Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More


Oct 18

2

221 BC: Scroll 1 of the Narmer War by Kendall Price- Interview, Giveaway

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on October 2, 2018
Posted in Guest Author • Guest Authors/ Interviews • My Past Giveaways  | Tagged With: , , , , | 3 Comments

221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price and Laura Vosika

Publisher:  Mill City Press, Inc. (January 31, 2018)
Category: Historical Fiction, Ancient Civilizations, Supernatural Powers, Young Adult
Tour dates: October-November, 2018
ISBN: 978-1545626108
Available in Print and ebook, 364 pages

221 BC

Set against the backdrop of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, an alternate history unfolds, linking the power of the pharaohs to magic. Brother is pitted against brother in a race to find twelve amulets, lost with the ancient pharaoh, and unlock their powers. Whoever holds the amulets holds that power; to save the world…or destroy it.

Praise 221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price and Laura Vosika


“As the debut novel opens, King Ptolemy IV, Macedonian ruler of Egypt, is distraught over the apparent murder of his friend and mentor, Qibo (“Multiple gashes covered his body. His eyes stared at the ceiling, as if he could still see whatever had killed him”). The ancient Taoist master had worked at the Museum of Alexandria for years. This act seems to be the dark culmination to a number of days in which Ptolemy has been plagued with nightmares laced with what appear to be strange signs. He dreams he is the Pharaoh Amenhotep, worrying over his kingdom and suffering from dental pain, the latter of which seems to affect Ptolemy’s waking hours as well. After exhuming the dead pharaoh’s body, experts discover that he did indeed have advanced abscesses in his teeth, which leads head librarian Eratosthenes to posit that someone might be working magic against the king, perhaps to re-create history. The theory is that Qibo was murdered to prevent him from translating ancient tablets that might help Ptolemy unlock the magical powers of a set of 12 amulets that have been in the possession of the pharaohs for untold years, each associated with a different element. Using the artifacts, someone might be able to wrest control of the kingdom. As the story proceeds, Price paints a vivid, intricate portrait of war, juggling a wide array of famous characters, including the notorious Hannibal, and using meticulous research to flesh out this universe, rooted in historical facts and details. The prose is rich and involving, and the twists are carefully designed and executed. An inventive blend of Egyptian history and magic, this dynastic tale opens what promises to be a stellar series.”- Kirkus

“What grabbed my attention was the fact that it was based in Egypt during the time before Christ, about the Pharaoh Ptolemy III and his family struggle to maintain their control of the united Egypt. I love how the story is created with historical facts into mystery of hidden artifacts that hold magical powers and having characters with unusual powers too. It makes for a very entertaining novel and keeps the reader wondering what will happen next.”- Valerie I. Rosica, Amazon Review

“Clearly a great deal of research was done to write this book. It’s also exceptionally creative and engrossing! Hope there’s more to come….”-Kathryn Price, Amazon Review

“Very interesting  take on the Egyptian family the Ptolemy’s and their possible aliens within the ancient world and the invasion of Rome by Hannbal. Historical fiction worth reading!”-Char, Amazon Review

Interview with Kendall Price and Laura Vosika, Authors of 221 BC

Hi Kendall and Laura, welcome to Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus!

TR: Please tell us something about the book that is not in the summary.  (About the book, character you particularly enjoyed writing etc.)

KP & LV: The book is based on years of research in the global ancient world. From Spain to China, all parts included. I picked this time because it is a pivotal year in history often overlooked (new kings/rulers of Egypt, China, Greece, Asia, etc)

TR: What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?

KP : I love the scene at the Delta theater where Xiphos and Hannibal (best friends) foil the assassination attempt against the king. A few years ago we went to San Antonio for my wife’s college reunion and there is a great riverside theater that is the model for the Delta theater.

TR: I always enjoy looking at the names that authors choose to give their characters. Where do you derive the names of your characters?  Are they based on real people you knew or now know in real life? How do you create names for your characters?

KP & LV: Most of the character names are historical and accurate. The only 2 names I made up are Xiphos (Greek for sword) and Cynisca (actual name of different Spartan princess). The name s are a bit crazy but that’s the nature of ancient history J.

TR: How much time and effort went into your research for the book?

KP & LV: About 10 years of off and on research writing and editing. Laura took over about 3-4 years ago I believe.

TR: Where did you get the inspiration for your cover?

KP: Our great formatting and cover folks (DDD (deranged doctor design) suggested a few covers and our kids and I worked on it. The cover is one where Cynisca is doing a healing spell for Magus.

TR: What draws you to this genre? 

KP: I love comics, D&D, scifi/fantasy, and now history. True heroes and villains not too complicated by the world. Laura helped me make it deeper.

TR: Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead character from 221 B.C.?

KP: I don’t know young actors these days but the Rock and the new Tomb Raider actress are the right types.

TR: You are sitting in a coffee shop. What does your writer mind see?

KP: A lot of nice people eating food that is bad for them but think its ok. Folks think if I just have a little it’s ok when they are really shaping the space-time reality of their body and mind.

TR: What book/s are you reading at present?

KP: Phillip 2 of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great)

KP & LV: What are you currently working on?

KP & LV: 220 BC

TR: Is there a question that you would have liked me or another blogger to ask but didn’t?

KP: I guess my thoughts on Eastern and Western medicine (complimentary, valid, and interesting)


About Kendall Price


Dr. Kendall Price was born and raised in Columbia, Maryland, the third of four children. He attended high school at the Phillips Academy Boarding School in Andover, MA, a place that left him with many fond memories, and that he calls the most formative time of his life. The friendships in 221 BC are loosely based on his time at Andover.

Following in the footsteps of his father and two grandfathers, all doctors, Kendall attended Amherst College in Amherst, MA and the University of Illinois College of Medicine and studied pathology at Stanford University.  While there, he did four fellowships, including medical staff/ autopsy, hematopathology, surgical pathology, and immunohistochemistry.

Doctor Price lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife Michelle and their three children.  It was Michelle’s influence, with her study of Chinese medicine, and a masters degree in Chinese acupuncture, that led Dr. Price to become certified in acupuncture himself.  The magic in 221 BC is based on Chinese medicine.

In addition to writing and Chinese medicine, Dr. Price enjoys exercise, reading, and travel.  He has been to all 48 continental US states, Canada, Mexico, Alaska, and Copenhagen.

Other writing credits include a small booklet, available on Amazon, on healing dental caries by nutritional means.

221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price and Laura VosikaAbout Laura Vosika


Laura Vosika is a writer, poet, and musician. Her time travel series, The Blue Bells Chronicles, set in modern and medieval Scotland, has garnered praise and comparisons to writers as diverse as Diana Gabaldon and Dostoevsky. Her poetry has been published in The Moccasin and The Martin Lake Journal 2017.

She has been featured in newspapers, on radio, and TV, has spoken for regional book events, and hosted the radio program Books and Brews. She currently teaches writing at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

As a musician, Laura has performed as on trombone, flute, and harp, in orchestras, and big bands. She lives in Brooklyn Park with 5 of her 9 children, 3 cats, and an Irish Wolfhound.

Website: www.bluebellschronicles.com
Blog: http://bluebellstrilogy.blogspot.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laura.vosika.author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lauravosika

Buy 221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price and Laura Vosika


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Barnesandnoble
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BookDepository

Giveaway 221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price and Laura Vosika


This giveaway is for 3 winners choice of one print or ebook copy of the book. Print is open to the U.S. only and ebook is available worldwide. This giveaway ends November 30, 2018, midnight pacific time. Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter onlly.

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Follow 221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price and Laura Vosika Tour


Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Oct 2 Kickoff

Lisa Book Reviews Oct 3 Review & Excerpt

Dawn Bound 2 Escape Oct 5 Excerpt

Dawn Bound 4 Escape Oct 9 Guest Review

Lu Ann Rockin’ Book Reviews Oct 12 Review

Yari Yaris-Book-World Amazon Oct 15 Review

Indie Review Behind the Scenes Oct 16 Video Interview 1 pm est (will be posted later in the week)

Carole Rae’s Random Rambling Nov 2 Review

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Nov 5 Review

Amber Imaginative Dreams Nov 20 Review & Excerpt

Mindy Room Without Books is Empty Nov 27 Review

This schedule is subject to change.

221 BC: Scroll 1 of Narmer War by Kendall Price and Laura Vosika

Aug 18

27

Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike: Giveaway

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on August 27, 2018
Posted in My Past Giveaways  | Tagged With: , , , | 4 Comments

Hundred Fires in Cuba by John ThorndikeHundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike

Thanks to Max López of JKS Communications, I am giving away 3 print copies of ‘A Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike.

Description Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike


In the spring of 1956, a young American photographer falls in love with a Cuban line cook in New York. They have a ten-week affair which ends when Immigration arrests and deports him, and by then Clare Miller is pregnant.
Few Americans know the name Camilo Cienfuegos. All Cubans do. He was the most charismatic of Castro’s rebel commanders. But Clare, who never hears from him after he’s deported, believes he has died in Fidel’s invasion of the island. She marries a wealthy Cuban businessman and moves to Havana with her two-year-old daughter, only to discover that her first love is not only still alive, he’s now head of the Cuban Army.

Clare knows that Camilo likes to dance and drink. He likes women, and too many women like him. Though his courage is legendary, when he comes to visit at night he’s afraid of his daughter’s moods. He feeds her, he reads to her, he changes her diapers, but for him an all-night march would be easier. Clare worries that he’ll never make a good parent, but she cannot resist him.

Praise Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike


“Thorndike is a talented, experienced writer, and Clare and Camilo especially are fully developed, attractive characters…. A highly recommended rendering of a love affair and mysterious slice of Cuban history.” – Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)

“The prose is elegantly crafted….A Hundred Fires in Cuba is a sophisticated historical novel that effectively deploys a love triangle to capture the essence of a remarkable figure and the historic period that produced him, laying bare the yearnings of the heart.” –Foreword Reviews

“Thorndike weaves a complex love affair into one of the hemisphere’s great dramas, the Cuban Revolution. Evocative prose, timeless conflicts, and an intimate story full of surprises.” –Natalie Goldberg, author of Wild Mind and Let The Whole Thundering World Come Home

About John ThorndikeHundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike


John Thorndike grew up in New England, graduated from Harvard, took an MA from Columbia, then lit out for Latin America. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador and two, with his wife and child, on a backcountry farm in Chile. Eventually he settled with his son in Athens, Ohio, where for ten years his day job was farming. Then it was construction.

His first two books were novels, followed by a memoir, Another Way Home, about his wife’s schizophrenia and his life as a single parent. A second memoir, The Last of His Mind, describes his father’s year-long descent into Alzheimer’s.  A Hundred Fires in Cuba is his latest novel, and he’s at work on the next one, a half-fictional evocation of his mother’s life.

Website: http://www.johnthorndike.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnThorndikeAuthor/

Buy Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike


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Giveaway Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike


This giveaway is open to the U.S. only and ends on September 14, 2018 midnight pacific time.  Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Aug 18

2

Four’s Destiny: A Wartime Greek Tragedy by Michael Powell: Giveaway

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on August 2, 2018
Posted in My Past Giveaways  | Tagged With: , , | 4 Comments

Four's Destiny: A Wartime Greek Tragedy by Michael PowellFour’s Destiny: A Wartime Greek Tragedy by Michael Powell


Thanks to the author, I am giving away one print copy of ‘Four’s Destiny: A Wartime Greek Tragedy’ by Michael Powell.

Description Four’s Destiny: A Wartime Greek Tragedy by Michael Powell


The book traces the lives of four young men, Godfrey (English), Rolf (German), Marco (Italian) and Yiannis (Greek) – each born in 1920 – and their families. Marco and Yiannis come from the small island of Leros, then part of the Italian-ruled Dodecanese group. They all meet in 1936 at the Nuremburg Youth Rally when Godfrey visits Rolf on a student exchange and Marco is invited to visit his second cousin, Rolf, with his friend Yiannis.

When war breaks out, the four serve their countries in various fields of battle. In 1943, Italy changes to the Allied side and their lives come together again when Yiannis, now a sailor on the distinguished Greek destroyer, ‘Queen Olga’, transports British troops to Leros and meets Godfrey, now a member of the British Long Range Desert Group, and Marco, serving in the Italian army on Leros. Rolf, now stationed in Greece as a bomber pilot is fated to drop one of the bombs which sinks the Olga and, in the final act before his plane crashes, to strafe Marco’s anti-aircraft battery.

About Michael PowellFour's Destiny: A Wartime Greek Tragedy by Michael Powell


As a young man Michael was a Choral Exhibitioner at Christ Church Oxford and dreamed of becoming a full time opera singer.  Close to achieving this ambition he later sang professionally with a number of Opera companies and performed regularly as a baritone soloist. But making a living as a singer is hard so he also supplemented the family income as an IT consultant and IT work took more and more time from singing. However, once it dawned on him that tenors have more fun and get to kiss the girls, he had a second operatic career as tenor and during the 1990s and 2000s sang many tenor roles, including Don Alvaro in Verdi’s ‘Forza del Destino’.

His IT activities continued and he designed and wrote three quite successful software products – one of which (for analysing Operational Risk) is still in use. He also started writing, contributing regular articles to Computer Weekly, The Guardian and FT and writing two rather dull books on Contracting published by Reed Business Publishing (astonishingly still available though completely out of date!). He also wrote the libretto for an opera, called “Mister Butterfly”, which was composed by Ken Roberts and performed in Hong Kong in 2000.

In 1993 he met his lovely Swedish wife, Kerstin, who had been living in Greece for many years, running a charter yacht with her previous husband. She persuaded him, at a time when his fortunes had reached a nadir, to buy a boat. Though this seemed completely crazy at the time, it proved to be one of their best decisions ever. They have been lucky enough subsequently to visit every Greek island and now spend half their time in Greece, sailing on Tosca II, or in their house on Leros.

In the course of their travels, they came to the Dodecanese island of Leros. Michael became interested in the history of the island. It is riddled with tunnels, dug before and during the war as shelter from bombing. It has a myriad of interesting old buildings from the time of the Italian occupation and a British War Cemetery, the last resting place of many brave and distinguished soldiers who died futilely trying to stop the Germans taking over in 1943.

They were entranced by the people of Leros who he found to be some of the most friendly and outgoing Greek people. It was clear from the start that the islanders are eager to include foreigners and they were made to feel welcome immediately. After a lot of debating, and spending a winter in their boat in the excellent marina, in 2014, Michael and Kerstin found a house right on the cliffs overlooking the wild bay of Gourna. It was incomplete and needed some work. Kerstin happened upon a neighbour, Giorgos, who is a master builder. He, with Kerstin’s input and her ability to speak Greek, has finished the house beautifully as well as becoming a close friend. The Greek character in “Four’s Destiny” is based on his stories of his young life and he furnished some of the anecdotes about the Greek people’s relationships with the Italians. Over long evenings discussing with Giorgos, over a few ouzos, how life was on the island during the occupation by first the Turks, then the Italians, then the Germans and finally the Brits who handed them back to the Greeks – vivid memories told by an island man quoting stories from his ancestors – ‘Four’s Destiny’came to be written.

Website: http://www.foursdestiny.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/foursdestiny

Buy Four’s Destiny: A Wartime Greek Tragedy by Michael Powell


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Giveaway Exit Strategy by Joseph H. Baskin


This giveaway is open to and the U.S., UK, most of Europe,  Australia, and New Zealand and ends on August 17, 2018 midnight pacific time.  Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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