The wait is over: Black Cow is now officially available! You can get it at Amazon (discounted!), BeWrite's website, Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping!), other online retailers, and local bookstores on request - hip hip hooray! I hope this book entertains, moves, and stimulates you. Want a sneak peek? Here's a free excerpt! We're shooting for the bestseller list this week, so if you have it in your heart and wallet to buy, now's the time! See below for all the ways you can help. Today's the day when I hit the virtual road for my international book blog tour (no plane tickets needed and no suitcase restrictions). The tour kicks off at Kathy Stemke's place where I'll be talking characterisation in picture books. Please tune in and share your comments, questions, etc - as I intend to answer every question. Throughout late Feb and all of March, I'll be visiting a wide range of radio shows, blogs, websites, and even doing a little video at some of the most exciting virtual venues in town, followed up by an in-person Australian launch at the Hunter Writers Centre to which, of course, you're all invited.
Black Cow Book Launch 24 Feb to 29 March
Throughout the launch, any tweets, comments, or Facebook links you put up will go into a draw to win a number of autographed bookpacks, electronic sets, and limited edition signed promotional items like magnets, stickers, bookmarks, postcards, and even a tote bag! If you'd like to help make Black Cow hit the bestseller list, here are ways you can show the love this week. Big hugs and deep bows in advance!
1) Buy it while it’s hot! Please purchase between Feb 24 and 31 March if at all possible. It's available at Amazon at a nice discount, and other online retailers. If you've bought it already, grab another copy for your family and friends! I've got some lovely owl bookplates available and I'd be more than happy to custom autograph them for you and send them, no charge, anywhere in the world, for the perfect personalised gift.
2) Tweet! Tweet! and Retweet! Chirp about Black Cow (use #blackcow) and cut and paste this link to buy: http://tinyurl.com/BlackCowNovel
3) Update your Facebook status with Black Cow news and provide the link http://tinyurl.com/BlackCowNovel
4) Write a Black Cow review in your blog or newsletter. Share your reflections, generate discussions, and post the link.
5) Contact me for media and book club requests. Drop me a line and I'll be happy to come and talk to your book club (via Skype anywhere in the world or in person if you live nearby), write an article for your blog or magazine, or do an interview on your show. For review requests, please contact me directly, or my publisher Neil Marr ntmarr[at]bewrite.net.
Check out Website for more info about the book including bookclub notes, an excerpt and more.
Thank you very much for your support! Magdalena
Throughout the launch, any tweets, comments, or Facebook links you put up will go into a draw to win a number of autographed bookpacks, electronic sets, and limited edition signed promotional items like magnets, stickers, bookmarks, postcards, and even a tote bag! If you'd like to help make Black Cow hit the bestseller list, here are ways you can show the love this week. Big hugs and deep bows in advance!
1) Buy it while it’s hot! Please purchase between Feb 24 and 31 March if at all possible. It's available at Amazon at a nice discount, and other online retailers. If you've bought it already, grab another copy for your family and friends! I've got some lovely owl bookplates available and I'd be more than happy to custom autograph them for you and send them, no charge, anywhere in the world, for the perfect personalised gift.
2) Tweet! Tweet! and Retweet! Chirp about Black Cow (use #blackcow) and cut and paste this link to buy: http://tinyurl.com/BlackCowNovel
3) Update your Facebook status with Black Cow news and provide the link http://tinyurl.com/BlackCowNovel
4) Write a Black Cow review in your blog or newsletter. Share your reflections, generate discussions, and post the link.
5) Contact me for media and book club requests. Drop me a line and I'll be happy to come and talk to your book club (via Skype anywhere in the world or in person if you live nearby), write an article for your blog or magazine, or do an interview on your show. For review requests, please contact me directly, or my publisher Neil Marr ntmarr[at]bewrite.net.
Check out Website for more info about the book including bookclub notes, an excerpt and more.
Thank you very much for your support! Magdalena
Book One features Franny on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In Book Two, Franny has had the breakdown, and her brother Zooey, whose bedside manner leaves much to be desired, tries to bring her back from the abyss. He resorts to phoning Franny and pretending to be their kinder, gentler brother Buddy, which (predictably) doesn't work for long. In the end, the memory of a telling incident with a third brother, Seymour (dead by suicide), provides Franny with the lifeline she needs.
Cinderella's evil stepsisters may be the most realistically portrayed in literature when it comes to unchecked and cruel behavior toward gentler, and kinder members of a family. Although the Brothers Grimm retold "Cinderella" in their 1812 collection, the original tale may date back as far back as Ancient Greece. Does this mean women, disregarding for argument's sake men and Air Jordans, have always had an inexplicable obsession with shoes? 
Lucy seems to let her hair down only when dear brother Freddy is around. Freddy, who never warms up to Lucy's fiancé, the stuffy, stick-up-his-ass Cecil, unknowingly befriends George, a free spirit who smooched Lucy earlier in the book during a somewhat traumatic trip to Italy, and set the wheels in motion for Lucy to find true love and remain an independent spirit. Now that's being a good brother! 
Walker's novel is filled with iconic characters, two of the most memorable being Celie and her sister Nettie. Celie is finally able to emerge as a strong, self-determined woman, in spite of the years of unimaginable abuse she's endured, in part through her bond with and love for her sister. 
To paraphrase one of the book's characters, third cousins to Italians are like twin brothers to the Irish. Not even Italian mobsters and corrupt Irish cops can sever the sense of loyalty that Charlie and Paulie share with each other. Paulie's almost sociopathic disregard for holding down a job and settling down pushes their relationship to the brink, and yet somehow, things never go completely over the edge. 
For his sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Carroll sampled this duo from an old nursery rhyme. The characters appeared in the beautiful, Disney animated film Alice in Wonderland and director Tim Burton's twisted take on Alice and Through the Looking Glass. An example of how these two are a part of our popular vernacular, Ralph Nader famously referred to George W. Bush and Al Gore as "tweedle dum and tweedle dee" with regard to each man's policies regarding corporations. 
Brothers Caleb and Aaron mirror Cain and Abel from the Book of Genesis, which Steinbeck repeatedly alludes to throughout his novel. The level of cruelty that family members are capable of exacting upon one another is a major theme in what Steinbeck considered his greatest novel.
Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children." How can you not love two kids who, abandoned in the woods by their wimpy father and psychotic (step?) mother are nearly eaten by a cannibalistic witch living in a house made of candy? Even 21st century kids identify immediately with these two little ones and how they stick together even in the scariest of circumstances. 
Okay, they're not fictional, but their accomplishments for their time (early to mid 1800's) were so unusual, they each wouldn't be out of place as a character in a novel that any of them might have written. Interestingly, considering that the Brontë sisters grew up mutually supporting each other in the shadow of an abusive father as well as sharing their earliest writing efforts each other, they are each best known for creating almost autonomous heroines, like Charlotte's orphaned Jane Eyre or Helen Lawrence Huntingdon in Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.