Entertaining and Enjoyable Read for People of all Ages! (On A L.A.R.P. by Stefani Deoul)

Entertaining and Enjoyable Read for People of all Ages, March 31, 2017

By 

G.W. Pomichter

At 200 pages (Kindle) this is a great few of hours, spent immersed in a a youthful and fun mystery read!

Not typically one for a YA story, (well not anymore), I am so glad I decided to take a look at this one. Stefani Deoul really put all her knowledge and experience as a story-teller on both the page and the small screen to work to deliver a dynamic and immersive as well as original tale. As she describes, On a LARP introduces us to a young teen coder (That’s compu-speak for all of us middle aged folks). Sid Rubin is a typical teen smartass, well typical if your teen is a super-smart high school kid with a strong conscience and a knack for solving problems. (Happily mine were).

The secret to a great YA story to me is in the point of view. It is important to feel yourself, no matter how old you are in the shoes of the protagonist, and from word one, Deoul puts her readers there fro page one.

“Do any of you know the truly scary part about being seventeen?”

Answer: “Your brain doesn't actually know, understand or care what it can't do; and, while this sounds great in theory, in my particular case, my under-developed brain apparently didn't know I couldn't fly.

So I jumped . . .
And I plummeted . . .”

When young Sid sees the photo of a murder victim during a field trip to the police station, her keen eye soon finds her and her friends chasing a “dark web” (another techno-term I’ve always loved) killer through the middle of a live action role playing game, and hey, who doesn’t want to LARP through a murder mystery.

This story is an energetic and youthful ride that really delves into the fascinating world of interactive role-playing (or L.A.R.P.-ing), Ted Talks, teenage heartbreak, suspicious parents, oh, and some really cool “Cosplay.”

This, of course, is not the first literary run for the award winning Deoul, who is the author of the novel The Carousel, and who has produced TV series such as The Dead Zone, Brave New Girl, and Haven, as well as being the executive in charge of production for the series Dresden Files and Missing, but tackling a YA story might have seemed like the road less traveled to her at first. It is, however, a path she navigated to perfection providing an entertaining and enjoyable read for people of all ages.


https://www.amazon.com/LARP-Rubin-Silicon-Alley-Adventure-ebook/dp/B06X6L1RKY

5.0 out of 5 stars Very entertaining and insightful tale!,

Murder. Mayhem. Intrigue. Racial tensions. When a charred body is discovered in the ashes of the Phoenix Hotel, all of these things are ignited and author Gwen Mayo pulls readers into a complex and well-crafted world of mystery and melodrama.

Mayo’s former Pinkerton Agent turned detective, Nessa Donnelly, is a character that readers won’t soon forget. She left an impoverished past behind to become one of Kentucky's most prominent detectives. Mayo’s thorough exploration of the character makes her all the more sympathetic and is bound to tether readers to the adventure.

This is a story that centers around a murder, but it is easy to suspend disbelief, as Mayo’s reach extends beyond the crime scene into the community and the interconnected lives of its residents.

Mayo writes,”Rival forces are threatening to pull the city apart as the murder ignites old hatreds. Klansmen attack a local police sergeant with family ties to O'Brien.”

This is story strikes a contemporary nerve and is more than a simple murder mystery as it delves into the complex dynamics of racial relations, small town interconnectivity, and human deceits.

Concealed in Ash is a slam dunk and a story that I found both compelling and entertaining!

Latest Review of Lot 28: Thank you JC Brennan

It is so touching and humbling when you know you've entertained and really connected with a reader like this.  The above review was authored by fellow writer JC Brennan, who shared it with me on Twitter.  JC Brennan is the author of The Ancients series which can be found on Amazon.com.  I've only recently started the first book, A Fine Line, and it is wonderful journey I;m looking forward to.

G.W. Pomichter

Lot 28:  http://www.amazon.com/Lot-28-Lucky-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B011PLFN6S

JC Brennan on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Fine-Line-Ancients-Part-ebook/dp/B00TMMD80G

Life After Lucky (The Philandering Fella)

PREVIEW

It was 7:30am on a hot August morning. The alarm clock rang out, murdering a restful night’s sleep. A knock at the door seemed to echo through his one room loft apartment and office.

Will slowly sat up from the sofa where he’d laid all night. He rotated his legs to one side as if they were weighted — first one and then the other. The rhythmic knocking continued and hastened.

“I’ll be right there!” Will said as he stood abruptly, shaking the final moments of his slumber from his muscular shoulders.

As he passed by his desk, he pulled off its top a half-full coffee cup, and smelling it first to test it, he took a sip and placed the cup on the side of a small sink that appeared to jut from wall of the room. As he turned the sink on, he reached behind him to the doorknob on the left, turned the knob and opened the door dismissively.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” said the bouncy Molly as she walked happily into the room.

Molly had been coming by each morning, almost without exception, since Lucky had left the police force and moved from his apartment into the office flat. Each day she brought Will a fresh cup of coffee and a cardboard take-out container in a plain, brown paper bag, filled with eggs and bacon from the corner drug store.

As she had done hundreds of times before, it seemed, she swept through the door while Lucky washed his hands and face, and placed the plain paper bag on the desk. She proceeded to walk to the sofa, pick up the blankets Lucky had strewn beneath, folded them and placed them gently on top of a steel filing cabinet in the corner of the room.

“How’s tricks, Will?” She asked cheerfully.

Lucky turned from the sink and passed Molly as he reached into a pile of clothes on top of an end table near the sofa and grabbed a clean shirt.

“The same as yesterday,” he said half-heartedly, holding up his shirt before he put it on. “Just doing somebody else’s laundry.”

A few months after leaving the police force, Will had applied and been granted a license as a private investigator by the city. The past several months since hadn’t been exactly the life he thought it would be.

Most of his clients were middle-aged men or women, looking for an estranged spouse or sibling that had disappeared quite intentionally. Some were jilted lovers or wives and husbands suspecting unfaithful partners. The work was more jading than adventurous.

“Nope,” said Molly. “Today is going to be the day you get a big case. I just know it! At least you’re not stuck in the basement digging up old ‘perp files for that ritzy robbery case they’ve all been figuring.”

Lucky finished dressing and searched from the coat rack to the table top for his favorite tie. Finding it rolled up on the corner of the desk, he wrapped it around his neck and began to fumble with it.

“I sure hope so,” he said, reluctantly surrendering to her optimism.

Molly stepped toward Will and finished adjusting his tie and folding down his collar. As she stepped back away, she smiled.

G.W. Pomichter's
The Lucky Marks Mysteries

“I’ll see you tonight?” she queried playfully. “We’re going to dinner after I get off at the station, right?”

“Sure thing,” Lucky replied. “I can’t wait.”

He smiled back at her. He couldn’t help but remember how dismissive he had been to her when he first arrived home from the war. He wondered, now, why she was so happy to be around him after all that had happened.

“Stay out of trouble, and I’ll see ya later, handsome,” she said as she straightened her hat on her head, opened the door and left, pulling it closed behind her. The foggy grey glass window on the door made a rattling sound as the door latched.

Lucky waved as she departed and smiled as he peered at his companion through the etched letters, that from his vantage point, spelled out “Lucky Marks: Private Investigator” backward in the grey glass.

He reached behind him to the coat and hat rack, grabbed his suit jacket and slid it on confidently, then rounded the corner of the desk and sat behind it in the wheeled wooden chair. He placed his interlaced hands at the back of his head and rocked back and forth with a satisfied contentment. No longer in surrender to Molly’s morning cheer, he could feel his own sense of hope and optimism rising inside him.

“Today’s going to be a good day,” he said rhetorically.

Get The Philandering Fella on iTunes for iBooks:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1073313650

Get The Philandering Fella on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Philandering-Fella-Files-Lucky-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B01ADJMZ46

Florida Today Newspaper: Classic Hollywood who-done-it penned by Brevard author

G.W. Pomichter, a graduate of Florida Air Academy and Eastern Florida State College, has released his latest noir detective novel, “Lot 28” ($9.99, Create Space). Set in Hollywood in the summer of 1953, the story follows private eye William Lucky Marks as he investigates the murder of a famed director on the set of his blockbuster movie “Witness to the Act.” Marks must navigate the treacherous drama of Hollywood filmmaking, sort through the gossip and innuendo, and challenge his own prejudices to catch the killer before time runs out.

In a news release, Pomichter describes the book as a classic mystery. “It is always fun to write a story with such amazing roots in modern literature,” Pomichter wrote. “With ‘Lot 28,’ I really wanted to have a bit of fun with the who-done-it style familiar from ‘Clue’or ‘And Then There Were None.’” The book is available at online retailers, and more can be found at gwpomichter.wix.com.

MORE:  http://www.floridatoday.com/story/life/books/local-authors/2015/08/01/classic-hollywood-done-penned-brevard-author/30931033/

Buy Lot 28 on iTunes for iBooks & Get Lucky FREE (BoGo: Buy 1 Get 1)

Buy 1

Get 1

#MotivationMonday Get #Lot28 $0.99 for @iBooks on @iTunes & get #Lucky #FREE #IARTG #IndieBooksBeSeen #BookBoost 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/g.w.-pomichter/id887459009

Pre-Orders Now On Sale of Florida author’s new ‘Who-Done-It’ are Being in time f next week’s “Indie Book Fest” in Orlando

MELBOURNE, FL —author G.W. Pomichter is pleased to announce his newest book, “Lot 28” is available for Pre-Order from online retailers, Amazon, B&N, Apple and more. The Paperback is also available at these retail outlets in anticipation of the book’s release on July 29, 2015.

“Lot 28” is a sequel to Pomichter’s homage to classic noir, “Lucky,” which has soared to success since its June 2014 release. “Lucky” has sat in Amazon’s top 100 several times during 2014/15, and has gathered a significant social media following.

“Lot 28” follows Pomichter’s William Lucky Marks character on another murder mystery case, this time set in 1950’s Hollywood.

G.W. Pomichter describes the novella as a look at the more classic mystery “who-done-it” genre.

“It is always fun to write a story with such amazing roots in modern literature,” Pomichter said. “When we first read ‘Lucky,’ we are taken on a very nostalgic journey into the darker noir fiction of the 1930s and 40s. With ‘Lot 28,’ I really wanted to have a bit of fun with the “who-done-it” style familiar from ‘Clue’ or ‘And Then There Were None.’”

Pomichter summarizes the story, writing:

“In the summer of 1953, Private Investigator, Will “Lucky” Marks, was working as the in-house private eye for Arcane Pacific Pictures. That’s the summer when famed director Allister Walters was brutally stabbed to death on the scene of his last blockbuster hit mystery, the 1953 noir cult classic, “Witness to the Act.” Lucky is on the scene, and is pulled into this deliciously, deceitful drama of Hollywood film-making. Trapped inside the studio with the killer, Lucky must sort through arcane stereotypes, and challenge common perceptions of the time, as well as his own prejudices in order to sort through the gossip, innuendo and intrigue, to find the killer before time runs out. This movie murder mystery will pit Lucky against some of the most deceitful creatures on earth: movie stars.”

Pomichter claims that “Lot 28” was written to stand alone as its own story, but that fans and readers of “Lucky” will still get enough to demonstrate the connection between the two books.

“In this story, we get to see that Lucky suffers some consequences of the first book,” Pomichter said. “He isn’t as prepared as he should be for this case, because of his impatience in the first story. It means it takes a bit longer for him to fit the pieces together. Of course we also reference characters from book one, and some of our visual descriptions are meant to evoke images from the first as well. But in all, set as a different kind of story on the precipice of a different era, ‘Lot28’ stands by itself.”

“Lot 28” will be released in both e-book and in paperback at online book stores: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple’s popular iBooks, Kobo, Scrib’d and GooglePlay on July 29, 2015.

G.W. Pomichter will debut the book in paperback at the 2015 Indie Book Fest from July 31 thru August 2 at the Caribe Royale Hotel in Orlando, Florida. For more information about Indie Book Fest, visit http://www.indiebookfestcon.com on the internet.

For information about “Lot 28” or Author G.W. Pomichter, visit http://gwpomichter.wix.com/gw-pomichter on the web.

Pre-Order:
http://www.amazon.com/Lot-28-Lucky-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B011PLFN6S 
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/G_W_Pomichter_Lot_28?id=0B8qCgAAQBAJ 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lot-28-gw-pomichter/1122306980 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1019799220 

Contact G.W. Pomichter by e-mail at gwpomichter@gmail.com or by telephone at (321) 243-8463.

Florida indie author launches new ‘Who-Done-It’ at “Indie Book Fest” in Orlando (July 31-Aug. 2)

MELBOURNE, FL — Independent author G.W. Pomichter is pleased to announce his newest book, “Lot 28” set for release on July 29, 2015.

“Lot 28” is a sequel to Pomichter’s homage to classic noir, “Lucky,” which has soared to success since its June 2014 release.  “Lucky” has sat in Amazon’s top 100 several times during 2014/15, and has gathered a significant social media following.

“Lot 28” follows Pomichter’s William Lucky Marks character on another murder mystery case, this time set in 1950’s Hollywood.

G.W. Pomichter describes the novella as a look at the more classic mystery “who-done-it” genre.

“It is always fun to write a story with such amazing roots in modern literature,” Pomichter said.  “When we first read ‘Lucky,’ we are taken on a very nostalgic journey into the darker noir fiction of the 1930s and 40s.  With ‘Lot 28,’ I really wanted to have a bit of fun with the “who-done-it” style familiar from ‘Clue’ or ‘And Then There Were None.’”

Pomichter summarizes the story, writing:

“In the summer of 1953, Private Investigator, Will “Lucky” Marks, was working as the in-house private eye for Arcane Pacific Pictures. That’s the summer when famed director Allister Walters was brutally stabbed to death on the scene of his last blockbuster hit mystery, the 1953 noir cult classic, “Witness to the Act.” Lucky is on the scene, and is pulled into this deliciously, deceitful drama of Hollywood film-making. Trapped inside the studio with the killer, Lucky must sort through arcane stereotypes, and challenge common perceptions of the time, as well as his own prejudices in order to sort through the gossip, innuendo and intrigue, to find the killer before time runs out. This movie murder mystery will pit Lucky against some of the most deceitful creatures on earth: movie stars.”

Pomichter claims that “Lot 28” was written to stand alone as its own story, but that fans and readers of “Lucky” will still get enough to demonstrate the connection between the two books. 

“In this story, we get to see that Lucky suffers some consequences of the first book,” Pomichter said.  “He isn’t as prepared as he should be for this case, because of his impatience in the first story.  It means it takes a bit longer for him to fit the pieces together.  Of course we also reference characters from book one, and some of our visual descriptions are meant to evoke images from the first as well.  But in all, set as a different kind of story on the precipice of a different era, ‘Lot28’ stands by itself.”

“Lot 28” will be released in both e-book and in paperback at online book stores: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Apple’s popular iBooks, Kobo, Scrib’d and GooglePlay on July 29, 2015.

G.W. Pomichter will debut the book in paperback at the 2015 Indie Book Fest from July 31 thru August 2 at the Caribe Royale Hotel in Orlando, Florida.  For more information about Indie Book Fest, visit http://www.indiebookfestcon.com on the internet.

For information about “Lot 28” or Author G.W. Pomichter, visit http://gwpomichter.wix.com/gw-pomichter on the web.

Contact G.W. Pomichter by e-mail at gwpomichter@gmail.com or by telephone at (321) 243-8463.

PRE-Order for Apple IOS and iBooks from iTunes NOW

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1019799220

"Lucky" rises to #4 Noir in the Amazon Kindle Store

"I am humbled and grateful to know that people have accepted this story, and have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it."

Garrett (G.W. Pomichter) 

"With so many terrific stories to choose, it's a very fulfilling and incredibly humbling feeling to know that so many readers have connected with these great characters.  What can one say, besides: 'Thank you and may God bless you all.'"

Garrett (G.W. Pomichter)

"Just seeing that excellent cover by Jay Aheer sitting in the top 4 Noir mysteries in the Amazon Kindle store: it is a sobering reminder that this experience is far from a solitary one.  It is truly a team effort and a community experience.  It's a kind of elegant dance between the writer, editors, designers, reviewers and all centered around our readers.  It's a thing of great beauty to behold."

Garrett (G.W. Pomichter) 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KUYZWVS