Outer Banks Publishing Group recently signed a four-book contract with Scifi and children’s book author Koos Verkaik of The Netherlands.
Author Koos Verkaik
Koos’ Saladin, the Wonder Horse, a four book series, is about a poor Saxon girl, who is given a special horse, Saladin, by a mysterious knight during the turbulent times in 12th century England during the reign of Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood.
The series will be published in early 2018.
Koos says he developed his own writing voice and that is what makes his books different, according to an interview with Circle of Books.
“My books are different from other writers, they are all typical ‘Koos Verkaik Books’. I love it to make the reader wonder what it is all about and where it will lead to. But I never liked books that end without the reader knowing what it was all about. Therefore I always come up with explanations. Why one should buy them? Buy one of my books and I take you by the hand, lead your through the most insane situations, you will have a great time and after having read the last word, you will say: “Yes, that was worthwhile!” Up to the next Koos Verkaik Book!”
Koos,a ‘Dutchy’ with spunk and an inexhaustible drive and fathomless imagination, is one of the most prolific authors of Scifi and children’s books in The Netherlands. His novels, All-Father and Wolf Tears, earnedhim the moniker, the Dutch Stephen King.
He wrote his first Scifi novel, Adolar, in a weekend when he was 18 years old and the manuscript was published shortly thereafter.
Koos has published over 60 books, both children’s books and novels, many hundreds of comic scripts, and he has worked as a copywriter. He is currently working on several screenplays and new novels.
Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Company will jointly publish the novel, which represents a rare foray into fiction for a former president, according to the report published in The New York Times.
You can read the rest of the story in the Times here.
Outer Banks Publishing Group author Scott Fields’ novel, The Mansfield Killings, based on the true story of the horrific murders of the Niebel family in 1948, will be made into a major motion picture in 2018.
Produced by Forbidden Tears Productions of Waldron, Arkansas, the movie will be filmed in Waldron and on location in Mansfield, Ohio and at the historic Ohio State Reformatory (OSR) also in Mansfield, where the story started. The Shawshank Redemption and Air Force One were also filmed at the reformatory.
Jennifer Anderson-Bounds, owner and producer Forbidden Tears Productions, was chosen as Female Producer of the Year 2016 and won the Humanitarian Award from WIND International Film Festival 2016. She was also awarded 2nd Place in Indie Film Festival 2015, along with a nomination for Best woman filmmaker 2015 in Barcelona.
Scott, who was three years old when the killing spree occurred, said he had dreamed all his life of writing a story that would become a movie. When he heard about the murders, he became obsessed with writing the story into a novel and completed the manuscript in four months.
When asked about his reaction to the movie deal, Scott said,
“Without doubt this is probably the most fascinating and exciting thing to ever happen to me! When I was just a little boy, my parents took me to a movie, and instead of wishing that I could be an actor, I wanted to be the guy who wrote the screenplay. It was the beginning of a dream that has been with me for about 60 years. I am not talking about an occasional dream…it was with me practically everyday.”
“My mother was a great writer, but she never pursued her talent. I inherited it but being a Kmart manager and raising a family of three kids, I had no time to write even a short story. Then after 30 years in management, I became a common worker and began to write. After having a few short stories published, I decided that it was time to try writing a novel. Since then I have had 16 novels published, but the dream was still there.”
He said at times it was difficult to write the novel because the killings were so atrocious and brutal.
The Mansfield murders was the worst two-week killing spree in Ohio’s history. On the night of July 21, 1948, Robert Daniels and John West, former inmates at the Ohio State Reformatory, entered John and Nolena Niebel’s house with loaded guns. They forced the family including the Niebel’s 21-year-old daughter, Phyllis, into their car and drove them to a cornfield just off Fleming Falls Road in Mansfield. The two men instructed the Niebels to remove all of their clothing, and then Robert Daniels shot each of them in the head.
The brutal murders caught national attention in the media, but the killing spree didn’t stop there. Three more innocent people would lose their lives at the hands of Daniels and West in the coming week.
The two parolees were captured after a 14-day manhunt in Ohio when West attempted to shoot it out with police and sheriff’s deputies at a road blockade north of Van Wert, Ohio. West was killed by police and Daniels was captured, tried and convicted. He was executed in the electric chair on January 3, 1949.
The scene at the Van Wert roadblock, where West was killed and Daniels captured while sleeping in the car on the front top rack – July 22, 1948
Scott Fields tirelessly researched the killings, the capture and trial of Daniels and even interviewed a surviving member of the Niebel family to weave this tragic story bringing the reader back to those dark days in the summer of 1948. What led to these brutal killings, and why was the Niebel family singled-out to be savagely murdered? It has been more than sixty years since the tragedy, and, yet, this question still remains unanswered. The killing spree is not only remembered to this day, but is an important and dark part of Mansfield lore.
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The Ohio State Reformatory
If you are ever in Mansfield, Ohio, be sure to tour the historic Ohio State Reformatory, the most haunted location in Ohio and one of the shooting locations of The Mansfield Killings.
Hauntings have been documented over the years by professional paranormal investigators and TV shows on the paranormal, including Syfy’s Ghost Hunters and the Travel Channel’s popular, Ghost Adventures.
View the informative video about the OSR and its rich history.
Order a copy of The Mansfield Killings at our bookstore.
If you have ever seen Dan Piraro’s critically acclaimed comic Bizarro (and you have: it is published daily in over 360 papers), you know that he doesn’t see the world like the rest of us do. His single panel gems are a unique concoction of surrealistic imagery, social commentary, and witty plays on words. Indeed, if Salvador Dali, Garry Trudeau and Oscar Wilde had an illegitimate child, that child would be Dan Piraro.
Outer Banks Publishing Group author Ron Rhody tells what it takes to write a novel based on the real life of person in this interview. He talks about his newest book, Concerning The Matter Of The King of Craw, to be released at the Kentucky Book Fair on November 5 in Frankfort, KY and how he “wrote it” rather than reporting the story.
What brought you to write about John Fallis and his life and times?
I had just wrapped up When Theo Came Home (the last, maybe, in the Theo trilogy) and was searching for a subject for the next book. I had two ideas. One was for a story about what happens when the meek inherit the earth – you know, the promise in the Beatitudes, Mathew 5.5, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth” – what would happen, I wondered, if that happened?
The end of times… everyone gone … to heaven or hell … only the meek left. What would happen? Fascinating idea to play with.
The other idea was to try to build a story around John Fallis, the King of Craw. Fallis was a real character, a fascinating character, a dominating figure in Kentucky’s capital city during the Roaring Twenties, controversial at the time, legendary now.
I grew up in that town. I remember hearing stories about about him as a boy – most of them bad. He was a legitimate businessman on the one hand, but on the other a gambler, a brawler, the biggest bootlegger in the whole area with a violent temper and a reputation for mayhem.
He was also handsome and charismatic and loved by the common folk because he helped them and stood up for them against the Establishment. The powers that be didn’t like that. There is speculation even today that powerful forces in the city sent a hit man to do him in. I thought I’d try to find out about him and build a story around him. The meek could wait.
Fallis is a real person. How did you get the information you needed to craft an informed story?
The way a reporter goes about it. Search the record, talk to people. Son Bixie Fallis’ “biography” of his father at the Capital City Museum was a start and an enormous help. Bixie’s story is that of a loving son writing about a hero father, so it has to be taken with a certain restraint, but it is first hand and intimate.
No one is alive today who knew Fallis directly but, thankfully, there is Jim Wallace’s collection of interviews with people who lived in the Bottom and Craw and who did know Fallis. They’re in his This Sodom Land treatise done for the University of Kentucky. It is enormously rich. And there is Doug Boyd’s work in his book Crawfish Bottom. It has a whole section on Fallis.
Those two pieces, and the local area newspapers, were my principal sources. And there are, of course, people who didn’t know Fallis but have relatives who did and who remember the stories they were told. I managed to find and talk with several of them.
After that, it was a matter of imagining what might have happened or could have happened as I worked with the information the limited sources provided. I’ve tried to stay true to facts I could uncover and make sure the inferences I’ve drawn from them are fair.
Concerning The Matter Of The King Of Craw is my fourth novel. I think it is the best. I’ve learned a lot listening to Theo. The first three books are about him and make up the Theo trilogy. They did not start out to be trilogy. But one story led to another and then became three.
Like Concerning The Matter, they are set in Frankfort, which is Kentucky’s capital city – a jewel of a place, a river town in a Bluegrass Valley that has a character and a feel to it that works on me like magic.
All I’m trying to do is tell a story that makes the reader want to know what happens next and feel satisfied when one gets to the end. A story. A good story. That’s all. We live by stories.
The Theo books are about a young man who starts out as rookie reporter assigned to cover a bizarre murder which he leads him to a career in big time newspapering in New York City and other world capitals and ultimately back to that little town on the river trying to decide whether to run for Governor.
Along the way there are two other murders. He’s implicated in one of them. There is political intrigue and malfeasance, graft, blackmail, Melungeons, and, of course, a girl, Allie, who becomes a woman and who is in and out of his life through it all. I don’t know whether Theo runs and gets elected or not.
At present, I’m not interested in finding out, but I may want to.
The first three books I “reported.” I grew up newspapering, That’s the way you tell the story – who, what, when, where, why – and, if you can figure it out, how. I think they’re good books. They move fast and the stories are compelling.
I didn’t “report” Concerning The Matter Of The King of Craw. I wrote it. There’s a difference. The who, what, when, where, why, and how are there. But there’s more. I think I’m getting the hang of it.
When you start a novel, who are you writing for?
I’ve given that a lot thought. The straight of it is that I’m writing for myself. I’m telling myself the story. If I can hold my interest, keep the story moving, touch a cord of emotion, be intrigued by things I didn’t know, discover something of value in the motives and actions of my characters, I’m happy.
All I’m trying to do is tell a story that makes the reader want to know what happens next and feel satisfied when one gets to the end. A story. A good story. That’s all. We live by stories.
Is there another book on the horizon?
I imagine. For a long time I’ve wanted to try a memoir of a sort. Not a real memoir. A string of stories or vignettes that tell of some of the things – people, places, events – that have mattered and may hold some interest for others. I’m not sure I have the courage to do that. There is the remembering of course. Pain came along with the good times. Not sure I want to revisit all that.
And there is the matter of ego. I’ve never been accused of being overly modest, but there seems something so egotistical about presuming to do a memoir that I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with trying one.
Otherwise, there’s Theo. Might be interesting to see if he could get elected and find out what challenges he would face as Governor of the Grand & Glorious Commonwealth of Kentucky and how he’d handle them.
And, of course, there’s the meek. I’ve often thought that given the prospect of an uncertain Heaven, or the beauty and bounty of Mother Earth, I’d opt for her.
We’ll see.
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Concerning The Matter of The King of Craw
He brooked no insult, would not be cheated, would not be pushed around. He bent a knee to no man. He was the King of Craw and the powers-that-be wanted him gone.
List Price: $16.99
6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
288 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0990679042
ISBN-10: 0990679047
BISAC: Fiction / Historical / General
Author Scott Fields talks about his new novel, The Killing Road, and why he decided to dramatize this true story and how hard it was to write such a book.
What made you dramatize the true life events of The Killing Road?
I was at a book signing when a young couple came up to me and the woman told me about a time when three members of her family were killed by a maniac who eventually killed twelve people in a three week period. She gave me the phone number of her grandparents. I met with them and they gave me a scrapbook that was full of everything I needed to know.
What is your fascination with real life crime stories? Why do you think you are so interested in true crime? Your earlier novel, The Mansfield Killings, is also based on true events.
Normally, I prefer feel good stories. I like a story with a conflict but a happy ending. The Killing Road and The Mansfield Killings began by someone telling me about some events that happened years ago. Something clicked inside me when I heard about each one, and my regular life was put on the back burner.
What do you hope to accomplish by writing The Killing Road? By writing any book?
Most everyone has a hobby, and mine just happens to be writing. For all my life ideas would pop into my head. If they stayed there for several years, then I took them seriously and would eventually turn those ideas into a novel.
How did you go about starting The Killing Road? What was involved?
After several interviews and trips to the library for additional information out of the newspapers, I was ready to begin.
You said it was hard writing The Killing Road. What did you mean by that?
It was extremely difficult to write about some of the things that he did. It only took me four months to write The Mansfield Killings, and it took me two years to write this one. He was incredibly vicious and did some things that I described in the novel but will not discuss them today.
Do you have another book on the horizon?
I am about halfway finished with a little more upbeat kind of novel. Imagine a mafia hitman turning into a pastor and becoming obsessed with taking care of kids with cancer. I have a real problem with kids getting cancer, and I just had to write a story about it. This will be one more way of feeding my hobby.
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Now $12.99 directly from the Publisher for a limited time
So, this isn’t the first time I’ve floated this idea out there, but it’s something I like to touch on from time to time to remind indie authors what an author brand really is. Using the word brand suggests that there’s an artificial construct involved. That you as an author are being directed to create a persona that you think meets readers’ expectations.
Every time I get into this discussion with people I’m reminded of a scene from the classic television show Seinfeld. When Jerry and George are pitching a show to the television network executives, they’re asked what it’s about, and George excitedly proclaims that it&’s about nothing. The network executive is confused because it can’t be about nothing. It has to be about something, but George insists that it’s not. Jerry interjects that even nothing is something.
That exchange encapsulates what an author brand is. It’s nothing. That is to say it’s nothing false. It is you. It is your interests, your opinions, and your personality. It is everything you love. It can even be everything that drives you crazy. Wherever your passions lie, that’s your brand. There is nothing to do to build a brand other than to be yourself, genuinely, fervently, and openly.
Building and maintaining an author brand is, at its core, you being honest about who you really are. If you are, your brand will thrive and help grow your community. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen as long as you stay committed to that principle. In turn, your community will help grow your readership.
Richard Ridley is an award-winning author and paid CreateSpace contributor.
Writer and Internet marketer Aaron Harris notes five good reasons why you should write every day especially if you have a blog or website. His five reasons to keep in shape as a writer are:
You are someone’s idol, hope, and inspiration
Your works could be a part of someone’s daily routine
No matter how bad you write, there will always be someone who loves your work
Writing helps you loosen up, relieve stress
Writing is simply one of the best ways to express yourself
Read the rest of Aaron’s article published on the Digital Donut site.
Adult Coloring Books dominated sales in 2015 and will continue…
Video provided by Fox
Nine of the 20 books on Amazon’s current bestseller list contain few words and belong to a genre that didn’t exist two years ago. Welcome to the biggest publishing craze of the year: coloring books for adults, writes Susannah Cahalan in the New York Post.
More than 2,000 have hit stands since 2013 and the genre’s two biggest bestsellers, “Secret Garden” and “Enchanted Forest,” have sold a combined 13.5 million copies in 50 countries, she wrote.
“Adult coloring books are key factors in three of the top four adult nonfiction categories,” according to Kristen McLean, director of new business development for Nielsen Book.
“They make up 14 out of the top 20 for games/hobby/activity, including the top three slots. They are 40 out of the top 50 in art/design. There are even three in the top 20 in self-help,” she was quoted an article in the ABA Winter Institute’s look at 2016 bookselling trends from Publishers Weekly.
So what is the attraction to coloring books? People consider it therapeutic, stress-relieving and calming. Adrienne Raphel in her piece in The New Yorker called the trend, the “Peter Pan Market” as adults turn to coloring to relive the joys of their childhood.
Starre Vartan wrote in Mother Nature Network (MNN) that MNN’s own Robin Shreeves is a fan, “I enjoy them because when I’m doing them, I don’t think about anything but colors. They take me away from life’s problems without a lot of effort. So do many other creative endeavors, but with the coloring book, I can do it for 10 minutes instead of the time it would take me to do some other things. I don’t do it often, but I pick it up from time to time and get lost for a bit,” Shreeves wrote.
“Coloring fulfills a creative urge and is also soothing and calming,” wrote Jan Hornbeck Chapman, an Ohio-based youth librarian in her 60s, according to Vartan.
Vartan also quoted Sophie Hessekiel, a college student at Vassar in Poughkeepsie, New York, echoes Chapman, even though she’s at a completely different stage of life. “Coloring lets you think about nothing for a little while, and the feel of a marker on paper is very soothing,” she wrote.
Produced by Forbidden Tears Productions of 
as a great writer, but she never pursued her talent. I inherited it but being a Kmart manager and raising a family of three kids, I had no time to write even a short story. Then after 30 years in management, I became a common worker and began to write. After having a few short stories published, I decided that it was time to try writing a novel. Since then I have had 16 novels published, but the dream was still there.”
List Price: $16.99
