Dorothy Thompson Talks Virtual Book Tours at The Book Faerie Reviews

Guess what! I'm guest posting today at The Book Faerie Reviews! I just found out this is going to be a monthly feature and I'm to talk about virtual book tours and online book promotion. If you'd like to see my first post, visit The Book Faerie Reviews! Stop by and leave a comment or say howdie!

HOMER'S ODYSSEY VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Gwen Cooper, author of the memoir/pets book, Homer's Odyssey (Delacorte Press), as she virtually tours the blogosphere in September on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! About the Author Gwen Cooper is the author of the novel Diary of a South Beach Party Girl. A Miami native, she spent five years working in nonprofit administration, marketing, and fundraising. She coordinated volunteer activities on behalf of organizations such as Pet Rescue, the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, the Miami Rescue Mission, and His House Children’s Home. In conjunction with Hands on Miami and Barnes & Noble, Gwen initiated Reading Pen Pals, an elementary school-based-literacy program in Miami’s Little Haiti. Gwen currently lives in Manhattan with her husband, Laurence, and her three perfect cats—Scarlett, Vashti, and Homer, who aren’t impressed with any of it. You can visit Gwen online at http://gwencooper.com/. About the Book Once in nine lives, something extraordinary happens... The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. Then Gwen’s veterinarian called with a story about a three-week-old eyeless kitten who’d been abandoned. It was love at first sight. Everyone warned that Homer would always be an “underachiever,” never as playful or independent as other cats. But the kitten nobody believed in quickly grew into a three-pound dynamo, a tiny daredevil with a giant heart who eagerly made friends with every human who crossed his path. Homer scaled seven-foot bookcases with ease and leapt five feet into the air to catch flies in mid-buzz. He survived being trapped alone for days after 9/11 in an apartment near the World Trade Center, and even saved Gwen’s life when he chased off an intruder who broke into their home in the middle of the night. But it was Homer’s unswerving loyalty, his infinite capacity for love, and his joy in the face of all obstacles that inspired Gwen daily and transformed her life. And by the time she met the man she would marry, she realized Homer had taught her the most important lesson of all: Love isn’t something you see with your eyes. Homer’s Odyssey is the once-in-a-lifetime story of an extraordinary cat and his human companion. It celebrates the refusal to accept limits—on love, ability, or hope against overwhelming odds. By turns jubilant and moving, it’s a memoir for anybody who’s ever fallen completely and helplessly in love with a pet. Excerpt Prologue: The Cat Who Lived Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide… --Homer, The Odyssey The routine when I get home at the end of the day is always the same. The ding! of the elevator is the first cue to sensitive ears that my appearance is imminent, and by the time my key hits the lock I hear the soft press of paws on the other side of the door. I’ve found that I tend to open all doors—even those in other people’s homes—with enough caution to prevent any furry miscreants from tumbling outside. Rather than seeking the floor, however, it’s only a matter of seconds before those paws have found their way from the door to the front of my legs, and a tiny black cat makes his best effort to shimmy his way up my body as if I were a tree trunk. To prevent injury to either my clothes or the skin beneath—his claws are small, but highly effective—I squat down with a cheerful, “Hi, Homer-Bear!” (A nickname given when he was a kitten on account of his glossy black fur, like a grizzly bear’s coat.) Homer takes this as his cue to jump onto my knees, placing his front paws on my shoulders and rubbing his nose against mine with much loud purring and a series of short, clipped mews that sound uncannily like the yips of a puppy. “Hey, little guy,” I say, scratching him behind his ears. This sends Homer into veritable convulsions of delight, and—no longer content with mere nose-to-nose contact—he presses his entire face to my forehead, sliding it down to my cheek and back up again. Squatting in the high heels I typically wear (I’m only 5’1”, but I refuse to live life as a short person) is even more painful than it sounds, so I pick Homer up and deposit him back on the ground, rising to my feet and finally entering the apartment I share with my husband, Laurence. Keys, coat, and bags are quickly stowed away. When you live with three cats, you learn that the best way to prevent fur accumulation on the clothes you wear publicly is to change into “knock around the house” garb immediately upon arrival. So from there I head to the bedroom and make a quick change. A fuzzy shadow trails my steps through the apartment, leaping to the tops of any and all furniture along the way. Homer jumps effortlessly from floor to chair, from chair to dining room table, then back to the floor again, like Q-bert on speed. As I make my way from the living/dining area to the hallway, Homer’s up on top of a side table, then hurls himself recklessly to the third shelf of the bookcase diagonally across the hall, perching for a precarious moment until I’ve passed. Then he’s down on the ground once more, zipping along ahead of me and occasionally, in his enthusiasm, running smack into one of my other two cats until he reaches the doorway to the bedroom. Stopping at precisely the same point each time, he pauses for an infinitesimal moment, then cuts a hard left through the bedroom door, as if he were drawing a large capital “L”. He jumps to the top of the bed, where he knows I’ll sit to remove my shoes, and crawls into my lap for another round of purring and face rubbing. This routine is the same from day to day, but what changes is the closer survey of the apartment I take once I’ve changed clothes. Homer is a creature of many and varied hobbies, and it’s hard to know from one week to the next what new projects he’s decided to immerse himself in. For a while, his goal seemed to be setting the world record for number of items pushed from the top of a coffee table in a single day. Laurence and I are both writers, so we have the usual writers’ effluvia—pens, pads, and scraps of paper with notes we’ve taken—scattered among the magazines, paperbacks, tissue boxes, ticket stubs, sunglasses, matchbooks, breath mints, remote controls, and takeout menus. One day we came home to find our coffee table swept entirely clean—books, pens, remote controls and all, spattered across the floor like a Jackson Pollock canvas. We restored the items to their rightful place (not without a certain amount of shamefaced tidying up), but this pattern continued for several weeks. We weren’t sure which of the cats was our phantom housekeeper until the night I came home and caught Homer in the very act, quivering with pride at his accomplishment and wholly unrepentant. “Maybe he’s objecting to the clutter,” I suggested to Laurence. “It’s probably disconcerting for him to have everything in a different place whenever he jumps up onto the table.” Laurence isn’t as prone as I am to examining the hidden motivations of our pets. “I think the cat just likes pushing things off the coffee table,” was his reply. We’ve also learned to tie closed the sliding closet doors in our home. It’s apparently easier than one would think for a small cat to hoist the full weight of his body up a hanging pair of jeans (denim being a nice, sturdy material that’s well-suited to climbing), then propel himself onto a top shelf where boxes of old photos, wrapped birthday and holiday gifts (which make a delightful crinkling-paper sound when they’re clawed open), and comfy piles of soft clothes make their homes. Garbage cans—no matter how tall—can be leapt into and toppled onto their sides. Scratching posts made of coiled rope can be completely unraveled, given enough persistence. Bookcases can be scaled and hardcovers hurled from their highest shelves. The same goes for records, CDs, and DVDs stacked in an entertainment center. With enough imagination, the acts of general mischief and minor destruction that one small cat can discover over the course of an average workday are endless. If there’s one valuable life lesson I’ve learned from Homer, in fact, it’s the importance of finding worthwhile projects to occupy one’s time. Most recently, Homer has trained himself to use the toilet. Why, at twelve years of age, he suddenly chose to add this feat to his bag of tricks, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve heard of cats being trained by their owners to use the bathroom instead of a litter box, but I’ve never heard of a cat taking the mastery of this particular task upon himself. The first time I discovered his latest achievement was by accident. I awoke early one morning and stumbled into the bathroom. Flipping on the light, I found that it was…already occupied, Homer balancing on the edge of the toilet seat. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said automatically, still half asleep. It was only after I left, considerately closing the door behind me, that I thought, Wait a minute… “Our cat’s a genius!” I gushed to Laurence later that day. “When he teaches himself to flush, he’ll be a genius,” Laurence replied. It’s true: The art of the flush is still beyond Homer’s grasp. So checking toilets is another item I’ve added to the mental checklist I go through when I get home at night, while I survey the apartment for overturned picture frames, pried-open cabinets, and knocked-over knick-knacks. Because I never know exactly what to expect when I walk in the door—and because seeing Homer can be a startling sight all on its own for the uninitiated—I try to prepare guests when they visit for the first time. In the years since I met Laurence and stopped dating, and as I reach an age where the number of new friends I make becomes fewer, this is something I’ve had to do with less frequency. Still, I remember one occasion when I failed to give a new boyfriend the run-down before a first-time visit. At the outset of the evening I hadn’t expected to invite my date back to my apartment. By the time the decision was made, talking about my cats seemed like the sort of thing that might kill a romantic mood. Homer, in those days, was particularly enamored of playing with tampons. Having encountered one by chance, he was fascinated by the way they’d roll around, and by the string at the end. He liked them so much, he figured out where I kept them stored in the cabinet below the bathroom sink and—with unerring patience and accuracy—mastered the task of forcing open the cabinet door and raiding the tampon box. When I walked in with my date, Homer ran to greet me at the door as usual. And there, hanging from his mouth, was a tampon. The whiteness of it stood out against his black fur in vivid, mortifying relief. He scampered around in gleeful triumph for a moment, then promptly ran over and sat expectantly on his haunches in front of me, tampon clutched between his jaws like a dog with a rawhide bone. My date looked taken aback, to say the least. “What the…is that a…” He stammered for a moment, before finally managing, “Did something happen to your cat?” I hunkered down on my heels, and Homer happily climbed into my lap, dropping the purloined tampon at my feet. “He’s fine,” I answered. “He doesn’t have any eyes, is all.” My date appeared staggered by this piece of information. “No eyes?!” he asked. “Well, he was born with eyes,” I explained. “But they had to be removed when he was a kitten.” There are some ninety million cats residing in roughly thirty-eight million U.S. households, according to Humane Society estimates—and so, in a sense, Homer is entirely typical. He eats, sleeps, bats around crumpled-up balls of paper, and gets into more trouble than I can keep him out of half the time. And, just like any other cat, he has very fixed opinions when it comes to what he likes and what he doesn’t. Happiness, in Homer’s world, is tuna fresh out of the can, climbing anything that can support his weight, pouncing with mock ferocity on his two unsuspecting (and much, much larger) sisters, and napping in the patch of sunlight that falls into the living room just before sunset. Unhappiness is being the last of my cats to score a prime spot next to Mommy on the couch, a litter box that isn’t immaculately clean, permanent denial of access to our apartment’s balcony (blind cat, high ledge—it’s easy math), and the word “no.” But Homer looms larger than life in my imagination, and I often think his story can only be thought of in epic terms. He’s the Cat Who Lived—an orphaned, half-starved stray who survived an illness grave enough to take his eyes at two weeks of age, and who nobody wanted to give a home to once it was clear he would pull through. He’s Daredevil, the famed Marvel Comics superhero who lost his sight in an accident while saving a blind man, but who gained superhuman use of all his other senses. Like Daredevil, Homer’s senses of hearing and smell, his ability to map and negotiate all obstacles in an unfamiliar room simply by walking through it once, border on the preternatural. He’s a cat who can smell a single flake of tuna fish from three rooms away, who can spring straight up, five feet into the air, and catch a buzzing fly in mid-flight. Every leap from a chair back or tabletop is taken on faith, a potential leap into the abyss. Every ball chased down a hallway is an act of implicit bravery. Every curtain or countertop climbed, every overture of friendship to a new person, every step forward taken without guidance into the dark void of the world around him is a miracle of courage. He has no guide dog, no cane, no language in which he can be reassured or made to understand the shape and nature of the hurdles he encounters. My other cats can see out of the windows of our home, and so they know the boundaries of the world they inhabit. But Homer’s world is boundless and ultimately unknowable; whatever room he’s in contains all there is to contain, and is therefore infinite. Having only the most glancing of relationships with time and space, he transcends them both. Homer initially came into my home because nobody else wanted to take him. So it never fails to amaze me how fascinated people are—even people who aren’t particularly interested in cats—when they meet him, or even when they just hear about him. He’s the ultimate conversation starter, something I hadn’t anticipated when I first adopted him. Ninety million cats out there means there are at least ninety million cat stories, but—at the risk of sounding unbearably prejudiced—I’ve yet to encounter a cat as remarkable as mine. At least once a week, every week for the past twelve years, he’s done something that has amused me, infuriated me, or flat-out astonished me—and he’s never more astonishing than when I see him for the first time all over again through somebody else’s eyes. Oh, how sad! is often the first thing people say when they hear that Homer’s eyes had to be removed at two weeks of age. I usually respond that if you can show me a happier, more rambunctious cat anywhere in the world, I’ll give you a hundred bucks just to get a look at him. How does he get around? they’ll ask. On his legs, I answer, just like any other healthy cat. On occasion, when he’s especially enthusiastic in his play, I’ll hear the bonk! of his little head bumping into a wall or table leg he’d forgotten was there. It’s something that always draws a laugh from me, even while my heart cracks down familiar lines. I laugh because anybody who’s witnessed a cat in a playful frenzy, falling backwards off a sofa or charging headfirst at a closed glass door, can’t help but chuckle. And my heart breaks because, in the best of all possible worlds, Homer would have been found a week earlier, when the eye infection he’d had might have been diagnosed as “serious” rather than “incurable.” Of course, in that world, Homer almost certainly wouldn’t have entered my life in the first place. My favorite moment in the celebration of Passover—the holiday commemorating God’s leading Moses and the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery and into the Promised Land—is always the Dayenu, a joyous song sung loudly and accompanied by much clapping of hands and stomping of feet. Hebrew for “It would have been enough,” the Dayenu recounts the miracles God performed on behalf of the Israelites, insisting after each one that it, all on its own, would have been enough: If He had brought us out from Egypt and not carried out judgments against them, dayenu! If He had carried out judgments against them and not parted the sea for us, dayenu! If He had parted the sea for us and not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, dayenu! And so on. Living with Homer, over the past twelve years, I’ve composed a Dayenu of my own. If Homer had simply managed to live beyond two weeks of age, it would have been enough. If he had simply learned to find his food bowl and his litter box all on his own, it would have been enough. If he had simply taught himself how to get from room to room in our home without any guidance, it would have been enough. If he had simply learned to run, jump, play, and fearlessly do all the things they told me he might never do, it would have been enough. If he had simply made me laugh out loud every single day for over a decade, it would have been enough. And if he had done nothing more than become one of the most loyal, affectionate, and courageous sources of daily joy and inspiration I’ve ever known…well, that would have been more than enough. In a seemingly hopeless situation, when no rational person could expect anything good, yet somehow ends up receiving everything good—these are things we call miracles and wonders. A few of us are lucky enough to see such wonders in our everyday lives. So this book is for the others like me, but also for the ones who’ve given up on believing in everyday miracles and heroes; for people who love cats and for people who consider themselves firmly anti-cat; for those who think “normal” and “ideal” mean the same thing, and for those who know that, sometimes, stepping slightly to the left of what’s normal can enrich your whole life. To all of you I introduce Homer, the Wondercat. Dayenu! Praise for Homer's Odyssey "I am certain it would be impossible to meet Homer without falling in love with him and it is just as difficult to read this loving account without coming away with a renewed faith in the unique bond that can sometimes arise between two alien species. Gwen Cooper writes with humor, with wit, with candor and most of all with irresistible warmth for this astonishing little feline who will steal your heart the way he stole hers." —Jeffrey Moussaief Masson, New York Times bestselling author of The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats and When Elephants Weep “This tender and affecting book reveals Homer's lessons about love and acceptance—and how he transformed Cooper into the woman she had always wanted to be.” —Publishers Weekly Win Prizes!!! The HOMER'S ODYSSEY VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on September 1st and end on September 25th. You can visit Gwen's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of September to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

WRITING AS A SACRED PATH VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Jill Jepson, author of the personal growth writing book, Writing as a Sacred Path: A Practical Guide to Writing with Passion and Purpose (Ten Speed Press), as she virtually tours the blogosphere in August on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Jill Jepson is a traveler, professor, and transformational life coach, and the author of three books and over 60 articles. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Chicago as well as degrees in writing, psychology, social science, and Asian studies. Using her extensive travels to places as diverse as Guatemala, Syria, Siberia, and Afghanistan, her writing explores spiritual traditions, history, culture, personal growth, and the writing process. Through her business, Writing the Whirlwind, she offers coaching and online workshops for writers, activists, and others. You can visit her website at www.writingthewhirlwind.net. Writing as a Sacred Path: A Practical Guide to Writing With Passion & Purpose is a one-of-a-kind writing book that plumbs the practices of four great spiritual vocations—that of the shaman, warrior, mystic and monk—to provide a new, inspired approach for writers. This invaluable offering is for those who yearn to write with purpose and direction, to develop a deep connection to their writing, and to make writing their spiritual path. It is a both a practical guide to cultivating the spirituality inherent in the writing life and a profound exploration of writing as a sacred act. It is a richly-textured but accessible book that shows readers how to use myth, meditation, ritual, and other sacred tools to deepen and expand their writing practice. Writing as a Sacred Path offers readers a way to approach writing itself as a life-changing spiritual practice. Weaving a tapestry of anecdotes, quotes, and personal experiences, Writing as a Sacred Path offers techniques for breaking through blocks, encouragement in times when the writing life becomes difficult, inspiration for the daily work of writing, and no-nonsense ways to write bravely, honestly, and with real vision. It also gives us deep insight into and hands-on guidance through the spiritual nature of the writing life. Writing as a Sacred Path springs from the author’s years as a writer and teacher and is based on her highly effective workshops on the spirituality of writing. As an anthropologist, linguist, and novelist, Jepson has explored spirituality throughout the world, learning from mountain peoples in Afghanistan, rice farmers in India, fishermen of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, urbanites in modern Tokyo and Beijing, and laborers in Siberia. Writing as a Sacred Path draws on the experiences of the many writers with whom she has worked, as well as on meticulous research into the biographies, interviews, published letters, and writings of authors from Sappho to Stephen King, from beginning students to great masters. Both a working writer and a scholar of world religions, Jepson calls on the words of theologians, lay practitioners, and sacred texts from an array of traditions—Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Native American, Taoist, Pagan, and others. Writing as a Sacred Path looks to karate black-belts, the legend of King Arthur, and Star Trek’s Klingons to show how the writer is like a warrior—and why she must be. It guides the writer through the life-changing experience of the mystic as a means of understanding the personal ups and downs so many dedicated writers face. It details what writers can learn from the simplicity and devotion of the monastic life—or from the healing journey of the shaman. It delves into the ways writers throughout the ages have tapped into the Mystery or looked to the wisdom of the world’s spiritual traditions to offer the modern writer nourishment and support. In its pages, you will find: • A wealth of exercises designed to help you navigate your writing life. • Guided meditations to develop keen focus, access sources of strength, and delve deeply into memory. • Suggestions for using dreams, rituals, music, and mandalas in your writing. • Stories of famous writers and their struggles to over come writing blocks. • Strategies to help you find your unique voice, and tap into creative energy. • A simple process for shedding negative thoughts, fears, and anxieties that hinder the creative process. • Descriptions from contemporary working writers of how to blend writing and spiritual practice. • Ideas for using the wisdom of the world’s spiritual traditions in your writing practice. Writing as a Sacred Path: A Practical Guide to Writing With Passion & Purpose unveils the mysteries surrounding practices that shamans, warriors, mystics and monks have honed over the ages. Jepson offers a clear, compelling guide for every writer and aspiring writer who seeks to better navigate the ups and downs of their writing lives, to unlock the transformative creative powers within. If you are reading this book, you have already heard the call. Maybe, at this point, it’s just a whisper, a small voice quietly urging you to put your ideas down in words. It occurs to you that you might try writing some day. You think, “I should write the story of my grandmother’s life” or “If only I could create a poem about the way my kitchen smells in the morning.” Or perhaps the voice is more insistent. Characters appear full-blown in your consciousness, complete with faces and bodies, histories and dreams. It isn’t so much that you’ve thought the characters up as that they have arrived uninvited. You wake up to find them sitting at the foot of your bed saying, “Well? Have you given us substance yet?” You long to put it all down on paper. You have to tell their stories. Here is a shocking truth: few people write because it is fun. It can be fun, even exhilarating and delightful, but that’s not why writers write. True writers keep at it even when the experience falls squarely between aggravating and ghastly. They labor at work that sometimes depresses and exhausts them, for little pay (or none at all), even in the face of failure. This impulse may sound like masochism or addiction, and perhaps it is, but it is also something greater and more compelling: it’s a vocation, a calling. In the spiritual sense, a vocation is not merely a job one sets out to do, but an irresistible impulse, an urge strong enough to lead a man or woman to renounce a successful career for a life of service, to give up children and family for the rigors of the monastery—or to risk everything in order to write. Like religious men and women, writers often feel they’ve been chosen or destined for their work. Novelist Starling Lawrence describes his desire to write as a “commanding impulse.” Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes’s prolific creator, saw his writing as something “marked out” for him by Providence . “I write because I can’t not write any more than I could not breathe,” says novelist Elaine Marie Alphin. Writing isn’t something you choose to do, in the way you might decide to become a teacher or firefighter. More often, writing chooses you. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison has said that in order to weed out the overwhelming number of commitments she faced, she had to ask herself which were the things she absolutely had to do—the things without which, she would die. She had two: her family and her writing. Many writers share the feeling that writing is what keeps them alive. Sometimes, they mean this quite literally. Poet Frank O’Hara said that the one thing that kept him from suicide was the thought that, if he died, he would never write another poem. And Pamela Wagner, a poet who suffers from schizophrenia, says that it is writing that has kept her alive—in every sense of the word. Even if writing isn’t the one thing that stands between you and madness or suicide, it is what makes a writer feel alive. If you are called to the path, not following it is a kind of living death. Writing is an natural and as necessary as breathing. Pump Up Your Book Promotion would like to thank the following sponsors of Jill Jepson's WRITING AS A SACRED PATH VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09: (to be announced) If you would like to sponsor Jill (interview, guest post, podcast or book review), please email Dorothy Thompson at thewriterslife(at)yahoo.com or visit I want to be a Tour Host for more information. Deadline for sponsorships is July 31. All sponsors are eligible for a chance to win Pump Up Your Book Promotion's Blog Host of the Month Award which includes a $25 prize plus goody bag from Pump Up Your Book Promotion for our appreciation. ____________________________ Jill Jepson's WRITING AS A SACRED PATH VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on August 3 and end on August 28. You can visit Jill's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of August to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

A WILL TO LOVE VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Kim Smith, author of the romance novel, A Will to Live (Red Rose Publishing), as she virtually tours the blogosphere in July on her second virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Kim Smith is the hostess for the popular radio show, Introducing WRITERS! Radio show on Blog Talk Radio. She is also the author of the zany, Shannon Wallace mystery series available now from Red Rose Publishing and also the new romance novel, A Will to Love. You can visit Kim’s website at www.mkimsmith.com. Benton Jessup wants his bed and breakfast to be successful. He will go to no lengths to insure that it does. But when Kitty Beebe, a famous romance author, arrives at The Inn, his desire for success becomes a struggle of wills with love. If the Beebe woman liked it, her expression of approval might bring more business to The Inn, and cement his chance at having a four star rating. He scowled. Keeping her off his mind was becoming nearly impossible. The opportunity to gain more recognition for his business consumed him, regardless if it meant impressing someone to do it. Showing off his talents was his ace. It excited him, kept him focused. He’d been raised a poor man’s son with never two pennies to rub together. It was through his own resourcefulness that he’d found jobs working in kitchens each one building to a higher position until he landed a job as head cook. He knew how to succeed. He’d done it a step at a time all of his life. He set a goal and worked toward it until it became his. At the moment, his goal was to make Kitty Beebe tell all her New York friends that The Inn was the best bed and breakfast in South. It was a reasonable expectation. It would take long hours, and careful planning, but it could be done. Nothing he hadn’t faced before and successfully accomplished. That drive to overcome his meager beginnings was why he hadn’t just closed The Inn and gone back home. Ambition was his all-consuming need and his ticket to ride on the wheel of life. But could he get his guest to succumb to his charm, his talent. . . his obsession? Change. That was what he needed. Change to his approach, his execution. He would make the Beebe woman fall in love with this place, with his very country until she didn’t want to return to Ireland. If he were to succeed at that, it meant giving up his resolve to stay out of a woman’s way. It meant putting himself directly in her path and he knew what direction her path would be. It was written on every page of her damn book. Kim Smith's A WILL TO LOVE VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on July 6th and end on July 31st. You can visit Kim's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of July to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

LOSE THE DIET VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Kathy Balland, author of the self-help book, Lose the Diet: Transform Your Body by Connecting with Your Soul (Blissful Publications), as she virtually tours the blogosphere in July and August on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Kathy Balland, an expert in the mind-body-soul connection, teaches people how to tap into their own inner power for success. Clinically certified in hypnotherapy, her publications and seminars provide deep insights into the true causes and their remedies that prevent people from achieving their goals. Balland is a graduate of the University of Phoenix and the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts. She is clinically certified by the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners and certified by the American Board of Hypnotherapy. As president of Blissful Publications and author of “Lose the Diet: Transform Your Body by Connecting with Your Soul,” Balland provides information to enrich and empower people to achieve happiness and success. You can visit her website at www.losethediet.com or visit her at Twitter at www.twitter.com/losethediet. You’ll discover your power to achieve and maintain a healthy weight naturally without diets. Food deprivation is uncomfortable and ultimately causes weight gain. Instead, enjoy the good health and joy that you deserve. Lose the Diet shows you how. • Drop the diets and the weight in a healthy and natural way. • Find out why deprivation doesn’t work. • Learn about the mind-body-soul connection’s effect on weight. • Discover that happiness leads to a healthy weight rather than the other way around. • Insightful tools and information that help you to find balance — from the inside out! Kathy Balland's LOSE THE DIET VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on July 6th and end on August 28th. You can visit Kathy's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the months of July and August to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

FIRST NIGHT VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Tom Weston, author of the young adult novel, First Night (Tom Weston Media), as he virtually tours the blogosphere in July on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Originally from England, Tom now hangs his hat in Boston, Massachusetts; with occasional spells in such faraway places as London and Luxembourg. Tom has a degree in Computer Science, and he claims to speak three languages: English, American, and Visual Basic. Before turning his hand to fiction, Tom had a successful career as the CEO of a systems consulting company, conference speaker, and writer of industry articles and business books. As well as the novel, First Night, Tom has also written the screenplay, Fission, based on the true story of scientist, Lise Meitner, and the race for the atomic bomb. While Fission has yet to find a home in Hollywood, it garnered enough critical acclaim, including being named as a finalist at the London Independent Film Festival, that Tom was encouraged to keep on writing, resulting in his latest work which is, of course, First Night. You can learn more about Tom and First Night by going to his website: http://www.tom-weston.com/ Alexandra O'Rourke, aged 16, is not a happy camper. It's New Year's Eve. She should be partying in San Diego with her friends, but instead she is stuck in Boston, with just her younger sister, Jackie, for company. As if that wasn't bad enough, she is being haunted by Sarah, the ghost of a seventeenth century Puritan. Oh, and there is the small matter of the charge of witchcraft to be sorted out. Armed only with big shiny buttons and a helping of Boston Cream Pie, the sisters set out to restore the Natural Order. Can Alex solve the mystery of the Devil's Book? Can Jackie help Sarah beat the sorcery rap? And can they do it before the fireworks display at midnight? Because this is First Night - and this is an Alex and Jackie Adventure. “And to drink?” asked the waitress. “I’ll have a beer, if I may?” replied Sarah. “Can I see some ID please?” asked the waitress. “Sorry, but we have to check.” “She’s just joking,” interrupted Alex. “She’ll have some water, like us.” “Surely, you are not going to drink the water?” asked Sarah. This world differed so greatly from her world, but even these people must know the danger of drinking the water? “Yes, why not?” “Do you want to die of the colic or worms of the brain?” “We have something called sanitation now,” sniped Alex. “If you’d had it in the seventeenth century, you might still be alive.” “Or dead!” offered Jackie. “Or dead, yes, absolutely,” amended Alex. Tom Weston's FIRST NIGHT VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on July 6th and end on July 31st. You can visit Tom's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of July to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

UNDERSTANDING LEARNING DISABILITIES VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Etta K. Brown, author of the nonfiction guide, Understanding Learning Disabilities: Understanding the Problem and Managing the Challenges (Langdon Street Press), as she virtually tours the blogosphere in July on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Etta K. Brown received her undergraduate degree from the Ohio State University with a major in Dental Hygiene Education and the Masters in Education degree from South Carolina State University with a major in Special Education. The Educational Specialist Degree was conferred at Kent State University with studies in School Administration, and a major in School Psychology. Through her graduate programs, and internships, the author acquired skills with speech and language, visual-motor training, auditory training, and the teaching of reading and handwriting. During twenty years of professional experience in the public schools in Ohio, Iowa and California she has worked as a special education teacher, a school social worker and as a school psychologist. At no time, in either of those positions did she feel that she was able to apply any of her acquired knowledge to help children to learn. Instead, while she didn't always agree, much was learned about what not to tell parents about their children. She also learned how school systems function, why they function the way that they do, why there were some things that it was not in the best interest of the school district for parents to know and why they should not be told. Those were long, frustrating years watching children being placed in Special education because that was all that the School District had to offer. On the other hand were the frustrated parents who agonized over what to do about their child’s learning problems and the stigma of being placed in Special Education. Having recently retired from public education and started a practice as a Licensed Educational Psychologist, the author is now free to discuss Special education and share information believed to be in the best interest of parents without being unprofessional or disloyal to employers. She continues to reach out to parents and children through her writing. Her current book is a summary of all that she would have told parents during her career had she been permitted to do so. Ms Brown may be reached at www.understanding-learning-disabilities.com This work, while written by an academician, is an uncomplicated resource of information addressed to parents who have been introduced to the concept of Special Education for the first time. Overall, this work is a road map of how-to activities which will be of assistance from the beginning to end of the special education process. Part I is an introduction to the environmental influences since World War II, that are believed to be contributing to the incidence of learning disabilities that is increasing at a rate of 20% every 10 years. Part II includes a definition and history of special education and its intended role and function in the effort to educate all children. The reader is introduced to the process of determining eligibility for Special Education, and Federal and State Legislation are explored in terms of the parent's rights in the process. Part III is an exploration of processing disorders as required for a designation of learning disability. Behaviors exhibited in the classroom, a rationale for the behavior, along with modifications and accommodations for the general education classroom are listed. These interventions are applied to the elementary, middle school, and high school environments as an aid in developing the individualized education plan (IEP). CHAPTER XIII ADVOCACY AT ITS BEST As stated previously, before beginning advocacy for a child’s special education, it would be helpful for parents to be sure that any trauma, injuries, nutrition or health problems have been addressed and the child’s vision and hearing have been checked so that as an advocate, parents are doing or have done their part at home to prepare their child for learning. Children with learning disabilities represent the largest category of students receiving special education, and the term has become so closely associated with special education that some professionals have actually referred to special education as a form of treatment for learning disabilities, and some parents and teachers have been led to believe that special education will solve their child’s learning problems. This is far from the truth of what special education is and does. When a child has a learning problem, the special classroom modifies the way the information is presented to the child. If his problem is visual processing, information may be presented so that the stronger auditory senses are utilized. The child then learns more effectively, but that does not mean that the visual processing problem has been cured. Children with many types of developmental immaturities benefit greatly from the special techniques and assistance received in special education. The law states that identification should occur at an early age and that, for school age children, services should be provided in the least restrictive environment. Because learning-disabled children do not learn in the same way that the majority of children learn assessment is needed to assist the teacher in determining how they do learn best so that teaching methods can be adapted to their needs. Without this help, the teacher is overwhelmed with challenges for which she may have been ill-prepared in her training program. Add to that an overcrowded classroom of 30 to 35 students and the child with special needs often does not receive the special accommodations that he is rightfully entitled to under the law. When this scenario exists, the child with a different learning style is often referred to special education, where, ideally, the smaller class size is expected to make it easier to accommodate unique learning needs. However, approval for the placement of a child in an isolated group should be given only after the parent has visited the class, examined the curriculum and talked with the teacher about special teaching techniques. Special Class Placement Data suggests that students with disabilities living in inner-cities are more likely to be placed in restrictive learning environments. In these settings, 41.3 percent of students with disabilities are enrolled in full-time programs that remove students from regular classes for 50 percent or more of the school day, compared to 23.4 percent in non-inner-city areas. Once placed in these classes, without specific assessment and accommodation of their learning style, they continue to underachieve. As a consequence, they are rarely able to return to an educational setting with their non-disabled peers because they have fallen too far behind academically and are, therefore, condemned to these settings for the remainder of their school experience. Eventually, because school is so meaningless, by middle school truancy becomes a problem and they drop out. This raises a question. If the child is not going to learn at grade level anyway, why is it that he cannot be accommodated in the general education classroom and at least learn the social skills available through interaction with his classmates? The answer is that teachers sometimes believe the hype given to parents. “He will benefit more from placement in special education.” And theoretically that should be true, but in reality it often is not. Again, the school district has a logical defense for its actions. It is hard to retain good teachers in some schools where there is limited parental participation; there are a limited number of English-speaking students; these children enter school “unready” to learn, etc. While this may be true in some instances, and a major problem in others, enrollment statistics are not a problem which should have negative impact upon the education of the individual child. The parent’s objective is to see that their child receives an appropriate education. And if an appropriate education cannot be provided in the home school environment, parents have the right under the law to request that their child be transported, at school district expense, to an environment in which he will receive an appropriate education. And if English is not his primary language, he should be enrolled in a class that will develop his academic skills while he is learning English. Referral for Special Education Part of the reason for referral to special education is that the child may present a problem for the classroom teacher because his special needs demand services and accommodations which cannot be provided without special skills. So the teacher utilizes the only option available by referring the child in need to special education. Another situation that places the child in jeopardy is the law that requires a minimal number of students for special classes. If the number in a given area is 12 and there are only 10 students identified at the child’s school, it becomes easier to find two more students to fill that class requirement than to lose a good teacher and bus the other 10 students to another school. So, an additional question becomes, does the child “need” special education and is special education “appropriate” for the child even if he is eligible? With good advocacy parents can weather this storm and achieve an educational program that is “appropriate” for their child in “the least restrictive learning environment.” It is their right under the law. And with good advocacy and involvement in the process, they can claim their rights. Etta K. Brown's UNDERSTANDING LEARNING DISABILITIES VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09 will officially begin on July 6th and end on July 31st. You can visit Etta's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of July to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

VIRTUAL VICE VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Jason Kays, author of the new technology crime novel, Virtual Vice (BookSurge), as he virtually tours the blogosphere in July on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Jason M. Kays is an intellectual property attorney with fifteen years experience in both information technology and entertainment law. Kays is an accomplished jazz trumpet player and his passion has always been music, technology, and convergence of the two in today's digital age. This is his first novel. You can visit Jason online at http://www.virtualvice.net/ or check out the trailer for Virtual Vice here. About the Book: In Virtual Vice by Jason Kays, readers follow disillusioned entertainment attorney Ian McKenzie as his professional life takes a decided turn for the questionable when he is hired by the charismatic and dangerous Scott White to represent Scott’s interests in his cutting edge Internet startup, Metropoleis Multimedia. Unfortunately for Ian, Scott has more in common with Scarface’s Tony Montana than Apple’s Steve Jobs, and things go from questionable to deadly in no time flat. As Scott’s confidant and consigliore, Ian soon finds himself caught between the Feds, La Cosa Nostra, and the Cali Cartel in a fatal game of corporate winner-take-all. Excerpt: Everything old is new again Drug trafficker turned entertainment and technology entrepreneur Scott White was having as much difficulty adapting to post-reformation Seattle as was Allis. Recreational drugs have always been integral to a musician’s food pyramid. White, one of the West Coast’s largest cocaine kingpins between the late-1970s and 1980s, profited handsomely from the well-balanced diet of Rock stars and hangers-on who populated the music scene during that hedonistic era. The dark knights’ respective zeniths of infamy did not intersect during the 1970s: Scott was unloading kilos, while Allis was packing his bags for Texas. Over the years, however, each had become aware and respectful of the other’s legacy and sphere of influence. Scott’s return to Seattle had preceded Wes Allis’ by a few years. When the promoter learned through his network that the Candy Man was back in town, he sought him out to ensure that there would be a ready supply of party favors for the talent. With the exception of heroin, drugs were no longer in vogue amongst the Seattle artiste set during the 1990s. White still had connections in that world, but had invested profits realized as drug trafficker into an Internet start-up, Metropoleis Multimedia Corp. (MIII). MIII’s focus was developing methods to stream high-resolution audio and video feeds from live music events. The two career criminals rendezvoused at The Off Ramp, an iconic Seattle watering hole for young rockers, where they shared war stories and notes on the lay of the land. The common connection to organized crime families allowed them to speak to one another with a greater familiarity and trust than would normally have been extended. The product differed, but they shared the same banker and rules of engagement. White passed a collection of pierced, inked twenty-somethings to reach the well-worn and nicotine-stained backroom of the dive bar. Allis sat alone at a corner bar table, his shoulder-length, silver-streaked hair tied back in a ponytail. Sporting a green-striped navy seersucker suit and boutonnière, Allis’ defiant Savile Row aesthetic drove a white hot poker right through the Grunge rockers’ earnest indifference. A good six inches taller than his guest, Allis stood to greet the diminutive drug dealer. Insecurity and ambition reflexively propelled White to stand on tiptoe to offset the difference in height. His discomfiture further intensified by the promoter’s effete handshake, White checked for spilt beer on his bar stool before taking a seat at the rummy’s impromptu conference table. With exaggerated animé grin, Wes Allis opened, “The city has changed, but some things, well, they stay the same, don’t they?” He gestured with his beer bottle towards the ante-room and the heroin-laced patrons, paused, shook his head, then smiled wistfully. The eeriness of his smile seemed to freeze time, as he subsequently directed the Candy Man’s eye to the double doors leading to the kitchen. Slumped just outside the kitchen doors was the ashen-faced, near-lifeless body of a strung-out addict. “Supply and demand, right, Mr. White? Supply and demand. I’ll ensure continued demand; you ensure delivery of the product.” Where Allis’ smile was one of artifice and punctuation, the wellspring of joy in White’s heart for God’s gift of the addict prompted a heartfelt, Cheshire-cat beam of approval as he looked about him to witness laissez-faire economics at work. After taking in the sights, the Candy Man was further moved when he pivoted back on his stool to face his host and found himself at pussy level with their leggy server. The Off Ramp prided itself on being a family affair: addicts serving addicts. This girl was either the exception or wore her drugs well. Absent was that sexy, anemic, necrophilic look sported by so many of her co-workers. She appeared to have a pulse. Petulant locked and loaded labia were straining for release against her taut denim hot pants; delicate rose-hued nipples were visible through a sheer top beneath the faded image of Karl Marx. All of this was served atop shapely, lithe ivory legs unblemished by track marks. “You gonna drink or ya just here to collect a pap smear?” quipped the server. Allis chuckled slyly, “Oh, that’s good! I’ll have to file that away. Betty Friedan and all that aside, you are engaged in a pretty aggressive marketing campaign there, toots!” The promoter played for time to give White an opportunity to produce a rejoinder. When none appeared to be forthcoming, he ordered up another warm beer for himself. As for White, the reptilian part of his brain was still attempting to connect the quick-witted quip to the full, moist, burgundy red lips of this anomaly that stood before him. White’s reductive and narrow world view did not allow for the co-existence of sexy and cerebral at this level. His sense of manhood left flaccid, the Candy Man decided it was best to order his drink and pretend he had not heard the comment. “Whatever Porter you have on tap. Thanks.” The server stared blankly at the misogynist, then replied, “Look, Daddy. We got Rainier for the regulars and Heineken for the poseurs and suits.” She shot Allis a disapproving look. White ordered his Rainier, then declared to his drinking partner, “I’m out of the party-favor business, Wes. Elements of the CIA and DEA messed up the game by vying for a piece of the action, only to pull an end run after we schooled them in the business. The taxpayer is footing their fuel bill, so they can keep overhead to a minimum. Like any private venture where you involve the government, they mess it up. To add insult to injury, the feds arrested some of my crew five years ago and were getting too close to administration. My core group split up when we learned they were on to us. Today, margins are too narrow and the risk too high for this to be a viable venture. I got into the Information Technology sector, built a team, and came up with a way to efficiently stream video and audio capture of live concerts over broadband . . .” “Good, good,” Allis interrupted. “We may be able to partner on that front too, but I need to know that I can count on you or that you can . . .” “I still have my network out there. I can get whatever you need – it will just take a little longer, but . . .” He paused as the sexpot server returned with their beers. White was momentarily distracted by what he mistook for an infected piercing, only to realize she had a tiny green Smurfette charm dangling from her naval ring. The girl noticed the perplexed look and shook her head in disgust as she snorted derisively and sashayed to her next table, leaving White transfixed by her pneumatic hips and little-boy ass. Scott White resumed his conversation. “So, you’re covered on that front. It’s done. Let me tell you a little about Metropoleis Multimedia. I have two former Microsoft software engineers on the payroll, as well as one of the sound engineers that equipped Paul Allen’s yachts – both of them – with onboard recording studios. These people are all top shelf. I have a Silicon Valley venture capitalist on the Board of Directors, as well an MBA with a background in securities. We’re slowly ramping up for an IPO. We need to road test the technology first and bring aboard a good PR person and advertising firm, but . . .” White paused as Allis held up his hand. “You know my background in music,” Allis interjected. “I can help you with talent and marketing. The technology end of it isn’t my bag. My partner, Donald Morse – he’s the tech guy. He’s the person you want to talk to. He was lighting director for several of my arena shows and handled the smaller rooms as well. These venues, most have their own sound and light people, but if you’re doing something new, something different, it’s better to bring in your own people. I’m guessing the same is true in your world – better to have your own team. The psychedelic Trips Festivals I did at the Eagles Auditorium wouldn’t have worked without Don’s involvement. Plus, he’s a money guy. He can finance projects and has a few of his own in the works that might benefit from your services. I’ll set up a meeting.” Allis was a seasoned promoter, but a complete Luddite when it came to technology. He didn’t own a personal computer and had not comprehended a word of White’s pitch. This was his partner’s arena. The alien contactee, Donald Morse. The two spent the next few hours reminiscing about Seattle in the 1970s and ’80s. The new Seattle: the Microsoft, nouveau riche Seattle was as alien to the two men as their server’s tribal tattoos and genitalia jewelry. In the months to come, White would put Allis on contract with MIII, but the work was entirely commission-based. In short, it didn’t pay unless Allis produced. And Allis, despite his contacts and unflagging ambition, was having great difficulty producing. As the months evolved into years, Allis’ love-hate relationship with his business partner, Morse, became that much more strained as he suspected the latter of collaborating with White without keeping him fully apprised. He was convinced Donald Morse and Scott White were doing deals on the side that excluded him. And he was right. He would remain under contract with Metropoleis Multimedia, but needed to author his own project, needed his own advance men, his own team of “suits”. Allis’ days of free love and freewheeling business deals did not translate into the contemporary music industry business model: a model that was far more about “business” than music. That left the promoter back at square one in rebuilding his base in Seattle. Win Prizes!!! Jason Kays's VIRTUAL VICE VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on July 6 and end on July 31. You can visit Jason's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of July to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

FEAR THE WORST VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '09

Join Linwood Barclay, author of the suspense novel, Fear the Worst (Bantam Books), as he virtually tours the blogosphere in August on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Linwood Barclay is a former columnist for the Toronto Star. He is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Too Close to Home and No Time for Goodbye, a #1 bestseller in Britain. He lives near Toronto with his wife and has two grown children. Visit Linwood's website at www.linwoodbarclay.com. About the Book: Your daughter doesn’t come home one night from her summer job. You go there looking for her. No one’s seen here. But it’s worse than that. No one’s ever seen her. So where has she been going every day? And where is she now? In Linwood Barclay’s riveting new thriller, an ordinary man’s desperate search for his daughter leads him into a dark world of corruption, exploitation, and murder. Tim Blake is about to learn that the people you think you know best are the ones harboring the biggest secrets. Tim is an average guy. He sells cars. He has an ex-wife. She’s moved in with a man whose moody son spends more time online than he should. His girlfriend is turning out to be a bit of a flake. It’s not a life without hassles, but nothing will prepare Tim for the nightmare that’s about to begin. Sydney vanishes into thin air. At the hotel where she supposedly worked, no one has ever heard of her. Even her closest friends seem to be at a loss. Now, as the days pass without word, Tim must face the fact that not only is Sydney missing, but that the daughter he’s loved and thought he knew is a virtual stranger. As he retraces Sydney’s steps, Tim discovers that the suburban Connecticut town he always thought of as idyllic is anything but. What he doesn’t know is that his every move is being watched. There are others who want to find Syd as much as Tim does. But they’re not planning a Welcome Home party. The closer Tim comes to the truth, the closer he comes to every parent’s worst nightmare—and the kind of evil only a parent’s love has a chance in hell of stopping. Excerpt: Chapter One "We've also been looking at the Mazda," the woman said. "And we took a—Dell, what was it called? The other one we took out for a test drive?" Her husband said, "A Subaru." "That's right," the woman said. "A Subaru." The woman, whose name was Lorna, and her husband, whose name was Dell, were sitting across the desk from me in the showroom of Riverside Honda. This was the third time they'd been in to see me since I'd come back to work. There comes a point, even when you're dealing with the worst crisis of your life, when you find yourself not knowing what else to do but fall back into your routine. Lorna had on the desk, in addition to the folder on the Accord, which was what Lorna and Dell had been talking to me about, folders on the Toyota Camry, the Mazda 6, the Subaru Legacy, the Chevrolet Malibu, the Ford Taurus, the Dodge Avenger, and half a dozen others at the bottom of the stack that I couldn't see. "I notice that the Taurus has 263 horsepower with its standard engine, but the Accord only has 177 horsepower," Lorna said. "I think you'll see," I said, working hard to stay focused, "that the Taurus engine with that horsepower rating is a V6, while the Accord is a four-cylinder. You'll find it still gives you plenty of pickup, but uses way less gas." "Oh," Lorna said, nodding. "What are the cylinders, exactly? I know you told me before, but I don't think I remember." Dell shook his head slowly from side to side. That was pretty much all Dell did during these visits. He sat there and let Lorna ask all the questions, do all the talking, unless he was asked something specific, and even then he usually just grunted. He appeared to be losing the will to live. I guessed he'd been sitting across the desk of at least a dozen sales associates between Bridgeport and New Haven over the last few weeks. I could see it in his face, that he didn't give a shit what kind of car they got, just so long as they got something. But Lorna believed they must be responsible shoppers, and that meant checking out every car in the class they were looking at, comparing specs, studying warranties. All of which was a good thing, to a point, but now Lorna had so much information that she didn't know what to do with it. Lorna thought all this research would help them make an informed decision, but instead it had made it impossible for her to make one at all. They were in their mid-forties. He was a shoe salesman in the Connecticut Post Mall, and she was a fourth-grade teacher. This was standard teacher behavior. Research your topic, consider all the options, go home and make a chart, car names across the top, features down the side, make check marks in the little boxes. Lorna asked about the Accord's rear legroom compared to the Malibu, which might have been an issue if they had kids, or if she'd given any indication they had any friends. By the time she was on to the Accord's trunk space versus the Mazda 6, I really wasn't listening. Finally, I held up a hand. "What car do you like?" I asked Lorna. "Like?" she said. My computer monitor was positioned between us, and the whole time Lorna was talking I was moving the mouse around, tapping the keyboard. Lorna assumed I was on the Honda website, calling up data so I could answer her questions. I wasn't. I was on findsydneyblake.com. I was looking to see whether there'd been any recent hits on the site, whether anyone had emailed me. One of Sydney's friends, a computer whiz—actually, any of Syd's friends was a computer whiz compared to me—by the name of Jeff Bluestein had helped me put together the website, which had all the basic information. There was a full description of Syd. Age: 17. Date of birth: April 15, 1992. Weight: approximately 115 pounds. Eye color: Blue. Hair: Blonde. Height: 5 feet 3 inches. Date of disappearance: June 29, 2009. Last seen: Leaving for work from our address on Hill Street. Might have been spotted in the vicinity of the Just Inn Time hotel, in Milford, Connecticut. There was also a description of Syd's silver Civic, complete with license plate number. Visitors to the website, which Jeff had linked to other sites about runaways and missing teens, were encouraged to call police, or get in touch with me, Tim Blake, directly. I'd gone through as many photos as I could find of Syd, hit up her friends for pictures they had as well, including ones they'd posted on their various Internet sites like Facebook, and plastered them all over findsydneyblake.com. I had hundreds of pictures of Syd, going back through all her seventeen years, but I'd only posted ones from the last six months or so. Wherever Syd might be, it wasn't with extended family. Susanne's and my parents were dead, neither of us had siblings, and what few relatives we had—an aunt here, an uncle there—we'd put on alert. "Of course," said Lorna, "we're well aware of the excellent repair records that the Hondas have, and good resale value." I'd had two emails the day before, but not about Sydney. They were from other parents. One was from a father in Providence, telling me that his son Kenneth had been missing for a year now, and there wasn't a moment when he didn't think about him, wonder where he was, whether he was dead or alive, whether it was something he'd done, as a father, that had driven Kenneth away, or whether his son had met up with the wrong kind of people, that maybe they had— It wasn't helpful. The second was from a woman outside Albany who'd stumbled onto the site and told me she was praying for my daughter and for me, that I should put my faith in God if I wanted Sydney to come home safely, that it would be through God that I'd find the strength to get through this. I deleted both emails without replying. "But the Toyotas have good resale value as well," Lorna said. "I was looking in Consumer Reports, where they have these little charts with all the red dots on them? Have you noticed those? Well, there are lots of red dots if the cars have good repair records, but if the cars don't have good repair records there are lots of black dots, so you can tell at a glance whether it's a good car or not by how many red or black dots are on the chart? Have you seen those?" I checked to see whether there were any messages now. The thing was, I had already checked for messages three times since Lorna and Dell had sat down across from me. When I was at my desk, I checked about every three minutes. At least twice a day I phoned Milford police detective Kip Jennings—I'd never met a Kip before, and hadn't expected that when I finally did it would be a woman—to see what progress she was making. She'd been assigned Sydney's case, although I was starting to think "assigned" was defined as "the detective who has the case in the back of his or her desk drawer." In the time that Lorna had been going on about Consumer Reports recommendations, a message had dropped into my inbox. I clicked on it and learned that there was a problem with my Citibank account and if I didn't immediately confirm all my personal financial details it would be suspended, which was kind of curious considering that I did not have a Citibank account and never had. "Jesus Christ," I said aloud. The site had only been up for nearly three weeks—Jeff got it up and running within days of Syd's disappearance—and already the spammers had found it. "Excuse me?" Lorna said. I glanced at her. "I'm sorry," I said. "Just something on my screen there. You were saying, about the red dots." "Were you even listening to me?" she asked. "Absolutely," I said. "Have you been looking at some dirty website all this time?" she said, and her husband's eyebrows went up. If there was porn on my screen, he wanted a peek. "They don't allow that when we're with customers," I said earnestly. "I just don't want us to make a mistake," Lorna said. "We usually keep our cars for seven to ten years, and that's a long time to have a car if it turns out to be a lemon." "Honda doesn't make lemons," I assured her. I needed to sell a car. I hadn't made a sale since Syd went missing. The first week, I didn't come into work. It wasn't like I was home, sick with worry. I was out eighteen hours a day, driving the streets, hitting every mall and plaza and drop-in shelter in Milford and Stratford. Before long, I'd broadened the search to include Bridgeport and New Haven. I showed Syd's picture to anyone who'd look at it. I called every friend I could ever recall her mentioning. I went back to the Just Inn Time, trying to figure out where the hell Syd was actually going every day when I'd believed she was heading into the hotel. I'd had very little sleep in the twenty-four days since I'd last seen her. "You know what I think we're going to do?" Lorna said, scooping the pamphlets off the desk and shoving them into her oversized purse. "I think we should take one more look at the Nissan." "Why don't you do that?" I said. "They make a very good car." I got to my feet as Lorna and Dell stood. Just then, my phone rang. I glanced at it, recognized the number on the call display, let it go to message, although this particular caller might not choose to leave yet another one. "Oh," said Lorna, putting something she'd been holding in her hand onto my desk. It was a set of car keys. "When we were sitting in that Civic over there"—she pointed across the showroom—"I noticed someone had left these in the cup holder." She did this every time she came. She'd get in a car, discover the keys, scoop them up and deliver them to me. I'd given up explaining to her it was a fire safety thing, that we left the keys in the showroom cars so that if there was a fire, we could get them out in a hurry, time permitting. "How thoughtful," I said. "I'll put these away someplace safe." "You wouldn't want anyone driving a car right out of the showroom, now would you?" She laughed. Dell looked as though he'd be happy if the huge Odyssey minivan in the center of the floor ran him over. "Well, we might be back," Lorna said. "I've no doubt," I said. I wasn't in a hurry to deal with her again, so I said, "Just to be sure, you might want to check out the Mitsubishi dealer. And have you seen the new Saturns?" "No," Lorna said, suddenly alarmed that she might have overlooked something. "That first one—what was it?" "Mitsubishi." Dell was giving me dagger eyes. I didn't care. Let Lorna torment some other salespeople for a while. Under normal conditions, I'd have tolerated her indecision. But I hadn't been myself since Syd went missing. A few seconds after they'd left the showroom, my desk phone trilled. No reason to get excited. It was an inside line. I picked up. "Tim here." "Got a second?" "Sure," I said, and replaced the receiver. I walked over to the other side of the showroom, winding my way through a display that included a Civic, the Odyssey, a Pilot, and a boxy green Element with the suicide rear doors. I'd been summoned to the office of Laura Cantrell, sales manager. Mid-forties with the body of a twenty-five-year-old, twice married, single for four years, brown hair, white teeth, very red lips. She drove a silver S2000, the limited-production two-seater Honda sports car that we sold, maybe, a dozen of a year. "Hey, Tim, sit down," she said, not getting up from behind her desk. Since she had an actual office, and not a cubicle like the lowly sales staff, I was able to close her door as she'd asked. I sat down without saying anything. I wasn't much into small talk these days. "So how's it going?" Laura asked. I nodded. "Okay." She nodded her head in the direction of the parking lot, where Lorna and Dell were at this moment getting into their eight-year-old Buick. "Still can't make up their minds?" "No," I said. "You know the story about the donkey standing between two bales of hay that starves because he can't decide which one to eat first?" Laura wasn't interested in fables. "We have a good product. Why can't you close this one?" "They'll be back," I said resignedly. Laura leaned back in her swivel chair, folded her arms below her breasts. "So, Tim, any news?" I knew she was asking about Syd. "No," I said. She shook her head sympathetically. "God, it must be rough." "It's hard," I said. "Did I ever tell you I was a runaway myself once?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "I was sixteen, and my parents were ragging on me about everything. School, my boyfriends, staying out late, you name it, they had a list. So I thought, screw it, I'm outta here, and I took off with this boy named Martin, hitched around the country, saw America, you know?" "Your parents must have been worried sick." Laura Cantrell offered up a "who cares" shrug. "The point is," she said, "I was fine. I just needed to find out who I was. Get out from under their thumb. Be my own self. Fly solo, you know? At the end of the day, that's what matters. Independence." I didn't say anything. "Look," she said, leaning forward now, resting her elbows on the desk. I got a whiff of perfume. Expensive, I bet. "Everyone around here is pulling for you. We really are. We can't imagine what it's like, going through what you're going through. Unimaginable. We all want Cindy to come home today." "Sydney," I said. "But the thing is, you have to go on, right? You can't worry about what you don't know. Chances are, your daughter's fine. Safe and sound. If you're lucky, she's taken along a boyfriend like I did. I know that might not be what you want to hear, but the fact is, if she's got a young man with her, already she's a hell of a lot safer. And don't even worry about the sex thing. Girls today, they're much savvier about that stuff. They know the score, they know everything about birth control. A hell of a lot more than we did in our day. Well, I was pretty knowledgeable, but most of them, they didn't have a clue." Praise for Fear the Worst: ”What a story! Holds the reader in a tight grip, as good and evil match wits and wiles. Barclay pushes the envelope of suspense to the edge and beyond, offering a revealing peek into the human psyche, exploring every parent's worst fear. This is imaginative and scintillating, and you'll enjoy every page.” -- Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Charlemagne Pursuit Win Prizes!!! Linwood Barclay's FEAR THE WORST VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on August 3rd and end on August 28th. You can visit Linwood's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of August to find out more about this great book and talented author! As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.