Great Big Book Giveaway - Enter to Win!

It’s fair to say that I have stacks of books in my bedroom. And my hallway. Also the living room. Possibly the kitchen. It’s time to move some of these awesome titles along to you. Enter to win below!

A Song For A New Day by Sarah Pinsker

In this captivating science fiction novel from an award-winning author, public gatherings are illegal making concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music, and for one chance at human connection.

In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world--her music, her purpose--is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.

Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery--no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.

We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan

An exhilarating novel about a group of students who take revenge on a wunderkind professor after she destroys one of their own-- a story of collective drive to create, sabotage, and ultimately, to love.

It doesn't take long for the students on Fielding campus to become obsessed with Hannah, Leslie and Jimmy. The three graduate students are mysterious, inaccessible, and brilliant. Leslie, glamorous and brash, has declared that she wants to write erotica and make millions. Hannah is quietly confident, loyal, elegantly beautiful, and the person they all want to be; and Jimmy is a haunted genius with no past. After Simone - young, bestselling author and erstwhile model - shows up as a visiting professor, and after everything that happened with her, the trio only become more notorious.

Love. Death. Revenge. These age-old tropes come to life as the semesters unfold. The threesome came to study writing, to be writers, and this is the story they've woven together: of friendship and passion, of competition and envy, of creativity as life and death. Now, they submit this story, We Wish You Luck, for your reading pleasure.

When You See Me by Lisa Gardner

#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner unites three of her most beloved characters—Detective D. D. Warren, Flora Dane, and Kimberly Quincy—in a twisty new thriller, as they investigate a mysterious murder from the past...which points to a dangerous and chilling present-day crime.

FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy and Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren have built a task force to follow the digital bread crumbs left behind by deceased serial kidnapper Jacob Ness. When a disturbing piece of evidence is discovered in the hills of Georgia, they bring Flora Dane and true-crime savant Keith Edgar to a small town where something seems to be deeply wrong. What at first looks like a Gothic eeriness soon hardens into something much more sinister...and they discover that for all the evil Jacob committed while alive, his worst secret is still to be revealed. Quincy and DD must summon their considerable skills and experience to crack the most disturbing case of their careers—and Flora must face her own past directly in the hope of saving others.

Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone "family," and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.

Middle Grade Graphic Novel Giveaway! Anti-Hero by Kate Karyus Quinn & Demitria Lunetta

Two of my best author friends have combined forces with DC Comics to bring you - Anti/Hero, a new graphic novel for middle-grade featuring all original content and characters!

Piper Pájaro and Sloane MacBrute are two 13-year-old girls with very different lives but very similar secrets. Popular, outgoing Piper is strong. Like, ripping-the-doors-off-cards strong. She longs to be a superhero, even if she tends to leave massive messes in her wake. Snarky Sloane, on the other hand, is super smart. Like, evil-genius-smart. To help her family, she has to put those smarts to use for her villainous grandfather.

When a mission to steal an experimental technological device brings the two girls face to face with each other, the device sparks, and the two girls switch bodies! Now they must live in each other's shoes as they figure out a way to switch back.

Anti/Hero is a story that explores what makes a hero, how one can find friendship where it's unexpected, and what it means to walk in another person's shoes...literally!

5 Tips for Writing a Self Help Book

By: Dr. John Chuback

I wrote my book, Make Your Own Damn Cheese, after many years of formal academic and personal-development study. Having become a Board-Certified Cardiovascular surgeon, I was professionally quite successful but still felt somehow personally unfulfilled.

My deep dive into the self-help genre was motivated by an intense desire to understand not only why some individuals are more successful than others but, more importantly, who we really are at our essence, what makes us tick, and how do we ultimately achieve true inner peace and happiness.

After 20 years of exhaustive research into these questions, Make Your Own Damn Cheese was my contribution to the field of self-discovery, self-expression, and self-acceptance.

Below are tips for other authors thinking about writing a self-help book:

Tip #1 Study Self-Help

Well, I think this may sound a bit obvious, but if you want to write a book in the self-help genre, I think you need to begin by being a student. The best way is to read, watch, and listen to everything you can get your hands, eyes, and ears on. Self-help may seem like a niche field of study at first, but it’s extremely vast when you begin to look at it.

Tip #2 Add Something to the Conversation

You have to study to be confident that you have developed some reasonable degree of expertise in the area you are interested in.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself: do you have practical experience or formal training and education in the area you are pursuing? Do you have a personal or professional track record for success in this area of self-help?

This is going to be vital if you want to be taken seriously or even noticed at all. Publishers, and the general public alike, will ask, who are you, and why should we listen to you? It’s important to feel that you have something to add to the conversation. You can’t expect to be published if you are going to rehash a lot of previously existing information. What do you have to say that is new?

Tip #3 Find your Niche within the Niche

There are so many areas of sub-specialization here. Always try to find your niche. For example, you can specialize in topics such as positive thinking or combatting pathologies like anxiety and depression. You can also look at issues, such as physical health, fitness, exercise, etc. Whatever it is, make sure you specialize; this will help you to stay unique.

Tip #4 Use Technology

In one of the earliest and best-known self-help recordings called The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale in 1957, he begins with the following words, “We live today in a golden age. This is an era man[kind] has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. But since it’s here, we pretty well take it for granted.”

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One thing I do not want you to take for granted is the mind-boggling technology that almost all of us in the United States have at our disposal. Your mind is like a nuclear-powered engine of imagination and creativity.

As we go through the day, we are continuously coming up with great ideas. Many of these ideas can be used in your self-help book. Unfortunately, we tend to forget even our most innovative thoughts.

For that reason, I urge you to keep your smartphone at the ready at all times and become well versed in the audio-command functions of creating notes, text messages, e-mails, and voice memos.

If you can get into the habit of sending yourself these ideas for your self-help book, the project will begin to write itself. As you get back to your laptop or desktop computer and organize and develop these snippets of inspiration you collect throughout the day, you’ll be shocked to see how much information naturally comes together as a cohesive message. I’ve been putting this simple technique to good use for years and couldn’t imagine living without my “peripheral digital brain” with me at all times. 

I became so frustrated thinking to myself that I would write it down when I got to the office and then either forget what my idea was or even forget that even had an idea. Use the technology you have at hand and learn how to use it well. All you have to do is dictate or record your ideas for books, articles, chapters, etc. and then later flesh them out and bring them to their full state of maturity.

Tip #5: Write a Self-Help Book

Like tip #1, this may sound ridiculous, but it’s not. Writer Joseph Epstein has been quoted as saying that 81% of Americans would like to write a book. That’s 200 million people! So why were only 329, 259 books published in the United States in 2011? The answer is obvious, most people who think they have a book in them and that they should write don’t. Who are you? Are you the person who is going to let your self-help book die inside of you? Don’t be that person. Be the individual who, no matter what, sits down and actually writes your book. Don’t worry about anything else. Just finish the job. If you don’t, you shouldn’t be teaching self-help, you should go back to tip #1 and study it some more.

ABOUT DR. CHUBACK

Dr. John Chuback is the founder of Chuback Education, LLC. His passion is to assist patients with personal development achievement by figuring out how to set actionable, attainable goals. He is also the author of the self-help book, Make Your Own Damn Cheese.