When B-Grade stands for Best

Do you have to hand in your hipster card if you love film noir? This is the serious love affair my protagonist Steele Hill confesses to in the short story Lady Madonna Meets the Martians. http://amzn.to/1H0fPdf

       In the 1990s, 20-something Hill scours video shops for noir classics and when caught watching the vids at home has to explain his abnormal behaviour.

       Twenty years on, are we noir lovers to be even more pitied or have the hipsters caught up with the joys of black and white crime films?

FREE BOOK --- STARTS YOUR JOURNEY WITH PSYCHIC DETECTIVE TRUDY

 Free for a limited time: get your copy now

YOU  have probably come across Jane Sharp’s eBook which began the Vision series of psychic mysteries. “I should look into that one,” you have probably said.

               Well percolate the coffee and break open a bar of Swiss chocolate, these bite-size ghostly tales are free for Kindle.

                Australian author Jane Sharp is offering you her first published work in the hope you will be hooked and itching for more of Detective Trudy’s Harper’s adventures.

Vision: the Reluctant Psychic Free

Put the single story to bed

2015 Man Booker winner Marlon James

IT was a good week for those of us listening hopefully for the recognition of new voices in world literature.

Marlon James became the first Jamaican born winner of one of the world’s most highly regarded literary awards, the Man Booker Prize.

His winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings traces a murderous lineage in Jamaica and the United States which began with the attempted murder of Bob Marley in 1976.

James, who teaches creative writing at an American college, received the prize along with a big bauble of £50,000 Great Britain pounds (J$9.2 million Jamaica dollars) at a black-tie dinner at Guildhall in London.

But the glitz and the gold could not cover the irony that James in hoisting the trophy above the stage would be looking down on some of the publishers who collectively rejected his first novel John Crow’s Devil, 78 times, before it was eventually accepted in 2005.

Break our addiction to the predictable

WE have all done it. Find a book from one of our fave genres and we are ¼ the way through but it hasn’t grabbed us. It’s the Least Favourite Jelly Bean Color Syndrome

       We are consuming our least- favourite- color-jelly-bean book and contemplating putting it aside. It is after dinner and we might put it aside and we might move on to social media or even television. Just one more chapter.

Michael come into my office

I WOULD say most of us have worked in the public/ civil service or at the very least are one degree of separation from someone who has.

       Public-service jobs are so ubiquitous, often we don’t know when we are standing in one. Literally. 

      

 As a teenager I took a self-imposed sabbatical from university and landed a job in the Gold Coast Sewerage Department. We worked in the trenches, doing all sorts of things with sewerage pipes. One day they bused a bunch of us to chip weeds in rectangular concrete ponds containing spent sewage.

5 good bets punting on #BYNR

For many of us, books are staple commodities, not luxuries.

I have invented a book race to see which of my five Bent Banana Books April Specials sells the most.

I am calling the race the Grand Notional Staplechase. I am against horses jumping over obstacles but new books have to do it all the time.

I will list the form of the five horses/ books as they appear in the official race-guide, http://bentbananabooks.com/

The race finishes April 30.

1.        

Well-bred by Bernie Dowling out of Pop Culture.

Runs a funny race with short sprints and seems to always want to chase Rock Music, Aussie Slang and Crime.

Had only two starts before review judges and scored first (5-stars) both times.

Lack of experience may hinder.

Discount cost $1.99

Odds 7-1

In the stables of Amazon, Apple, B&N, Google Kobo and others: Amazon stable http://geni.us/3mZH

2.        

Novel on aging, a horse some punters don’t like to look at.

By newcomer Christina Debi.

Runs on lines of comedy and drama.

Mixed performances in reviews, because of the topic???

Definitely a winner in the right race.

Discount cost $2.99

Odds 6-1

In the stables of Amazon, Apple, B&N, Google Kobo and others: Amazon stable http://geni.us/2QX5

3.

First horse to race from the Vision stable.

By Jane Sharp

Five short sprints in each race

Stablemate to the more fancied Vision Complete Trudy Harper Psychic Investigations.

Excellent in reviews with 11 starts for 4.7* average.

Note recent stable change when moved exclusively to Amazon to make it free to punters of Kindle Unlimited.

Bit of a smokey if it attracts KU support.

Discount cost $1.99

Odds 5-1

Amazon stable only http://geni.us/3y7d

4.

Regular visitor to World’s Top 100 Psychic Suspense.

By Jane Sharp

20 short sprints make it a value runner

Marginally behind its stablemate in review stakes with 12 starts for 4.2* average

Short priced favorite.

Discount cost $2.99

Odds 1-2

In the stables of Amazon, Apple, B&N, Google Kobo and others: Amazon stable http://geni.us/1l36

5.

Cult favorite over many years

By Bernie Dowling out of Pop Culture, sibling to another runner.

Runs a funny race over a true course with darts down sidetracks.

Suited to Australian tracks so international punters, prepare for a wild ride.

Could take off at any stage.

Discount cost $2.99

Odds 3-1

In the stables of Amazon, Apple, B&N, Google Kobo and others: Amazon stable http://geni.us/3LXG

And they’re OFF.

Support your faves from the above field and follow their fortunes in the Grand Notional Staplechase.

Here is our song

Holy Bookmark Quest: Last Day of Reckoning

Author Jane Sharp challenges Stephen King

Noo Yawk is a city overlooking the mountain Popular Literary Olympus where Dean Koontz, Heather Graham and Stephen King live although they arrived on the mount from other parts of Americus.

The Literary Liberators, author Jane Sharp and her fans, are flying a gilded carriage in a circle around Popular Literary Olympus where Dean Koontz, Heather Graham and Stephen King live. The freedom fighters want to land on the mountain to farewell Jane so she can live there as an immortal. But Jane needs to find the Holy Bookmark Kindle Top 10 in Suspense/Psychics because it is the key to the portal into Popular Literary Olympus where Dean Koontz, Heather Graham and Stephen King live.