Book Bloggers of Goodreads discussion

I'm currently accepting review requests from self-published authors. My blog focuses on young adult fiction, and I try to review a new book every week! You can look at my review policy and check out my previous reviews on my website at https://www.mariandribus.com. Please email me if you would like to have me review your book!

Hello Marian,

I released my debut novel, Pandemic Pandemonium a month ago. I feel like you'd enjoy my novel (at least I hope so) and I'd love to hear your feedback on the book. Please message me if you're interested and I'll send you a PDF of the book in exchange for an honest review on Goodreads and Amazon.

Pandemic Pandemonium is a fast-paced YA SciFi thriller packed with action and adventure. The story begins with the current state of the world but breaks off to 14 years into the future. A mild dystopian, if you will.

Three things that mean a lot to me personally are key aspects in the book - strong female characters, exploring diverse cultures and the blessing of family.

I also had major travel plans for 2020 but none materialized due to the pandemic. This inspired me to travel virtually through the pages of my novel and take my readers along for the ride.

Book trailer on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/s5YMSqC13Tg

Here is a link to my book on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

Here is the universal book link:
https://books2read.com/pandemicpandem...

Link to book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R6XR7ZH

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Patricia
http://Instagram.com/pamashelle

Book description:
A science prodigy. A genetically enhanced virus. A global pandemic. A family’s desperate fight.

Recently appointed as Director of the Institute of Virology, Mia’s elation is short-lived when news of a mysterious virus spreading indiscriminately across the globe breaks. All signs point to a virus that potentially mutated in the institute’s laboratory. She is desperate for answers, but soon discovers the pandemic is only part of a sinister equation.

Danger looms at every turn while the truth remains in the shadows. When danger hits close to home, Mia will need more than her brains to survive. She must fight like never before to reunite her family and protect the world from a brutal death.

Unbeknownst to her, the key to saving the world lies in the hands of a child—one time and distance prevent her from reaching.

Will her desperate fight to save the world succeed, or will the malicious evildoers continue their reign of terror and hold the world at ransom indefinitely?

Hello Marian,

If you're interested, I'm working with two authors to promote their books. Louise Belanger has her first book on blog tour and would love reviews in February/March.

Join us for our Winter 2021-22 (Dec. 2021 through March 2022) blog tour for Your Words Your World by Louise Bélanger, independently published in July 2021.

Poetry For Your Soul – Stunning Photographs
Zoom to Heaven
The most beautiful love poem
Where God is not there
Promises…
A handful of cloud
Clowns…
During the night

These are some of the titles of the poetry you will read in this beautiful, inspiring collection complemented by captivating nature photographs.

Read poems about God and having a relationship with Him. Poems about trust, missing a loved one, childhood memories, Christmas, Heaven, Easter…

Other poems are lovely stories, the length of a page.
The poetry is easy to understand. It is for everyone whether poetry is your genre or not, you will enjoy it.

Advance Praise:

There are a number of 5-star reviews on Amazon, including this one: “Your Words, Your World is a beautiful collection of poetry, photographs, and story poems about God and the world He created, and the second book of poems by Louise Bélanger. It helps the reader look at the world in a new way. Among my favorite poems is Ordinary, about how God can take something ordinary, like a star or a body of water, and make it do extraordinary things. I also loved Dust, which reminds us that God created us all from something we don’t really like–dust. A War Erupted paints a beautiful and tumultuous picture of a thunderstorm. The Contest is a thought-provoking story poem about a conversation between flowers. Zoom to Heaven is probably my favorite of all, as it talks about what it would be like to have a Zoom conversation with a loved one in Heaven. Your Words, Your World takes a unique look at God and the world He created, and it makes me appreciate Him and this world all the more.” – BonnieD

unnamed(1)About the Poet:

Louise Bélanger is a Canadian poet and the author of Your Words Your World and Your Words. Both books are beautiful, inspiring, and spiritual poems complemented by nature photographs. She started writing poetry in the spring of 2020. She poured her emotions onto paper, describing beautiful scenery and stories that came to life. With encouragement and help from friends, her dream came true. She loves photography and music, is an avid reader, and loves movies.

Let me know if this is of interest. She can also answer interview questions or provide a guest post. She'd love reviews on Amazon and Goodreads too.

Hi Marian,

I'm also working with Mary Beth Hines on her blog tour for her debut poetry collection, Winter at Summer House. We're hoping for more reviews in February/March, but she's also open to interviews and guest posts.

Please join us for our Winter 2022 blog tour for Winter at a Summer House by Mary Beth Hines, published by Kelsay Books in November 2021.

In Winter at a Summer House, Mary Beth Hines’s poems speak to the sublime and risks in every middle-class home, small city neighborhood, seaside retreat, or suburban backyard. Vivid, tactile imagery suffuses the collection, which follows the arc of a life from birth/first words to death/last words. Together, these poems create a sometimes heartbreaking, but often humorous and joyous, narrative that speaks to all readers.

Advance Praise:

“The poems in Mary Beth Hines’s first collection, Winter at a Summer House, strike a wonderful balance between narratives of everyday experience and a pristine, pure poetic imagination. Always rhythmically diverse, most of the time mellifluous, and often intense, Hines’s poetry vividly paints the life of a modern self-made woman, with her worries and obligations, her family, and her dreams. In response to the heroine’s world, this poetry, never static, vibrates with all sorts of emotions: love, friendship, youthful
infatuations, amorousness, jealousy, altruism. As a result, the book gives its reader all the pleasures of a novel – and of lyric novelty.” – Katia Kapovich, the author of Gogol in Rome and Cossacks and Bandits

“Mary Beth Hines sings to us out of the staircases, back yards, and swimming pools of a life sumptuously lived, a world rife with joys and enticements, with girlhood wish and adulthood tryst. Each song lifts on the updrafts of a language passionately breathed, The poems are arrayed with such stunning craft that the art dissolves into the narrative. One forgets that one is reading and imagines that one is reliving this life. Winter at a Summer House is, in the words of one of the poems, a “gift to spark remembrance,” as if the memories had become our own.” -Tom Daley, the author of House You Cannot Reach
Hines, Winter at a Summer House, Author photo(1)

Photo Credit: David Mullen

About the Author:

Mary Beth Hines grew up in Massachusetts where she spent Saturday afternoons ditching ballet to pursue stories and poems deep in the stacks of the Waltham Public Library. She earned bachelor of arts in English from The College of the Holy Cross, and studied for a year at Durham University in England. She began a regular creative writing practice following a career in public service (Volpe Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts), leading award-winning national outreach, communications, and workforce programs. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction appear in dozens of literary journals and anthologies both nationally and abroad. Winter at a Summer House is her first poetry collection. When not reading or writing, she swims, walks in the woods, plays with friends, travels with her husband, and enjoys life with their family, including their two beloved grandchildren.

Let me know if this is of interest to you. We'd love reviews on GoodReads and Amazon as well.

Hi Marian,

I'm also working with Judy Croome on her first blog tour for her debut poetry collection, The Dust of Hope. This tour is for reviews on Amazon and GoodReads only beginning now through March 2022.

This is an unusual request from an author. Judy Croome would love for those interested to only post their reviews on Amazon and GoodReads for this online tour.

Her book is The Dust of Hope: Rune Poems. She will mail out review copies to everyone who signs up for the online tour and agrees to post on Amazon and GoodReads.

Book Synopsis:

Judy Croome’s latest collection of poetry returns to the ancient ways of the Nordic runes, shining a light of hope and healing as we navigate through the wilderness of anxiety permeating these early years of the twenty-first century.

The simple verses console the reader with a calm acceptance that, even during a global pandemic, everyday life ebbs and flows with the natural rhythms of the timeless oceans.

Here are poems that invite us to stop, to breathe, and to see the world around us from a new perspective birthed within the centre of our souls.

About the Poet:

Judy Croome lives and writes in Johannesburg, South Africa. Shortlisted in the African Writing Flash Fiction 2011 competition, Judy’s short stories, poems and articles have appeared in various magazines, anthologies and newspapers, such as The Sunday Times, The Huffington Post (USA) and the University of the Witwatersrand’s Itch Magazine. In 2016, Judy was the poetry judge for Writers2000's Annual Writing Competition in 2016 and 2021.

Judy loves her family, cats, exploring the meaning of life, chocolate, cats, rainy days, ancient churches with their ancient graveyards, cats, meditation and solitude. Oh, and cats. Judy loves cats (who already appear to have discovered the meaning of life.)

Her fiction and poetry books 'the dust of hope: rune poems" (2021); "Drop by Drop: poems of loss" (2020); "a stranger in a strange land" (2015),"The Weight of a Feather & Other Stories" (2013), "a Lamp at Midday" (2012) and "Dancing in the Shadows of Love" (2011) are available from Aztar Press.

"Street Smart Taxpayers: A practical guide to your rights in South Africa" (Juta Law, 2017) was co-authored with her late husband Dr. Beric Croome (1960 - 2019).

If you have openings Jan. 2022-March 2022, I would love to have you on this online tour.

Hi Marian,

Also in 2022, we're looking for bloggers to review Out of No Way by Roje Augustin. She's adapting her 2020 smash poetic drama into a play for the stage and we want to get more reviews on Amazon, GoodReads, and blogs.

Rojé Augustin’s Out of No Way: Madam C.J. Walker & A’Lelia Walker, a poetic drama published in May 2020.

Author, producer and emerging poet Rojé Augustin has written a groundbreaking debut collection of dramatic poems about hair care entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and her daughter A’Lelia Walker. Out of No Way: Madam C.J. Walker & A’Lelia Walker, A Poetic Dramatracks Walker’s phenomenal rise from penniless orphan to America’s first self-made female millionaire in dramatic verse.

Born Sarah Breedlove to former Louisiana slaves in 1867, Madam C.J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at 14, became a mother at 17, and was widowed at 20. After the death of her first husband, Sarah moved to St. Louis with her daughter where she earned $1.50 a day as a washerwoman. When her hair starting falling out she developed a remedy and sold her formula across the country. In the process she became the wealthiest Negro woman in America. Rojé’s highly original and accomplished poetry is written through the lens of the mother/daughter relationship via different poetic forms — from lyric poems to haikus, blackout poetry to narrative (one poem takes its inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’) — with each chapter addressing issues relevant to their lives at the time.

Written against the backdrop of the Jim Crow era, Out of No Way is ultimately an examination of what W.E.B Du Bois called “conflicting identities.” Sarah was a proud African American on the one hand and a woman seeking America’s acceptance on the other. She was a pauper who achieved the American Dream while denied the rights and protections of the American Constitution. She was a wife, mother, and businesswoman who juggled the demands of family with the demands of career. And she was an orphan who had to transcend a brutal childhood in order to be a loving mother to her child. As Du Bois stated at the time, “One ever feels a two-ness. An American, A Negro…Two warring ideals in one dark body.” Indeed Madam C.J. Walker/Sarah Breedlove was an American and a Negro, as was her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, both of whom likely viewed herself through their own conflicting identities. What did they see?

Out of No Way tells Walker’s remarkable rags-to-riches story by exploring thoughtful questions — What impact did Sarah’s busy work life have on A’Lelia? What was the bond between a mother orphaned so young and the daughter who might wait days or weeks for her return? Could the death of her parents when she was a child have compromised Sarah’s nurturing instincts? How did A’Lelia feel about their newfound wealth? What, if any, were the drawbacks of that wealth?

About the Author:

Rojé Augustin is a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her first novel, The Unraveling of Bebe Jones, won the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award in African American fiction. She wrote the novel while living in London and Sydney as a stay-at-home-mom. She established Breaknight Films shortly after her move to Sydney in 2009 to develop and produce television projects across a range of formats, including television, web, and audio. Her first Sydney based project was a podcast and visual web series called The Right Space, which explores the relationship between creatives and their workspace. Rojé continues to work as a television producer while also writing in her spare time. She is an Australian citizen who currently lives in Sydney with her Aussie husband and two daughters.

Let me know if this is of interest.