WANDA HART: Reviewer and Blogger.

Are you a writer, reader or reviewer?

I am a reader and a reviewer, and I am trying my hand at writing.  Not very successfully I may add.

How long have you been writing, reading or reviewing?

Reading, since I was 3,  Serious.  I learned to read at 3 by 5 I read books set at a grade 5 level and up.

What book was your biggest inspiration, and why?

Wowie, this is hard.  The Stand by Stephen King.  Weird hey?  But really.  It was the first time a work of fiction gave me so much to ponder and I figured that maybe fiction has a value far greater than that of recreation only.

What book is your favourite?

Oh wow, not enough time or space.  

Do you prefer stand-alone books or series?

Both, they have their merits and none can replace the other.

Do you like and do you ever read fan fictions?

Truthfully not sure what Fan fiction is.

Do you dream about the books your reading / writing?

All the time. 

How many books are you reading right now?

1

What are you reading right now?

Forever by Gillian Joy is one of those 12!

Does your family feel you have an addiction to books?

My family loves to read themselves but they believe I am over doing everything I do including reading.

Do you feel you have an addiction to books and can you justify your answer?

Yes I do, do I have to justify the fact that I can be instantly transported into another world by the flip of a page or the press of the button on my Kindle, doubt it.

 Go check out Wanda's Blog @ tattlet.blogspot.com

Graffiti Heaven

Here's a sneak peek of my new cover for the first book in the Graffiti Heaven series. I suppose the closest you can relate it to would be Skins. 

The cover still needs some slight adjustments, but that will be done closer to the book's release in August.

A group of teenagers deal with sex, love, drugs, bullying, family and Shakespeare. (Edgy YA)

Set ten years prior to Behind the Hood, Graffiti Heaven is a spin-off series that follows Ash Rata's teenage years. It is a coming of age tale where both comedy and tragedy battle it out on a South Auckland stage.

RESOURCES/SITES FOR SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHORS

Author Groups on the internet:

http://www.youwriteon.com/

http://www.authonomy.com/

Information on how to format your book to Kindle and Smashwords:

http://declanconner.com/kindle-formatting/

Online Publishers for ebooks:

Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon): https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

Smashwords (which also covers Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.): http://www.smashwords.com/

The two main publishers of self-published paperbacks:

https://www.createspace.com/

http://www.lulu.com/

The best book reviewing site (In my opinion):

http://www.goodreads.com/

Extra Links: My Twitter Name/Facebook Pages/Goodreads’ Page:

@MaritaAHansen

Personal page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000453197575

Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marita-A-Hansen/113130742120676

Goodreads’ Page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5129673.Marita_A_Hansen

Review of Smack.

My Review

Rating	4.3 stars out of 5
Genre:	Edgy Young Adult

Subject: A realistic look at heroine addicts in England. Synopsis: Gemma runs away from home because her parents are too strict, Tar runs away because his father hits him. Different reasons, but the same end result. They become addicted to heroine and will do anything to get a high. Over the span of five years we are taken through their lives and meet the same people that they do, from addicts to the few that want to help them. My Thoughts: As with Nicholas Dane this story was very sad, but well-written and captivating. Though, I did like Nicholas Dane better, I still got very much involved in the lives of Gemma and Tar, especially Tar. He was by far my favourite character, even though he had many faults. He was the type of person that you wanted to wrap up in cotton wool and keep away from the bad crowd, because he was so easily led into things. He was also the only one in the story that captured my heart, his sweet personality taking a real hammering with what he went through. Gemma was a much stronger character than Tar. But at the beginning very selfish. Like Vonny, she frustrated the hell out of me, and at one point I really disliked her. But, she grew as a person. However, she had to go through absolutely horrible experiences to do so. In the end I did come to appreciate her character and it took a lot of guts for her to do what she had to in the end, which was admirable. Lily was a horrifying character, because of how extreme she was. She was the biggest addict of all the friends, and her insistence that she was a good mother even when she shot up between her breasts while breastfeeding highlighted this perfectly. Her boyfriend, and the father of her child, was also a sad, sad character, especially with what we found out he had done in the end to get more junk. I thought the author did a good job of portraying the characters in the story, and I also liked how he named each chapter according to the narrator, because I also do this in my Behind the Lives series. The internal monologues were well done, although at times they did get a little laborious. Nonetheless, the story was still captivating enough to get me through those moments.  Because of this, "Smack" isn't the type of book that is read quickly. It took me a while, because of the slightly duller moments. But, I think this was also because Melvin Burgess was taking us through a realistic portrayal of life, and as with life you get both the lulls and the highs (pun intended). And, I think certain moments in the book also overrode the more duller points, making me appreciate this story very much.  Keywords: Drugs, Heroin, Addiction, Prostitution, Teens, Young Adult, England, Squatting. P.S. I remember reading a review, I think it was on Amazon, complaining that the author used the word "junk." This person complained that "junk" was an old-fashioned word and thus shouldn't be used. My thoughts were that the reviewer didn't read the book properly. Melvin Burgess uses appropriate words for the time period this story is set in: The 1980s. If he didn't, it wouldn't have felt right or have come across as so realistic. Conclusion: A bittersweet story that was definitely worth the read. Links: amazon.com   amazon.co.uk  amazon.de  amazon.es  amazon.it

Cara and Ray Bertoia's "Cruise Quarters" is free today

Today Feb 3 Cruise Quarters - A novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships will be free at Amazon.com. It is the # 1 cruise ship and the #1 casino novel at the Kindle store. It was chosen as 'Read of the Week' at Tripatini.com.

The Review Girl blog raves, "Cruise Quarters is an amazing travel novel which is as much about romance as it is about travel (the novel is based on their real-life love story)."

Please help Cara and Ray celebrate the anniversary of the day they met by downloading a copy. They hope you have as much fun reading it as they did writing it. 

Product Description by Cara Bertoia

Cruise Quarters is a fun, fast paced tale of working in the casino aboard a Regal Cruises cruise-ship. It is based on a true story and was written by authors who have decades of experience working on luxury cruise ships and in casinos across the globe. The crew of the Regal Star resemble a mini United Nations, hiring people from all over the world. But unlike the UN, Regal Cruise's employees present a united front above decks as they attend to their passenger's every needs. Sarah Seldon is a croupier on the luxury liner. After many unhappy endings, and burnt out on shipboard romance, she is determined to forget about men and concentrate on becoming a casino manager. On land women face a dearth of GOOD men but on a ship giving up men would take willpower. The mostly male crew exist to serve her every need. Handsome Italian waiters bring her food, the Filipino steward cleans her room, English officers play poker with her and the Welsh plumber fixes her sink. She leads a cushy life, sleeping 'til noon , eating gourmet food, and the topper - she gets to wake up in beautiful new place everyday. All because she works in a casino, a place so bad it has SIN in the middle. Book a cruise and travel with Sarah and the crew as they work, play, feast, and fall in and out of love, all while the ship sails around the globe, stopping at exotic ports of call. Along the way, from Venice to Barcelona sight-see in the Med, shop in St. Martin , take an eco-cruise down the Amazon, and feast in Glasgow . Let the crew tell you their own stories as they sit in the hallway in the wee hours of the morning. While the ship travels to new destinations, tired and tipsy they share tales of love and betrayal. Excerpt from Chapter One: When people sat down at Sarah Seldon’s blackjack game, they always wanted to talk about The Book. “Should I double down? Should I hit? Dealer, I know you’re a gambler; you could let me win if you wanted to. What does the book say?” She had never read this book, this mythical Bible for gamblers. The truth is there are 2256 books, each teaching its own foolproof winning system. But Sarah had been in the casino business long enough to think with a gambler’s mind. Gamblers knew they could follow all the rules of basic strategy, utilize money management and still lose if they weren’t dealt the right cards. The allure and curse of gambling was that there were no sure things. In the end it all came down to luck; gamblers prayed that Lady Luck would show up and that she would stick around for awhile. On that particular day, Sarah perched on a chair to get a better view through her salt-stained porthole onto the dock, filled with people busying themselves with the activities necessary to supply a huge cruise ship. Port activities in Hong Kong demonstrated a model of modern efficiency. Even though the ship had been docked for under an hour, already the crew had begun to perform the necessary safety checks. At the same time operators steered forklifts, moving wooden pallets filled with provisions into the hold. Like a patient hooked up to life support, long, fat hoses attached to the side of the ship fed water and gas into tanks, providing nutrients for the upcoming voyage. You can find out more about Cara and Ray at Author Central and please check out their blog: casinosandcruiseships.blogspot.com

Cara Bertoia

Growing up in a straight laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina , I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe . My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place so bad it has 'sin' in the middle." Eventually, I succumbed to pressure from the family and returned east to take a high-tech job in Boston . I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. I wanted to write the first realistic novel about casino life from the perspective of an experienced table games dealer. I am always amazed that normal and sometimes quite intelligent players become absolutely clueless in the casino. They repeat superstitious nonsense and no amount of logic can change their position. On a whim I submitted an article to The Boston Tab, about trying to find a rent control apartment. To my amazement they published it and I even received my first piece of fan mail. Spurred on by that success, the next week, after a few glasses of wine at lunch, I called the editor of the Brighton Allston Journal and told him I should write a humor column. While in Boston I was offered the opportunity to join Princess Cruises as a croupier. Jumping at the chance, I spent the next five years circling the globe. Sometimes life exceeds your dreams. I was awed by the wonders of Venice, the fjords of Norway, and the Northern Lights in Leningrad but on the downside I also watched glaciers melt at an alarming rate in Alaska, snorkeled to coral reefs killed by pollution in the Caribbean, and witnessed the devastation as the Amazon burned. It was the best education I could ever have had. Taking advantage of every opportunity to be a tour guide, I soaked in as much history as I could. I returned from ships with a very special souvenir, my husband Ray. Besides being a handsome Glaswegian, he is my co-author. We also produced a movie on walking the 500-mile "Camino De Santiago," in Spain . The Desert Woman and the Desert Sun both featured stories about our walk. When we were researching the Camino we could never find a good practical guide on the terrain and the trail, the things a person would experience every day, although there was plenty on the architecture and history. So seeing a need we made a movie of our journey. It is a thrill to come home and find orders from such diverse countries as Japan and Denmark . The address for our movie is: www.caminovideo.com

Amazon links to Cruise Quarters:

United States:    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004NIFUUU  

United Kindgdom:   https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004NIFUUU

Germany:   https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004NIFUUU

France:   https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B004NIFUUU

Italy:   https://www.amazon.it/dp/B004NIFUUU 

Spain:  https://www.amazon.es/dp/B004NIFUUU

A Review of Nicholas Dane

 Amazon.com link

Amazon.co.uk link 

The Carnegie Prize-winning author, Melvin Burgess, who wrote such books as Smack, Billy Elliot and more. 

My Review

rating
review	Genre: Edgy Young Adult, and in my opinion for older teenagers and adults. Subject: A rather horrifying look at boys homes in 1980s Britain. Synopsis: After Nicholas Dane’s mother dies unexpectedly from a drug overdose he is put into a boys’ home, where violence is used to keep order. After countless fights and what happens to him at the hands of the deputy-principle he goes on the run. My Thoughts: This story was very sad, the topic being about how certain people in society abuse their positions to gain access to children. But, I think the author's focus was more upon how Nicholas handled what what thrown at him. I felt for the character, was horrified by his situation when he was put into the boys home: from the beatings by other boys to the disgusting acts perpetrated by the adults that were supposedly there to protect him. But, even with the harsh topic of child abuse, Melvin handled things with care and brushed over the parts that would've made me stop reading, which is how it should be when this topic is handled. Conclusion: An eighties Oliver Twist and a recommended read if you like edgy YA.

Music in Books 4

I haven't done any music posts for a while. Last year I did one on The Black Seeds as they got mentioned a couple of times in my book: The part where Tama steals Nike's Into the Dojo CD, and also in chapter 36 when Tama goes to Kelly's house. Here are the lines from Kelly's house:

Tama opened the stereo, slipped in The Black Seeds’ CD, then pressed play. The guitar rift of Sometimes Enough started, the reggae beat following close behind.
   Bobbing his head up and down to the music, he walked towards the brunette from the party, his eyes narrowing in on her tight black sweater. 

If you want to hear this song, here's the video:

The Black Seeds - Sometimes Enough

I used to listen to The Black Seeds all the time while working at the Auckland International Airport. They made the extremely early hours less boring. They are a great New Zealand group that sing New Age Reggae - easy beats that you can mellow out with or bob your head to. And, for anyone that knows about the Flight of the Conchords, Bret McKenzie was a former member of The Black Seeds. He sang my favourite Back Seeds' songs, previously posted on my blogsite in August 2011: One by One.

The Black Seeds - One by One

So, if you like them, go check out their CD Into the Dojo plus their more recent albums. Here's the connection to their website: http://www.theblackseeds.com/hifi.html If you click on here you'll hear more of their songs.