Meet Our Authors

With humility, might I suggest that since the Amazon.de board does not have a MOA section that we writers self-police. I want to be clear. I am not pointing fingers at anyone because I am no better than any other author on this board. I want to sell and promote my books. However, if we stick to one thread or threads titled MOA, we might not alienate, every possible customer. It may also lead readers to discuss the merits of our work, rather than our sales techniques.

Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip

Cheers, Harry Leslie Smith

Harry Leslie Smith,

I applaud you. What a lovely idea!

And I'm not only saying that because I started that OTHER thread but because actually I think that meeting the authors is a great idea. There are lots of authors who I would like to meet and get my questions answered. On the other hand -- what I really don't like is copy/pasted promo with no regard whatsoever to the subject of the discussion. So getting to some kind of arrangement that suits everybody (like me not getting annoyed every time I go to this forum and you actually selling some books) is more than welcome.

I say -- go for it, writers.

Hi, I have managed to secure a publisher for my WW1 novelGoing Home To Ruby without the assistance of an agent. i wonder how many other writers have done the same, and are agents really neccessary with all the information available concerning royalties etc.

Congratulations, Roy. How long has it been out on the market?

Thanks Harry, i signed the contract only days ago and my book is due for publication in Oct 2012. However for the moment the publisher has not removed the book from Kindle and it is still available.

WASPS & SCORPIONS: Luv Pomes and Other Lies

WASPS & SCORPIONS: Luv Pomes and Other Lies
Quirky Poetry
by Barbara Scott Emmett

FREE FROM NOW UNTIL VALENTINE'S DAY!

DON'T LOOK DOWN

DON'T LOOK DOWN - Thriller set in Germany

also by Barbara Scott Emmett
E2.68

[Vom Autor gelöscht am 14.02.2012 18:52:22 GMT+01:00]

Roy, that's really cool news. I have a publisher looking at my Kindle published book now and I'm hopeful the same thing that's happened for you happens to me at some point. I actually could have had an agent for my novel but I decided to publish alone. The agent was from Janklow & Nesbit, but he wanted me to make a change to my book that I strongly disagreed with.

The book, by the way, is The Ninth Leg. It has Hitler, aliens, spaceships, giant spiders, flesh-eating monsters, time travel and worm holes.

That really is good news, James, my fingers are crossed for you. It really is brave of you to turn down your agent ihope everything works out, let me know if it does.

Hi. I am a new author on Amazon.com. My name is Rani Laha. I would love some feedback if someone could borrow or buy my newly published book. I hope you enjoy it! It is just a collection of poetry I have written.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00794QDU6

The Barley Hole Chronicles: From Hell to Hamburg on special this month for 0,89 euros

A true story about life lived on the razor's edge of history.

An excerpt

For a long time, we remained in Friede’s small lair, while outside the thin shuttered door, the old man raged against the occupation, his life, and his new lodgings. The din slowly dissipated and faded into the background like a smudge on the wallpaper.

I must have dosed off because I woke to the nakedness of her back and the curve of her spine. I traced my fingers against her skin and noticed that just below Friede’s left shoulder; she carried a horrible discoloured scar.“What are you doing back there?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

“Nothing,” I replied nervously as if I had been caught eavesdropping.

“You are staring at my war wound, aren’t you?” she asked, turning over to kiss me on my forehead.

“Come on then, give us a cigarette,” Friede demanded, hungry for nicotine. She drew her knees up underneath the blanket and blew a smoke ring from her lit cigarette.

Thanks Harry for starting this thread. During a recent promo, I noticed an encouraging number of downloads from Germany, and I'm thrilled to think that my books are being read and hopefully enjoyed in this country. Lucky me, I've found you all here! A big hello and pleased to meet both authors and readers based in Deutscheland. (Hope I've got that right!)

Julia Hughes

Hi Julia:
You should list your books in this thread.
Cheers,
Harry

[Von Amazon gelöscht am 20.02.2012 12:35:43 GMT+01:00]

Hi, I'm an English author of Young Adult books with a touch of fantasy. The price is very low at the moment or even free when I can make it!
This is a great read, or so people keep telling me:)
Shadowland

If you like the YA, historical or fantasy genres then please give this a try, you'll be glad you did and so will I!

Shadowland  is a YA story of historical fantasy set in Dark Ages Britain.

`I have lived more years than I can remember, probably more than the sum of all your years combined. Kings have called me friend and brigands have sworn to burn the flesh from my bones even if they have to search all seven halls of the shadowland to find me.'

On the night of midwinter's eve, a storyteller takes his listeners back to the Dark ages and a tale from his youth.

Deserted by its Roman masters, Britain has been invaded by the Saxons at the invitation of Vortigern, traitorous leader of the Britons. Now, as the tribes unite to reclaim their land, one man must rise to lead them and become their true and only king.
Shadowland

Ok, I'll bite. My name is Kate Baggott and my eBook is called Love from Planet Wine Cooler. If you don't want to buy it, many of the stories are available for free on literary magazine sites and in journals. Those you can find linked to under fiction at www.katebaggott.com

I write everything from technology journalism to experimental fiction. I have lived in Germany for the last ten years and teach English here. I speak German reasonably well, but I have never learned to write in the language. I use Facebook and Twitter to connect with the world at large, but I still feel a bit lost here. I am, though, very proud to have received my first German-language review here! Love From Planet Wine Cooler

Free cozy mystery, Sat & Sun, 18/19.2.2012 THE MEDICINAL MARTINI

THE MEDICINAL MARTINI, a cozy mystery set in 1961 on a transatlantic ocean liner and mixed with equal shots of murder, romance, and humor, lands the pickled gumshoe Dusty Darling in a pickle. Just how far overboard will he go for love?

Thanks!

My name is Dawson I am a writer from the U.S. and currently have three books on Amazon.com. If you like fiction with a sci-fi twist check it out. I like reading all your comments. Thanks and take care.

Hi everyone, my name is Stephen Livingston and I'm a writer from Scotland. My short story collection Kindling contains twelve tales and is now available in the amazon.de Kindle store. I have also made four of the stories from Kindling available as individual short stories, these are The Wheel of Justice, Recycling, The Waster's Tale, and Choose Your Future.
Best wishes, Stephen Livingston.

Good evening. My historical novel, Tree Soldier (Taschenbuch) is about forestry camps set up in the great Depression inthe 1930s to provide work for men who lost their jobs. In saving men, the camps saved trees and created campgrounds and other public buildings and sites at national parks across the country. Tree Soldier: A novel of Love, Forgiveness and the Great Depression

Hi, I was told it was most polite on threads like this to offer up some biographical background also. I come from across the pond. Born and raised in Chicago. Not well-traveled, the furthest outside of the states I've been is Toronto for the film fest. I'm Japanese American, and love coffee and movies. I also enjoy designing websites, blogs and book trailers. Fond of cats though I don't currently have one.

I started out as a poet, then wrote plays, and now write novels. The first novel I loved was Catcher in the Rye. Then next one I remember loving was The Lovely Bones. I don't really gravitate toward hard core sci fi, but I write literary novels with a sci fi spin. My well-reviewed debut novel is The Prospect of My Arrival. My poetry book has several poems in it that were reprinted in anthologies and textbooks like the Norton Introduction to Poetry. The poetry book is Crossing with the Light

My novel is about a human embryo that's allowed to preview the world before deciding whether to be born. To help him make up his mind, he will be able to interact with the best and worst the human race has to offer. From a retired greeting card writer to a conservative in an increasingly liberal world. Standing in the way of progress are Trevor Grueling who wants to derail this bio-experiment...and Trish Mesmer, the spearheading scientist who has more hidden agendas than a centipede has legs. This quirky cautionary tale is served up with equal helpings of whimsy and dread, with just a dash of hope.
The novel was a top three finalist out of 5000 books in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.

(The second novel I'm working on is The Hope Store. http://dwightland.homestead.com. It's about the first store in the world to sell hope over the counter. It's currently entered in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards contest.) If anyone has any questions for me, I'd be happy to try to answer.

The Barley Hole Chronicles: From Hell to Hamburg on sale for 0,89 cents to celebrate my 89th birthday

A True Story about life lived on the razor's edge of history.

Barley Hole was for my great grandfather Canaan, the land of milk and honey. For my father, it was paradise lost and for my mother, Barley Hole was a curse. It was a place that haunted her spirit and her soul throughout her life. To me, Barley Hole is a name forever etched on the map of my family's heart; it is where betrayal and injustice nearly thrust us into oblivion.
The Barley Hole Chronicles are an odyssey of the human spirit that stretch across time and geography to incorporate, diverse personalities, personal hardships, World Wars and the struggle for peace and love, in a society fallen from grace. These Chronicles document one Yorkshire family's decent into the wilderness of poverty and hunger. It is a personal record of one young man's struggle to survive the great depression, the Second World War and the hazards and wonders of life in post war Germany. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a summation of two memoirs by Harry Leslie Smith 1923 and Hamburg 1947. The Barley Hole Chronicles are a true account of a time and place when life, full of raw emotion, was never so real. It is also a social history of the 20th century at its bloodiest and deadliest time.

I don't know why but the winter rains stopped and spring came early in 1945. When Hitler committed suicide at the end of April, the flowers and trees were in full bloom and the summer birds returned to their nesting grounds. Not long after the great dictator's corpse was incinerated in a bomb crater by his few remaining acolytes, the war in Europe ended. After so much death, ruin and misery; it was remarkable to me how nature resiliently budded back to life in barns, in fields and across battlegrounds, now calm and silent. The earth said to her children; it is time to abandon your swords and harness your ploughs; the ground is ripe and this is the season to tend to the living.
When Germany surrendered, to the allies in gutted Berlin, I was in Fuhlsbuttel, a northern suburb of Hamburg. Our squadron took up a comfortable residence in its undamaged aerodrome located not far from the main thoroughfare. At the time, I didn't think much about Fuhlsbuttel, I felt it was between nothing and nowhere. It was much like every other town our unit drove through during the dying days of the war. Nothing was out of place and it was, quiet, clean and as silent as a Sunday afternoon.

While I slept in my new bed, in this drowsy neighbourhood; the twentieth century's greatest and bloodiest conflict came to an end at midnight on May seventh. On the morning of the eighth, our R.A.F commander hastily arranged a victory party, for that afternoon. The festivities were held in a school gymnasium close to the airport.

No one considered or asked on that day of victory "what happens next." That was tomorrow's problem. I certainly didn't question my destiny on that spring afternoon. Instead like the Romans, I followed the edict carpe diem: I ate too much, I smoked too much and I drank too much. And, why not I reasoned, the war was over and I had survived whereas many others had been extinguished as quickly as it takes to blow out a flame on a candle.

My thanks to the many Amazon.de patrons who have discovered THE BLACKGLOOM BOUNTY and The Regents of Rhum (Episode 2 of THE SCYTHIAN STONE SAGA) in the Kindle store. Episode 3, THE SCIONS OF SCOTIA will be available by Christmas 2012. If you're a fan of historical fantasy, Viking lore, or medieval history, this may be the series for you.

I am Paul Dale, author of The Dark Lord's Handbook

In brief, it's about Morden and the path he walks on his way to becoming a Dark Lord with a little help from the titled Handbook.

As a child I only lived in Germany for a very short period in the mid seventies as I was sent to boarding school back in the UK soon after we moved there. The thing I remember probably more than anything was how much more snow there is in winter than we have in England (although you'd think we had massive amounts given how we completely fail to deal with even minor falls). For a young boy, all that snow was very exciting.

The boarding school experience did help with one of the early chapters but not in the sense that I had a desire to grow up to be a Dark Lord.

1923: A Memoir Lies and Testaments 0,89 cents to celebrate my 89th birthday this February.

Birthday Greetings from 1941

I am quite sure that, this year, on my birthday there will be many good wishes, along with some cake. No doubt, there will be champagne because, after all, I am turning eight-nine.

“That is very old,” a relative recently said to me.

“It is an ocean of time,” I replied.

On good days, I marvel at my advanced age and on bad I lament that so many have passed before me. Being a winter baby, I have felt February’s austere light ebb, fade and grow cold upon my face for close to nine decades. Time has marked my body with many scars from this marathon, I started in 1923. I hope my finish line is far off in the thicket and I have still lots more time to ramble along the river bank of existence.

When I began this sprint, in my life’s journey, there was little to mark the day of my birth from any other day. There were no parties, balloons or fancy sweets, just a passing greeting from my mother, while my older sister tugged on my hair and counted my years of life. Afterwards, she would give me a pinch for good luck.

When I turned eighteen, a squeeze of good fortune from my sister would not have gone amiss considering Britain was at war. I was certainly going to need providence, on my side, because I was scheduled to begin my induction with the RAF, the following day.

My birthday in 1941 was a quiet affair. My friend Roy had already left to join the Cold Stream Guards while my other friend Dougie Butterworth was ill again and had taken to his bed with a quivering heart. I did not want to spend my last birthday, perhaps my last days on Earth with Eric. His fast talk about the money he was making in selective war service sickened me.

Instead, I decided to indulge myself with a visit to the public baths. They were located at the top of Boothtown Road. I arrived and paid an attendant 50p. It was a privilege to soak in a warm bath rather than a tin tub filled with tepid water in a kitchen. A female attendant led me along a narrow passageway until she found an unoccupied room. Inside the narrow, wood-lined space was a hanger for one’s clothes, and a deep, porcelain, bathtub. The attendant placed a plug into the bath. She turned the taps on until the bath was filled with warm inviting water. When finished, she closed the door behind her. I undressed and submerged myself in calm, cleansing hot water. I was empty of thoughts or cares until the water grew cold and it was time to dry myself, dress, and depart.

Afterwards, I spent some hours with my sister Mary who had come down to Halifax to bid me farewell. We did not talk much. We sipped our ale. We held each other’s hands on the table. We looked into each other’s faces, seeing if we could read our past upon them. She joked and bantered more than me because I was withdrawn and frightened about what tomorrow would bring for me. I was as scared as I was as a child when the nuns beat me because my future was as ominous as my past. I experienced the same form of loneliness when Albert our father left us. There was no one and nothing which could ease my sense of apartness from the civilian world. When it was time for my sister to leave, she got up and kissed me.

“Come back safe, Harry, just come back.”

The following morning, I awoke with a jittery feeling like it was a school morning. I dressed warmly and went to the kitchen. My mother was sitting alone, warming herself by the oven. Bill her lover had already gone to work and my half brother’s Matt and junior were at school. She made me a cup of tea and cut me a large slice of fresh bread. There was a generous lather of butter and jam on it.

“Go on, tuck in. Well, lad, this is it. Keep your head down, Harry. Don’t do anything daft because life is short, my boy, life is short.”

I hugged her with mixed emotions. I mumbled farewell and made my way to the train station.

The platform was deserted while I waited for my train to take me to Padgate for induction. It was cold, damp, and grey; sweet smoke from the McIntosh candy plant fell like drizzle across the station. I reached into my overcoat and found a near-empty packet of cigarettes.

I placed one in my mouth and furiously struck a match, quickly inhaling the harsh tobacco. In the distance, I heard the whistle of the train. I smelled the coal burning off its engine. I breathed in the coal that had been dug from the pits of Barnsley, Elsecar, and Barley Hole. I tasted it in my mouth, around my teeth, and on my tongue. It was the soot of my father, my grandfather, and all my ancestors who laboured beneath the ground.

As the train drew its way into the belly of the station, another passenger approached the platform. He was a man in his fifties, long past the time for war, and he was whistling the tune, ‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run…”