Seasons Greetings

So, I’m sitting here in the loft, scheming new ideas and plot lines for this next novel of mine, The Rose Guardian. Christmas music is playing on iTunes. Over my head the roofers are thumping and bashing and doing a Morris dance, installing a new steel roof on this grand old stone house. On the floor below Izzy, my adopted budgie, squawks and trills, happy he’s been given a new stalk of millet. Doesn’t take…

Another great review for Shadow Song

Reprinted from Goodreads. Lorina Stephens’ Shadow Song is a part-fantasy historical drama/love story, charting the, for lack of a better word, coming-of-age of Danielle Michelle Fleming. The daughter of a beautiful French aristocrat and an English gentleman, and the owner of a gift that European culture/traditions forbids, Danielle is, at the beginning of the novel, feeling her privileged lifestyle slip away, replaced with bitter poverty. The majority of the novel is set in Upper Canada,…

Simon Rose Joins Five Rivers’ Authors

Yesterday Five Rivers reached an agreement to publish the next young adult novel from author Simon Rose, Flashback. The novel is a reincarnation, time-travel story about young Vancouver-based Max, who finds himself a reluctant investigator into a murder that happened decades ago to David Dexter. Max’s dreams and findings lead him to people it would appear he knew in a previous life and in the end transport back in time and body into the dangerous…

The Value, or Not, of Reviews

There was a time, when legacy publishing houses decided what the public read, that legacy review periodicals ruled the publishing marketplace. Then print on demand technologies happened and vanity press took a back seat when indie authors sought economic and environmental options for their publications. Lulu, CreateSpace, BookSurge and others burgeoned. Last year in the US over 500,000 new titles were released, of which over half of those were from indie-authors. Quite staggering statistics. And…

First Appearance of Smashwords Distribution

In my daily check of various marketing strategies Five Rivers employs, I was very pleased to find today the distribution we chose to undertake through Smashwords has taken effect. All our books are now available, in all digital formats, through Barnes and Noble. This is the first of many channels into which Five Rivers eBooks will stream. In the coming weeks you should be able to find our digital books at Amazon and Sony, and…