IF I’D NEVER HEARD OF ME WOULD I READ MY BOOK? ~ Guest blog

If I’d never heard of me, would I read my book? Probably not. I am like every new writer, working hard to get his or her name before the masses. It is not easy to win over the trust of someone and offer your book, which will actually take time out of their lives to read. They will invest whole hours on your fiction, on your characters, on your story, hoping to find some sort of satisfaction in reading it. This takes time, and people are so short on time these days, and that’s why they take shortcuts. That’s why many people will read a bestselling author that they have never read before, because as my mother would say: “Three thousand Frenchmen cant’ be wrong.”

So new writers have it tough finding loyal eyes to go over their work and now, with the advent of indie-publishing, this will no doubt get harder and harder as more and more thousands of books become available to the reading audience. Soon there will be more books coming out in a year than there are readers. How does an avid reader pick their next book?

No doubt through some shrewd marketing. A writer has to get their novel out there, and before the right people and in the right places. All of these things that involve marketing seem to be more like magic and sleight of hand to me than any kind of science. All I can do is write the best story that I can, hopefully grab the reader’s attention and satisfy their reading desires so that they will tell a friend or two about my book. I still think word of mouth is the best advertising.

If I saw my book on the shelf, with its interesting cover, I think I would pause and read the back and since it’s a story about a genre that I like, I think I might give it a chance. But there are so many factors in choosing a book to read.

I hope that, even in spite of myself, I meet them all.

BLURB:  

A high profile murder of a Wall Street executive in Westchester pits three people against the criminal underbelly of Manhattan nightlife. The key players are two ex-cops turned private investigators—Kevin Whitehouse, whose sharpest tool is his keen analytical mind, and David Allerton, a former Special Forces operative—and Margaret Alexander, Kevin’s lover. In their search for a killer, they are forced to travel to the edge of sanity and morality, while stumbling onto their own confusing secrets as well. The Cover of Darkness is a gritty noir saga that untangles a web of deceit in the course of tracking down a brutal murderer.

EXCERPT 

The pool area was wide and reflected the sun on this hot summer day. It was edged with white marble so polished that it looked like pearl. Deck chairs lined the sides of the long pool, which was two lengths more than Olympic-sized. Outside the deck area was the carpeted lawn of the vast backyard, dappled with sun.

Hugh Osterman walked along the side of the pool wearing a heavy terry cloth robe and sandals. In his right hand, he held a martini glass. He ran his left hand through his sandy sun-streaked hair as he looked over his shoulder at the man following him.

“What’s going on? I don’t get it,” Osterman said, stopping at the end of the pool where the flotation chairs were kept.

“They said no,” the man replied. Considering the backdrop, he was incongruously dressed in a dark suit and tie.

“They said no . . . just like that?”

Osterman sat his drink down on the marble surface, and pushed a flotation chair into the deep end of the pool, sending it out and away. Then he peeled off the robe and dove smoothly into the water, emerging next to the floating chair.

“You go back and tell them that we aren’t pleased,” Osterman said sternly, pulling himself up and into the seat of the chair. “You tell them that Hugh Osterman wants to know what’s holding things up—what the problem is.”

The suit just stood at the edge of the pool, opening his jacket against the heat of the day. Osterman paddled to the side, and reached out and retrieved his martini glass. “I take it you have nothing to say about this?” he persisted, despite the other man’s silence.

The suit shook his head.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Osterman said as he tipped the glass up to his lips. Suddenly, the bottom of the stem shattered. Osterman gurgled as he dropped the glass, blood bubbling from his mouth, an open tear in his neck. He jolted upright in the chair as the suit closed the distance between them, his Colt .38 Super still trained on its victim, its silencer smoldering.

Osterman slowly sat back as the suit pumped more rounds into Osterman’s bare, well-defined chest—the hot shells of his pistol ejecting out and striking the surface of the water, settling to the bottom. His life ended as his body tumbled from the floating chair, his blood a widening crimson slick roughly in the area where his body slipped through.

The suit popped his clip, slipped in a new one, and headed for the sprawling house.

AUTHOR INFORMATION:

Gregory Delaurentis spent his adult life roaming from job to job, working for Lockheed in California, various law firms in New York, and financial firms on Wall Street. Throughout this period of time, he was writing—unceasingly—finally producing a large body of work, albeit unrecognized and unpublished . . . until now. Cover of Darkness is the first in a series of upcoming books that include Edge of Darkness, Pale of Darkness and Cries of Darkness. These novels follow the lives of three individuals who do battle bringing criminals to justice, while they struggle to understand the complex relationships that exist among themselves. This intriguing trio has absorbed the attention of Mr. Delaurentis for the past year and a half, so much so he decided to self-publish their stories to bring them to a wider audience. [AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER: These are works of fiction. Name, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.]

LINKS

Vendor links

1) AMAZON  http://www.amazon.com/Cover-Darkness-1-Gregory-Delaurentis/dp/0989185702/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365639244&sr=1-1&keywords=cover+of+darkness+gregory+delaurentis
2) KOBO  http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Cover-of-Darkness/book-SydhWnuMdEGT2jO97s6rDA/page1.html?s=znZMkhZzw0yjFAMp-WIkpQ&r=1
3) BARNES & NOBLE http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cover-of-darkness-gregory-delaurentis/1115107265?ean=9780989185707
4) SONY READER STORE https://ebookstore.sony.com/search?keyword=Gregory+Delaurentis
5) SMASHWORDS  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/304457

General links

1)  http://www.darknessnovels.com/

2) https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cover-of-Darkness/435819953132527

3) https://twitter.com/cupgrease

4) http://gregorydelaurentis.blogspot.com/

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