Kindle Fire HD raffle for Charity from Author Graham Parke

“I'm very polite by nature, even the voices in my head let each other finish their sentences.” – from Completely Flappable

Don’t you just hate it when you have a thousand little thoughts rattling around your brain, good for nothing but keeping you up at night? Ideas, worries, mental reminders for the next day? My voices can get pretty insistent, and mostly this is a nuisance, but sometimes it’s okay, when there’s a story idea or two among the ramblings. And rarely, very rarely, I get what I think is a really good idea, but one that I don't know what to do with.

For instance, a while ago it occurred to me that it’s probably not governments or big corporations that wield the world’s greatest financial power. I think it’s us. All the little people together. Then I started wondering what could happen if we all decided to set 1 month of our incomes aside towards fixing this place up a bit. How many of the world’s problems could we actually solve permanently? Half of them, maybe? All of them? That's a pretty cool picture.

But I’m a pretty dim light when it comes to implementing even small ideas, never mind the big ones. So I’m not sure how to get that ball rolling (heck, I'm not even sure where we keep the balls). But I can certainly start with myself. That’s easy enough (I’ve been in close contact with myself for years; I didn't have much trouble convincing myself.)

So, this December, all proceeds of all my novels will go to Child Helpline International. The CHI is pretty cool because they support toll-free child helplines worldwide and they help highlight gaps in child protection systems. They do all this on donations (click the image below for more information.)


But what does all this have to do with you? Well, I'm raffling off some prizes and giving out some freebees to boost the donation (expenses out of my own pocket, not the donation :P )

So what's in it for you, besides that warm, fuzzy feeling you'll get knowing the Xmas presents you’re buying include an automatic donation? Well, how about I give you the new edition to the award winning No Hope for Gomez saga completely free?
And how about a Kindle Fire HD raffle ticket with every purchase while we’re at it?
Simply forward your receipt emails to nohopeforgomez@gmail.com to participate.

And now, on to the pitch. This is the bit where I try to convince you, using only my words, that my novels don’t suck (or at least, not too much.) That they won’t only tickle your brain, but they’ll actually make your life better, if only marginally. That they are, in fact, worthy donation material. Here goes (fingers crossed)...

Paper: $6.08 Kindle:$2.99 (uk paper, kindle)

No Hope for Gomez! Winner of the Forewords Book of the Year Awards, featured on Kirkus Best Indie List 2011, IBA and USA Book News Award nominee. It's the age-old tale:   Boy meets girl.   Boy stalks girl.   Girl already has a stalker.   Boy becomes her stalker-stalker. We've seen it all before, many times, but this time it's different. If only slightly.

"Extremely witty writing containing keen insights into human nature." --California Chronicle
"Challenges the way we think about, and interact with, the world around us." --Kirkus Discoveries
"The antics in this book will leave the reader laughing. Graham Parke is a genius."--Reader's Favorite

Unspent Time Warning: reading this novel may make you more attractive and elevate your random luck by about 9.332%* (*These statements have not been evaluated by anyone of consequence) Permeating the cracks between the past and the present is the realm of Unspent Time. Time that was allotted but never spent. In this realm we find the stories that could have been true. Such as the story of the designer of the color scheme used inside your shoe, or the story of Goki Feng Ho: the Chinese art of decoding the secret meaning of car license plates.

Paper: $6.08 Kindle:$2.99 ePub : $2.99 (uk paper, kindle)

“Captivating. Each story fired up my imagination.” – Alan H. Jordan, author.
"Delightfully mad. Graham's vibrant characters shine from the first page." --Tahlia Newland, author.

Free with this event

Completely Flappable “He’s completely flappable!” “Don’t you mean he’s unflappable?” “Not really. He can very easily be flapped.” Gomez has never been on a date. In his 27 years on the planet he’s never been able to quite close the deal. For some reason, circumstances always conspire to make his meet-ups with women less than official dates. But now a blond German girl with freckles has moved into his building and he decides it’s time to get his act together.

If you've read this far, you're already my hero ;)
I hope you like my idea enough to join me in this fun adventure. Let's see how much we can raise this Xmas ;)

Kind regards,

Graham Parke

Mystic Predicts Future Accurately! by Graham Parke

I’ve recently become a master in Goki Feng Ho, the ancient Chinese art of decoding license plates. It has, you can imagine, changed my life dramatically and for the better.



Like most practitioners, I’ve always had this suspicion that there’s more to life. That we can’t be mere random collections of molecules with no higher purpose than figuring out how not to soil ourselves while we keep our bodies running as long as possible. Such a view has always seemed too arbitrary to me. So, ever since I was a child, whenever I saw my initials – or part of my date of birth – pop up on a car license plate, I’d get that uneasy feeling. As if there was something I needed to do, or that I was supposed to realize. As if someone was sending me coded messages. Even at a very young age, I understood that something like Goki Feng Ho must exist, and that I was drawn to it like a moth to a particularly nice lady moth.

So, I was both surprised and not-really-all-that-surprised when a friend gave me this book on Goki Feng Ho. I started reading and became hooked. Even the relatively scarce historical background was interesting to me on so many levels. Although much is lost about how Goki Feng Ho first came to the west, the stories about its initial discoverer, master Hung Lee, survive, and I dare say they’d constitute fascinating reading for even the hardened skeptic.

From the early days of receiving his gift in the mail (though some claim he received it in a dream) to his struggles to find disciples to whom to pass it down, Hung Lee’s story is a heartwarming one. Obviously his life was made particularly challenging by the absence of license plates, or even cars, at the time. I have found no record of what the first Goki Feng Hoos practiced and honed their skills on, but I assume they invented plates for each other to decode, or borrowed some from the Germans.

At the time, though, Chinese mystics were known to keep their gifts a secret, passing them down only to family members. Lee broke this mold when he became the first mystic to offer up his gift to the general public. But even then, the story goes, he had trouble finding anyone who was remotely interested. There are parables of Lee raffling off free Kindles and iPods among his disciples, but, again, he was too far ahead of his time. No one understood what he was talking about. He finally found a handful of willing participants at a local mental hospital, after raffling off a small pig and some sticks. And even though lived to be a hundred and fifty, it is said he never managed to earn those back.

Bio:

Graham Parke is responsible for a number of technical publications and has recently patented a self-folding map. He has been described as both a humanitarian and a pathological liar. Convincing evidence to support either allegation has yet to be produced.

The award winning No Hope for Gomez! is his fiction debut: Boy meets girl. Boy stalks girl. Girl already has a stalker. Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.

Summer of Gomez Winners!

Summer of Gomez Winners

"Every once in a while you come across a novel so fresh and new it reacquaints you with feelings of childhood wonder. The novel my neighbor, Warren, wrote was my first example of the exact opposite of this."
-- Gomez in 'No Hope for Gomez!'

Blogger Kindle Winner: Serena from SavvyVerseandWit.com Reader Kindle Winner: Arthur Hall (US) Reader iPod Winner: Lynn Bassler (US) Limited edition Winners: Ebehireme Iyoha (US) Yasmin Raad Muhi (Mal) Sarah Bibi Setar (SA) Gemma Richardson (UK) David Lane (US)

Thanks to everyone who decided to make the summer of 2011 an official Summer of Gomez! I for one had a lot of fun and lost only a little bit of hair (and a few teeth) over the administration. A small price to pay of course.

Let's try something great next year as well.

Guest Blogger: Is It Like Listening To You Talk? by Graham Parke, Author of No Hope for Gomez!

As you probably know, to become an internationally best-selling author, you need to sell three books. This is not an easy task, but once you’ve managed to rack up these three sales, the rest is more or less a done deal.

Now, these sales themselves will not put you on the best-seller lists. They won’t even put you within a million spots of the bottom of the lists, but what they will do, and what they do every time, is spark a slowly growing buying frenzy that will get you there.

These three people will love your book, they will tell another five people, who in turn tell another seven. Within roughly four-and-a-half weeks, you finally make your first million.

That’s how it happens. Every single time.

But, how does an author tackle this monumental task? Where does he find these three readers?

I myself was quite lucky. When my novel appeared on Amazon I already knew over five people! What’s more, some of these people even liked me... somewhat. So I set out to become an internationally best-selling author by convincing at least three of these five people to buy my novel.

I started with my mother. Of all the five people I knew, I probably knew her the longest. I showed her my Amazon page and she nodded approvingly. She did not, however, make any attempts to buy a copy. So I logged on for her, navigated back to my novel’s page, and left the mouse pointer conveniently positioned over the BUY button.

She read the novel description again, searched-inside-this-book, and nodded some more. When I asked her if she’d like to buy a copy, she scrunched up her nose and said;

‘But what if I don’t like it?’
I told her not to worry. ‘It’s a really good book,’ I said. ‘I should know. I’ve re-written it like 50 times. It’s really funny and interesting.’
My mother wasn’t convinced. ‘I’m not really into comedy writing, though,’ she said.
‘It’s not just a comedy,’ I pointed out. ‘It has a real story; it’s a mystery. And it has twists and turns and believable characters.’
My mother hesitated. ‘Maybe I should just play it safe and buy another Stephen King novel…’

I ended up having to offer a personal money-back guarantee, and purchase a copy using my own credit card for the time being, but she finally cracked. I’d made my first sale!

Next, I prodded my wife. Although she did like words in general, she wasn’t sure she was up for reading and entire book full of them. ‘Is this like your usual stuff?’ she wanted to know.
‘What usual stuff?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Is it like listening to you talk?’
‘What’s wrong with they way I talk?’
‘Nothing. It’s just, well, sometimes you talk a lot of nonsense.’
I waved it away. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I am much more interesting and ‘telligible’ on paper.’

Long story short; my second sale is almost in the bag. Now I just need to find one more person to buy my novel, and I’ll be set for life!


Check out the Summer of Gomez!


Get free books and win a Kindle or iPod.

As reviewers have been calling “No Hope for Gomez!” the perfect summer read - light, fast, fun - I decided to give this summer's Gomez readers some exclusive content and the chance to win prizes.

The Summer of Gomez! Contest

It's the Summer of Gomez!

Get free books and win a Kindle or iPod.

As reviewers have been calling “No Hope for Gomez!” the perfect summer read - light, fast, fun - I decided to give this summer's Gomez readers some exclusive content and the chance to win prizes.

About No Hope for Gomez!

It's the age-old tale:  -   Boy meets girl.  -   Boy stalks girl.  -   Girl already has a stalker.  -   Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.    We've seen it all before, many times, but this time it's different. If only slightly.     When Gomez Porter becomes a test subject in an experimental drug trial, he is asked to keep track of any strange experiences through a blog.

What Gomez isn't ready for, is so many of his experiences suddenly seeming strange; the antiques dealer trying to buy his old tax papers, the phone-sex salesman who hounds him day and night, the super sexy lab assistant who falls for him but is unable to express herself in terms outside the realm of science.

   But when one of the trial participants turns up dead and another goes missing, Gomez begins to fear for his life. No longer sure who he can trust and which of his experiences are real and which merely drug induced delusions, he decides it's time to go underground and work out a devious plan.
Read a chapter.



Nominated for Book of the Year by both ForeWord Reviews and USA Book News, here's what reviewers have to say about "No Hope for Gomez!":

“Extremely witty and clever writing.” -- California Chronicle

"An unputdownable read. a Coens Brothers' film in book form." -- BookReview.com

"A veritable page turner of nonstop laughs!" -- Reader Views

"A Party for your Brain!" -- Warren Baxter

Warning: clinical studies have shown that reading this novel is likely to make you more attractive to the opposite sex and elevate your random luck by about 9.5%**

(** These statements have not been evaluated by any person of consequence!)

With every cool summer party comes a gift bag, so here's just some of the stuff all summer readers will get:

• Exclusive new story collection
• No Hope for Gomez: The Lost Chapters
• Making of Gomez: behind the scenes eBook
• Signed hi-res poster + bookplate

Additionally, several lucky readers will win a prize. I'm raffling off a Kindle, an iPod Nano 8GB, and five exclusive spin-off paperback novels that are not available elsewhere!

All you have to do to have a "Summer of Gomez" is get the book from any store before July 12th 2011 and forward your receipt to nohopeforgomez@gmail.com.(Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Amazon CA, Amazon UK, Amazon DE)

Every purchase counts as an entry so increase your chances by stocking up on some extremely cool birthday presents ;)

Points towards additional entries are gained by getting your friends to join in, and tweeting/blogging/face-booking (is that a verb?) about the summer of Gomez.Tweet



Bio:

Graham Parke is responsible for a number of technical publications and has recently patented a self-folding map. He has been described as both a humanitarian and a pathological liar. Convincing evidence to support either allegation has yet to be produced.

http://www.grahamparke.com/
http://www.grahamparke.blogspot.com/
GoodReads
Facebook

James Cameron's Autograph--Almost by Graham Parke, Author of No Hope for Gomez!

I almost met James Cameron today!

Just to be clear, it wasn't that the Avatar 3D director and I just missed each other, it was just that it was almost him, but slightly, just slightly mind you, someone else. I hate when that happens. You get so close, then, nothing…

But this incident started me thinking. This kind of thing has been happening to me a lot lately. And not only with celebrities. Just the other day, I almost ran into Garry, a friend of mine. From a distance, at an angle, it looked exactly like him. A dead-ringer. Could have fooled his own mother. It wasn't until I came closer, and he turned his head a few degrees to the left, that he revealed himself to be just a little bit someone else. The thing was, when I walked passed him, he gave me a long, thoughtful look. He looked me over, then shook his head and turned away. But I knew what it meant. I knew exactly what he was thinking. He had almost recognized me back!

Now, almost-Garry almost recognizing me back made the whole situation much more complicated. My mind went haywire, trying to understand this, trying to figure out the underlying meaning. Was it possible for someone who was almost Garry but not quite, to recognize me but only slightly? Was it? And, if so, what was I to him exactly? Was I someone who looked like someone he knew? It was hard to say, but it was unlikely. All I knew for a fact was that I was someone who was known by someone he looked like, but who wasn't him. And, in fact, to be fair, he probably didn't even realize that he was almost Garry but not quite.

Are you still following me?

Probably not. Probably your brain isn't defective to the point of reasoning this way. Good for you. You're better off for it. So, let's back-track a little. Let's just assume that the easiest explanation is the correct one. It usually is. And if it isn't, it should be. Really. Life is hard enough already.

So, I almost recognized Garry, and almost-Garry almost recognized me (that look was unmistakable). This must mean that there is another Graham-and-Gary combo out there. This almost-Gary actually knows an almost-Graham. And this idea has big implications. As you know, and understand inherently in the core of your being, the universe is nothing if not a little fractally-inclined. Recursion-mad. If there are two sets, there must be more. There are probably thousands. Thousands of Graham-and-Gary combos. And this, of course, is upsetting. Because the first question that comes to my mind is, what if some of them are better at being a Graham and Gary combo? In fact; what if most of them are better? What if my friend Gary and I are in fact the worst of the bunch?

So, to summarize, I did ask almost-James Cameron for his autograph. Of course I did. I'm no fool. So, if you're interested in almost-autographs, check out my store on eBay. You won't be disappointed!



Bio:

Graham Parke is responsible for a number of technical publications and has recently patented a self-folding map. He has been described as both a humanitarian and a pathological liar. Convincing evidence to support either allegation has yet to be produced.

No Hope for Gomez! is his fiction debut: Boy meets girl. Boy stalks girl. Girl already has a stalker. Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.

Follow Graham's blog here