Kindle Daily Post

@author: Connecting Readers and Writers

We’re excited to announce a new way for readers to connect with authors and engage in the community around their favorite authors’ books. @author lets readers ask questions while they’re reading a Kindle book, or from an Amazon Author Page. You can see below which authors are participating in our beta release.

To ask one of these authors a question from a Kindle book, just highlight a passage using the 5-way controller, type “@author” followed by your question, and Share. We’ll tweet the question to the author and post it on the Author Page; you’ll automatically receive an email if the author answers your question. You can also ask a question from the Author Page of a participating author; look for the “Ask a question” link beneath the author’s biography or next to one of the author’s books if you want to ask a question specifically about that book.

Authors won’t be able to answer all questions, but readers can answer other reader’s questions from the Author Page too. If the author answers a question written from a Kindle book and you’ve chosen to follow the author on https://kindle.amazon.com, the question and the author’s answer will both become Public Notes in your book.

We’re eager to see the great questions you ask! Learn more.

• Ted Dekker: (@tedDekker) Forbidden and The Priest's Graveyard
• Timothy Ferriss: (@tferriss) The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek
• Marie Force: (@MarieForce) Ready for Love and Fool for Love
• Barbara Freethy: (@BarbaraFreethy) Love Will Find a Way and One True Love
• Steven Johnson: (@stevenbjohnson) Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You
• Robert Kiyosaki: (@theRealKiyosaki) Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant
• J.A. Konrath: (@jakonrath) SERIAL and Endurance
• John Locke: (@DonovanCreed) The Love You Crave and Lethal People
• Elisa Lorello: (@ElisaLorello) Ordinary World
• C.J. Lyons: (@cjlyonswriter) Blind Faith and Borrowed Time
• Debbi Mack: (@debbimack) Identity Crisis and Least Wanted
• Brad Meltzer: (@bradmeltzer) The Inner Circle and The Zero Game
• Scott Nicholson: (@hauntedcomputer) Ashes and Write Good or Die
• Susan Orlean: (@susanorlean) Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief
• Deborah Reed: (@DebReedAuthor) Carry Yourself Back to Me and A Small Fortune
• James Rollins: (@jamesrollins) The Skeleton Key and The Devil Colony

8/30 Kindle Daily Deal: "Darkness Visible" for $1.49

Today only, William Styron's, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness is just $1.49 (85% off yesterday's price).  In this rare feat of literature, William Styron manages to convey his tortuous progression and eventual recovery from depression with both candor and precision.

Don't want to miss a Kindle daily deal? Bookmark amazon.com/kindledailydeal and check back daily to see what's next. Deals go live at approximately 12:00 A.M. Pacific time and run for 24 hours.  The Kindle Daily Deal will be also posted daily on Twitter, and frequently on Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post.

8/29 Kindle Daily Deal: "Hidden in Plain View" for $0.99

Today only, Blair S. Walker's bestselling book from the Darryl Billups Mystery series, Hidden in Plain View is just $0.99 (88% off yesterday's price).

In Hidden in Plain View, a determined journalist set off in perilous pursuit of a serial killer who seems to know far too much about those who are intent upon cracking his case.

Don't want to miss a Kindle daily deal? Bookmark amazon.com/kindledailydeal and check back daily to see what's next. Deals go live at approximately 12:00 A.M. Pacific time and run for 24 hours.  The Kindle Daily Deal will be also posted daily on Twitter, and frequently on Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post.

Guest Blogger: George Pelecanos on "The Cut"

George Pelecanos is an independent film producer, an essayist, the recipient of numerous international writing awards, a producer and an Emmy-nominated writer on the HBO hit series The Wire, and the author of a bestselling series of novels set in and around Washington, D.C. He currently writes for the acclaimed HBO series Treme. Here, he talks about the inspiration for his latest novel, The Cut.

The Cut came about, as much of my work does, from a mix of the personal and the professional.  I don’t have a master plan for my career, and what comes forth is usually the result of an informal process of getting out there in the world, watching and listening. 

Sections of my novel The Turnaround (2008) were set at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is just about a mile from my house.  When I was writing that book I visited with the soldiers and marines who were being treated there.  I’m still interested in the story of veterans who have returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was trying to think of a way to reenter that world on the fiction front.  In the past few years I have met many combat veterans who work as private investigators for attorneys here in D.C., so the work aspect of their lives was a way in.  Also, in a chance meeting one day, I struck up a very interesting, enlightening conversation in the waiting room of a local jail with a vet who had lost a leg while serving in Iraq.  Our talk lasted only half an hour, and I never saw or spoke with this gentleman again, but our encounter was inspiring, and it stuck with me. 

I was gathering string, but I didn’t yet have a book.  How I got there was via a short story, “Chosen,” which I wrote on impulse.  It’s the tale of a couple, Van and Eleni Lucas, who build a multi-racial family through biology and adoption.  The story focuses on the parents and their journey, and only touches on the lives of the children.  But by the end of it I had two characters, the youngest siblings, Spero and Leo Lucas, and the seeds of what they would become.  Spero is a Marine veteran of the Battle of Fallujah, and Leo is a D.C. Public School teacher at Cardozo High.  Armed with this, I started in on a novel.

In The Cut, 29 year-old Spero Lucas has returned from the war and taken a job as an unlicensed private investigator working for a high-profile criminal defense attorney.  He has also fallen into regular side work finding lost or stolen items for a “cut” of 40%.  When he’s hired by a jailed marijuana dealer to recover a stolen shipment of product, he finds much more trouble, and violent conflict, than he bargained for.  But so do his enemies.  Lucas is a capable, highly physical, and well-trained young man. 

--George Pelecanos

8/28 Kindle Daily Deal: "The Lincoln Lawyer" for $2.99

Today only, Michael Connelly's bestselling legal thriller, The Lincoln Lawyer is $2.99 (63% off yesterday's price).

The Lincoln Lawyer is the gripping story of a criminal defense lawyer whose seemingly straightfoward defense case quickly takes a complicated--and dangerous--turn.

Don't want to miss a Kindle daily deal? Bookmark amazon.com/kindledailydeal and check back daily to see what's next. Deals go live at approximately 12:00 A.M. Pacific time and run for 24 hours.  The Kindle Daily Deal will be also posted daily on Twitter, and frequently on Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post.

Parkour Comes to Kindle: This Brave Balance, $2.99 for a Limited Time

“Hardcore Parkour!” is perhaps one of my favorite lines from the absurdly hilarious sitcom, The Office. It springs from an episode in which three office mates, Michael, Andy and Dwight, decide to try out the up-and-coming sport of parkour, in which participants run at obstacles (walls, dumpsters, parked cars) and jump, flip, or vault over and around them. The “hardcore parkour!” line becomes funny in that Michael, Andy and Dwight’s attempts at the sport are decidedly not hardcore, despite their own delusions of grandeur.

That a television show like The Office chose to include parkour in an episode points to the rapid growth in the sport’s popularity in the U.S. and its entrance into mainstream pop culture. First conceived in France, the sport made its way around the globe with the help of viral parkour videos of truly inspiring hardcore parkour.

This week, in addition to viral videos, film cameos, and TV episodes, parkour can count among its appearances a new Kindle book. This Brave Balance, by Australian/German writer Rusalka Reh, follows a group of teenage traceurs (those who practice parkour) as they confront the challenges of growing up and face a dark secret that threatens them all.

The story focuses on a group of four friends, collectively known as The Urban Planetbirds, who have taken on the pseudonyms of birds. Dipper names himself after a bird that, fittingly, is known for flying rapidly and straight, deliberately diving into lakes and rivers, and seemingly flying underwater. But despite his namesake’s impressive artistry, Dipper’s skills are far behind those of his friends Corone, Skylark, and Jay. But he won’t let that stop him practicing daily in parks and abandoned warehouses. During the training he finds a sense of freedom in what feels like an otherwise cold, uncaring world.

Suddenly, one day Corone’s ex-girlfriend Kite shows up. Sensitive, and full of surprises she shares only with Dipper, their closeness upsets the balance of the group and sets off a series of events that will permanently affect their friendship and forever change them all.

Experience the world of parkour through This Brave Balance, just $2.99 on Kindle for a limited time.

--Sarah Tomashek

Author Spotlight: Ernest Cline on Escaping Escapism

Ernest Cline is the author of Ready Player One, one of Amazon editors' picks for the Best Books of August 2011.

I’m a big fan of escapism. I always have been. As a socially awkward nerd growing up in a small, isolated mid-western town in the 1980s, escapism was an essential part of my youth.

Like most kids, I first escaped into storybooks, cartoons, and improvised backyard adventures. Then I gradually learned the euphoria of losing myself in a movie, comic book, or science fiction novel. These interests eventually gave way to my obsession with Dungeons and Dragons, a game that introduced me to my favorite form of escapism: simulation. These primitive pen-and-paper simulations didn’t just allow me and my friends to escape the boundaries of our tiny hometown and visit incredible fantasy worlds--they actually let us become active participants, heroes.  That new sensation was... kind of addictive.  Role-playing games quickly became my all-consuming passion, and the evidence was all over my report cards. (“Ernie seems distracted in class.” No kidding--I’m preparing to raid a zombie-infested dungeon this weekend!)

I had to sneak my Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks out of the house by hiding them under my jacket, like some sort of illicit substance, because my parents were convinced that role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons were somehow satanic. They were convinced kids who played them were in mortal danger of losing their grip on reality altogether, just like Tom Hanks did in the made-for-TV movie Mazes & Monsters. A story on 60 Minutes gave a terrifying warning to my parents, who then passed that warning on to me: When you step into another world, there’s a chance you won’t be able to find your way back.

Video games have always offered me a similar form of escape, with an even greater risk of overdoing it. Over the years, as video game graphics and gameplay got more and more realistic, the danger of losing myself in their digital realities also seemed to increase exponentially. When First-Person Shooter games like Doom first appeared, I became totally addicted to them. Totally addicted. There really isn’t any other word for it. I’d stay up night after night, playing deathmatch after deathmatch against my housemates, then crawl off to work the next morning without a wink of sleep.

When Massively Multiplayer Online games like Ultima Online and EverQuest began to appear, addiction quickly gave way to rabid obsession. First, I started skipping work to play. Then I started playing at work, on my work computer. I clearly had a problem. Luckily, in a rare display of self-control, I forced myself to quit MMO games cold turkey back around the turn of the century, just a few weeks before I became one of those people who devoted so much time to their virtual life that they ruined their real one. Even with its crude polygons and sound effects, EverQuest (which earned the nickname “EverCrack” shortly after its release) was clearly better than real life for a lot of people. They lost their jobs and ruined their marriages and kept right on playing. I didn’t want to go out like that. But I definitely understood--still do understand--the mindset of people who did.

My first novel, Ready Player One, is all about that tension--about our need for that kind of escape, and the danger of overdoing it. The story is set in a future where most people have retreated from the real world into a stunningly real virtual universe called the OASIS.  I wanted to find a way of showing this virtual world’s seductive power, and what better way to do so than populate it with all the things that have seduced me throughout my life? So the OASIS is filled with hundreds of fictional planets from science fiction and fantasy novels, movies, and TV series, along with other worlds devoted to classic video games, 80s movies, rock albums, and role-playing games. Whatever sort of reality you want to escape to, you can find it inside the OASIS. It’s like having a holodeck in your living room. Sounds kind of addictive, doesn’t it?

Wade Watts, the hero of my story, has grown up inside the OASIS and his attachment to its simulated reality goes way beyond mere addiction.  The OASIS is the only place where he feels like his true self. His virtual reality is the only one that matters to him. Over the course of the story, Wade will have to try and break free of the virtual world and make his way back to the real one, just like I did.  But that doesn’t mean he--and hopefully the reader--can’t have a lot of fun playing in that virtual world along the way.

8/26 Kindle Daily Deal: "Elizabeth Street" for $1.99

Today only, Laurie Fabiano's sweeping historical novel, Elizabeth Street is $1.99 (75% off yesterday's price).

In Elizabeth Street, Laurie Fabiano tells a remarkable, and previously unheard, story of the Italian immigrant experience at the start of the twentieth century. Culled from her own family history, Fabiano paints an entrancing portrait of Giovanna Costa, who, reeling from personal tragedies, tries to make a new life in a new world.

Don't want to miss a Kindle daily deal? Bookmark amazon.com/kindledailydeal and check back daily to see what's next. Deals go live at approximately 12:00 A.M. Pacific time and run for 24 hours.  The Kindle Daily Deal will be also posted daily on Twitter, and frequently on Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post.

Guest Reviewer: Paula McLain on "The Language of Flowers"

Paula McLain is the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife. She grew up in Fresno, California where, after being abandoned by both parents, she spent fourteen years in the foster care system. A graduate of the MFA program at The University of Michigan, she has taught literature and creative writing for many years, and currently lives with her children in Cleveland, Ohio.

I feel it’s only fair to warn you, dear reader, that Vanessa’s Diffenbaugh’s central character in The Language of Flowers, Victoria Jones, is going to break your heart three ways from Sunday.  She’s also going to make you want to pick her up, shake her and scream, why can’t you let yourself be happy? But for Victoria, the answer is as complex as the question is simple. She’s spent her childhood ricocheting through countless foster and group homes, and the experience has left her in pieces. Painfully isolated and deeply mistrustful, she cares only about flowers and their meanings. She herself is like a thistle, a wall of hard-earned thorns.

When we first encounter Victoria, it’s the day of her emancipation from foster care, her eighteenth birthday. “Emancipation” couldn’t be a more ironic word for this moment. For Victoria, as for most foster care survivors--myself included--freedom really means free fall. She has nowhere to go, no resources, no one who cares about her.  She ends up sleeping in a public park, tending a garden of pilfered blossoms, and living on her wits. It’s only when a local florist sees Victoria’s special way with flowers that she is given a means to survive. But survival is just the beginning. The more critical question is will Victoria let herself love and be loved?

The storyline weaves skillfully between the heavy burden of Victoria’s childhood--her time with Elizabeth, the foster mother who taught her the language of flowers and also wounded her more deeply than Victoria can bear to remember--and the gauntlet of her present relationship with Grant, a flower vendor who’s irrevocably linked to the darkest secret of her past. At its core, The Language of Flowers is a meditation on redemption, and on how even the most profoundly damaged might learn to forgive and be forgiven. By opening up Victoria’s very difficult inner world to us, Vanessa Diffenbaugh shows us a corner of experience hidden to most, and with an astonishing degree of insight and compassion. So hold on, and keep the tissue box nearby. This is a book you won’t soon forget.

8/25 Kindle Daily Deal: "Water for Elephants"

Today only, Sara Gruen's bestselling novel, Water for Elephants is $2.99 (57% off yesterday's price).

Set in the circus world circa 1932, Water for Elephants, is an atmospheric, gritty, and compelling story of star-crossed lovers who overcome incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.

Don't want to miss a Kindle daily deal? Bookmark amazon.com/kindledailydeal and check back daily to see what's next. Deals go live at approximately 12:00 A.M. Pacific time and run for 24 hours.  The Kindle Daily Deal will be also posted daily on Twitter, and frequently on Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post.