Ana's Bookstore

Ana's Bookstore
In print and ebooks

10/08/2015

CYCLE

9/03/2015

#FF Friday Feeling

#SOS Synonym Of Success: When you see your books being pirated and having people commenting that they loved the book! Ok, now go and share the value and spread the word so that other people can buy them and I will be able to write some more good stuff!
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That's the comment I left in a website who does book piracy and simply "stole" my book by leaving it there to downloading for free. Hey let me decide who and when and where I want my books free!! See if they buy that...otherwise everyone is free to share quotes from my books. I know that today is still Thirsty Thursday but I´m a bit ahead of time because I´m already preparing the spirits for tomorrow. I was searching on the web to see if there was no more piracy when I found out this:
Today´s Friday Feeling
What was my surprise to not only see my words been chosen and shared around the world but also in such a sweet way, we cannot help and notice there was a care, someone took the time to feel and think about my words to create such design; it made me speechless. Go figure, someone who loves words and who is a prolific writer/author left without words. This is the kind of attitude that makes me continue on my track and keeping writing and thirsty to sharing my own thoughts.

And Happy Thirsty Thursday!


Pierrot & Columbine

4/10/2015

The Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe

My most recent book that I just published on Amazon (now available on print at lulu and soon in Barnes & Noble and other major retailers) The Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe has a very sensitive topic for it touches us even today, about the theory of conspiracies that remains until nowadays. I also talk about the assassination of JFK and many more issues that we inherited with the cold war. So I was afraid to let it out all open. At that time I had completely stopped writing and that had nothing to do with writer's block. I was simply denying the fact that I was too afraid of letting the matters being out in the light. My father then asked me why I stopped writing, and I gave him many excuses... but he knows me too well, then he said, " You are afraid of what people may think of it.' That answer touched me too deep. But I was still in denial. I couldn't figure out exactly why I had stopped with the book. So I started to write other books with much more "light" subjects, which was pretty fine since some sold right after I published them. It was after all these years that I felt comfortable to give the finishing strokes to that book and there it is, ready and in many people's lives now. I'm so glad I finally gave up and listened to my father's wise words. He knew it more than I did. I was afraid of what people might think of the things I wrote in that book. But now I'm ok with it, for now I know if I didn't put this book out there no one would ever do, and people wouldn't know about the things I say there. I never used a pseudonym, never felt like it, only made a pun such as "Ana Bowlova", for sometimes I feel like I love to bow (bow lover) to make reverence to life and also bowl over things... go figure. This book Iḿ talking about had many spins and turns until I felt ok to go push forward to let it breath and see the light, "The Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe" that I have written in the end of 2011, it was a project that I was developing with another Mystery/Suspense writer in a writing workshop and we had to talk about the things that happened fifty years before the next year and that it would be the year 1962. So in my research I found out about so many things that happened then, and it was a revolution going on in my head. Many things that were not revealed or were never really being very investigated, that was all too fishy. So I divided the topics and decided to share ideas to write the book. But for some odd reason (that I can only conceive it now as a type of fear) a sensation of letting people read my own thoughts that froze me for about three years. I wrote many other books in the meantime, there was not actually a gap there, so I cannot even call this a writer´s block (I actually have no idea what it means, for me ideas pop up in my head all the time) so that was not even the problem of finishing the book. The thing was much deeper. It was that feeling of being rejected that I told you above, I was simply afraid of what people would think of my words, my work, the things that I was revealing there. But hey, it was just in the end of 2014 when I decided to give it the last strokes and finish it and voila:

3/28/2015

Temptation (Natalie’s Edge, #1)Temptation by R.B. O'Brien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first thing that grabbed my attention on this book was its cover. A beautiful woman with only her underwear and her Ballet shoes, not quite the ballerina type. As a professional Ballet dancer with a keen eye for the "perfect" body I saw some flaws on this image of a ballerina. Actually her overarched back already gives it, almost like denying her sexual pleasure, although wanting and craving for it. And the way she tied the ribbons on her pointe shoes showing some sloppy terms with her Ballet training, or lack of instruction on how to do it well. If she cannot lace her own shoes, never mind thinking about her hiding the knots. She is definitely not an expert, but immature. A kind of a Lolita, as the way she looked at the photographer in the picture. So you already get the picture of what´s inside. Whoever made that cover is an artist and an expert in communicating a feeling and a storyline. Natalie is indeed that kind of girl who tried to hide herself inside assorted masks, making her appear vulnerable and self-confident,at the same time, but she´s totally naked on the outside. And so it goes with her attitude towards life itself. Her boyfriend (and I mean Michael, the one she didn´t cheat on... yet!) is in no way insecure, but totally controling. Where people see flaws in character I see a very courageous woman. Natalie lives her life to the fullest. She is eager to experiment. But she draws the line, the boundaries in bondage. And, like any girl who had to endure years of Ballet discipline and exercises to ensure a good performance, she expects more of herself than anyone else. It´s no secret that Ballet forces you to get into a more Masochistic scenario. After all, for the sake of beauty and pleasure for the eyes of others you get to force yourself into a regime that not many can take. Some readers may get mislead, though, and failing to see her character as faulting where she is actually just showing how human one can be, and they are oblivious to the thruth beneath the domineering process. Natalie is being true to herself when she tries to walk into the wild, to reach out to her self-discovery, her true self. And there she might even get hurt, or fall in love. Fall will be the exact word. For she is much more falling in love than being loved or in love. She starts to get her broken pieces and put it all together again. The guilt about her cheating on who appears to be as a cold, self-absorbed, bloated-minded, selfish boyfriend Scott doesn´t impede her a bit to the beat (and beating)of a sensual symphony. The author was crafty enough to let loose ends on him. She doesn´t allow the reader to get into deep with this guy, and in turn you don´t give much credit on him. So cheating is like shitting in the sense that you do crap while sitting on it and as you get up it´s just then that you see what you have done. You couldn´t get more real than this. The realistic characters are well portrayed. But the guilt she feels upon her boyfriend seems innocuous. Nothing would take her out of her purchase, per-chase per se (purr... poor?) poor cat being chased by a rat. Maybe if the story was not told in first person it wouldn´t touch so deeply as it does. And it won´t cause as much impact, and we wouldn´t feel such empathy for the main character. Michael became a subterfuge for her psyche - she likes to play games. She likes kinky stuff, she is into it, into becoming objectable and objectionable, to be subdued, dominated. She found that part of her and she thanked Michael for that. But that´s where lies the devil: She´s really confused, she doesn´t really want to loose it. The devil is not as ugly as they painted. R.B. made a real portrait of what´s underneath the veil. She mastered on making characters so close to us, so not at all perfect, disturbed and lost. The way Michael turned what seemed so right into something so wrong... Let´s just hope that Redemption will come easy on her...as the series goes, well, I think that this is more like a trilogy and I just hope I could see different colors and covers for the extreme make over.

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In another note, not as hysterical but historical as the devil, my book about the ballerinas and their complexity with passion is also in Italian. Pierrot & Colombina Who knew this romantic language would make so well with my mystery/historic novel and in tune with the characters? Well, one of the main characters is Italian, so no wonder it was fascination and drill all over the deal.