Contests

Celebrating Great Ideas

Win a free cover design!

February Contest: This month we are running a contest for best book synopsis. The winner will receive a free cover design (to be created by September 2012) from the professionals at Bookmasters. Submissions will be accepted February 1 through February 14. We will ask our fans to vote February 15 through February 28. The winner will be announced February 29.

Please email synopsis and a title to blog@bookmasters.com and they will be posted here, or leave your synopsis in the comments and it will be added to the main page.

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Creative Commons

The entries

Gravity by GB

Hostility rages among world nations when their nuclear powered satellites experience glitches. Ryan Simmons, a chief U.S. scientist, attributes it to an invisible lock closing around Earth. Fateful events that follow deteriorates the situation plunging the world nations into the third world war!It is then that an alien civilization enters Earth which lands at the Peruvian desert unearthing their secret storage.

The attacks of retaliation and suspicious explorations by aliens that follow, tell Ryan that there is more than meets the eye. As the world nations combinely attack from the Mars station, someone from earth helps the aliens. Although Ryan identifies it later, who and why someone would help aliens remain deeply shrouded to him, the knowledge of which may alter everything forever.

Immaculate Deception by Amber Bankston

Kennedy Cossen was a 24 year old single mom with a history of bad men, fast cars and dirty money. The day the missionaries knocked on her door would be the last day of her old life as she knew it, but not at all how she could have imagined. Just weeks after her spiritually heartfelt turnaround and beautiful baptism, Kennedy started having the dreams. Insanely sensual, intoxicatingly lucid dreams that were cast with players from the darkest darks to the lightest lights. Her growing unease madly spun into an incredulous panic when she realized that despite her newly pledged chastity, she was with child. Kennedy had nine months, no friends and armies of angels on both sides to help her discover the truth behind this child growing inside her; this immaculate deception.

Submitted by Maggie Grinnell

A young girl about 6 is celebrating her 6th birthday and awaiting her dad who is on a plane to fly in for her big day. The plane crashes killing her dad. The young girl decides not to speak ever again. 2 years later, a cereal box thrown away contains a toy inside. That toy, a pink catapillar, comes to life chewing its way out of the green hefty bag and makes its way towards the girl. The girl without speaking, through actions tells her story to this toy. She feels a connection to the catapillar and takes it to her room. She leaves the catapillar in her pink purse and goes to eat dinner. When she returns she sees a butterfly but no catapillar on her window ledge. She cries and then stops when the butterfly explains. The butterfly says “I am going to fly to heaven to tell your dad how much you love him. So when you see a butterfly, it is your dad sending his love to you from heaven.” The butterfly flies away and the girl tells her mom that she loves her, her first words in 2 years.

Submitted by Christie Johnson

A group of friends find one of ther own dead in the dumpster now the heat is on trying to solve the muder on thier own they end up getting thierselves into trouble not knowing what to do they turn to one person who they know a uncle of thier friend who was just been killed.

The Panes Between the Void by Micki C

Haunted by his past and ever-sinking product design career, Sonny Benson is desperate to succeed. While visiting his brilliant but socially incompetent best friend, Henry O’Shea, Sonny learns of Henry’s new invention that is certain to give him the edge in his career that he has been searching for. Henry has transformed a seemingly ordinary door frame into a gateway into alternate realities. While Henry is determined only to use the new-found technology to benefit mankind, Sonny sees this as an opportunity that will benefit his wallet. Using his silver-tongued expertise, Sonny convinces his pure hearted friend to allow him to his the door to visit an alternate reality and bring back technology that can be reversed engineered and sold in their own reality’s marketplace.

Sonny’s plan seems to be working well for everyone until he inadvertently catches the attention of a mysterious and dangerous agency on the other side of the door that seems determined to capturing the duo. After being pursued on the other side of the door and terrified of being caught by the strange men, Sonny and Henry stop using the door only to find that the agency has tracked them back to their own reality. Captured, Sonny and Henry learn that they have accidently become a part of a cross-dimensional power struggle that could have disastrous consequences on their own reality and many others. Unsure of who to trust but knowing that something must be done, Sonny and Henry find themselves reluctant agents of the men who captured them. Can Sonny and Henry discover the truth behind the agency’s motives and prevent the collapse of their reality?

The Last Year by Deidra Phillips

SueAnn Saxton is on death row. Her estranged cousin Camille, overwhelmed by grief and determined to figure out where everything went wrong for SueAnn, rekindles their relationship through a series of prison visits. Through laughter and tears, they begin to find something near to the closeness that they once shared.

As they journey together through the last year of SueAnn’s life, Camille finds answers to questions about SueAnn, herself and the family that they both thought they knew. She soon finds her grief over SueAnn’s predicament competing with her anger towards those who could have saved her so many years ago but chose to look the other way. It’s too late for SueAnn – nothing can save her now. But can Camille save herself and maybe find some measure of justice along the way?

…and the Rooster Crowed by G.Neil Gupton

Bill, ‘Li’l Bull’ the nickname given by his father when he was six years old, has quit his job and started a new handiman business, Bull Works, unbeknownst his wife Kate, until he springs the news on her at his thirty-sixth birthday party. Beyond reason, neither Kate nor Bill will admit fault in this chaotic breakup as Bill loses touch with reality and becomes beyond himself in hypomania. A ticket to the Bahamas evolves into a trip to Key West, and Bill embarks on an adventure unplanned and unexpected.

Chance takes him to a former 1920′s bordello, now rooming house in which a saving angel, Angela, watches over him in the guise of innkeeper. Wanderings to the old cemetery in which he encounters ghosts among broken tombstones, the Southernmost Point as the jumping off place, a ‘pirate’ ship leading to near drowning if not rescued by an angel above the dock, a ‘magical’ drum from Tibet, a red-eyed bull, a camouflaged soldier in a palm tree, the Amazing Grace of Ruby, and awakenings by the little red Bantam rooster… all nudge Bill back to a flight back home, from hypomania and insanity, or not.

By Claw and Fang: Revelation by Qamar Khan

Werewolves are disappearing and the close-knit community is edging closer and closer to human discovery. Rik, a lone wolf and assassin for the leader of the North American werewolves, is startled to find his long-estranged twin brother on his doorstep, hurt and being hunted by werewolves’ sworn enemies, the Hunters. Reluctantly, Rik finds himself drawn back into a world he had left behind him long ago. As he is brought back into contact with his fellow wolves, he finds himself faced with werewolf politics, a vengeful Hunter dead-set on eliminating all werewolves and Rik’s twin in particular, and rebuilding the shattered relationship with his twin.

Stealing First by Drew Golden

June, 1957, Louisiana bayou country. Set against the race- and class-driven politics of the day, American Legion baseball is the white heart of small-town pride. Ronnie LeBlanc, the Nina Redbirds’ promising pitcher, believes winning the league championship at all costs is his ticket out of a hard-scrabble job at a sugar mill. He dreams of playing major league ball.

The Redbirds fall on some hot, hard times that summer, besieged by poverty, bad luck, shabby equipment, Ronnie’s attitude, their archrivals the Bayou Braves and the Braves’ bully of a coach, Denis Soileau, nefarious bank president Bo Brasseux, and finally Hurricane Audrey.

As the Redbirds begin to suffer a series of losses and forfeitures, Ronnie gradually comes to suspect Bo Brasseux is behind many of his team’s misfortunes, and sees his chance to play big league ball evaporating. With the help of former Negro League pitcher Scoot Groshon, Ronnie digs into the cause of his team’s declining win-loss record, and as he digs he stumbles on the source of his embattled family’s past: the LeBlanc’s history with the privileged Brasseux.

When the Nina Redbirds break their last bat in the eighth inning of the championship game, Denis Soileau and the Braves refuse to lend the Redbirds a bat to finish play. They are forced to forfeit the championship but Ronnie realizes then what Scoot Groshon has been trying to teach him: that respect on and off the field makes a winner, and losing can often teach you more than winning—that he must throw off his win-at-all-costs attitude in order to be major league material. He leads his team to the Braves’ dugout to shake hands. A scout for the Chicago Cubs, watching from the sidelines, is impressed by Ronnie’s talent and evident new-found point of view and recruits him, and Ronnie learns that the gift of honor is a thrill far sweeter than stealing first.

The Chosen, where do we go from here? by Neirmen Alzubi

This is a story of a young lady named Sarah. The Sarah that’s in every one of us that presents our inner struggles between the good and the bad, the brave and the weak, the righteous and the sinner, the assertive and the timid. The question here is which one of those instincts will take over the personality and manifest itself, and how can one find their answers to become the next chosen one.

Life and death are closely connected to each other. Everything we do as far as good and evil is concerned, is transferred to energy. This energy is either pleasant or repulsive. According to the type of energy field we’ve created around us, we attract both good things and people into our roads or misfortune and unkind people. Since the circle is enclosed with no exit doors, there is no escape from this field of energy unless we change who we are from the inside out, and elevate ourselves by not obeying Id to obeying Superego. When we die, we take all the things we did in this life with us to the afterlife, and based on it we either live in an eternal bliss or eternal damnation.

In this journey called life, we are constantly driven into different roads that are determined by our paths. Our predetermined paths are similar to a brief trial period where we are given a test and the score will determine which road is suitable for us. Even if we don’t score well on our paths, we are given the opportunity to correct our low scores by making good decisions on the road we are led to next. We continue our voyage by passing through different paths that leads to subsequent roads, this cycle shall remain in constant repetition till all of our vacation days has been fully depleted.

Although those paths are predetermined, the decisions we make on those paths are entirely ours and so we are the sole creators of our roads. We can either chose to build skyscrapers, plant trees, and big tall mountains or we can turn this road to an empty and polluted dumpster nothing but an abashed sketch left behind on our deserted past road. The cumulative results of our decisions become the tools we use for the construction or destruction of those roads of ours. In addition, with every single action we make on our roads, we are either elevated higher into the spiritual world till we become legends and leaders of our roads or we’re descended lower into the material world where we eventually become insignificant followers that are mainly driven by our animal instincts till we become the lowest of God’s creations by choice. Often times we find some obstacles on our roads that take us on a bumpy ride, like a roller-coaster sometimes we find ourselves uphill and other times we are downhill, but the decisions we make can turn what is bumpy to even, steady and comfortable road that will serve us and others that pass by our roads.

So even if our paths that lead us to different roads are predetermined, we are the creators of the interior designs of our roads. In some rare cases the creations of our interior designs are beautiful enough to impress the Supreme Creator and perhaps we might be privileged enough to where we skip the next path and pave the way to our next road ourselves. Those few chosen ones find their designs written on the pages of history for all generations to follow. So where do we go from here? Let our actions pave the way.

49 Comments »

49 Responses

on February 6, 2012 at 11:57 pm | Reply Micki

How long should this synopsis be? Page, paragraph, or sentence?
- on February 7, 2012 at 2:05 pm | Reply AtlasBooks
  
  A paragraph or two would be great. Looking forward to seeing what you have!
on February 17, 2012 at 10:21 pm | Reply Josh

I vote for Micki’s book, The Panes Between the Void.
on February 17, 2012 at 10:57 pm | Reply Seth

Vote for The Panes Between the Void submitted by Micki C
on February 21, 2012 at 4:42 pm | Reply auntdskitchen

I vote for The Last Year
on February 21, 2012 at 6:14 pm | Reply vbgirl

Vote for The Last Year.
on February 21, 2012 at 7:10 pm | Reply Linda

I vote for Stealing First!
on February 21, 2012 at 8:09 pm | Reply Joy

I vote for Stealing First.
on February 21, 2012 at 8:09 pm | Reply lilone

the last year gets my vote
on February 21, 2012 at 8:17 pm | Reply Aline Machado

I vote for the The Chosen, where do we go from here? by Neirmen Alzubi
on February 21, 2012 at 8:18 pm | Reply riley

i vote for the last year.
on February 21, 2012 at 8:19 pm | Reply renee

The Last Year. Definately.
on February 21, 2012 at 8:36 pm | Reply OEM

THE LAST YEAR
on February 21, 2012 at 8:40 pm | Reply Heba Abulazm

I vote for The Chosen, where do we go from here? by Neirmen Alzubi
on February 21, 2012 at 8:49 pm | Reply Kim

I vote the last year
on February 21, 2012 at 8:51 pm | Reply Joanie

Stealing First gets my vote.
on February 21, 2012 at 9:01 pm | Reply Kelli

i vote for the last year
on February 21, 2012 at 9:07 pm | Reply erick

the last year
on February 21, 2012 at 9:39 pm | Reply BJ MacLuskie

I vote for Neirmen Alzubi’s The Chosen. Thank you!
on February 21, 2012 at 10:04 pm | Reply seba zain (@subi_moemoe)

I vote for The Chosen, where do we go from here? by Neirmen Alzubi
on February 21, 2012 at 11:30 pm | Reply Zizi Noor

I vote for The Chosen, where do we go from here? by Neirmen Alzubi
on February 22, 2012 at 12:41 am | Reply Peter

last year is the best… i vote for it.
on February 22, 2012 at 1:46 am | Reply Joseph

I vote for The Last Year
on February 22, 2012 at 1:46 am | Reply Shawn

I vote for The Last Year
on February 22, 2012 at 1:47 am | Reply Eric

I vote for the last year
on February 22, 2012 at 1:48 am | Reply Matt

i vote for the last year
on February 22, 2012 at 1:49 am | Reply Josh

I vote for the last year
on February 22, 2012 at 3:28 am | Reply shady

I vote for The Chosen, where do we go from here? by Neirmen Alzubi
on February 22, 2012 at 3:30 am | Reply Maysa

I vote, for the one and only, NEIRMEN ALZOBI !!!
GOOD LUCK
on February 22, 2012 at 5:16 am | Reply samira H

Ivote for The Chosen,where do we go from here?By neirmen AlZubi
on February 22, 2012 at 6:21 am | Reply Karen D

I vote for the last year by Deidre Phillips
on February 22, 2012 at 7:35 am | Reply tom

I vote for Stealing First
on February 22, 2012 at 11:38 am | Reply hemat waziry

Ivote for the chosen where do we go from here by Neirmen Elzubi
on February 22, 2012 at 12:31 pm | Reply Joshua

last year is my vote
on February 22, 2012 at 12:32 pm | Reply Michael

I vote for the last year
on February 22, 2012 at 1:15 pm | Reply Lisa Snyder

I vote for the “Last Year”
on February 22, 2012 at 4:27 pm | Reply Pit

I vote for the last year, too
on February 22, 2012 at 5:44 pm | Reply Hema

My vote is for Gravity by GB.
on February 22, 2012 at 11:47 pm | Reply Adam

I vote for Gravity by GB.
on February 23, 2012 at 12:22 am | Reply Mike

last year is the best , I guess…. I vote for it.
on February 23, 2012 at 12:55 am | Reply Brian

I vote for Gravity by GB.
on February 23, 2012 at 1:02 am | Reply Kitty

I love last year. I vote for it.
on February 23, 2012 at 2:14 am | Reply Robby

My vote is for “Gravity by Gb”
on February 23, 2012 at 2:17 am | Reply Brian

Gravity by Gb
on February 23, 2012 at 2:21 am | Reply Kiran

I loved the synopsis ‘Gravity by Gb’
on February 23, 2012 at 7:28 am | Reply R.V.Kiran Kumar

Much Appreciated book, Good Book. I vote for Gravity by GB.
on February 23, 2012 at 7:49 am | Reply R.V.Kiran Kumar

A good Sci-fi book, Nice Cover Design….
Much appreciated…. I vote for Gravity by GB.
on February 23, 2012 at 1:25 pm | Reply Annette

The Last Year by Deidra Phillips
on February 24, 2012 at 1:37 pm | Reply Gaby

The Last Year gets my vote!