Kindle Fire HD raffle for Charity: Support Child Helpline International with Author Graham Parke

“I'm very polite by nature, even the voices in my head let each other finish their sentences.” – from Completely Flappable

Don’t you just hate it when you have a thousand little thoughts rattling around your brain, good for nothing but keeping you up at night? Ideas, worries, mental reminders for the next day? My voices can get pretty insistent, and mostly this is a nuisance, but sometimes it’s okay, when there’s a story idea or two among the ramblings. And rarely, very rarely, I get what I think is a really good idea, but one that I don't know what to do with.

For instance, a while ago it occurred to me that it’s probably not governments or big corporations that wield the world’s greatest financial power. I think it’s us. All the little people together. Then I started wondering what could happen if we all decided to set 1 month of our incomes aside towards fixing this place up a bit. How many of the world’s problems could we actually solve permanently? Half of them, maybe? All of them? That's a pretty cool picture.

But I’m a pretty dim light when it comes to implementing even small ideas, never mind the big ones. So I’m not sure how to get that ball rolling (heck, I'm not even sure where we keep the balls). But I can certainly start with myself. That’s easy enough (I’ve been in close contact with myself for years; I didn't have much trouble convincing myself.)

So, this December, all proceeds of all my novels will go to Child Helpline International. The CHI is pretty cool because they support toll-free child helplines worldwide and they help highlight gaps in child protection systems. They do all this on donations (click the image below for more information.)


But what does all this have to do with you? Well, I'm raffling off some prizes and giving out some freebees to boost the donation (expenses out of my own pocket, not the donation :P )

So what's in it for you, besides that warm, fuzzy feeling you'll get knowing the Xmas presents you’re buying include an automatic donation? Well, how about I give you the new edition to the award winning No Hope for Gomez saga completely free?
And how about a Kindle Fire HD raffle ticket with every purchase while we’re at it?
Simply forward your receipt emails to nohopeforgomez@gmail.com to participate.

And now, on to the pitch. This is the bit where I try to convince you, using only my words, that my novels don’t suck (or at least, not too much.) That they won’t only tickle your brain, but they’ll actually make your life better, if only marginally. That they are, in fact, worthy donation material. Here goes (fingers crossed)...

Paper: $6.08 Kindle:$2.99 (uk paper, kindle)

No Hope for Gomez! Winner of the Forewords Book of the Year Awards, featured on Kirkus Best Indie List 2011, IBA and USA Book News Award nominee. It's the age-old tale:   Boy meets girl.   Boy stalks girl.   Girl already has a stalker.   Boy becomes her stalker-stalker. We've seen it all before, many times, but this time it's different. If only slightly.

"Extremely witty writing containing keen insights into human nature." --California Chronicle
"Challenges the way we think about, and interact with, the world around us." --Kirkus Discoveries
"The antics in this book will leave the reader laughing. Graham Parke is a genius."--Reader's Favorite

Unspent Time Warning: reading this novel may make you more attractive and elevate your random luck by about 9.332%* (*These statements have not been evaluated by anyone of consequence) Permeating the cracks between the past and the present is the realm of Unspent Time. Time that was allotted but never spent. In this realm we find the stories that could have been true. Such as the story of the designer of the color scheme used inside your shoe, or the story of Goki Feng Ho: the Chinese art of decoding the secret meaning of car license plates.

Paper: $6.08 Kindle:$2.99 ePub : $2.99 (uk paper, kindle)

“Captivating. Each story fired up my imagination.” – Alan H. Jordan, author.
"Delightfully mad. Graham's vibrant characters shine from the first page." --Tahlia Newland, author.

Free with this event

Completely Flappable “He’s completely flappable!” “Don’t you mean he’s unflappable?” “Not really. He can very easily be flapped.” Gomez has never been on a date. In his 27 years on the planet he’s never been able to quite close the deal. For some reason, circumstances always conspire to make his meet-ups with women less than official dates. But now a blond German girl with freckles has moved into his building and he decides it’s time to get his act together.

If you've read this far, you're already my hero ;)
I hope you like my idea enough to join me in this fun adventure. Let's see how much we can raise this Xmas ;)

Kind regards,

Graham Parke

First Chapter Review: No Hope for Gomez! by Graham Parke

The first chapter of No Hope for Gomez! was sent to me by author Graham Parke. I've featured Graham more than once on my blog. He's known to run all fun kinds of promotions for his book. He actually toured with Pump Up Your Book when this book first came out. Since then, he's run other promotions on his own, which have kept me curious about No Hope for Gomez! 

BLURB: It's the age-old tale:

Boy meets girl.
Boy stalks girl.
Girl already has a stalker.
Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.

We've seen it all before, many times, but this time it's different. If only slightly.

When Gomez Porter becomes a test subject in an experimental drug trial, he is asked to keep track of any strange experiences through a blog. What Gomez isn't ready for, is so many of his experiences suddenly seeming strange; the antiques dealer trying to buy his old tax papers, the phone-sex salesman who hounds him day and night, the super sexy research assistant who falls for him but is unable to express herself in terms outside the realm of science. But when one of the trial participants turns up dead and another goes missing, Gomez begins to fear for his life. No longer sure who he can trust and which of his experiences are real and which merely drug induced delusions, he decides it's time to go underground and work out a devious plan.

Now, years later, his blogs have been recovered from a defunct server. For the first time we can find out firsthand what happened to Gomez as he takes us on a wild ride of discovery.

COVER: This cover has always intrigued me. It's simple black and white with a dash of color, so normally, I would say, blah, yuck, too bland. But as I read the first chapter, it fit. Gomez is a big thinker, so the thinker statue on the cover matches perfectly. I'm guessing the sombrero is hint at the character's ancestry, but I could be way off. And maybe, the black and white cover is a good symbol for black and white thinking.

FIRST CHAPTER: As a test subject for an experimental drug, Gomez has been instructed to blog about everything, leaving nothing out. While reading the paper, Gomez discovers a man he knows has turned up dead. Suddenly, he fears the same fate awaits him.

KEEP READING: Definitely. Parke knows how to attract an audience and bring them along for the ride. This opening chapter captures the attention of the reader with its odd style and immediate conflict. Written as a series of blog entries, you're immediately pulled in by the (possible) ramblings of an experimental drug subject. Because you don't know what the drug is--neither does Gomez--and you're unsure of his mental state before or while being a test subject, you don't know what to make of Gomez. You're not quite done digesting that information when you discover the same subject is afraid for his life after reading an article about the death of another participant in the drug test. It's a zany premise for a book, which is partially why you're captivated by it. The main draw, however, is that Parke's writing has caught you--hook, line, and sinker.

Paperback: 194 pages
Publisher: Outskirts Press (January 12, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1432752480
ISBN-13: 978-1432752484

This review contains my honest opinions, for which I have not been compensated in any way.

The author is offering a free sequel to anyone who purchases one of his novels. You can find the details here.

Unspent Time Launch Event Winners!

"I'm very polite by nature, even the voices in my head let each other finish their sentences." Graham Parke, Unspent Time

I'd originally planned to have a monkey draw two random numbers out of a hat (then use the inverse hexadecimal value - because you cannot trust monkeys, not at the prices I'm willing to pay) but apparently there are laws against monkey labor. There are permits involved. It's a whole thing. So instead I asked a friend to think of two random numbers while dressed in a monkey suit, without telling him what the numbers were for. This seemed sufficiently random to me, although it later occurred to me how worrying it was that my friend would actually do this without ever asking why. There might be a thinly veiled cry for help in there somewhere...

Kindle Fire Winner: Cecilia Huddleston Kindle Touch Winner: Kathy Habel

A big thank you to all the bloggers and readers who supported the Unspent Time launch event (especially those who bought multiple versions of the weird little novels that wrecked a thousand reasonably useful minds.)

Anyway, here's the results, thank you all for joining in, winners will be contacted and forced to accept prizes, let me know if you ever come across bits in the novels you like, stay healthy and sane,

Graham Parke

“We played for about half an hour before I realized we were actually playing two different games. What I’d thought of as ludo was actually a game called gin rummy, and what Warren was playing seemed to be a mixture of craps and table tennis. Once we started playing by one consistent set of rules, though, the fun was really over.” Graham Parke, No Hope for Gomez!

Summer of Gomez Winners!

Summer of Gomez Winners

"Every once in a while you come across a novel so fresh and new it reacquaints you with feelings of childhood wonder. The novel my neighbor, Warren, wrote was my first example of the exact opposite of this."
-- Gomez in 'No Hope for Gomez!'

Blogger Kindle Winner: Serena from SavvyVerseandWit.com Reader Kindle Winner: Arthur Hall (US) Reader iPod Winner: Lynn Bassler (US) Limited edition Winners: Ebehireme Iyoha (US) Yasmin Raad Muhi (Mal) Sarah Bibi Setar (SA) Gemma Richardson (UK) David Lane (US)

Thanks to everyone who decided to make the summer of 2011 an official Summer of Gomez! I for one had a lot of fun and lost only a little bit of hair (and a few teeth) over the administration. A small price to pay of course.

Let's try something great next year as well.

Truth about Dinosaurs Finally Revealed! by Graham Parke, Author of No Hope for Gomez!

There is something terribly wrong with this dinosaur picture. At first I didn’t notice it, either. I must have read this picture page with my son ten times before I saw it. But when I did, my blood ran cold. How could this be? What was going on? I don’t mind telling you, there’s something very unsettling about discovering a kink in the nature of reality through a children’s book. Any other place is bad enough, but a children’s book? I just wasn’t prepared. How could I be?

Of course you didn’t need to look at the picture ten times. You noticed it right away. Before you even started reading this post. But there are some readers (not you) who didn’t. I urge them to take another look. To really give this picture the once over. As soon as your breath catches, as soon as the back of your neck gets cold and you start having nightmares, right now while you’re still awake, you know you’ve found it.

Crazy, isn’t it? At first I thought it was an honest mistake, some kind of artistic license. Draw a bunch of aquatic dinosaurs frolicking around in prehistoric oceans. Add some coral, add some reef, postulate the existence of cretaceous jellyfish, why not? There is no way to disprove that. And then, well, you give the dinos something to play with. Like what you ask? What might one find at the bottom of an ocean? A sunken ship, maybe?

Well, no. Not really. Not when the closest estimation of the gap between dinosaurs and humans is around 60 million years. That’s not even a near miss. I’m having a hard enough time explaining to my dinosaur-obsessed four year old that there are no more living dinosaurs. That each and every one of them just happens to be dead. Never mind all the movies and picture books and merchandising. They are gone. It’s bad enough that I cannot answer his always ensuing enquiry of ‘WHY?’ with a satisfying answer. (Well, son, there are different hypotheses ranging from climate change to meteor showers and, although no definitive proof can be found to exclude any hypothesis specifically, the one thing they all have in common is that they end with the dinosaurs going extinct.) So I don’t need his favorite picture book casting doubt over my already shaky explanation.

My son doesn’t give up easily, though. What about the zoo, he wants to know. I tell him there are elephants at the zoo, which are pretty big. And there are crocodiles, which are a kind of dinosaur, but there are, and this I swear to him, no tyrannosaurus rexes. Not a single one. Not even, I add to head off his next question, a tiny little one tucked away in a forgotten corner somewhere. They are all gone.



But of course the creators of children’s books are far from stupid. They are in the business of explaining the world, the entire universe even. They have access to far more information than we laymen do. Of course they have, they are educating our future generations, after all. They have access to secret government labs, to experiments, to NASA data. And you’re not surprised to hear this, not in the least, as a species we’ve always suspected as much. So this is why my blood ran cold. They did make a mistake with this dinosaur picture, but it wasn’t an oversight, it was a leak! Scientists have apparently known for a while that society, as nature itself, is in fact cyclical. Before the human came the dinosaur, before the dinosaur came simple multi-cellular life, and before simple multi-cellular life came… yes, the human! We’ve been here before. Many times. 5 billions years of earth history is a long time. It’s long enough for over 80 cycles of dinosaurs and humans and the huge amount of time in between them! We’ve been fools for not figuring this out sooner. We’ve been popping in and out of existence like popcorn and we didn’t even know it!

Scientists are trying to work out how long each cycle of human existence lasts, and what ends up wiping us out. If we can find a common denominator, we might predict our future, adjust our cycle, hang on to life a little longer this iteration. In the mean time, though, they don’t want us to panic. Not more than we’re already doing.

But, some renegade children’s book illustrator apparently decided that enough was enough. It was time for the truth to come out. I can picture him right now, drawing away, an evil grin on his face, putting boats and cars and discount cellular phone shops in dinosaur books for all age groups. ‘This will get the word out,’ he thinks. ‘This will stick it to the man!’


Bio:

Graham Parke is responsible for a number of technical publications and has recently patented a self-folding map. He has been described as both a humanitarian and a pathological liar. Convincing evidence to support either allegation has yet to be produced.

No Hope for Gomez! is his fiction debut: Boy meets girl. Boy stalks girl. Girl already has a stalker. Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.

Follow Graham's blog here

New Year's Present for Followers of The Book Connection from Author Graham Parke

At the beginning of December, we celebrated the "No Hope for Gomez!" Birthday Party. In return, author Graham Parke is offering our followers a FREE download of his eBook, "A Gomessy New Year: Random Acts of Senseless Kindness".

This book comes with the following warning:

Clinical studies have shown that reading this novelette is likely to make you more attractive to the opposite sex and elevate your random luck by about 9.5%

(These statements have not been evaluated by anyone of consequence!)
 
You can pick up your copy at http://www.grahamparke.com/gomezbday/gomeznewyear/gny476.html
 
For legal reasons Graham states that he is hereby granting The Book Connection digital distribution rights to this eBook from the 26th of December 2010 until the 16th of January 2011.

At the end of the period the page above will go offline, so if you link directly to it, that part is taken care of automatically.

Enjoy!

No Hope For Gomez! Birthday Party Today! Win Great Prizes!

"No Hope for Gomez!" Birthday Party going on today, December 2nd! Win Kindles, iPods, and get free books!

“It's the age-old tale:      Boy meets girl.      Boy stalks girl.      Girl already has a stalker.      Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.”

It's hard to believe, but it's been a year since I handed in the final proofs for my weird little book ‘No Hope for Gomez!’ To celebrate this, and the fact that it just became a finalist in 2010's Best Book Awards, I decided to throw an international party. As I’ve had a debilitating fear of throwing parties and no-one showing up since early childhood, I’d be more than delighted if you’d come!

Of course, with every cool, international party comes a gift bag. Here's just some of the stuff attendants will get:

• Exclusive short story collection
• No Hope for Gomez: The Lost Chapters
• Making of Gomez: behind the scenes eBook
• Signed hi-res poster + bookplate

(These are all exclusive items and will not be available again)

Additionally, several lucky attendants will win a Kindle or an iPod!

Oh yeah, you can bring as many friends as you like, just don't bring your crazy uncle who drinks too much and then tries to get me to go to the attic with him to see something wonderful. I've fallen for that before and I don't mind telling you, I came away very disappointed!

Find out how to attend HERE.

No Hope for Gomez! by Graham Parke is available at Amazon.com.

"No Hope for Gomez!" Birthday Party. Win kindles, iPods, and get free books!

"No Hope for Gomez!" Birthday Party. Win Kindles, iPods, and get free books!

“It's the age-old tale:      Boy meets girl.      Boy stalks girl.      Girl already has a stalker.      Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.”

It's hard to believe, but it's been a year since I handed in the final proofs for my weird little book ‘No Hope for Gomez!’ To celebrate this, and the fact that it just became a finalist in 2010's Best Book Awards, I decided to throw an international party. As I’ve had a debilitating fear of throwing parties and no-one showing up since early childhood, I’d be more than delighted if you’d come!

Of course, with every cool, international party comes a gift bag. Here's just some of the stuff attendants will get:

• Exclusive short story collection
• No Hope for Gomez: The Lost Chapters
• Making of Gomez: behind the scenes eBook
• Signed hi-res poster + bookplate

(These are all exclusive items and will not be available again)

Additionally, several lucky attendants will win a Kindle or an iPod!

Oh yeah, you can bring as many friends as you like, just don't bring your crazy uncle who drinks too much and then tries to get me to go to the attic with him to see something wonderful. I've fallen for that before and I don't mind telling you, I came away very disappointed!

Find out how to attend HERE.

No Hope for Gomez! by Graham Parke is available at Amazon.com.

The Mysterious Case of the Badman and the Crocodile by Graham Parke, Author of No Hope for Gomez!

Today's guest blogger is Graham Parke, author of No Hope for Gomez!

Graham Parke lives in the Netherlands with his wife and his son. He is responsible for a number of technical publications and has recently patented a self-folding map. He has been described as both a humanitarian and a pathological liar. Convincing evidence to support either allegation has yet to be produced.

No Hope for Gomez! is Graham’s fiction debut. You can visit his website at www.grahamparke.com.

"The Mysterious Case of the Badman and the Crocodile" by Graham Parke

You don't always get published on your first try. In my case, not necessarily on your second or third either (or, for that matter, your hundred and seventeenth.) So it's a special occasion when you first hold your printed book in your hands. It's the culmination of years of wishful thinking and banging your head against the wall. And the special-ness of the occasion is intensified considerably when you've had a hand in the cover design.

So it's easy to forget that not everyone immediately shares your enthusiasm. Or will even bother to pretend to. Case in point; Damian, my three-year-old son. What was his reaction when his proud daddy waved this oddly picture-less book in his face? This colorless waste of ground-up trees that was so utterly devoid of speaking animals, fairies, and animal-saving teenagers? His reaction was this; he pointed at my book and said, quite seriously, 'Bad man!'

Now, some explanation may be needed here. Firstly, the fact that he spoke up in English at all was interesting. The little guy basically has a choice of four languages. There's Dutch, which he speaks at day care. There's Serbian, which he uses to communicate with his mother. There's English, which he uses to communicate with his father. And then there's that fourth language, the one he is actually fluent in. (Sadly, he is also the only person to speak this unnamed language in our known universe, which is probably why he uses it mostly in conversations with himself, and when he wants to end phone conversations with his grandparents.)

Secondly, I had made the mistake of choosing a prime piece of real-estate, time wise, to connect with my son. Dora the Explorer had just started. And TV is a powerful force, especially when Dora is on. This, by the way, was the Dutch version, where Dora the Explorer teaches the viewers Dutch and English (not the English version, where she teaches English and Spanish – what a wasted torrent that was, luckily we found out in time before the culmination of languages actually damaged Damian's brain).

And, lastly, the reader should know that many things can, in fact, be Badman. From the little old lady with the apple in Snow White, to the invisible foe who tries to steal Damian's pacifier when he's drinking his milk.

(Edit: Badman has since managed to make all pacifiers disappear from the house. Both Damian and I believe that he may have been aided by a crocodile. If you have any information, please contact your local writer’s association!)

However, the bad man referred to in this instance, I discovered with relief, was not daddy for writing a book without pictures and then bothering people about it during Dora the Explorer. It was also not the book itself. It was in fact the image of the Worrier on the front cover, created by C. Rodriguez Vega. This Worrior is somewhat of a homage to Rodin's thinker, only with an even less sunny disposition. He sits on a rock and holds his head, worrying. And, if you look close enough, you can see that he is indeed a bit of a Badman!

INFO: I’ll be giving away signed copies of a limited edition novella set in the Gomez universe. It’s not available for purchase, but I’ll be sending copies to readers periodically from my forum. You can get there thru; www.grahamparke.com

Reviews for No Hope for Gomez!

"Extremely witty and clever writing that contains keen insights into human nature." -- California Chronicle

“A quick and unputdownable read that flies in the face of reason, and smashes against the wall of detective novels. It's a Coens Brothers' film formatted in book form.” -- Book Review

"The antics in this book will leave the reader laughing. Graham Parke is a genius." -- Readers Favorite

“A veritable page turner of nonstop laughs. Buy a copy and find out for yourself!" -- Reader Views

Follow Graham's virtual book tour all month long at http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/.