Kindle Daily Post

Write the Next Book in the Dead Man Series

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever wanted to write a short thrill-ride of a novel that blends horror and action adventure? We're opening up the Dead Man series to one lucky (and talented) writer. Read on for the back story and the details.

We grew up loving those "men's action adventure" paperbacks. They were the male equivalent of Harlequin romances, though the only romance was often between a man and his AK-47. The books were short and tightly-written, with hard-boiled heroes, outrageously sexy women, and gleefully over-the-top plots that were enormous fun to read…and to write.

So we revived the genre exclusively on Amazon last year with The Dead Man, a widely-acclaimed monthly series of short novels (also available in trade paperback and as a audiobooks) about Matt Cahill, an ordinary man who, after a freak accident, inexplicably rises from the dead…and with the ability to see the horrific, supernatural forces that move among us. Now he’s searching for the answers to who he is and what he has become…and fighting to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of Mr. Dark, a mysterious creature who can spread evil with his touch.

We've treated the books like episodes of a TV series, inviting experienced novelists we admire from a wide variety of genres, as well as Emmy-award winning writer/producers from shows like Star Trek Voyager, Cheers,  Monk and Boston Legal, to create new adventures for Matt Cahill. Their unique, creative talents have kept the series fresh, bold and exciting. And because the Dead Man books they’ve written are such giddy and terrifying fun, we’ve been inundated with requests from readers asking if they can write one, too.

Well, now you can!

All you have to do is write a sample chapter and a short outline of your story and submit them to the Write a "Dead Man" Novel Contest. The winner of the best chapter and story will receive a publishing contract and a $500 advance and a $500 Amazon gift card…and will get to see their Dead Man book published by Amazon’s 47North imprint in early 2013.

Read the complete rules here, and if interested complete the entry form and the release form. But hurry – the contest ends on August 1, 2012, or when 500 entries are received, whichever comes first. --Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin

Druid Fact or Druid Fiction?: Thore D. Hansen Knows

In his debut novel, The Celtic Conspiracy, Thore D. Hansen weaves a thrilling tale of international intrigue, religious oppression, and treasure-hunting, all set against the backdrop of Celtic history. Druids—a people who are often mentioned but seldom understood—play an important role in the novel's plot. So we asked its author, an avid student of religious history, to help us separate Druid fact from Druid fiction.

Statement: All Celtics who followed the Druidic belief system were Druids.
Fiction. Druids were members of the priestly class in Celtic culture, and they played many roles in society. They were early scientists as well as lawyers, healers, warriors, artists, alchemists, and soothsayers.

The idea of "sin" is unknown in Druidic thought.
Fact. Druids don't have objective standards of value or absolute truth.

Druids had naturopathic treatments for many modern ailments, including cancer.
Fact-ish. Druidic knowledge of medicinal herbs was extensive, but we don't know exactly what they could and couldn't treat reliably.

Druids were part of ancient Roman society.
Fact. Druids worked as teachers for rich Roman families. By A.D. 330, most Druids had been forced to convert to Christianity or had escaped to Britain.

Druidic texts have been found in archeological sites across Europe and Asia.
Fact. Although it is important to note that Druids used letters only for day-to-day correspondence and record-keeping (e.g., court decisions). It was forbidden to write down anything about the Druidic belief system.

Druidism is the official state religion of Ireland.
Fiction. But since 2010, Druidism has been a recognized state religion in the United Kingdom.

The modern Supreme Court has ruled on historical crimes against Druids.
Fiction. This is true only in The Celtic Conspiracy, in which the Supreme Court hears a case regarding the modern-day Catholic Church and crimes committed against Druids by the Roman Empire and early Christians.

Guest Blogger: Garry Trudeau, Creator of the Comic Strip, "Doonesbury"

G. B. Trudeau's Doonesbury has tracked and explored 40 years of American culture through six wars and eight presidential administrations. Now, we're excited to announce that you can enjoy this beloved comic strip on Kindle Fire.

When 40 was published in print form in 2010, the book tipped the scales at just under 10 pounds. The sheer heft of it, along with the sturdy slipcover; the fine, coated stock; and an unusually intoxicating new-book smell, commanded attention. And when a trailer truck packed with 1,300 copies was hijacked during a cross-country run, I was secretly thrilled that discerning thieves had thought 40 worthy of a heist—and that the book would soon be showing up on the street at people’s prices.

No such luck. The unloaded truck was eventually located on an interstate off-ramp, presumably abandoned in disgust. I’ve tried to imagine the reaction of the hijackers’ supervisor when he broke into the trailer and discovered 13,000 pounds of Doonesbury where palettes of hi-def TVs should have been. Let us hope no one was hurt; it was an honest mistake.

Still, after all that excitement, you’d think that the digital reimagining of 40 would be a letdown. Not so; we can now invite more people to the party. I’ve come to appreciate that many readers prefer to forego the risk of herniation while picking up a book—no matter that the risk is slight if you push up from your knees and have someone spot you. There was also the problem of where to display the book once consumed, as standard bookshelves could not accommodate it. We briefly considered shrink-wrapping it with four attachable legs, but then worried it might bump us into Amazon’s Home and Kitchen category.

Clearly the answer lay in rendering the collection in ones and zeros. And to further facilitate the reader experience, we divided the book into four easy pieces—each covering a full decade’s worth of strips. Everyone has a favorite decade, although let’s face it, it’s never the ’70s. Especially in my case. Not to wave the reader off, but my opening decade was filled with the uncertain stops and starts of a rank amateur learning his craft in full public view. I was wildly unready, but as the syndicate salesmen assured me, that was the point. The young had hijacked the culture, and with that standing, our voices—raw, impassioned, ungovernable—were in high demand.

Besides, all journeys need a beginning, and the early wheel-spinning is part of the fun. To paraphrase the Dead, it’s been a long, strange strip, and if 40 comprises the long of it, it ought to retain the strange as well.

--Garry Trudeau

Q&A with Scott Adams, Creator of the Comic Strip, "Dilbert"

What started as a doodle has turned Scott Adams into a superstar of the cartoon world. Dilbert debuted on the comics page in 1989, while Adams was in the tech department at Pacific Bell. Adams continued to work at Pacific Bell until he was voluntarily downsized in 1995.

Starting today, you can enjoy 4 volumes of Adams's beloved comic strip on Kindle Fire.

Amazon.com: To what do you credit Dilbert's longevity and popularity (the most widely read comic on the Internet and appearing in more than 2,000 newspapers)?

Scott Adams: Before Dilbert, there had never been a popular voice for the typical disgruntled white- collar employee. And it turns out that everyone with an office job is disgruntled at least some of the time. In a way, Dilbert predicted the current wave of reality entertainment. I'd love to say my writing is what makes Dilbert work, but it probably has more to do with the recognizable workplace situations and the fact that people see themselves in the strip. Dilbert works best when the characters give voice to what employees in the real world are thinking.

Amazon.com: The Kindle edition of Dilbert 2.0 is split into 4 volumes, organized by business era. Are there signature characters or themes that mark the essence of each era?

Scott Adams: In the early ears, volume one, Dilbert wasn't strictly about the workplace. Dilbert had a job, but the comic was more often based around his home. The next volume involves strips written during the downsizing of the early nineties, at about the same time Dilbert became a workplace strip. Next came the hardest era for any cartoonist -- the dotcom years. During the go-go days of the Internet, when employees felt well-paid and hopeful, it was hard to find humor. Humor prefers dysfunction. We now know that the dotcom era was hugely dysfunctional, but it wasn't obvious to most people who were in it. Then came the modern era, when hope and compensation took a hit, and once again it became easy to do my job.

Amazon.com: How did you narrow down your selections from more than 7,000 potential strips to the nearly 2,000 included in Dilbert 2.0?

Scott Adams: It wasn't easy! I tried to find the strips that were the funniest while also having some meaning, or a funny story attached. But it felt like I was a mother with triplets and someone told me I could only keep one of them.

Amazon.com: What were the greatest challenges and opportunities associated with translating Dilbert 2.0 for the Kindle Fire?

Scott Adams: It's a fascinating process. When you change the physical delivery system for a comic, you can also change the pacing. There's a tradeoff between what looks best and what reads most fluidly. I think we found the right balance.

Amazon.com: What are you most excited about for the Dilbert of the future?

Scott Adams: I'm hoping a Dilbert movie comes together soon. We're working on it, but movies are never a sure thing. A lot of elements have to fall in place. And we'll be doing a lot with Dilbert.com and with mobile phone distribution. It's an exciting time to be a cartoonist.

Macbeth: A Novel: Lush in Tone and Language, Rich in Imagery

Here, Deborah Reed, author of Carry Yourself Back to Me and the thriller A Small Fortune written under the name Audrey Braun, reviews Macbeth: A Novel—a gripping contemporary prose by A. J. Hartley and David Hewson.

Novelists have often borrowed templates of Shakespeare’s work to create contemporary stories of their own, though not many are willing or possess the skills to overtly novelize a Shakespeare play. But A. J. Hartley and David Hewson have dozens of bestselling novels between them, written in nearly as many genres, and with Hartley’s background as a Shakespeare scholar, who better than these two writers to succeed at such a bold undertaking?

From the very first page of Macbeth: A Novel I realized Hartley and Hewson hadn’t just written a padded translation of the play but a fully realized novel, lush in tone and language, rich in imagery. Perhaps more importantly, they have transformed Shakespeare’s characters from vessels for ideas to human beings—sentient and crackling with passion and blood. It is not an easy task to breathe new and nuanced complications into characters that have existed for readers and audiences for centuries, but the authors succeed brilliantly. They have rendered Macbeth’s entire cast more sympathetic by affording them inner lives, making clear their motivations, and allowing us to feel their intentions, desires, doubts, and the ultimate pain of their demise. The story becomes more character driven, though the intense and clever plot is never far behind, which makes Macbeth: A Novel the perfect page-turner.

As a writer myself, I’m particularly sensitive to the nuance of speech, and I half expected to find the novel’s dialogue forced, copied over from the play, where it is meant to be spoken by live actors. But the dialogue not only remains true to the play, it is woven into the novel as if it had been written only for that purpose. For example, this original line by Macbeth: “I am in blood / Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more /  Returning were as tedious as go o’er,” in the novel becomes, “I am so far steeped in blood that if I chose to wade no further, then returning would be as bloody as to proceed.” Zing! The authors achieve these perfect translations, one after the other.

I’m guessing fans of Shakespeare will come to the novel with their own set of skepticisms, perhaps questioning the fidelity to the original play. But as the authors point out in their authors’ notes, Shakespeare himself drew from other sources to evoke higher truths, with most of his plays based on real life events and people. The original Macbeth is not a historical account of eleventh century Scotland, even if it is often interpreted as such. In truth, the play is a depiction of humanity set against the backdrop of Scotland, a story that reaches across time and space with its themes of greed, tragedy, morality, power, death, war, and love.

Macbeth: A Novel repurposes an age-old tale to portray secrets within secrets, leading to tragedies based on misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and perhaps, above all, vulnerabilities. Good people with the best intentions give in to desires and greed and then try to right all their wrongs by stumbling over their own mistakes. In the novel, Lady Macbeth becomes a complicated, nuanced, fully realized woman, her hand forced in many ways, life and death decisions based on her own pain, and on the deep love she has for her husband and country. The novel brings vision and nuance where none had existed, due to the limitations of playwriting. The novelists use introspection to reveal the depth of motivations behind the Macbeths, and in turn shine a fairer light so that we understand how the couple came to make that first fatal mistake and how they privately endured their sins begetting misery, begetting more misery, until death became their only escape.

Filmmaker Tim Burton comes to mind, the way he adapts classic tales by layering them in raucous bands of an even darker, twisted skin. Hartley and Hewson have done the same here with their sensual and vulgar witches, bloodthirsty wars, and highly charged sex scenes. But perhaps most of all, they have succeeded in depicting the intense and mysterious love between husband and wife, as fickle as patriotism in all its wonder, glory, and misfortune. Gentlemen, take a bow.

$0.99 for a Limited Time: Rabbit Ears Children's Books

For a limited time, 45 Kindle-exclusive Rabbit Ears children’s picture books with Kindle text pop-up are available for only $0.99 each.  Browse a few of our top picks:

The first new Rabbit Ears book in 15 years: Tom Thumb, features hilarious illustrations by Tim Gabor telling the story of Tiny Tom and his adventures with the Knights of the Roundtable. Gabor, who has produced art for Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Time and many other publications, rock bands, and events, says he used his standard potion of colored pencils, watercolor paints, and the computer software PhotoShop to create these delightful images.

Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Washington Irving’s eerie tale of romantic rivalry along the Hudson pits the new schoolmaster Ichabod Crane against the local hero and bully, Brom Bones, for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel. The haunting drama climaxes with the appearance of one of the great, legendary ghosts of all time: the headless horseman. This spirited adaptation by Robert Van Nutt, who also did the illustrations, reflects all the wit, fun and drama of the early American classic. Ages 6 and up. Winner of Parents Magazine’s The Year’s Best for Kids award.

The Elephant’s Child. Rudyard Kipling’s story of how the elephant got its trunk has always delighted children with its playful use of language and sense of high adventure. This rendering of Kipling’s most beloved “Just So” story, beautifully illustrated by Tim Raglin, explains what the world was like “in the beginning of years when the world was new and all…” Ages 5 and up. Winner of the Action for Children's Television (ACT) Award

The Tailor of Gloucester. A sensitive retelling of a wry Beatrix Potter tale with whimsical illustrations by David Jorgensen that beautifully evoke the period, flavor and subtle humor of the story. The tailor of Gloucester who, no thanks to his naughty cat Simpkin, has no more twisted silk thread to finish the coat he has promised the mayor for his wedding on Christmas day. With the help of some special friends, the tailor finds that a kind favor is returned. Ages 5 and up. Winner of Parents Magazine’s The Year's Best for Kids award.

Follow the Drinking Gourd. This moving story is based on the traditional American folksong. Written by Bernardine Connelly and illustrated by Yvonne Buchanan, the compelling tale recounts the daring adventures of one family’s escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad and captures all the drama of a perilous flight to freedom. Ages 6 and up. The video/audio versions, narrated by Morgan Freeman and with original music by Taj Mahal, won the Parents' Choice Gold award and were nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.      

The Emperor’s New Clothes is an adaptation by Eric Metaxas of the Hans Christian Andersen story with illustrations by Robert Van Nutt. Like everyone else in the kingdom, two clever swindlers understand the king’s passion for new clothes. Claiming to be the creators of the richest and most beautiful cloth in the world, they cleverly announce that the “magical” garments they are weaving for the Emperor are invisible to anyone lacking intelligence. Who will have the courage to speak the truth?  Ages 5 and up. Winner of Parents' Choice Gold Seal Award.

Pecos Bill is a rollicking ride through the Wild, Wild West with the original cowboy, Pecos Bill. Raised by coyotes to brave the great frontier, Pecos rides his wild mustang Widow-Maker and invents the first rough-and-tumble cattle drive. Then he mounts a runaway cyclone like a buckin’ bronco to create the Great Salt Lake. Rich in language, this adaptation by Brian Gleeson with illustrations by Tim Raglin, is sheer nonsensical fun, a fast and furious fantasy. Ages 5 and up. Winner of Parents' Choice Classic Award.

UNO Comes to Kindle E-Readers

For more than 40 years the family card-game UNO has captivated friends and family members around the world with its fast and fun action, rule variations, and portability. It's an undisputed classic game for all ages that never grows old and consistently inspires big smiles and bursts of raucous laughter.

Now, UNO has been faithfully reproduced for play on Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle DX, and second generation Kindle devices.

Instead of the game's traditional card colors of red, blue, yellow, and green, UNO for Kindle features four easy-to-see patterns customized exclusively for the Kindle e-ink displays. In addition to the four different patterns, UNO for Kindle cards are numbered from 0 to 9, just like in the original card version of the game.

For the uninitiated, play begins when you place a card from your hand into the discard pile to match either the color or the number laid down on the pile by the previous player. The first person to get rid of all their cards is the winner.

A selection of special cards keeps the game play fresh and adds an element of surprise; whenever a Wild, Reverse, Skip, Draw Two, or the dreaded Draw Four Wild card is laid down, fortunes quickly turn! Just as someone thinks they're about to win the game, the momentum can suddenly swing against them. Another hallmark rule twist is the need to call out "Uno!" when you're down to one card. If not, you'll be forced to draw two cards.

UNO for Kindle lets you pick up and play a round right from your Kindle's main menu with the choice of either "Quick Play" or "Tournament Mode." Once selected, UNO for Kindle gives you the choice of nine different varieties of the game, including 7-0 (if a zero card is played, all players give their cards to the next player) and Jump-in (if you have a card with the same number and pattern in your hand as on the discard pile, you can play it at any time).

With smooth game play, sharp graphics, easy-to-learn rules, and loads of in-game achievements, playing UNO for Kindle continues the game's tradition of fast fun for everyone.

Meet Sgt. Tom Wade, a Western Character in an Industrial Wasteland

Guest post by Lee Goldberg, whose novel, King City, came out this week.

I broke both of my arms in a bad accident a few years ago. Part of my recovery involved having my rebuilt right arm strapped into a nasty device from the Tower of London collection that bent and extended my arm for hours each day. During that time, I watched hundreds of hours of Gunsmoke reruns and was surprised by how much I enjoyed following stoic, leather-skinned Marshal Matt Dillon bring order, and sometimes justice, to lawless Dodge City.

Matt Dillon truly lessened my pain. There’s just something about westerns, about the simple concept and mythic characters of Gunsmoke in particular, that’s inherently compelling and deeply satisfying. I wondered what it was, and if I could capture it in a crime novel. So I studied the show and scores of classic western movies.

I discovered that it’s a lot more than just giving a guy a Stetson, a badge, and a gun.

A western puts a man in a lawless, unforgiving, brutal frontier, where he must somehow survive by living off the land, his wits, and his own rigid code. It’s that last bit, I think, that is the core of it all: a personal code of conduct that’s constantly, relentlessly, put to the test.

A true western character ultimately prevails against adversity because of a stubborn, unwavering faith in his own convictions and the righteousness of his cause, a determination to see the world shaped the way he wants it to be, rather than let himself be shaped by it. He doesn’t try to explain or justify himself because it’s pointless. His actions speak for him.

And as iconic and old-fashioned as that all may be, it’s so refreshing in a world where everyone, particularly heroes in crime fiction, are so self-aware and self-obsessed, so eager to accept the moral, ethical, professional, legal ambiguities in a situation rather than take a principled stand on something, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong to everyone else.

That led me to write King City, and to create Sgt. Tom Wade, a man of principle, whose values may be laudable but whose maddening, unwavering loyalty to them costs him almost everything and everyone that he cares about. He’s not out on the western frontier, but exiled to the worst part of a once great industrial city, where he is out-numbered and out-gunned, and must enforce the law on little more than sheer strength of will.

Viewing the tropes and clichés of a modern crime novel through the prism of a western gave me a fresh perspective on the genre that made the book a pleasure to write and, I hope, for you to read.

Iris Johansen's Explosive New Thriller

From best-selling author Iris Johansen is the gripping, action-packed crime drama, What Doesn't Kill You. The novel features femme fatale Catherine Ling, a character Johansen first introduced in 2010's Chasing the Night.

In Chasing the Night, we follow Ling, a CIA agent, as she continues her eight-year struggle to find her son, the victim of a kidnapping when he was only two. Her friends, family, and colleagues tell her to let go, move on, and accept that her son is never coming back, but Ling refuses. Instead, she finds help in Eve Duncan, a forensic sculptor whose own parental nightmare, the disappearance of her daughter, has engulfed her in a similar obsession.

Together, the women endure the worst fear any mother can imagine. Without question, Chasing the Night is a gut-wrenching thrill-ride into the darkest places of the soul.

In What Doesn't Kill You, Johansen continues her exploration of Ling's skills and psyche by going deeper into her background. Abandoned on the streets of Hong Kong at age four, Ling was schooled in the art of survival, and she traded in the only commodity she had: information. As a teenager, Ling came under the tutelage of a mysterious man known only as Hu Chang, a skilled assassin and master poisoner.

With such a deadly and anonymous background, the CIA recruits Ling and trains her to become one of their most effective operatives. However, having lived life in the shadows, Ling is aware of the wobbly moral compass of her existence. She's even more aware of how expendable she is to the shadowy power brokers Ling deals with.

When her old friend Hu Chang creates an incredibly deadly and completely untraceable poison, the chase is on to be the first to get it. With rogue operative John Gallo also on the hunt, Ling finds herself pitted against a group so villainous and a man so evil that she may not survive the quest to protect those she cares about.

No doubt about it, What Doesn't Kill You showcases Iris Johansen at her page-turning best.

Iris Johansen is the best-selling author of Pandora's Daughter, Stalemate, Killer Dreams, On the Run, and many more. Her latest novel, What Doesn't Kill You,is also a best-selling thriller, and Johansen has already announced plans to bring Catherine Ling back in future books.

"Running with Scissors": One Hilarious and Horrific Memoir

In Running with Scissors, author Augusten Burroughs gives an equally hilarious and horrific tour of his nearly unbelievable world as his family disintegrates and his boyhood slides into a surreal and grotesque version of the American dream. After his mother, a delusional poet suffering from mental illness, and his alcoholic father end their chaotic marriage, Augusten's mother gives him away to be raised by her psychiatrist.

This is how, at age 12, Augusten found himself in a dilapidated Victorian in Northampton, Massachusetts, living in perfect squalor with an egomaniac doctor that was a dead-ringer for Santa Claus and a lunatic to boot. Most of Running with Scissors chronicles Augusten's teenage years spent with the psychiatrist's bizarre family that also included a few other patients. Augusten's pathos-drenched stories are seasoned with riotous, self-deprecating humor, even the sexually explicit ones where he describes his relationship with a man 20 years his senior.

In this environment, there were no rules, and there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. When things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs, just waiting to be fired up.

Burroughs roles through his anecdotes with a peerless comic timing meshed with the witty, truthful observations of a child. His writing promises to have you laughing at, while simultaneously recoiling from, the horrors of his youth. Above all, Running with Scissors is an ordinary boy's survival chronicle of extraordinary circumstances. Ranging from foul and harrowing to compelling and maniacally funny, this is a rare, oddly-shaped gem shining out from the crowded memoir shelves.

Augusten's writing has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers around the world including The New York Times and New York Magazine. In 2005, Entertainment Weekly named him one of “The 25 Funniest People in America.”

His latest work, This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike, is a bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred self-help book and an Amazon Best of the Month pick for May, 2012.