Glorify Each Day Virtual Book Publicity Tour September & October 2011

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Join John Banks, author of the literary fiction novel, Glorify Each Day (819 Publishing), as he virtually tours the blogosphere September 5 – October 28 2011 on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!

About John Banks

John Banks was born in Asheville, NC. His storytelling is very much in the Southern tradition, with a special affinity for humorists such as Mark Twain and the Old Southwest school of writers. Though entirely imaginary, much of the material in Glorify Each Day must have come from his many years as a teacher in the public schools and community colleges of his native state and from the three years he spent as an a community college administrator.

Visit his website at www.819publishing.com or his Facebook Fan Page here.

About Glorify Each Day

Glorify Each Day is a darkly comical novel depicting the consequences of violence in modern American life. It tells many stories. Tommy “Teach” Morrison, the novel’s main character, tells the story of his relationship with his childhood friend Charles – a story of a horrible misunderstanding and a story that Tommy can never retell. It tells the story of Tommy and Cait, a story of shared love and shared jokes, but a story that Tommy has doomed to end unhappily.

Glorify Each Day is the story of how Tommy becomes Teach, a man on a mission and on a quest for redemption – instructor extraordinaire (at least in his own mind) who must become the protector of all the ill-fated youngsters put in his charge. It is the story of Teach and his father, a crusty, foul-mouthed abuser of everyone around him and proof that nuts don’t fall very far from the tree.

Glorify Each Day is a story about storytelling and the many different ways to tell a story – stories about Teach’s students; about superheroes, Jesus, races, raps, rapes; about a young woman who learns how to forgive her father, another young woman who learns how to forgive herself, and another young woman who learns that she doesn’t need anyone’s forgiveness. And these are stories that Teach should be able to learn something from, too, stories that shine a light on lives disfigured by violence and loss.

Here’s what critics are saying about Glorify Each Day:

Tommy “Teach” Morrison, a controversial GED teacher who is at once a plethora of personality and pain, is riddled with the guilt of his past. He is sentenced to emotional outbursts and an insatiable hunger for redemption, albeit the recurring pain lives solely in his mind and his day-to-day is insufferable. Although he is not a role model by any stretch, this is one of the most humorous, haunted and honest characters to cross the page in a long time. Glorify Each Day is a witty and gripping, if not addictive, read. The structure of the story is intelligent and climactic, leading its readers into a world of watchful waiting. There are finely intertwined stories which almost always satisfy the reader’s questioning and sleuthing, with an exception of some characters that, although intrinsically interesting, do not necessarily warrant such lengths of exposition dedicated solely to themselves, in this reader’s opinion. That being said, each character is leaping full of life.

John Banks displays his gift throughout this novel; his ability to realistically capture such a wide range of personalities and language is hilariously accurate and brings a colorful realism to the characters, as one would hope. His characters are battered and scarred, making them memorable and endearing to the final period.

This novel and John Banks have brought a light to the quest for self and the means with which as a human race we will strive to find it. Through Teach, a journey is realized in loss and grief, culminating in an ultimate release of his past and renewal through emancipation.

A read this good should not be ignored. A small warning for the sensitive and earmuff-wearer: Teach is a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is-according-to-him, sometimes offensive storyteller. He has a tale to tell, and a compelling one, if you can get around his means.

— San Francisco Book Review

Book Excerpt:

CHAPTER 1

ONE SUMMER SATURDAY when I was eight, my mom decided she wanted to spend the afternoon visiting with her friend, Mary, who lived about a mile from our house. We lived on a winding country lane, with houses far apart, separated by large tracts of land. My dad was on the road.

“It’s Saturday! Can I just stay here?” I said. Normally, I would spend most of Saturday with Charles, but he was at the beach.

“I’m not leaving you here alone all afternoon. You and Robbie go put on your shoes.”

“I don’t want to!”

“I don’t care if you don’t want to. . . . You two go pick out a couple of games to take with you. You can watch TV.”

As we were getting ready to leave, our Chihuahua, Señor Perro, came running up to us, tail wagging, mouth panting and yapping. Any collective movement within the household would set him off. Mom bent over and vigorously rubbed the dog along both flanks. As was her habit, she started babbling in baby talk. (She had another habit, more unusual – if Señor Perro misbehaved, she would inexplicably translate the dog’s name into English – Mister Dog! Bad Mister Dog! – even though, I suppose, that would have negated any effectiveness of yelling at a Mexican dog.) Although technically belonging to me and Robbie, Señor Perro was most loved by our mom. He, true to his nature, had a tendency to snap at us if we got too rough, which we, true to our natures, usually did.

Robbie and I selected the games we wanted. I chose Monopoly because it took the longest to play. Robbie chose one of his silly kid games called Horsefeathers!, which involved putting strange animal body parts together to create even more unusual creatures.

Mary was an older woman who lived alone, and there wasn’t anything in her house for a kid to get excited about. Robbie and I spent an hour playing Monopoly, arguing incessantly about dice rolls, how to count money, which was the best railroad to land on, what did Water Works mean. At one point Robbie threw all the Community Chest cards at me, and the game was stopped peremptorily by Mom when I lunged at Robbie, grabbed his neck, and tried to make him eat a hotel.

Robbie had a more sedentary disposition than I and seemed satisfied to spend the rest of the afternoon lying on Mary’s living room carpet watching cartoons. But soon after the Monopoly debacle I was desperate to be outside.

My persistent badgering finally paid off.

“Alright, Tommy,” my mom relented. “I’m going to leave in a few minutes anyway. I guess you’ll be okay at home by yourself for a little while. . . . You can go on two conditions. Number one, don’t walk in the road. Stay on the grass. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Repeat what I just said.”

“Don’twalkintheroad. Stayinthegrass.”

“Okay. And when you get home, stay in the yard. Don’t go into the woods. . . . Now what did I just say?”
“Stayoutofthewoods. Stayoutofthewoods. CanIgonow? CanIgonow?”

Even though Mom had to drive over, it was easy for me to run back home. I stayed on the road all the way. The idea of running on the grass was ridiculous. The ground was uneven and rutted in places; I was much more likely to fall and hurt myself if I followed my mom’s instructions.

The reason I was so eager to leave Mary’s house was because I was excited about practicing my pitching. Dad, a few months ago, had put up a tire swing in the backyard. It didn’t take me long to figure out the swing was also the perfect device to improve my pitching. The tire’s inside circumference was an excellent approximation of the Little League strike zone, and its height off the ground matched the height of most batters my age. Making this development even more exciting, I had finally been able to convince my dad to “ruin” the backyard by building a pretty convincing pitcher’s mound. So far, I had collected five baseballs from various places, which I carried in a toy bucket brought home from the beach. After throwing my five pitches, I would run to the chain-link fence to retrieve them. It was a perfect set-up, though I did wish I had more than five balls to pitch.

When I got back home, after a nearly mile-long sprint, I wasn’t even breathing very hard. I walked around to the side of the house, to where the spare door key was hidden, and let myself in.

Señor Perro was at the door to greet me. In my haste to get my glove and bucket of balls, I ignored the Chihuahua. I tended to ignore the dog anyway, though there were certainly times when both of us were in playful moods and I would wrestle Señor Perro and roll him on the floor – but more often than not this roughhousing would come to an abrupt end when Mister Dog would emerge, turn nasty and snap at me. I had not yet developed a habit of cursing, but would damn the dog in my own little-boy way.

Back outside, I ran to my pitcher’s mound in the backyard. My windup featured a very high left-leg-kick, which allowed me to balance on my right foot and lean the right side of my body backward to the point where I felt almost in danger of toppling over. In this way, I assumed, I would be giving myself the greatest amount of forward momentum possible as I threw the ball toward home plate. My pitches usually made it through the center hole of the tire, although sometimes a ball would ricochet off the inside rubber of the tire before being called a strike by the imaginary umpire.

After a half hour of pitch practice and ball retrieval, I heard Señor Perro barking from inside the house. Señor Perro was impatient and inconsistent when he needed to go outside, so I knew I needed to postpone my fun for a few minutes, if I wanted to prevent Señor Perro from being transformed into bad Mister Dog when Mom returned.

The dog ran outside immediately and scampered into the backyard. We had a high concrete deck with steps leading into the backyard. This side of the deck, facing the back yard, was a formidable concrete wall. And against this wall, which was about as high as I was tall, was Señor Perro’s favorite spot to cock his leg – which he did.

Having done my duty, I was in no mood to play with the dog. I wanted to pick it up and carry it back into the house so I could continue to pitch and to see how many consecutive strikes I could throw. Señor Perro, however, was in no mood to cooperate with me. He ran away when I tried to pick him up. He ran over the top of my pitcher’s mound, under the tire swing and then began running along the perimeter of the fence – with me in full chase. After two laps around the backyard, Mister Dog ran once again under the swing and came to a sudden stop on top of my pitcher’s mound. It was here that the dog started doing the unthinkable. Furious and not believing my eyes, I ran to the dog and picked it up, even though the animal was in full squat, with a long segmented turd hanging halfway to the ground. Señor Perro growled furiously and snapped his jaws at my arms, which were stretched out to full length, as the dog continued to defecate. In my anger, I threw the dog to the ground. Señor Perro once again took off running, this time toward the front of the house.

I wanted to forget about the dog and return to my soiled pitcher’s mound, which would require a bit of excavation before play could resume. But I knew how fearful Mom was about her dog being in the front yard, where there was no protective fence making it safe from traffic. So once again I was forced to postpone my fun in order to be a good son. Señor Perro, however, did not run up the short bank to the front yard. He stopped once more at the bottom of the concrete deck-wall and once more cocked his leg. I took this opportunity to seize the little bandit, and this time I was not going to let go. Still angry at him for desecrating my pitcher’s mound and for taking up so much of my fun-time, I started to squeeze Señor Perro tightly, holding it the way a running back holds a football. The more I squeezed the dog the harder I wanted to squeeze. I felt my arms squeezing tighter and tighter. Tighter still, as my teeth clenched and my arms started to tremble. The dog yelped loudly and struggled to free itself. I was holding it so tightly it could not move its head from side to side in order to bite. Its helpless yelping was muffled beneath my arms.

My anger slowly subsided and I loosened my grip on the dog. Reflexively, Señor Perro snapped viciously at me, grazing my arm with his fangs. I yelled out in pain and all of my anger returned in full force. Señor Perro leaped from my arms, but before the dog could escape, I jumped on it, picked it up with both hands, and with all of my strength hurled the dog toward the concrete wall. Señor Perro howled when he hit the wall and started yelping as he hit the ground. Señor Perro’s pathetic yelps were continuous, metronomic and piercing. Panicked, I could see I had broken the dog’s leg badly. I had no idea what to do. Señor Perro’s yelping was incessant. I reached down toward the dog, but it snapped again, with foam flecking from its mouth. I started running aimlessly around the yard. The dog’s yelping only seemed to be intensifying. I reached the fence at the far end of the yard and reached my fingers through the chain links and began to shake and rattle the fence, to what purpose I don’t remember, except perhaps to drown out the noise of the dog. As I stood shaking the fence, I suddenly thought about Mom and became terrified that she had heard Señor Perro from Mary’s house. I became sure of it. Even more panicked now, I started crying. I released the fence and started walking slowly back toward the dog, which continued to yelp steadily. As I gazed around the yard, I saw a shovel lying against the back of the house – the shovel my dad had used to build my pitcher’s mound. I grabbed the shovel and continued walking toward the dog.

When I got to within a few feet of Señor Perro, his yelping was unbearably loud.

“Shut up!”

The dog continued its crazed yelping.

“Shut up! Shut up!”

I raised the heavy shovel about shoulder-high and brought it down on the dog’s head. There was a metallic clang against the skull, but the dog continued to yelp, now with an even faster cadence.

I raised the shovel again, this time to a full height above my head, and slammed it once again against the dog’s head.

The yelping immediately ceased. Once again I was struck dumb with indecision and fright. I stared down at the dog and threw the shovel behind me; perhaps I was trying to disassociate myself from what I had done. I sat on the ground, cross-legged, still staring at Señor Perro, who lay motionless, a small spot of blood visible on his brown scalp, his hind leg angled grotesquely away from the other three.

I suddenly jumped to my feet and picked up the shovel, as a passing car reminded me Mom would be home soon.

The Chihuahua fit almost perfectly into the blade of the shovel, with only his front leg dangling. It was surprisingly heavy as I carried it across the yard. I slowly lay the shovel aside before I lifted the latch on the gate. When I picked the shovel up again I was careful to keep all the weight properly balanced – especially as I carried the dog along uncertain footing up into the woods. I trudged deeper, deeper, across a soft bed of pine needles, not knowing when to stop – perhaps not wanting to stop, wishing I could continue on forever into a never-ending forest.

Eventually, however, I did stop and slowly began digging through the moist undergrowth until I hit solid dirt. The soil was rocky and the digging became difficult. The grave wasn’t very large, but Señor Perro fit well enough. He would be hidden well by the leaves and needles. Before beginning to cover the dog, I bowed my head and asked God forgiveness. I had stopped crying.

As I finished my short prayer, I was startled to hear my mom shouting my name. The voice was too close to be carrying from the back deck of our house. Once again, I was helpless about what I should do. Mom continued to shout my name, her voice coming closer. I doubted I could finish burying the dog before Mom discovered me. I heard my name called once again, much closer now. I wanted to run away, deeper into the woods, but I must have realized how futile that would have been. Instead, I reached down and picked up the limp body of the dog and began walking slowly toward the sound of my mom’s voice.

As soon as she saw me, and what I was carrying, she ran to me.

“Oh my God.”

I didn’t say anything. She quickly took the dog into her arms.

“Let’s go, Tommy. We’re gonna have to run. We have to get him to the vet.”

“He’s dead, Mama.”

We were running, sticks crunching underfoot.

“No, baby, he’s not dead. He’s not dead. I can feel his heartbeat.”

Robbie started bawling immediately when he saw Señor Perro. On the way to the vet, Señor Perro started to regain consciousness.

“What happened, Tommy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you leave the gate open?”

“What?”

“I’ve told you repeatedly to make sure that gate stays closed.”

“I’m sorry, mama.”

“Well, I know, son, but as soon as we get back you have to be punished for this.”

“Is Señor Perro gonna be okay?” Robbie asked, his tears dried now that the dog’s eyes were open again. Señor Perro was, I imagine, in shock, strangely silent considering the agony he had been in.

“He’ll be fine, sweetie. The vet will fix his leg.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. He must have fallen down a hill or into a hole. Tommy, where was he when you picked him up?”

“In a hole.”

Which was the only true statement I have ever made about the incident.

Glorify Each Day Book Publicity Tour Schedule

Monday, September 5

Book spotlighted at Book Marketing Buzz

Tuesday, September 6

Interviewed at Review From Here

“This isn’t really advice, but one thing I’ve realized since writing my novel is that readers don’t give themselves nearly enough credit for their contribution to making a story meaningful.”

Thursday, September 8

Interviewed at Pump Up Your Book

“In terms of Glorify Each Day, I would love to see it made into a movie. As I was writing it I was aware of the cinematic nature of the scenes, of how well the story would translate into film. There are many interesting characters and each of them has a very interesting story to tell; there’s a compelling love story at the center of everything and lots of humor and lots of drama – everything a good movie needs.”

Friday, September 9

Interviewed at Examiner

“I wrote all of this novel during the spring and early summer. I loved sitting on my front porch, drinking coffee, listening to birds and letting the words come to me. It was an ideal writing situation. But if I’ve got a good idea, I can write just about anywhere.”

Monday, September 12

Interviewed at Working Writers

“We all have self-doubts and run into roadblocks that we have to work through, whether it’s trying to think of the right word or the right image or whatever.”

Tuesday, September 13

Interviewed at Blogcritics

“Elvis Presley said that there were three things you had to have to be happy – someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. I’ll go along with that.”

Wednesday, September 14

Guest blogging at The Book Faery Reviews

“If you’re browsing a bookstore it’s great to see shelf upon shelf of books to choose from. But if you’ve just been published, the only thing all those books represent is competition.”

Monday, September 19

Book spotlighted at The Hot Author Report

Wednesday, September 21

Book spotlighted at Cafe of Dreams

Monday, September 26

Interviewed at As the Pages Turn

“I kept the setting a little vague on purpose. The original idea I had was to make the setting a lot more specific, but I decided that it suited my purposes better to keep things kind of generalized. It was important to me that the story take place in the South, but that’s about as specific as I wanted to get. I wanted as many people as possible to be able to relate to this kind of place. I gave the town a funny name, and gave it a funny kind of notoriety – but most small towns have a funny kind of notoriety anyway, so I felt okay doing that.”

Tuesday, September 27

Guest blogging at The Book Bin

“Publishing my first novel has definitely been an eye-opening, and somewhat humbling experience…”

Wednesday, September 28

Interviewed at Beyond the Books

“Getting the book into the hands of reviewers is a big first step in promoting a book. And setting up a webpage for your book. Going on this blog tour is also very important.”

Friday, September 30

Chat with John at Pump Up Your Book Live! September Chat/Book Giveaway

Monday, October 3

Interviewed at Book Marketing Buzz

“Since my book has just been published, Facebook has been great at letting everyone I’m friends with learn more about the book. Hopefully, as time moves on, the blogs and Amazon reviews will help expand my readership.”

Tuesday, October 4

Interviewed at The Book Connection

“I knew I had a knack for writing fiction when my fifth-grade teacher accused me of plagiarism. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he must have been pulling my leg – unless the book he thought I had stolen from was a book of really silly stories written by precocious nine-year-olds.”

Wednesday, October 5

Guest blogging at The Book Boost

Thursday, October 6

Book spotlighted at Between the Covers

“When I got back home, after a nearly mile-long sprint, I wasn’t even breathing very hard. I walked around to the side of the house, to where the spare door key was hidden, and let myself in.”

Friday, October 7

Interviewed at Paperback Writer

“It was such a wonderful experience writing this novel that I don’t think I would change a thing. But I don’t want to duck your question, so I guess the one thing I could have done differently is, once I decided to self-publish I could have added as much to the manuscript as I wanted. I was very conscious of the word count. Everybody who is somebody tells first-time novelists to keep their manuscript under 100,000 words if they expect to have any chance of landing a publisher.”

Monday, October 10

Guest blogging at Book Giveaway at Bookin It Up

“It was the best of book signings, it was the worst of book signings…”

Tuesday, October 11

Interviewed at The Writer’s Life

“I think I’ve come up with an original story that’s told in an original way and I think that a lot of people will enjoy it.”

Wednesday, October 12

Interviewed at The Hot Author Report

“I think I’ve always wanted to be an artist of some kind, but it took me awhile to discover literature and writing. In high school and early in college I was totally into music and being a musician. But I discovered that I was a much better writer than musician so I started focusing on that.”

Thursday, October 13

Book spotlighted at Literarily Speaking

Friday, October 14

Guest blogging at The Story Behind the Book

“Publishing my first novel has definitely been an eye-opening, and somewhat humbling, experience….”

Monday, October 17

Guest blogging at As the Pages Turn

“The hardest part of the novel for me to write was probably all the little jokes that Tommy and Cait scribble to each other in college. It wasn’t easy thinking up all of those jokes. As actors always say, anyone can do drama – it’s comedy that’s hard.”

Tuesday, October 18

Guest blogging at Mad Moose Mama

Wednesday, October 19

Book reviewed at Mad Moose Mama

“If you enjoy dramatic fiction with some comedy thrown in and a cast of misfit characters, then I am sure you will enjoy this book!”

Monday, October 24

Book spotlighted at Books Products and More

Tuesday, October 25

Guest participant at Literarily Speaking Book Panel

Friday, October 28

Interviewed at American Chronicle

John Banks’ GLORIFY EACH DAY VIRTUAL BOOK PUBLICITY TOUR will officially begin on September 5 and end on October 28 ’11. Please contact Dorothy Thompson at thewriterslife(at)gmail.com if you are interested in hosting and/or reviewing his book or click here to use the form. Thank you!

If you would like to book your own virtual book tour with us, click here to find out how!

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"Thank you again for all of your help and support for my recent book tour. You were so supportive and responsive, and I enjoyed working with you. It was a great tour and I really enjoyed it, especially when my book hit the top 100 in the two subcategories! That was awesome! Thanks for "pumping up my book!""
Monique Roy, ACROSS GREAT DIVIDES

"Thank you for another amazing tour, Dorothy!! I loved the sites I had an opportunity to visit and the people I met along the way. I even made a few new friends and found wonderful supporters that I'll never forget - I promise! The exposure you gave my book was absolutely unbelievable, and I can't think of a better way to welcome and expose an author's new creation to the literary world. Happy New Year to all your readers and may your success continue to grow. "
Kaylin McFarren, BURIED THREADS

"Thank you for a great virtual book tour. I thought it went really well and it was great to have a wave of PR that flowed through the two month period of my book release. I'm working on my next book - and will definitely reach out to you when it comes time to market! You were a delight to work with and really made me feel looked after. As I've mentioned before, I just don't know how you do it all."
--Deborah Serani, DEPRESSION AND YOUR CHILD

"I just wanted to let you know how wonderful I felt my book blast went for Be Careful What You Wish For in the month of August. So many emails and contacts that I would never have gotten. The publicity was just phenomenal!"
--R.K. Avery, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

"Just wanted to touch base with you and extend a huge thank you for the wonderful and successful book blast you arranged for Love Vindicated for me. I was very happy with your services and will be passing your name and brand along to some writer friends with a stellar recommendation. Again thanks and I look forward to working with you again in the future."
--Lila Munro, LOVE VINDICATED

"Thank you so much for all your hard work in putting together the virtual book tour for The Sixth Power. I appreciate it so much."
--Carol Nicolas, THE SIXTH POWER

"Thank you SO MUCH for such a great blog tour!"
--Sandra D. Bricker, ALWAYS THE BAKER, FINALLY THE BRIDE

"Wow - you are absolutely fantastic. Can't believe how lucky I was to find you :)"
--Jo Sparkes, THE BIRR ELIXIR

"I just wanted to let you know that tonight Steven Manchester's Twelve Months became The Story Plant's first #1 Kindle bestseller. This couldn't have happened without you. Barb's cover is an absolute showstopper, Sue's copyediting boosted the overall work, Jackie's proofreading kept all of us honest, and Tracee Gleichner's blog tour started what has become an avalanche of great reviews."
-- Lou Aronica, STORY PLANT

"Blog tours have been the most effective promotion I’ve done. Dorothy Thompson and her company Pump Up Your Book are the greatest. I’ve spent money with other promotion companies that advertised packages then didn’t deliver the service they advertised, inflated their audience and reach and point blank falsely represented themselves. Dorothy has been a Godsend, and by far, her services are the best promotional endeavors I’ve invested in thus far."
-- Alicia Singleton, DARK SIDE OF VALOR

"I didn't realize that there is a place on amazon that you can see your stats for foreign sales; mine are really good and I believe it is your tweeting service. I think I might have found the key to successful self-publishing when I found Pump Up Your Books."
-- Suzanne Jenkins, PAM OF BABYLON SERIES

"Dorothy Thompson helped promote my book, Gringos in Paradise: Our Honduras Odyssey. Taking part in it was so much easier (and less expensive) than the travel schedule I was hving to keep doing on my own. She set up everything, coached me through my part, and I found my book and I promoted it all over the Internet. It definitely increased my book sales."
-- Malana Ashlie, GRINGOS IN PARADISE

"Dorothy was not only a lot of fun to work with but she helped me get the word out about my book. I would recommend her to both debut and experienced authors."
---Deborah Woehr, PROSPERITY: A GHOST STORY

“Dorothy is a firecracker promoter. She is skilled at finding the most visible placements in promoting your book with unmatched enthusiasm.She is creatively talented and a wonderful person to have on your team.”
--Kathy Holmes Eckardt, REAL WOMEN WEAR RED

“I invested in a three month virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Books promotions for my noir thriller, Moonlight Falls. Not only did the marketing campaign work wonders for spreading the word about the new novel, in the very last month, on the very last day of the tour, Moonlight Falls became an Amazon Kindle bestseller!”
–Vincent Zandri, MOONLIGHT FALLS and THE REMAINS

“I’m so pleased every day when I look at Google Alerts and see our titles all around the blogosphere, so thanks for that!”
–-World Ahead Media

“This has been a wonderful experience. Dorothy Thompson and her whole team are very committed to each author, take each author’s tour very seriously, and work towards maximum exposure in the right places. This is the best book promotion expenditure I’ve made in terms of return on investment. I highly recommend Pump Up Your Book Promotion.”
--Phyllis Zimbler Miller, MRS: LIEUTENANT

"I used Pump Up Your Book promotions a few months ago for my novel, Nephilim. My publisher is a great person, but when it comes to promotions, she encourages authors to do that on their own. Enter Dorothy Thompson at Pump Up Your Book. I had 8 reviews of the book and was featured as a guest author every day of the week at various websites during the month that I used her company. Amazing! She secured everything for me which was really nice and I didn't have to do anything but write a few blogs or answer interview questions. I would use Pump Up Your Book again in a heart beat!"
--Mary Ann Loesch, NEPHILIM

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Princess Sophie and the Christmas Elixir

Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

-- Sheila Roberts, Author of Winter at the Beach