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February 10, 2011Dear Friends of Open Books,
It has been a month since our last newsletter, and we have much to tell you about. So let us get started without delay.
OUR NEWEST eBOOK
The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans by David A. Ross
Meet Fizzy Oceans—archivist, researcher, environmentalist and adventurer. On her travels she witnesses The Exodus, the Battle of Gettysburg and Hurricane Katrina, as well as many other historical and real time events. She meets notable individuals including Gandhi, Mark Twain, Jacques Cousteau, The Dalai Llama, Saddam Hussein and even a new species called the Quinngen.
Such unique experiences and encounters spanning the world and time as we know them would not be possible for a single individual—especially not for a woman named Amy Birkenstock who works as a medical clerk in Seattle, Washington—but Fizzy Oceans, Amy’s digital alter ego, is not in Physical Life. She lives, works and travels in the virtual world where the dead are very much alive, places like ancient Babylon and Pompeii have been reconstructed, and with the click of a button—WHOOSH!—one is transported throughout the Ages to events and destinations that make up our human history.
Even as Amy’s physical life existence is challenged by encroaching environmental disaster, economic instability, and societal breakdown, Fizzy’s virtual world offers instant realization of vision and inspiration. The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans imagines the bridging of two worlds—the literal and the metaphorical—and questions what it is we have created, what has been lost, and what might be possible for us as individuals and for the Human Race.
BUY NOW AT
Open Books Direct
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
UPCOMING eBOOK
Tarantula Woman by Donald O'Donovan
Publication Date: February 28, 2011
ISBN-13: 9781452468587
Price: $4.99
Availability: Worldwide where all fine eBooks are sold.
ABOUT THE eBOOK
Located across the U.S.-Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez, Mariscal Street (otherwise known as the Boulevard of Broken Dreams) harbors Donald O’Donovan’s quintessential character, Jerzy Mulvaney, as he unsuccessfully courts the Tarantula Woman—a prostitute named Ysela with a tattoo of a tarantula on her left shoulder blade. She is just one of many women in one man’s unapologetic and aimless existence in Mexico where each day brings another round of whorehouses, drunken stupors, odd jobs, eruptions of violence and encounters with equally directionless individuals.
Not since Charles Bukowski’s Factotum has a transgressive autobiographical novel touched upon with such rawness the everyday realities of a modern-day American desperado. Yet somewhere in the midst of all the strident nihilism, O’Donovan’s alter ego, Jerzy Mulvaney, manages to stumble upon an ambition of sorts: to become a real Mexican. “I wanted to destroy whatever remained of my identity, my American identity; to melt down into a primal being, because the greatest thing is to be unknown, anonymous, and truly free.”
Rather than a work of fiction, Tarantula Woman is a refreshingly honest document that subtly addresses such essential subjects as life, love, death and the challenge of simply being.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donald O’Donovan was born in Cooperstown, New York. A teenage runaway, he rode freights and hitchhiked across America, served in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne Division, lived in Mexico, and worked at more than 200 occupations including telephone psychic, undertaker and roller skate repairman.
A former long distance truck driver, he wrote Confessions of a Bedbug Hauler while running 48 states and Canada for Schneider National. As a volunteer at the Braille Institute in Los Angeles he recorded several western novels, and subsequently studied voice acting with James Alburger and Penny Abshire. O’Donovan lived for two years at the historic Wilshire Royale Hotel while writing Tarantula Woman (to be published in February, 2011 by Open Books), and wrote the first draft of Night Train (Open Books, 2010) on 23 yellow legal pads while homeless in the streets of LA.
An optioned screenwriter and voice actor with film and audio book credits, Donald O’Donovan lives mostly in Los Angeles.
HIGH PRAISE FOR Simple Intent by Linda Sands
“This is a fast-paced thriller that keeps readers on their toes and hooked until the last page. There is plenty of action as well as a little romance tossed into one powerful and explosive story… Linda Sands' writing style is addictive. I wanted to keep reading and never put the book down. I hated to see this story come to an end. I'll anxiously be awaiting Ms. Sands' next book.” – Socrates’ Books Reviews
“Simple Intent is an engaging legal thriller… I'd recommend (the book) as an impressive debut in the genre.” – Book’d Out Book Reviews and Notes
“Linda Sands is a first class wordsmith whose use of language crackles, bristles, and sparks with originality, power, and brilliance. Sands is a monstrous talent that can draw a reader into the story itself, and the voices of each individual character, and their destinies.” – Reader Review on Amazon.com
WHERE CAN YOU FIND OUR TITLES?
As always, you can find all Open Books titles at Open Books Direct. Purchase the title of your choice direct from Open Books in the format of your choice (ePub for Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader and others or .prc for Kindle and other devices using Kindle apps).
In addition to Open Books Direct, you can buy Open Books titles from well-known retailers worldwide. Here is a partial list of retailers offering our titles:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Smashwords.com
barnesandnoble.com
kobo.com
whsmith.co.uk
waterstones.co.uk
angusrobertson.com.au
whitcoulls.co.nz
Wherever you purchase your Open Books titles, we know you will enjoy the fine books we have on offer, and all Open Books authors thank you in advance for your purchase and welcome your communications.
Until next month, we hope you enjoy your reading.
THE EDITORS from Open Books
www.open-bks.com
January 8, 2010Dear Friends of Open Books,
It has been a month since our last newsletter, and we have much to tell you about. So let us get started without delay.
JUST PUBLISHED
The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans by David A. Ross
Meet Fizzy Oceans—archivist, researcher, environmentalist and adventurer. On her travels she witnesses The Exodus, the Battle of Gettysburg and Hurricane Katrina, as well as many other historical and real time events. She meets notable individuals including Gandhi, Mark Twain, Jacques Cousteau, The Dalai Llama, Saddam Hussein and even a new species called the Quinngen.
Such unique experiences and encounters spanning the world and time as we know them would not be possible for a single individual—especially not for a woman named Amy Birkenstock who works as a medical clerk in Seattle, Washington—but Fizzy Oceans, Amy’s digital alter ego, is not in Physical Life. She lives, works and travels in the virtual world where the dead are very much alive, places like ancient Babylon and Pompeii have been reconstructed, and with the click of a button—WHOOSH!—one is transported throughout the Ages to events and destinations that make up our human history.
Even as Amy’s physical life existence is challenged by encroaching environmental disaster, economic instability, and societal breakdown, Fizzy’s virtual world offers instant realization of vision and inspiration. The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans imagines the bridging of two worlds—the literal and the metaphorical—and questions what it is we have created, what has been lost, and what might be possible for us as individuals and for the Human Race.
BUY NOW AT
Open Books Direct
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Smashwords.com
UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS
TARANTULA WOMAN by Donald O'Donovan
Publication: February 2011
Donald O'Donovan is the author of Night Train: A Novel and The Sugarhouse: A Novella. His writing is simply delicious. Here are the first few paragraphs from his upcoming novel, TARANTULA WOMAN:
“As a child I was a Taoist. Then I departed from the Way. It wasn't my decision. I was forced, by secret urges and demonic voices. The decision to leave the Garden originated in the blood, the germplasm, the liver, the spleen. In the pituitary, if you will. Or in the pancreas. It was a matter of chemistry. Once I was the joyful inhabitant of a tiny, ordered world whose enameled blue sky my extended fingers could always touch. Then the serpent entered the Garden. The enzymes were released. My eyes were opened. And so it began: cities, women, occupations. In other words, my life... It was right after I was rejected by the Peace Corps, when I was living in El Paso, that I started writing letters for the girls across the river, in Ciudad Juárez—the girls of Mariscal Street—the butterflies who inhabited the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
NAKED AT THE MIC: THE SURVIVAL OF A LIBERAL/RADICAL IN A TIME OF PERIL by L.A. Steel
Publication date: March 2011
L.A. Steel pulls no punches. His analysis of the Bush years is honest and unapologetic as he exposes the truth about events both well known and well hidden. And he does not stop there! Included are revelations about 911, the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan, Vice President Dick Cheney, the religious right, President Obama and much, much more. This is a big book that every American who values his freedom must read.
HIGH PRAISE FOR Alone in the Company of Others: A Novel by Kelly Huddleston
"In this superb non-linear novel, Kelly Huddleston displays an adroit handling of shifting timelines without resorting to cumbersome and patronizing flashback devices. We can easily lay our hands on plenty of novels that follow the familiar conventional linear structure, but a large percentage of these books are unreadable because their sentences are stacked one on top of the other like wooden planks. We don’t want wooden-plank sentences whose sole object is to move the characters and the reader from point A to point B because this sort of thing is dull and formulaic. A literary novel—and ‘Alone’ is unquestionably a literary novel—must have texture. It must have patina. It must have style. The words must dance and sparkle and cavort as well as carry the story forward. And in ‘ Alone’ we have it. Word-magic, I mean. Kelly Huddleston unfurls her lyric weaponry on every page, without fail."—Donald O’Donovan, author of Night Train, The Sugarhouse and Tarantula Woman.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND OUR TITLES?
As always, you can find all Open Books titles at Open Books Direct. Purchase the title of your choice direct from Open Books in the format of your choice (ePub for Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader and others or .prc for Kindle and other devices using Kindle apps).
In addition to Open Books Direct, you can buy Open Books titles from well-known retailers worldwide. Here is a partial list of retailers offering our titles:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Smashwords.com
barnesandnoble.com
kobo.com
whsmith.co.uk
waterstones.co.uk
angusrobertson.com.au
whitcoulls.co.nz
Wherever you purchase your Open Books titles, we know you will enjoy the fine books we have on offer, and all Open Books authors thank you in advance for your purchase and welcome your communications.
Until next month, we hope you enjoy your reading.
THE EDITORS from Open Books
www.open-bks.com
Out of curiosity, how does the system work regarding borrowing eBooks from libraries? Our titles are available in a number of library systems, however we're still puzzled as to how it works. Thanks in advance for educating us regarding eBook borrowing at libraries!
