Amanda911 by Mark Schreiber - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!

Hi, lovelies!!  It gives me great pleasure today to host Mark Schreiber and his new book, “Amanda911,” here on FAB!!  For other stops on his Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.

Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!!!  Also, come back daily to interact with Mark and to increase your chances of winning!!

Thanks for stopping by!!  Wishing you all lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!!

Amanda911

by Mark Schreiber

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GENRE: YA (Crossover)

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BLURB:

“Sixteen-year-old Iowa schoolgirl Amanda Dizon may be the nation’s most unremarkable teenager, until she falls down a well and finds herself instantaneously transformed from irrelevant to influencer.  Mark Schreiber’s sly, rollicking masterpiece, Amanda911, follows Amanda’s escapades and sends up the craven, fame-obsessed virtual culture of today’s adolescents.   As insightful as Dickens and as innovative as Heller, Schreiber is the definitive satirist of the social media generation.”—Jacob M. Appel, author of Einstein’s Beach House

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EXCERPT ONE:

Falling down a well was both the best and worst thing that ever happened to my granddaughter.

She was a Disney princess to me, but a comic sidekick to her classmates, who’d never been kissed by a boy—or I suppose by a girl—been asked to a dance, or chosen for any role in a school production that did not conceal her face.

Most people under twenty probably don’t know what a well is.

Haven’t seen one. Probably think it’s just something you say when you need to buy time, like like, or when someone asks you how you’re feeling, although I guess these days everyone says good or OK, or nothing at all, opting for an emoji instead. Do kids even talk anymore, in the crowded loneliness of their bedrooms? Did Amanda even scream when she fell down the well? Or did she just send a screaming emoji?

So, when millions of kids all over the globe saw the headline, they shared via social media:

Girl Plummets Down Well

More than plenty had to Google well to comprehend its meaning.

I’m sure she got at least half a million hits just from image searches that returned a picture of an oil rig in the North Sea. Geez, her international peer group must have thought, or words or emojis to that effect. A girl has fallen thousands of feet smack into a tidal wave. I hope she’s more Kate than Leonardo.

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GUEST POST:

How to Handle Rejection Letters

A long, long time ago men used to go door to door selling stuff. Encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, life insurance. And women—and they were almost always housewives back then—would answer the door and politely tell them no thanks, or listen to their spiel and then tell them no thanks. And the salesman, if he were good, might get to do a demonstration at every 100th house, and make a sale at every 1000th house. And he would then go home to his own house, and his own wife, feeling successful.

Now let’s substitute author for salesman, novel for encyclopedias, agents or editors for housewives, query letter for spiel, and complete manuscript submission for demonstration. You might go to a mere twenty houses without a sale, and give up, feeling like an utter failure.

What’s the difference between the salesman experience and the author experience?

Being a door-to-door salesman was a brutal job. Okay, it wasn’t coal mining or raising eight kids, but it demanded persistence and optimism. Yet salesmen didn’t take rejection personally. In fact they didn’t view the closing door or the shaking head as rejection at all. The lady simply didn’t need a vacuum cleaner. Or she had just bought one from his rival last week. Or they couldn’t afford it, even on a payment plan.

Now look at the publishing house, or the agent. Their very response is called a “rejection letter.” I never understood why they did that. It’s basically sadistic. They all start with “Unfortunately.” Or with a polite opening followed by the dreaded word, “However.”

They say your book is not “right” for them, implying that you must be wrong. That if only your book were right, they would buy it. They don’t tell you the truth, which is that they are in a business and have to answer to stakeholders who may not give a damn about excellence, originality, creativity. They have to deal with budgets and logistics, which your story may be no match for. They can only publish so many books a year, and many of those slots are already contracted to existing writers. But I’ve never had an editor tell me their list is full, come back later.

Instead they make you forget it’s a business and think it’s a date. “I just didn’t fall in love with the hero.” “I didn’t love the story.” “The plot didn’t excite me.” “I found your protagonist unsympathetic.”

Whoa! I’m not asking for your hand in marriage. I just want you to buy my psychological thriller. Imagine if the salesman demonstrated his vacuum cleaner and it picked up every speck of dirt, but the housewife said, “I really do want a vacuum cleaner, but yours just doesn’t wow me.”

Who would blame the salesman for packing it in there and then and looking for the nearest coal mine?

And that’s what happens to us. We take it personally. We think something is wrong with our book. And maybe there is. But it’s futile to read rejection letters like cryptographers in World War II trying to decipher the Enigma code for actionable intelligence.

“Your protagonist is unsympathetic.”

So are you, dude.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Mark Schreiber was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1960, graduated high school at age fifteen and began writing novels full-time. Princes in Exile, which explores a prodigy’s struggle to accept his own mortality at a summer camp for kids with cancer, was published in 1984 and made into a feature film in 1991. It has been published in ten countries, received two awards in Europe and was shortlisted for the Austria Prize. Carnelian, a fantasy, was published by Facet in Belgium. Starcrossed, a rebuttal to Romeo and Juliet, was published by Flux and translated into French and Turkish. His illustrated science book, How to Build an Elephant, was published as an Apple app by Swag Soft. He has written over forty books and received two State of Ohio Individual Writer Fellowships. For the last seven years he has been a digital nomad, living on four continents. He currently resides in Costa Rica.

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CONNECT WITH MARK:

Website:

http://www.Amanda911.com

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Schreiber

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Amanda911book

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/Markschreiber07

Instagram:

http://www.instagram.com/_Amanda_911_

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@Amanda911

Goodreads Author Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/114290.Mark_Schreiber

Goodreads Book Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58786753-amanda911

Amazon Author Page:

http://amzn.to/3DeG5UW

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BOOK BUY LINKS:

Amazon US Kindle eBook:

http://amzn.to/3AbCrJC

Amazon US Paperback:

http://amzn.to/3uDJI3S

Amazon US Hardcover:

http://amzn.to/3Db3w1x

Amazon CA Kindle eBook:

https://www.amazon.ca/Amanda911-Mark-Schreiber-ebook/dp/B09DR2PWX5

Amazon CA Paperback:

https://www.amazon.ca/Amanda911-Mark-Schreiber/dp/1737052016

Amazon CA Hardcover:

https://www.amazon.ca/Amanda911-Mark-Schreiber/dp/1737052024

Barnes and Noble Paperback:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/amanda911-mark-schreiber/1139562142?ean=9781737052012

Barnes and Noble Hardcover:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/amanda911-mark-schreiber/1139562142?ean=9781737052029

The Book Depository Paperback:

https://www.bookdepository.com/Amanda911-Mark-Schreiber/9781737052012

The Book Depository Hardcover:

https://www.bookdepository.com/Amanda911-Mark-Schreiber/9781737052029

BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:

https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Mark-Schreiber/9781737052012

BAM! Books-A-Million Hardcover:

https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Mark-Schreiber/9781737052029

The Bookshop Paperback:

https://bookshop.org/books/amanda911/9781737052012

The Bookshop Hardcover:

https://bookshop.org/books/amanda911/9781737052029

Google Play eBooks:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Amanda911.html?id=Lzx3zgEACAAJ

Pleasure Boat Studio Paperback:

http://pleasureboatstudio.com/product/amanda911

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

Mark will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a purchase is made, I may receive a small commission to help support this blog.  This does not cost you anything, it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here**

This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions.  Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.