Selfies Of Success presents Author Helen Ducal with her book "All Expenses Paid."

 

Bert: Whoah. Information overload here!

Ernie: Whaddya mean Bert?

Bert: Condoms and body piercings!

Ernie: Erm Bert, I thought the book was about GRANNY sitting in the South of France?

Bert: Well it is Ernie but then there is Laura!

Ernie: You all alright Bert? Your eyebrows have all joined up!

Bert: Ha! They do that sometimes. Now shut up I am trying to read…

Ernie: Okay…Bert.

Bert: So why aren’t you reading Ernie?

Ernie: I can’t, Bert.

Bert: Why not Ernie?

Ernie: (In a hushed voice) There are mice, Bert. Live mice. She knows I hate mice! (sob)

***

Something about the author, Helen Ducal.

I was determined to be a writer ever since being asked to leave the Brownies for chalking on the benches. Had my first business at 19, married at 20, divorced at 30, ditched the 9-5 at 40 to work as a live-in carer, working in Europe, travelling to Australia and writing in between. Got a first in Media Writing at 50, moved to France, where I recharge my batteries and write and eat and sleep. But still have to return to Blighty every 2 weeks to earn my rent, until I can write full time!

Helen has 5 books available on amazon. The two seen above are also available in paperback.

Thanks to Simon Birch for the wonderful covers.

Works in progress: Helen is currently working on 2 fiction and 2 non-fiction books.

More information is available on her website:Authors Website.

About The Book...All Expenses Paid  

 How a simple advert can change your life...for good.

THE ADVERT:
Six months granny-sitting in the South of France
Separate en-suite accommodation. Ideally 40+ and non smoker.

ME:
Laura Bennett, been divorced longer than married.
No dependents. Lease just ran out on my rented cottage. Sales job going nowhere.

So, I decided to go for it. I mean what could be simpler than looking after an 82 year old English lady? I had visions of gentle strolls to the boulangerie and compulsory siestas. But this was before I met Betty. She looked like everybody’s favourite grandmother until Jean- Louis arrived to pick her up on his Kawasaki 1200!

Imagine Samantha from Sex and the City, team her up with Rose from The Golden Girls and you have ALL EXPENSES PAID.

“Engaging, fun, unpredictable, fresh, original, silly, and just plain old enjoyable. Cracking idea and neatly executed. All I need is a deck chair and some sun and I'm sorted!”ANDREW MORGAN

By

Amazon Customer “Douglas Wickard” (Los Angeles) – See all my reviews

This review is from: ALL EXPENSES PAID (Fact meets Fiction) (Kindle Edition)

I was swindled, hijacked and completely brought down (laughing, that is) by this delightful, kind-of-chick-lit-ish, novel. The first couple of pages got me so enthralled; I couldn’t, nor wouldn’t, nor did I want to put the damn thing down. I felt as if Laura was a dear friend of mine and I was living (vicariously) like a fly on her proverbial Provence wall. The writing is ‘spot’ on! I loved the brevity of sentences, the use of word choice, the writer’s voice rang clear and as confident as a `blimey’ bell! I adored the relationship, all of them, (Julia, especially, absolutely fabulous) the trysts and turns and the unexpected expectations of Laura’s adventures kept me reading, actually in one sitting. Well, done, Helen. When’s the sequel coming out? I’ll be waiting!

http://www.amazon.com/Helen-Ducal/e/B0055PCWUQ/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Selfies of Success for Authors welcomes KATE RIGBY with "Far Cry From The Turquoise Room".

Kate Rigby was born near Liverpool and now lives in Devon.  She’s been writing for over thirty-five years, with a few small successes along the way.

She realized her unhip credentials were mounting so she decided to write about it. Little Guide to Unhip was first published in 2010 and has recently been updated.

However, she’s not completely unhip. Her punk novel, Fall Of The Flamingo Circus was published by Allison & Busby (1990) and by Villard (American hardback 1990). Skrev Press published her novels Seaview Terrace (2003) Sucka!(2004) and Break Point(2006) and other shorter work has appeared in Skrev’s avant garde magazine Texts’ Bones including a version of her satirical novella Lost The Plot.

Thalidomide Kid was published by Bewrite Books (2007).

She has had other short stories published and shortlisted including Hard Workers and Headboards, first published in The Diva Book of Short Stories and as part of the Dancing In The Dark erotic anthology, Pfoxmoor Publishing (2011)

She also received a Southern Arts bursary for her novel Where A Shadow Played (now re-Kindled as Did You Whisper Back?).

Most of her titles are available in e-format and some, for instance, Far Cry From The Turquoise Room and Savage To Savvy, are also available in paperback.

She loves cats, singing, photography, music and LFC. She has fibromyalgia but is also an armchair campaigner against social injustice, energy permitting.

Far Cry From The Turquoise Room

Leila is the eight-year-old daughter of Hassan Nassiri, a wealthy Iranian property owner, and younger sister to the adored Fayruz, her father's favourite daughter. 

Then tragedy strikes in a holiday narrowboat accident having far-reaching consequences for the surviving family. So begins Leila's journey: at times heart-breaking and dangerous and romance, often exhilarating and ultimately life-affirming.

Review: 

"Hassan is a Persian man living in England with his family. Life is splendid; he does well at business and his family is perfect. But suddenly, life changes, when his oldest daughter dies in a tragic accident. At first, Leila, the younger daughter, does her best to fit in with the new family dynamic, trying to draw her parents out and make them happy. It becomes clear that her parents will not return to their previous way of life, however, when they threaten to send Leila to boarding school. This, coupled with the revelation that there will be a new baby in the family, prompts Leila to run away, and develop a new identity living with travelers throughout England.

The first few chapters of this book were like the soft introductory strains to a beautiful piece of music. They helped to identify the tone, mood, and voice of the entire piece. This music that the book creates is unlike anything I have ever experienced. The simultaneous stories of Hassan and Leila make for an incredibly original book.I really loved watching Leila's character develop. We walk with her over the course of several years, and watch her come of age in the most difficult of circumstances. She feels abandoned, by her sister, her parents, and later by the people who promised to protect her. I also really enjoyed seeing Hassan's character begin to awake, albeit a little late, to the important place Leila has in their family.
This story is so moving, and I think it really lends a voice to people and situations not normally represented in modern literature. While the book is very British in feeling and vocabulary, this is a story to which anyone can relate. Many countries have immigrant populations, and many immigrants are misunderstood, as Hassam feels Persians are. Many wish to fit it and fully assimilate, as Leila does when she wishes she were white. And who among us cannot relate to the pain of tragedy and death.
I am honestly struggling to find the right words to convey how breathtaking this book is. So, instead of taking my very inarticulate word for it, just simply read for yourself."  

 REVIEWED BY

Tiffany Harkleroad

PURCHASE LINK

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZF80N0

AUTHOR'S Website.

http://kjrbooks.yolasite.com/

 Or her occasional blog:

 http://bubbitybooks.blogspot.co.uk/

Selfies Of Success for Authors Welcomes V.M Gautier with her book "BLOOD DIVA."

Selfies of Success for Authors, welcomes V M Gautier.

VM Gautier is a pen name. Hence, the photo. However, the author is rumored to be Marion Stein, New York based writer, blogger, indie “pioneer” and author of Loisaida, Schrodinger's Telephone, and The Death Trip.

 BLOOD DIVA

The 19th century’s most infamous party-girl is undead and on the loose in the Big Apple.

When 23 year-old Parisian courtesan, Marie Duplessis succumbed to consumption in 1847, Charles Dickens showed up for the funeral and reported the city mourned as though Joan of Arc had fallen. Marie was not only a celebrity in in her own right, but her list of lovers included Franz Liszt – the first international music superstar, and Alexandre Dumas fils, son of the creator of The Three Musketeers. Dumas fils wrote the novelThe Lady of the Camellias based on their time together. The book became a play, and the play became the opera La Traviata. Later came the film versions, and the legend never died.

But what if when offered the chance for eternal life and youth, Marie grabbed it, even when the price was the regular death of mortals at her lovely hand?

Now Marie wonders if perhaps nearly two centuries of murder, mayhem, and debauchery is enough, especially when she falls hard for a rising star she believes may be the reincarnation of the only man she ever truly loved. But is it too late for her to change? Can a soul be redeemed like a diamond necklace in hock? And even if it can, have men evolved since the 1800′s? Or does a girl’s past still mark her?

Blood Diva is a sometimes humorous, often dark and erotic look at sex, celebrity, love, death, destiny, and the arts of both self-invention and seduction. It’s a story that asks a simple question – Can a one hundred ninety year-old demimondaine find happiness in 21st century Brooklyn without regular infusions of fresh blood? 

BOOK REVIEW:

Amazon 5.0 out of 5 stars Pressing issues for future vampires, January 5, 2015

By 

carlosredivivus - See all my reviews

Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Blood Diva (Kindle Edition)

I don't read much fantasy, and in spite of their popularity, vampires are (most likely) phantasmal--so I wouldn't have read `Blood Diva' if it hadn't been written by the author of the excellent `Loisaida', under the pen name `VM Gautier'. I bought it to find out why she published under a pen name, assuming it was something she'd prefer to keep at a distance.
Nope. It's great, a novel to be proud of on several levels.
It is, first of all, a fabulously sexy retelling of the Marie Duplessis story, the basis for the movie `Camille', and the opera `La Traviata'--but leaving aside the tuberculosis (a metaphorical guilt trip laid on the 19th century heroine.) If you're a vampire, you can live for pleasure all night long, century after century, no restraints, inhibitions or penalties--and Gautier's heroine takes full advantage.
And Blood Diva is very well written, not only as a `genre' novel but as a serious (also funny) novel that plays with a generic form, as Borges' played with cowboy and detective novels, satisfying the reader's expectations for the genre, and yet going as far beyond it as the reader cares to follow, raising questions about human nature (particularly the feminine side of it) and social and sexual mores.
How might a woman behave if her life was not at risk every time she got into bed, no pregnancy, no disease, no risk of violence--or even criticism. How about if gender roles were reversed and the man was at greater risk? If she could demand satisfaction whether or not he agreed? If she could kill, and yet not be killed? And how can she justify her survival at the expense of other human beings, no matter how degraded they might be? Questions reminiscent of those raised by Glaucon's story of the Ring of Gyges, that made the wearer invisible.
A remarkable job of writing, and fun to read.

 PURCHASE HERE

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Diva-VM-Gautier/dp/1496027515/

  Links to more information.
http://www.blooddiva.com

http://www.marionstein.net