Hello, lovelies!! It gives me great pleasure today to host Mike Nemeth and his new book, “Parker’s Choice,” 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 $25 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Mike and to increase your chances of winning!!
Thanks for stopping by!! Wishing you all lots of good luck in this fabulous giveaway!!
Parker's Choice
by Mike Nemeth
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GENRE: Romantic Mystery
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BOOK BLURB:
Framed by cops and chased by crooks, a white ex-con and a rebellious black woman become fugitives. They didn’t plan to fall in love.
After serving time for a crime he didn’t commit, Parker and his wife, Paula, hide from an old enemy in an Atlanta suburb. Their fresh start is disrupted when his new boss demands his involvement in a fraudulent scheme that will replace thousands of white collar American workers with artificial intelligence and offshore labor. Parker unfortunately suspects his secret and elusive birth father is mixed up in the fraud. Then a body is pulled from the Chattahoochee River and Parker believes Paula has murdered his enemy, but the police think Parker did it. He and his brilliant colleague, Sabrina, a woman who can trace her roots to Virginia slaves, steal the “smoking gun” that will expose the fraud and go on the run, pursued by cops and crooks. After a violent showdown in a frightening New Orleans cemetery, they connect the dots between a murder, fraud, and a man from his mother’s past. Parker’s loyalties are torn, but he must choose.
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EXCERPT ONE:
“You’re wrong, Paula, I’m not having an affair.”
“You’re lying, Parker, and you’ll regret it.”
“Your drinking has ruined our marriage. You have to get sober.”
“I should have divorced you while you were wearing pinstripes.”
“That would have saved us our current mess, wouldn’t it?”
“Screw you. I’ll figure out how to escape.”
Parker forced himself to calm down. “How long do you have to stay?”
“Till I’m sober, imbecile.”
Parker recoiled, then decided that maybe he deserved some abuse. “Ah, sure. I mean, how long is the program?”
“Twenty-eight freaking days. It’s already been a nightmare, filling out forms, stripping for a physical, peeing in a cup. It’s demeaning.”
“Hang in there, Paula. It will be worth it.”
She sucked in and exhaled smoke. At rehab, they let you substitute one addiction for another. “I’ve gotta go,” Paula said. “Group therapy session. Should be a barrel of laughs.”
“Wait. Have you heard from the police?”
“Nope. We can’t have cell phones in here, might arrange for someone to break us out, so Jordyn is holding it for me. We’re allowed one call today, like we’ve been arrested, then no more calls for the first two weeks.”
“The police will ask you about your gun.”
She paused to think about his warning. “Well, they’ll have to wait for visiting hours. It’s just like prison.”
“They recovered Grace Walker’s body from the river.”
A long pause, a smoker’s hacking cough. “Good,” Paula said. “She was evil.”
“Did you shoot them both?”
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GUEST POST:
Jumping Through Hoops
Usually when we talk about the obstacles an author faces on their writing journey, we’re talking about prepublication obstacles like writer’s block, finding the time to write, painting yourself into a plot corner, finding critique partners, hiring an editor, finding an agent or publisher, and so forth. In the case of Parker’s Choice, my obstacles arrived on my doorstep, wholly unexpectedly, after publication.
I was attending a local writers’ conference when a publisher approached me to talk about my recently completed manuscript of Parker’s Choice. He had heard about my book from two of his authors who happened to be members of the same writers’ association and critique group to which I belonged. “I want Parker’s Choice,” he said and I was flattered beyond belief. This is how networking is supposed to work, I thought.
Soon I was engulfed by intense and time-critical rounds of editing and design as we barreled toward a release date. After release, Kirkus Reviews was complimentary (“A razor-sharp mystery with twists aplenty”) and BookLife concurred (“The story here is fresh and unpredictable with a fine blend of psychological tension and more than a few plot twists.”). Parker’s Choice won a Firebird Award in the Thriller category and American Fiction Awards for Diverse & Multicultural Mystery and for Romantic Mystery.
I was thrilled; life was good. Until the day I learned that the publisher had gone out of business. The publisher was very cooperative in returning all rights and publishing materials to me so my book now existed only on my laptop and few dozen readers’ bookshelves. Or so I thought.
While deciding what to do next, I fiddled with the manuscript. Too many people with too many opinions had been involved in the editing process in a timeframe that was too compressed to get it right. So, I refined the writing in the first chapter, swapped the sequence of a couple of chapters, and strengthened Paula’s reasons for being unhappy in her marriage to Parker. Nothing drastic, nothing that changed the essential storyline, but changes that made me feel better about the finished work.
After consulting with my friends who were also without a publisher, we decided to self-publish and we enlisted the assistance of another local publisher to do the technical heavy-lifting to get the book back on the market, with minor changes to the cover and the text in my case. The first obstacle was proving to Amazon that I owned the rights to the revised book. No mean task. I appreciated Amazon’s due diligence.
So, Parker’s Choice had a second release date and I experienced the new thrill of total ownership of a published work that already had great reviews and some fans. That’s when I discovered that the original edition of Parker’s Choice was still for sale on Amazon. If you searched for Parker’s Choice or for books by Mike Nemeth, two nearly identical covers appeared and were offered for sale.
I contacted Amazon and learned that once a product was for sale, its detail page remained on the site FOREVER! Only the original seller, the defunct publisher, could take it down. But the publisher no longer existed, email accounts and phone numbers unresponsive. I asked Amazon the obvious question: What happens to the funds and my royalties if someone purchases the original edition since there is no publisher to pay and no publisher to pay me? Surely it’s illegal to profit from someone else’s work. Amazon had already determined to their satisfaction that I owned the work.
Two unsatisfactory answers were suggested: 1) someday stockpiled supplies of the original edition would be exhausted; and 2) Amazon had an obligation to act as a marketplace for “other sellers,” i.e. people who had purchased the original edition and were now reselling them as used copies. The simple premise that a person can write a book and get Amazon to sell it was replaced by the complex reality of dealing with a humongous retailer.
As we all do these days, I searched YouTube for advice and, voila!, I found it. There is a little-known claim of copyright infringement that can be made to stop an infringer from selling a product you own on Amazon. Of course, Amazon would have such a legal remedy. I submitted a claim that the original edition, whose rights were owned by me, was violating the copyright of the second edition, whose copyright was owned exclusively by me. I was in effect violating my own copyright.
Surprise, surprise, Amazon agreed and will remove the original edition.
The lesson here is that an author’s journey does not end when a work is published, and the author’s obligation to vigilantly protect their work never ends.
FYI, the second, valid, edition of Parker’s Choice has my name on the cover in yellow. Buy that edition. On the original, my name was in white.
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AUTHOR BIO:
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Mike Nemeth, a Vietnam veteran and former high-tech executive, writes love stories tucked inside murder mysteries highlighting America’s social issues. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY won the Beverly Hills Book Award for Southern Fiction and the Frank Yerby Prize at the Augusta Literary Festival. The novel inspired singer/songwriter Mark Currey to compose the song Who I am. PARKER’S CHOICE won a Firebird Award for thrillers and American Fiction Awards for Diverse and Multicultural Mystery/Suspense, and for Romantic Mystery/Suspense. Other credits include The New York Times, Georgia Magazine, Augusta Magazine, Southern Writers’ Magazine, and Deep South Magazine. In 2018, I was named Atlanta’s Best Local Author by Creative Loafing magazine. Mike lives in Villa Rica with his wife, Angie, and their rescue dog, Scout.
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CONNECT WITH MIKE:
Website:
https://www.mikenemethauthor.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/mikenemethauthor
X (Twitter):
https://www.twitter.com/nemosnovels
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nemosnovels
Goodreads Author Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15098381.Mike_Nemeth
Goodreads Book Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57359196-parker-s-choice
Amazon Author Page:
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon US Kindle eBook:
Amazon US Paperback:
Amazon CA Kindle eBook:
https://www.amazon.ca/Parkers-Choice-Mike-Nemeth-ebook/dp/B0BW4XQRB2
Amazon CA Paperback:
https://www.amazon.ca/Parkers-Choice-Mike-Nemeth/dp/0996537007
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/parkers-choice-mike-nemeth/1138982602
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Mike will be awarding a $25 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner’s Choice!!!) to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.**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 fabulous community outreach projects and 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.
