Bill Kassel's Blog

HERE’S THE LAST EXCERPT
FROM MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

I hope you’re enjoying these readings from my novel. And I hope they’ll entice you to read the entire book.

I also hope that recent traffic they’ve encouraged can boost the prominence of my humble scribblings on the Net. A little nudge would be helpful.

According to a tracking service called WebStatsDomain.org, this blog comes in at 13,480,399th out of some 30 million domains. Not exactly a world beater.

In this age of niche marketing, I guess obscurity is my niche. But then, I don’t think of my readers as few in number, I think of you as elite.

Anyway, here’s the most exciting of these four excerpts — or perhaps it would be better to call it intense. Well, it has conflict, in any event, and I’ve tried to convey that in my oral interpretation.

[Read more…]

THIRD OF FOUR EXCERPTS
FROM MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

Writers take their titles seriously. You wrack your brain to construct a word combination that’s provocative and captures the spirit and thrust of your book.

And when you finally discover that magic phrase, it becomes part of you.

I think MY BROTHER’S KEEPER is a perfect title for my novel. It capsulizes the essential focus of the story: James’ struggle to protect his brother, as controversy builds around Jesus and his movement.

And it’s Biblical, to boot.

But I have to admit that those words are anything but unique on the current literary scene. There’s a whole bunch of books by that title out there. Here are just a few…

With confusion ever a possibility, please take care when searching for my book. Hint…

Google: “Bill Kassel My Brother’s Keeper.”

Or follow the links from this blog.

In the meantime, here’s another reading of an excerpt from MY BROTHER’S KEEPER — that is to say, my MY BROTHER’S KEEPER…

[Read more…]

ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM
MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

It’s exciting for authors to see their books being promoted. Of course, you can never be certain of the context in which your work appears.

This display panel from the online book site, Kobo, showed up recently in my Facebook news feed. It places my novel, MY BROTHER’S KEEPER, next to a book titled “Imperfectly,” by a writer named Coleen Masters.

Apparently that book is the ninth in a series of action romances, and a snip from its promotional copy offers the following…

“Kelly Rodgers [the book’s heroine] may be young, smart, and headstrong, but she’s no match for a biker badass like Leo. She’s never met anyone like him, he’s the worst thing to happen to her and as much as she hates to admit it…she finds him irresistible.”

Yes…well… I’m sure Leo draws Kelly into all kinds of fascinating adventures. One wonders, however, just what marketing strategy would place “Imperfectly” next to a religious/historical novel about the family of Jesus.

But then, that’s the publishing business.

And who knows how these high-tech online marketing systems work anyway?

I’ll just keep on doing my own promotional thing. So here’s my reading of a second excerpt from MY BROTHER’S KEEPER — in which Mary tells Joseph how she had been visited by a messenger of God while Joseph was away obtaining materials for a construction project…

[Read more…]

HERE’S AN EXCERPT FROM
MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

Electronic publishing is rather ephemeral. At least it seems so to me. I’m working real hard to figure out how to market an eBook. And it ain’t easy.

For instance, how can you do a book signing with nothing to write your name on? I’m told there’s software that allows you to personalize a Kindle file, but I don’t see how it might work.

Well, the one thing I can do is read from the text. Whether rendered in ink on paper or pixels on a screen, words come alive when you hear them interpreted aloud.

So here’s li’l’-ol’-me reading the first of four excerpts from my novel, MY BROTHER’S KEEPER.

This should give you a taste of the book, and (one hopes) make you want to read the whole thing.

From the first chapter — Joachim, father of Mary, visits the home of Joseph with the temple priest Zacharias. They recount Mary’s experience as a servant in the temple, and prepare to ask a favor…

[Read more…]