Buy Local: R&L’s Book Nook

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I’m sold out of Stockholm Syndrome for the moment (yeah! Fist punch! Running man dance move! Wish I’d had another one for Melissa B), so now it’s time to turn the spotlight on our hard-working local stores. ‘Cause I, for one, basically haven’t done my shopping yet.youth-570881_640

Kobo director Mark Leslie Lefebvre first suggested I reach out to my local bookstores when Terminally Ill (Hope Sze #3) got traction. I felt shy, since I used to be a shy kid until I trained myself to be more extroverted. But I took a deep breath and called R&L’s Book Nook, the only bookstore in Alexandria.

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Even though this photo is blurry, it has the most genuine smiles, because the photo-taker said, “Say ‘sex’!” I replied, “Are you French?” She lowered the camera to say, “Yes.” “I knew it! French people talk about sex all the time.” French Canadians, anyway. Not sure about France-French.

Roena and Loretta, the R&L who own the store, were lovely. Someone had already asked for Terminally Ill based on my CBC Ontario Morning interview, so they took the Hope Sze series, as well as all my other books. They hosted the my Books and Bodies event in September 2014 (belly dancing pic with Joseline Beaulieu below), and made a huge window display with a dancing skeleton in my scrubs in honour of the event (Terminally Ill=skeleton, Student Body=dancing). I can’t find the pics right now, but trust me, it was spectacular and an author’s dream come true.

They make their own gingerbread and sell crafts, used books and new books, including books by local authors like Jennifer Debruin.

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They make gingerbread, too. Houses, cookies, and lollipops. So all you non-readers but eaters, start salivating now.

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Books & bodies with Joseline Beaulieu, Sept 2014

So get thee to R&L Book Nook! You can park at Gaetan’s Chip Stand and fill your mind and body with literature, gingerbread, and French fries!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an aside: an hour ago, Pat Larkin bought my fifth-last trade paperback of Stockholm Syndrome. In fact, he bought the entire set for his daughter, Amy, a vet student in Calgary.

IMG_9307 Pat really went the extra mile here. He couldn’t get the Hope books in Williamstown, so he contacted me through my website. Then we played telephone tag until Amy flew back to Calgary. But Pat still drove to my house today, theoretically on his way to Cornwall (which is the other way), bought the entire series, and then inspected my electrical wiring and generator to give me tips on how to get my house wired up properly in case of another ice storm. (Summary: I will probably set up an automatic generator in the New Year. Our generator is too small, and we need a transfer switch.)

It doesn’t get any better than that.

But if you go to R&L’s Book Nook, you can make up your own story. Hey, I was there twice yesterday.

As the French Canadians also say, Gogogogogogogo!

R&L’s Book Nook in Alexandria: 58 Alexandria Main/Alexandria, ON/K0C 1A0/(613)525-9940

rlbooknook@eastlink.ca

And I’m embedding the Cogeco interview because I wasn’t able to post it until late yesterday:

Book trailers, freaks, and bears, oh my

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I now have a silent partner who asked me for a book trailer. I never got into those, but NOW I HAVE.

All I can say is, Thank God for iMovie. And the Freak Fandango Orchestra. Any thumbs up appreciated.

Denise Nielsen said their music warmed her up on this cold January day. They’re a Barcelona-based group that tours the world.

I’m also hard at work on Stockholm Syndrome, the fourth Hope Sze novel, where Hope gets taken hostage on the obstetric ward.

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Dr. Severine Laplante gave me a tour of St. Mary’s Hospital, updated my obstetric knowledge, and introduced me to a new Russian restaurant, La Caverne. We started off with a light carrot salad, then borscht served in wooden bowls with wooden spoons, and finished off with Pelmenis (pierogi things). Yum!

Also, my lovelies, I’m finally raising my cheap e-book prices shortly, so consider yourselves forewarned.

Come say hi at the  University of Ottawa Healthcare Symposium (UOHS) on January 24th and the Canadian Federation of University Women on the 27th. I don’t bite. Much.

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My new profile pic?

breaking bones cover

Will rise from $2.99 to $3.99

yoga cover NEW octavia ganesha 6x9 with SKULL

Will leap from $2.99 to $5.99

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Will scale from 99 cents to $2.99

Calling a Code: Code Blues Free for Digital Book Day!

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It’s Digital Book Day tomorrow!

In celebration, for the very first time, Code Blues e-book will be free on July 14th, 2014. To download it in the format of your choice, go to Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/81693?ref=melissayuaninnes) and enter the code GT24E.

Or download it directly from your friendly neighbourhood Kobo (http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/code-blues).

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Make sure you go to the Digital Book Day website to download up to 407 books, completely free, in genres like mystery, thrillers, sf and romance. You have to page down for the literature, YA and non-fiction, but it’s there.

I know I’m working on Monday, but I’m going to try and get up early or stay up late so that I can gorge myself on words.

I’m happy to see that Code Blues is quite high up on the landing page. At the top of mystery-thriller are CJ Lyons, the pediatric emergentologist turned NYT bestseller who organized the entire shebang; JF Penn, thriller author, speaker, and publishing maven; and Bob Meyer, the only bestseller I know who used to be a Green Beret. But if you go down another four books, there’s me! Sometimes, the late bird does catch the worm!

Dr. Hope Sze rolls into Montreal with three simple goals: 1) survive her family medicine residency, 2) try pain au chocolat, 3) go on a date sometime in the next two years.

Then she discovers a doctor’s body in the locker room. When she tries to uncover his killer, two men dive in to help her.

The one man with charm to burn, the one man who makes her melt, has zero alibi. Code Blues.

Because medicine can be murder.

Written by an emergency physician trained in the crumbling corridors of Montreal, Canada.

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And hey, if you’ve already paid full price for the first three Hope Sze novels, don’t be bitter. It just means that you’re helping to support an writer with two small children. Plus, if you bought them in paperback, you get 50% off the print version of Student Body, the brand new Hope novella, at our yoga-belly dancing-book launch September 20th.

The e-novella is on sale this summer for everyone, for 99 cents!

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Snoopy dance! In a dignified doctor-y sort of way, of course.

 

A few reviews of Code Blues, to whet your appetite:

 

“Terrific fun.” –Veronica Hares, R.N.

 

“I had just finished a night shift. My boys were coming come on the school bus. And I could not put the flipping book down.” –D. Poilly, M.D.

(If any of you know Dr. Poilly, these are strong words!)

 

I really enjoyed this fast-paced mystery.

Having lived in Montreal, I found the references to the city hilarious as well as relevant.

Hope is a truly likeable and very realistic character-I will certainly be reading the next books in this series, and am looking forward to her developing comfort with the hospital and the city.

A lot of fun to read, and a book that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

–Anne Zoeller

 

This is a wonderful first entry into what promises to be an on-going mystery series.

There’s a murder and suspects and romance and a white-knuckle finish.

But what really makes this story work and stick with you isn’t all of the above, but the carefully drawn picture of its world and characters.

The protagonist is a new medical resident in the physically deteriorating Montreal anglophone medical system. The facilities are crumbling, and the author skillfully paints a series of characters whose walls are crumbling too. This is a novel partly concerned with boundaries: professional boundaries (when does a physician give ‘too much’), romantic boundaries, relationships that are too co-dependent or too enmeshed to be truly healthy, despite how compelling and driven the characters find them. The novel is partly a meditation on compulsion and addiction–when does the goal-directed driven nature required of medical students and doctors slip over the line from adaptive and necessary to harmful?

—Gregory L. Smith

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So c’mon. Get it while it’s free! Coupon code GT24E here, or just load up your Kobo here. If you leave a positive review, the book fairy will do a foxtrot.

You can also buy the print book from your friendly neighbourhood retailers, listed here. But I’ve got to give a special shout out to R&L’s Book Nook, which is hosting the Alexandria portion of Books & Bodies on September 20th.

Read, read, read!