AAPI Summer Book Giveaway

May is Asian-American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. This weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, is the unofficial start of summer. With summer, comes going to the beach, hanging by the pool and lounging on your backyard hammock, if you have one. Like many, when I do any of those things, I like to have a good book with me. 

Why not celebrate AAPI Month and Memorial Day with my novel, Back Kicks And Broken Promises, by winning a FREE copy for your Nook or Kindle. The first five people who comment on this post or email me on Monday, 28th May, 2012, will win an ebook of my novel. Make sure you provide an email address where I can gift you the ebook. 

Here's what's on the back flap of the print editions and below are some links that will, hopefully, get you excited to read it.

Synopsis:

Ricky Gilbert’s world has been turned upside down. The seventeen-year-old, Filipino, adopted son of American parents, Ricky tries to adjust to a new life after moving halfway around the world from Singapore to New Jersey. With the help of Max Parada, an American-born Filipino, and Amy Cho, his Korean-American classmate, Ricky begins to find his place and identity in his new home through Taekwondo training.

The training, however, is more than kicks and punches. Instead, it becomes Ricky’s guide to life as he progresses from one belt to another. Even so, just as he begins to adjust to his new environment, Ricky’s world takes another hit when he discovers a secret that forces him to question who he is and what family means to him. Coming to terms with this—and with the large sum of money suddenly in his possession—Ricky has to decide whether he’s going to stay with the family he’s known all his life or leave and become a family of one.

As he tries to sort out his life, traveling to the Philippines and back to Singapore, Ricky discovers things about his father that make the two of them more alike than he’d ever thought - or even hoped - possible.

Links:

The Manila Bulletin newspaper interview

Feature in The Filipino Reporter newspaper

Praise for Back Kicks And Broken Promises

Excerpt from Back Kicks And Broken Promises

Value in the Nook

So, my wife got me a Nook Tablet for my birthday. I've hesitated on getting any kind of e-reader and wouldn't have gotten one for myself but, now that I've had some time playing with it, I see that it has value to me. 

For Christmas, I got my wife an iPad. It's made her more technologically functional. Before, I served as her email and Facebook secretary; all her friends became my friends on Facebook and I'd pass on their messages. I did the same with her emails. It wasn't that big of a deal but she does it all herself now. The iPad is quick and easy and something she's used to because it functions just like her iPhone. Logging into stuff on a laptop and desktop was just too much for her. She also uses the Nook app and iBookstore app to get and read books. 

Personally, I still prefer the smell and feel of an actual book. Turning pages, seeing the cover every time I pick it up, dog-earing a page when I don't have a bookmark, and being able to do a quick reread of the cover flap blurb or the author's bio, without having to scroll through pages and pages of e-pages, allows me to experience the book, not just through the author's words, but through the book itself.

The obvious value my Nook has is that it's light and when I travel, which isn't that often, I can carry all the books I'm currently reading in one place. Currently, I'm into three new hardbacks, two older paperbacks and one e-book. The e-book, The Forever Girl by Rebecca Hamilton, only comes in the e-format otherwise I would've bought it in hardcover. (It's not my usual type of read but it's very good and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I'll write a review when I'm done but, if you enjoy YA fantasy stories with a feisty female protagonist, give it a try)

Where the Nook (and I'm sure the Kindle and Kobo and others), has real value for me is with my periodicals. I subscribe to The New Yorker and The New York Times and other magazines and newspapers. Unfortunately, due to a busy schedule, I don't always get to read all of them cover-to-cover, if at all. Some weeks, The New Yorker piles up and I'm playing catch up or just tossing some of the older issues out. (One day, if writing ever gets to be my full-time profession, I'll actually be able to have reading hours. Now, how cool would that be?) Aside from the financial waste of tossing those unread issues away, I lose the information, great fiction, book reviews, you name it that the magazine has to offer. This also happens with some of other magazines I subscribe to. Really, I should just stop subscribing. With the Nook, though, I can get the digital versions of some of these magazines and that way they're with me and I can easily access them and keep more updated on what's happening. Unfortunately, not all the magazines and newspapers I get are available in a digital format but they are available online and I can, at least, quickly and easily go to their websites and view them that way when I'm on the train or waiting at the doctor's office or anywhere most people read things like magazines and newspapers.

Truthfully, unless actual hardbacks and paperbacks become extinct, I don't see a full conversion to e-reader use happening for me. As someone who likes his technology and keeps up-to-date with what's out there and what's coming soon, I must admit that I'm usually late in getting my hands on stuff. In 2003, for instance, while riding a bus with my volleyball team to an away match, I was the brunt of my girls' jokes when I whipped out a Sony Discman. Discman! 2003! Many of them, of course, had their iPods. I'm not a Luddite. I just like my books but I am glad that my wife got me one.