Hi! Welcome to Rave Reviews Book Club’sSpring Book & Block Party. (For all the stops and oodles of chances to win a myriad of prizes, check out all the RRBC posts throughout the month-long tour.)

This stop? Staci Troilo’s site currently hosted in Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA.

Today I’m Giving Prizes to Two Lucky Winners:

First Prize: $15 Amazon Gift Card
Second Prize: Medici Protectorate SWAG Pack

SWAG Pack Contains: 1 Pen, 1 Magnet, 1 Bookmark, & 1 Sticky Note Pad

^{Prizes awarded to US commenters only.}

Today I want to talk about weaving history into contemporary stories. I like a good historical tale every once in a while, but I tend to read contemporary fiction a lot more often. That doesn’t mean history has to be abandoned, though.

One of my favorite things to do is research. I used to love writing research papers in school. Sure, I…

Welcome to Rave Reviews Book Club’s BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY 

atSiân Glírdan – The Way of the Bard, the main author blog of RRBC Member of the Year 2016, author Jan Hawke! (aka Siân Glírdan) –  😀
Location: N. Cornwall, UK
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Today’s giveaways are…

• *One (1) promotional Guest spot on Siân Glírdan – The Way of the Bard (‘Desert Island’ interview or other feature)
  
• *One (1) hand-made deck of Jan’s fantasy tarot cards (the Fool, or Trickster is on the wallpaper this month!)
  
• *One (1) $/£ 10 AMAZON gift card
  

making 3 lucky winners for this stop!

Just post a comment on the 14th April to be in the draw to win – good luck!

Slight change of plan with my second giveaway – I dropped the T-Shirt in favour of my exclusively designed fantasy tarot deck as this formed the basis of the cover design…

Friday once again. Always glad to see it roll around. No particular reason other than it gives me an opportunity to reflect on the week and see if I’ve done anything worthwhile. Hold on let me think a moment. *crickets*

I’m back. This week was pretty productive. I finished up all the edits within my power on Circumstances of Childhood and sent it off to the editor. That was a biggie this week. I also placed My GRL on an Amazon Marketing Services promotion. I will be interested to see how that goes. This is the first time I have done it seriously. The idea is for Amazon to match your book with searches done by their customers. I managed to come up with over 200 keywords so this effort should be more telling on the program. I’ll keep you posted. Today’s John Ku talks about trying new things. Hope you…

What is the most important achievement in an author’s life?

I can think of many thinks that are equally important, like

Completing a novel

Seeing your book in print

Being published, either traditionally or self

These are all important of course, but the one I’m thinking about is receiving good reviews for your work.

But apparently, according to Tara Sparling, there are better reviews we could get. Reviews that could sell more books than any of those 5-star reviews.

These are the bad reviews.

You may have heard the expression, “there is no such thing as bad publicity” and history has proved this to be true. The minute someone says how much they hated something, people immediately want to see for themselves.

Think of all the books that have been banned. People will break their necks to get a copy. Some of the best-selling books in the world started…

BOOK REVIEW: Panama by C.S Boyack.

MEET THE AUTHOR:

I was born in a town called Elko, Nevada. I like to tell everyone I was born in a small town in the 1940s. I’m not quite that old, but Elko has always been a little behind the times. This gives me a unique perspective of earlier times, and other ways of getting by. Some of this bleeds through into my fiction.

I moved to Idaho right after the turn of the century, and never looked back. My writing career was born here, with access to other writers and critique groups I jumped in with both feet.

I like to write about things that have something unusual. My works are in the realm of science fiction, paranormal, and fantasy. The goal is to entertain you for a few hours. I hope you enjoy the ride.

BLURB:

Ethan and Coop are sent…

HELLO ALL AND WELCOME TO THE

2017 SPRINGTIME BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY!

You Are Visiting Oak Park, Michigan USA!

Have A Wonderful Tour!!

HERE IS WHAT I AM GIVING AWAY TODAY!

1^st PLACE WINNER: $10 Amazon Gift Card

 2^nd PLACE WINNER:  Autographed Hardcover Limited Edition, Our Lady of Victory, the Saga of an African-American Catholic Community

 3^RD PLACE WINNER:  Autographed Paper Back Copy Crazy! Hot! And Living On The Edge!!

Leave a comment and you could be a winner!!

Number of winners for this stop:  3

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OUR LADY OF VICTORY

OLV BOOK TRAILER

You all know how much I love history and old buildings with historic significance. That’ why I joined forces to help save our train station years before I thought about writing a book. I became the news after putting on a city-sponsored event to bring attention to this forgotten piece…

Craig here, and it’s Ffriday. At Story Empire this means it’s time for our weekly curated content post.

This is where our members share things they’ve discovered during the week that may be of interest to our fellow authors.

Before you start clicking away, don’t forget the posts we’ve presented this week:

The Three Legged Stool of Writing, which I wrote.

And a great editing and formatting post, by PH Solomon.

Today is the last day of our Story Empire Roadshow. You still have a chance at the prizes, so you might want to check the tour page and comment on the individual host blogs.

Click to your heart’s content, and let us know if you find something helpful.

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•  Why Your Novel Needs a Trickster (benefits of this chaos-inducing character type)
• Why Kill Your Darlings? (evaluation of “darlings” and how to treat them… murder isn’t always the…