Henry Baum | Self-Publishing Review

Booktrope Closing Its Doors Leaving Authors Without a Publisher

Booktrope Logo In a sad turn of events, hybrid self-publishing service, Booktrope, is going out of business. Via Geekwire:

Booktrope plans to go out of business at the end of May, bringing an end to its “team publishing” platform used by ad hoc groups of authors, editors, marketers and designers to create and market print books and e-books…

With the closure, Booktrope says it will “remove all published books from sale as of May 31, 2016,” returning rights to authors as of June 1.

There’s a lot of consternation about how Booktrope went out of business when it just received […]

Henry Baum2018-10-22T12:31:53+02:00May 2nd, 2016|Categories: News|Tags: Hybrid Publishing Tips and Advice|

Mays Landing by J.C. Mercer

Mays Landing by J.C. Mercer is a dark but hopeful novel about a series of difficult subjects: suicide, mental illness, and life on the streets. The novel begins with Parkhill Mays laying in a Bellevue hospital bed, having attempted suicide. He soon meets T-Bone, a resourceful homeless man who gets by as a “human lab rat,” selling body parts and participating in clinical trials, and he teaches Mays to do the same. Together they live under the streets of New York City, as Mays tries to reconcile his new underground life with the world above ground, and the mental illness […]

Henry Baum2016-04-29T10:33:30+02:00April 29th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Contemporary Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Prasvapa by Chand Svare Ghei

★★★½ Prasvapa by Chand Svare Ghei

Prasvapa by Chand Svare Ghei is a dreamlike collection of short stories that’s part fantasy, part crime, part universe entirely of Ghei’s vivid imagination. A Norwegian author writing in English, Ghei has created a fantastical world that has little relation to our own, past or present. Each story is introduced with an abstract epigraph, which invites the reader to explore the story’s deeper meaning. The word “Prasvapa” is Sanskrit for “dream,” and that dreamlike quality permeates each one of these evocative and mind-bending stories.

Ghei is a highly inventive writer. Without question, you won’t find another book of short […]

Henry Baum2019-01-22T11:12:19+02:00April 29th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Short Stories Book Reviews|

Reaper: A Lucky Dey Thriller by Doug Richardson

Reaper: A Lucky Dey Thriller by Doug Richardson takes place in a scorching Los Angeles summer, in which South Central murders are on the rise. Sheriff’s deputy Lucky Dey has something of a checkered past, skirting the line between good and bad guy, and wants to clean up a part of the city that’s been left to disintegrate.

An accomplished screenwriter (“Die Hard 2″ among others), Richardson writes with a cinematic quality – not in the sense that Reaper reads like a screenplay, but in how it establishes setting and character without slowing down the story. Richardson is especially good […]

Henry Baum2016-04-29T04:54:52+02:00April 28th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Crime Fiction Book Reviews, Thriller Book Reviews|

Review: Trust in the Unseen (The Edge of the Known Book 2) by Seth Mullins

★★★★½ Trust in the Unseen (The Edge of the Known Book 2)

Trust in the Unseen is the second book in Seth Mullins’ cerebral and inspiring Edge of the Unknown series. The first installment of the series found Brandon Chane in a band on the way up, Edge of the Unknown, and seeking spiritual counsel from the enigmatic Saul.

The second volume finds Brandon reeling from a break-up, even as his band is on the rise, and as visionary as ever. His mentor, Saul Mason, is having personal issues of his own, and may not be the spiritual rock he purported himself to be. One thing remains true through the turmoil: […]

Henry Baum2018-02-16T11:46:37+02:00April 25th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Contemporary Fiction Book Reviews, Music Book Reviews|

Review: The Adversary’s Good News by Israfel Sivad

★★★★ The Adversary's Good News by Israfel Sivad

The Adversary’s Good News Israfel Sivad is a surreal, philosophical novel about Christian Michael Anderson who decides to end his life. He’s got the noose ready and aims to go through with it until he has a change of heart at the last minute. Fortunately, he’s rescued from his attempt by a mysterious stranger named Evius, who informs him that he has, in fact, died.

This leads Christian on an odyssey through the underworld, where he meets gargoyles, demons, a drug-dealing Tinkerbell, but most of all begins to confront the demons within himself.

Sivad is an erudite and ingenious […]

Henry Baum2016-04-27T01:23:26+02:00April 14th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Contemporary Fiction Book Reviews, Literary Fiction Book Reviews|

The Improbable Rise of Paco Jones by Dominic Carrillo

The Improbable Rise of Paco Jones by Dominic Carrillo is about the awkwardness of teenage years through the eyes of Bi-racial Paco Jones. Paco transfers to a rich high school from a poor neighborhood. It doesn’t help matters in his new environment that he’s fairly odd-looking, with an unsightly birthmark on his neck, pigeon toes, and overly-hairy arms, so he’s teased mercilessly by his classmates. He then falls for the most popular girl in class, who has a boyfriend, and is tasked as an eighth-grade Cyrano by her boyfriend. Soon Paco finds himself at the center of a whole lot […]

Henry Baum2016-04-14T08:23:30+02:00April 14th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Young Adult Book Reviews|

Daydream and Shadow: A Collection of Poetic Images by Nicholas Nossaman

Daydream and Shadow: A Collection of Poetic Images by Nicholas Nossaman is a collection of poems and photographs about subjects large and small – from appreciating a meal to the scourge of war – using subtle, but evocative imagery.

A bit too often, Nossaman relies on prose being reformatted into verse, rather than a poetic cadence of its own, but the images he conveys still remain expressive. The most powerful element of these poems is finding poetry in small moments (drinking a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette), which makes the book’s subheading – Poetic Images – all the more […]

Henry Baum2016-04-13T11:04:12+02:00April 12th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Poetry Book Reviews|