Saturday, August 8, 2015

Who won the "What is the sex of this author?" Contest. Take a look and see. How many did you get right?




A BIG! Congratulations to Mary Beth Engle. You won the “What is the sex of these authors?” Contest.


The contest was far more difficult than even I thought it would be. The excerpts were wonderful.

So without further ado let me tell you just who wrote what.


Excerpt Number 1. Author Gev Sweeney from her book “Beethoven’s Wife.”

Excerpt Number 2. Author Bill Kirton from his book “The Figurehead.”

Excerpt Number 3. Author Kate Rigby from her book “The Dead Club.”
 Three marvelous books.

Take a peek. I have shared the links where these may be purchased for each author.



Excerpt Number 1. Author Gev Sweeney ... "Beethoven's Wife' a novella.


Vienna, 1826. Ludwig van Beethoven sits for one of the earliest photographic portraits in history, and the world of a defeated young woman ceases to be what she has long accepted.
 A couple of the five star reviews.

By Maria K. on January 24, 2015
Perfectly put together, descriptive, exquisitely worded, with just the right amount of drama and romance - all wrapped up in this wonderful novella. A marvelous read!
 
By Mrs. Vivienne Tuffnell on February 20, 2015
I really enjoyed this; it reminded me of the feeling you get when you open a really old book and pressed flowers or rose petals fall out, and there's still the faintest of scents and you sort of imagine the person who put them in there. The story was poignant and the characters haunting and beautifully drawn.

Purchase Link Purchase here!



Excerpt number 2. Author Bill Kirton..."The Figurehead."

The Figurehead



Purchase link to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and The Book Depository: http://bit.ly/1FmQKtB



Back cover.



Long-listed for the International Rubery Award 2012.



Aberdeen in 1840 – a dynamic, wealthy, expanding place. When the body of a local shipwright is found on the beach, few are surprised.  He had enemies everywhere, from the women and young girls he molested to the customers and suppliers he cheated.



John Grant, a figurehead carver, is intrigued by the mystery surrounding his death. His work and his investigations bring him into contact with a rich merchant, William Anderson, and his daughter Helen.



Commercial secrets are revealed, personalities clash, clues accumulate, and a tension grows between John and Helen as they pursue their separate investigations into the mystery. When John eventually identifies the killer, the discovery gives him no satisfaction.







Bill Kirton



Bill Kirton was born in Plymouth, England but has 

lived most of his life in Scotland. He’s written stage and radio plays, songs and sketches for revues, flash fiction, short stories, novels, stories for children and books aimed at helping students to write effective academic essays and dissertations and get the most out of university and work. He’s been a university lecturer, actor, director, TV presenter, visiting professor and artist at the University of Rhode Island and spent a few years as a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow in universities in Aberdeen, Dundee and St Andrews.

Most of his books have a crime element but he’s also written parodies, satires and spoofs of other genres.

He’s won two Forward International Literature Awards (2011): Gold for The Sparrow Conundrum in the Humor category and Silver for The Darkness in Mystery. The Figurehead was long-listed for the 2012 Rubery Award.

His short stories have appeared in many anthologies and one of them, Love Hurts, was chosen for the 2010 Mammoth Book of Best British Crime.



You’ll find him on Facebook at:


And on Twitter as @Carver22

His website and blog are at: http://bill-kirton.co.uk



More details of Bill and his books are listed on his Amazon page at: http://amzn.to/SetQfu






 Kate Rigby. "The Dead Club."



"An edgy, contemporary tale about death and suicide and its effects on two families. Death is a fact of life for the principle characters and especially for Marina Reed who wishes to join her loved ones at ‘the dead club’, a place she and her sixth form friends obsessed about in their youth. Ultimately her mortido becomes more urgent until it takes her over the edge. The novel is in fact very much about edges: where the ultimate edge is between life and death.  Written in bite-sized sections in a colloquial style with elements of black humour and surrealism."



3) Author Bio:

Kate Rigby was born near Liverpool and now lives in Devon.  She’s been writing for over thirty years, with a few small successes along the way.

She realized her unhip credentials were mounting so she decided to write about it. Little Guide to Unhip was first published in 2010 and has recently been updated.

However, she’s not completely unhip. Her punk novel, Fall Of The Flamingo Circus was published by Allison & Busby (1990) and by Villard (American hardback 1990). Skrev Press published her novels Seaview Terrace (2003) Sucka!(2004) and Break Point(2006) and other shorter work has appeared in Skrev’s avant garde magazine Texts’ Bones including a version of her satirical novella Lost The Plot.

Thalidomide Kid was published by Bewrite Books (2007).

She has had other short stories published and shortlisted including Hard Workers and Headboards, first published in The Diva Book of Short Stories and as part of the Dancing In The Dark erotic anthology, Pfoxmoor Publishing (2011)

She also received a Southern Arts bursary for her novel Where A Shadow Played (now re-Kindled as Did You Whisper Back?).

She is in the process of re-Kindling her backlist of previously published as well as unpublished work including.

The Dead Club was released in April 2015.

4) Purchase links:

Amazon:







Apple:






Kobo:






Barnes&Noble:






Inktera:




5) Links to Blog & Website & Facebook Page:














 

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for running such an interesting contest, Soooz. I found the comments very interesting and they made me think a lot about the expectations we have of what male and female authors are capable of. Needless to say, I didn't reach any conclusions. X

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree, Bill. You have read my latest (Before the rewrite) It is not gender structured. I write what I enjoy writing,

    ReplyDelete

Please leave a comment/review on any of the stories/poems contributed.