Book Review

Author Spotlight: H.W. Buzz Bernard

Author Spotlight: H.W. Buzz Bernard
Cascadia

IT PROBABLY HELPS TO BE A FEW FRIES SHORT OF A HAPPY MEAL

A few days ago, I came across some notes I made while plodding though the literary landscape in search of an agent who would represent my debut novel, EYEWALL.  The notes were compiled in 2009 – a couple of years prior to EYEWALL’s publication.  I had no recollection of making them, but there they were.

What they were was this: a compilation of comments agents had made about the manuscript, both pro and con.  I assume I kept them to remind me to focus on the positive remarks as opposed to the negative ones, since I tend to be a glass-half-empty kind of guy instead of a glass-half-full one.  In other words, I needed an antidote, the “pro” comments, to ward off the poisonous effects of negative reviews.

If you’re a published writer or are looking for an agent, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you aren’t, then what follows will provide a little insight into what authors face as they trek along the winding, unpaved road to publication.  In my case, the road turned out to be ten years long and strewn with four different manuscripts.

If nothing else, a review of the comments I received serves as a vivid reminder of how TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE the endeavor of assessing manuscripts is.  And I know this from both sides of the aisle now, since I occasionally judge writing competitions.

So here we go.

According to my notes, I lacked genuine talent as a writer.  One agent said she was “not that impressed by the writing.”  Another dissed my execution as “a bit dense and overwritten.”

Time for a big swallow of my antidote.  “You have a gift of description which is lushly depicted,” declared one agent.  Another pointed out: “Your language in descriptive passages really impressed me.”  Okay, perhaps there’s a glimmer of hope for me.

I apparently had trouble kick starting the story, however.  One agent pointed out the first two chapters were “not compelling enough.”  But another told me, “Very nice writing, especially the first chapter.”  Hmmm, maybe I sent out two different manuscripts.

Then there was the issue of driving the drama forward.  “More slow-moving than I’d hoped,” one reviewer complained.  Another griped, “The details get in the way of what should be more fast-paced and gripping.”

Happily, there was an opposite assessment: “Starts off fast paced right from the beginning.”

The body blows were relentless, however.  Agents were “not sufficiently engaged; not sufficiently enthusiastic;” or found the tale “a bit predictable.”

Thankfully, there were always the counterpunches to keep me going: “Great and timely concept, one with clear marketability,” and “you write well and deserve an agent with the time to properly represent you.”

It took me another year before I found such an agent.

In the end, I’d have to say the pro comments were more on target than the cons.  EYEWALL went on to become a number-one best seller on Amazon’s Kindle Store.

That’s just the kind of goofy business this is.  It’s a game with only self-defined rules, amorphous boundaries, and no referees.  One that’s both fun and terribly frustrating.  To play it, you have to be tenacious, thick-skinned, and probably a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

 

Pick up EYEWALL by H.W. Buzz Bernard today for just $1.99!

St. Simons Island, Georgia, has never been hit by a Category 5 hurricane. Until now.

No one predicted the storm’s sudden force. A crippled Air Force recon plane, trapped in the eye of a violent hurricane. An outspoken tropical weather forecaster, fired from his network TV job before he can issue a warning: the storm is changing course and intensifying. A desperate family searching for a runaway daughter on Georgia’s posh St. Simons Island, cut off from escape as the hurricane roars toward them. A marriage on the rocks; an unrequited sexual attraction; a May-December romance. All will be swept up by the monster storm.

Get ready for a white-knuckle adventure.

 

 

And don’t forget to grab H.W. Buzz Bernard’s other great Bell Bridge Titles as well!

  

 

About the Author:

H. W. “Buzz” Bernard is a best-selling, award-winning novelist.

His debut novel, EYEWALL, which one reviewer called a “perfect summer beach read,” was released in May 2011 and went on to become a number-one best seller in Amazon’s Kindle Store.

PLAGUE (“One of the best thrillers of 2012″–novelist Al Leverone) came out in September 2012, and won the 2014 EPIC eBook Award in the suspense/thriller category.

SUPERCELL (“Races along with the speed of a twister”–novelist Michael Wallace) was published in late 2013 and became a best seller on Kindle as well as the winner of the 2015 EPIC eBook Award in the suspense thriller/category.

Buzz’s fourth novel and third in his “weather trilogy,” BLIZZARD (“A terrific book”–novelist Deborah Smith) was released in February 2015. It led to his nomination for a 2016 Georgia Author of the Year award.

CASCADIA (“heart pounding”–Reed Farrel Coleman, NYT best-selling author WHERE IT HURTS) hit the market in July 2016.

Before becoming a novelist, Buzz worked at The Weather Channel as a senior meteorologist for 13 years. Prior to that, he served as a weather officer in the U.S. Air Force for over three decades.  He attained the rank of colonel and received, among other awards, the Legion of Merit. His “airborne” experiences include a mission with the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters, air drops over the Arctic Ocean and Turkey, and a stint as a weather officer aboard a Tactical Air Command airborne command post (C-135). In the past, he’s provided field support to forest fire fighting operations in the Pacific Northwest, spent a summer working on Alaska’s arctic slope, and served two tours in Vietnam. Various other jobs, both civilian and military, have taken him to Germany, Saudi Arabia and Panama. He’s a native Oregonian and attended the University of Washington in Seattle where he earned a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science; he also studied creative writing. Buzz currently is vice president of the Southeastern Writers Association. He’s a member of International Thriller Writers, the Atlanta Writers Club and Willamette Writers. He and his wife, Christina, live in Roswell, Georgia, along with their fuzzy and sometimes over-active Shih-Tzu, Stormy.

Buzz’s Website can be found at www.buzzbernard.com.

A Note from Wally Avett

A Note from Wally Avett
Last Bigfoot in Dixie

Wally's new hat

 

A Note from Wally Avett

 

I am grateful to Bell Bridge Books and my agent, Jeanie Loiacono, for getting my first two novels —MURDER IN CANEY FORK and LAST BIGFOOT IN DIXIE —  included in Amazon’s Holiday Gift Guide for the month of December.

My goal is to be a good storyteller so both novels, works of fiction, are solidly based on a number of true incidents.  I’m thankful the partnership of BBB and Amazon can enable me to reach a wider audience for my books.

My wife(52 years and counting) and I will welcome children and grandchildren into our mountain home over the holidays, where we always share good food and good stories.  Merry Christmas to all and a Happy and Blessed New Year!

Avett and wife

Seasonal greetings from the Smoky Mountain farm of the Wally Avetts.

Last Bigfoot in Dixie by Wally Avett is on sale during the month of December for only $1.99! Click the cover below to purchase!

Last Bigfoot in Dixie - 200x300x72

“As a longtime resident of North Carolina I felt while reading this book how authentic and real the characters came across. People in the southeastern part of the country do speak and act as portrayed in this story. I think just about every little town around the country has some strange and wild individuals that everybody in the town knows about and are suspicious of as well as the everyday common folks.

The story takes some unpredictable and sudden twists that keep you intrigued and anticipating what will happen next. A very well written book with some surprises along the way and a dramatic end fitting for a cast of characters such as these.”

Review posted by Robert on amazon.com

 

 

A Note from Wally Avett

A Note from Wally Avett
Avett and wife
Murder in Caney Fork
Wally

Wally's new hat

 

A Note from Wally Avett

 

I am grateful to Bell Bridge Books and my agent, Jeanie Loiacono, for getting my first two novels —MURDER IN CANEY FORK and LAST BIGFOOT IN DIXIE —  included in Amazon’s Holiday Gift Guide for the month of December.

My goal is to be a good storyteller, so both novels, works of fiction, are solidly based on a number of true incidents.  I’m thankful the partnership of BBB and Amazon can enable me to reach a wider audience for my books.

My wife(52 years and counting) and I will welcome children and grandchildren into our mountain home over the holidays, where we always share good food and good stories.  Merry Christmas to all and a Happy and Blessed New Year!

Avett and wife

Seasonal greetings from the Smoky Mountain farm of the Wally Avetts.

Murder in Caney Fork by Wally Avett is on sale during the month of December for only $1.99! Click the cover below to purchase!

Murder in Caney Fork - 200x300x72

 

 

“Living in the N E GA/W NC mountains, I can certainly relate to these characters as if they were walking down the street in our small town. They come alive and realistically go about their days as you’d expect in a southern town in America. Wes, a wounded soldier coming home near the end of WWII, tries to settle back into his ‘normal’ environment on his return. Post war direction is needed and he chooses to become an apprentice in his uncle’s law firm. Being part of a southern lawyer’s cases delves him into suspense and mysteries, some surrounding those he loves…family. Justice is dealt with a little differently in the South and if the law doesn’t get the job done, then others will band together and take action deemed necessary. Certainly being thrust into multiple thrilling events opens the protagonists’ eyes into the world he is now surrounded by. Starting over can sometimes be thrilling, and call into focus that which you must deal with one incident at a time!”
Review posted by Rhonda Brigman on goodreads.com

 

Book Review of Dead (a Lot)

Book Review of Dead (a Lot)
Dead (A Lot) 200x300x72

Dead (A Lot) 200x300x72By Forris Day Jr. of Scared Stiff Reviews

Got Zombies? Dead (A Lot) does. Dead (A Lot) by Howard Odentz is fun book about a zombie apocalypse as experienced by a group of young teenagers. One day they are just doing the regular things that kids do then the next morning the world is forever changed when a strange virus is released into the world that changes most denizens of this Earth into slow moving and very hungry zombies. Unfortunately for our adventurers a shot to the head does not kill these decrepit bags of flesh as it does in most zombie stories. But a bit of fire seems to do the trick.

Odentz’s tale takes place during the fall season in New England. It is a time when people from all over come to drive the back roads admiring the foliage that this part of the country has to offer. Too bad many of the leaf peepers have now become a part of the landscape, dead like the leaves they came to view, searching for food to satisfy their never ending hunger.

Tripp Light and his twin sister Trina seem to be immune to the virus that has turned most of the world into a bad B-movie. As they go in search of their parents they meet up with other survivors who have their own strengths to add to their ever growing group. Alone they will die but together this ragged acne prone bunch of teenagers just might have a chance. Follow along as they travel from their destroyed home to go in search of their Aunts house where they believe their parents are hiding.

A fun and witty zombie apocalypse narrative that will bring a smile to your face as you discover (or remember) how the teenage mind operates in times of difficulty. The dialog is clever and the characters are realistic. The locations are based on real ones and that is pretty cool because they were recognizable to me as I am from New England and I know most of the locations really well. As a matter of fact the crew drives by the house I grew up in in Three Rivers, Massachusetts. Kind of a treat for me as I imagined the sidewalks that I rode my bike on as a kid, filled with all my neighbors turned zombie. I still think some of my neighbors I had as a kid were indeed zombies.

Dead (A Lot) is aimed at the “Young Adult” market but I feel it is an enjoyable read to anyone of any age who enjoys a good zombie story full of fun characters and entertaining zombies. Yes, I found many of the zombies funny and amusing because they could not get themselves out of many simple predicaments that us living folks take for granted everyday. For example turning doorknobs is beyond a zombies knowledge so if they are inside that is where they remain unless they can find some other means of egress. They are forever hungry and always have something up their sleeve…well the ones who still have arms that is.

Make sure you grab DEAD (A LOT) for only $1.99 through Friday!

And don’t forget about Howard Odentz’s new release –BLOODY BLOODY APPLE – available now!

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Dead (a Lot) Book Review

Dead (a Lot) Book Review
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cover34639-mediumZombie stories are everywhere. Due in some part to the unbelievable success of shows like The Walking Dead,books like World War Z, and films like 28 Days Later andShaun of the Dead, everyone’s writing about the dead-but-ambulatory. Nice zombies, evil zombies, teenage zombies, Nazi zombies, zombie dogs, shark zombies, Jane Austen zombies. Zombies sell books. And movies. And television. And video games. It’s all out there.

The thing about the best zombie fiction, though, is that it’s not really about zombies, not primarily. It’s about the living. The Walking Dead, for instance, has gone entire episodes without showing zombies. This is true of most genre fiction, for that matter: The conceit of the story—what makes it “genre,” in other words—is just a clever way to “tell it slant,” as Emily Dickinson advised, of examining the human condition. Yes, zombies are cool and threatening, but what keeps us coming back to the story is the desire to find out how the people work around the threat.

Howard Odentz’s Dead (a Lot) does just this, coming at the zombie apocalypse tale from a slightly different perspective. Odentz tosses the reader directly into the story of Tripp and Trina Light, teen twins who’ve been left at home while their parents are away on a trip. Almost immediately, the Lights’ universe tilts, things go awry, and the dead, unsurprisingly, begin to walk, and to munch on the living. As the book’s narrator, Tripp guides the reader through the story of how the siblings set out to find their parents. These teens have never had to make it on their own, they barely know how to drive, and they’ve certainly never had to kill another human being, so they’re up against enormous odds here.

Since Dead (a Lot) features a first-person narrative, big picture revelations are few and far between, but that’s fine, since the characters and their ongoing conflicts are interesting enough to keep us satisfied. And when the larger revelations do come, Odentz finds interesting ways to reveal them. We know that the zombies–called poxers by the characters–are the result of Neropoxy, a parasitic disease that causes the zombie plague, and we’re also certain that the disease was created by humans. We know that some people appear to be immune to the disease, which creates yet another source of tension and conflict. And we know that the poxers can be destroyed, though it’s not an easy thing to accomplish. Good thing, that.

During their journey, the twins meet up with radio DJ Jimmy James (whose name, I suspect, may either be a nod to the station owner from the 90s sitcom Newsradio or just a happy coincidence), brother and sister Prianka and Sanjay Patel, and Andrew the Crow, Jimmy’s talking bird. Odentz imbues these characters with interesting qualities that make the story more interesting. Tripp already knows Prianka from school, and they have a ready-made adversarial love/hate relationship. Prianka’s little brother Sanjay is autistic and often consults a worn out stuffed animal, Poopy Puppy, obtaining and passing on relevant and often unbelievably detailed information to the group. Jimmy also has a limitation that I won’t reveal here, but I will say that it helps strengthen an already prevalent sense of reality and urgency.

One of the most interesting aspects of this novel, though, is that its characters possess an awareness of the zombie genre. Tripp, for instance, has played video games and seen films featuring zombies, and Sanjay refers occasionally to zombie films by name. A good deal of the conventional wisdom contained in the cited media turns out to be false, or at least not quite right, and the characters rarely call the walking dead “zombies,” but there are occasional references to George Romero and other staples of the genre. Is this unique? No, but it does lend Dead (a Lot) an interesting authenticity, making it seem even more plausible that these characters live in the same world we do.

Overall, this is a fun and quick read. The story is fast-paced with little room for breathing or lollygagging, and there are plenty of close calls and high stakes. After all, around every corner or behind every door lurks the possibility of death. Odentz deftly captures Tripp’s voice, and his narration is engaging and full of humor, much of it clearly deployed defensively. He’s not perfect–not by a long shot–but he’s certainly worth rooting for. He’s sarcastic, often to his disadvantage, but we’re nonetheless able to occasionally glimpse his vulnerability, giving us the feeling he’s never far from losing it. And who wouldn’t be?

There’s such a glut of zombie stories on the market that perusing the contenders can feel a bit like running a gauntlet manned by the unruly undead. So, as with most growing trends in genre fiction, unless you want to read the same zombie story over and over, it becomes necessary to look for writers who find a way to make it different somehow.

Dead (a Lot) is different.

 

Make sure you grab DEAD (A LOT) for only $1.99 through Friday!

And don’t forget about Howard Odentz’s new release – BLOODY BLOODY APPLE – available now!

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