Anthony S. Policastro, author and freelance writer with articles in The New York Times, American Photographer, and other national, regional and local publications, is generously offering both of his mystery/thrillers, Dark End of the Spectrum and Absence of Faith, to the Kindle community for FREE! Check out the interview below, for more about the author.

To read these on your Kindle, get the ebook versions at Smashwords, as they are already in Mobi (Kindle) format (LuLu uses PDF and you'd have to convert it, but they do have a print version of Absence of Faith). In fact, since the Smashwords book comes in many formats, you'll be able to read these on your PC, iPhone and most current ebook reading devices, not just the Kindle. Once you have the Mobi file downloaded, just copy it to your Kindle using the USB cable or email it directly to your Kindle for wireless delivery.

Dark End of the Spectrum - normally $2.99 ($4.79 for Kindle at Amazon; paperback coming soon) , is FREE for a limited time at Smashwords. Be sure to use the coupon code JJ86F when checking out.

DARK END OF SPECTRUM will make you think twice before turning on your cell phone or PDA!

DARK END OF THE SPECTRUM is a frighteningly plausible, headline ripping tale of the real threats that loom in cyberspace based on the author's years of research.

DARK END OF THE SPECTRUM is a thriller that will connect with everyone with a cell phone, PDA or wireless device.

When digital terrorists known as ICER take over the US power grid and the cell phone network, they give the government an ultimatum - bomb the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan with nuclear weapons to put an end to Al-Quada. When the government refuses,the group destroys most of the downed aircraft in several major airports.

When ICER sends a pulse that will kill people on the East Coast, only security expert Dan Riker can stop them, but ICER has kidnapped his family.

Will Dan save his family or will millions die?

Absence of Faith - FREE to download at Smashwords (although you can pay for if you wish; to get it free, enter $0.00 as the price) and available in PDF for free and print at $15.99 at LuLu (304 pages).

In this medical mystery thriller, Doctor Carson Hyll falls asleep and drives into a river and experiences one of the worst nightmares of his life. The young intern is knocked unconscious and has a negative near death experience so real, so frightening that he thinks he died and went to hell.

When others in the highly-religious small town of Ocean Village have similar negative near death experiences and wake up with burnt skin, they believe they went to hell and that God has abandoned them.

Matters get worse when a local Satanic cult emerges to promote their beliefs and win over the town residents. Will the heroine, Chantress, be able to stop cult leader Kyle Mabus or will he succeed in destroying all known religions in the world?

Bestselling author and psychic Sylvia Browne writes in her book, Prophecy, that, "...our beliefs are the driving force behind our behavior, our opinions, our actions. Without faith, without our beliefs, we're lost."

Interview

Q. Where do you get your ideas for a book?

ASP: I’m always thinking of what ifs. I guess this goes back to my curiosity as a kid. I was always interested is how things worked, what made them work and why? I still have that curiosity. I like to push the envelope and see what happens, and then I know how and why things work the way they do. One of my favorite web sites is How Stuff Works. Sometimes I think that site was made for me. I think to be a good writer you have to be curious about everything.

Q. How did you come up with the idea for Absence of Faith?

ASP: I had just finished my first novel and my wife and I were discussing story ideas for the next book when we came up with the idea for Absence of Faith. What would you do if you lost your belief in religion, your belief in God and thought everything was hopeless? What if you lost something that was extremely important to you? What would you do?

Bestselling author and psychic Sylvia Browne writes in her book, Prophecy, that, "...our beliefs are the driving force behind our behavior, our opinions, our actions. Without faith, without our beliefs, we're lost." These are the issues addressed in the novel.

Q. How did you come up with the plot for Absence of Faith?

ASP: I always start out with a basic concept, a unique what if situation and let the plot evolve from there. I’ve tried outlining the plot chapter by chapter and found it too constricting on my creativity. I found myself trying to fit the characters into the plot rather than letting the characters create the plot for me.

Q. The characters create the plot for you? How does that work?

ASP: Each character has unique qualities and traits and when you put that character into a specific situation, he or she will react in a certain way. If you have a character that is very stubborn and you put him in a situation where he is faced with a multiple of decisions, he will most likely pick the decision that he knows works rather than the right decision. His actions then drive the plot forward. For every action there is a reaction.

Q. Why did you write this book?

ASP: I have wanted to write a novel since I was 17, but when I sat down to write, I had nothing to say. I hadn’t lived long enough; I didn’t have enough life experiences to write anything outside of myself.

I have always had this urge to write, to communicate my thoughts to others. I believe I have a unique perspective on the world and I want to share that with others. I also believe we all have a unique perspective, but some have an urge to share it while others don’t give it a second thought.

I wrote this book to communicate an idea; to let people into the unique way I view the world. I love to communicate to people information that helps them or enlightens them. I like to invent unique situations and characters and see how people react to them with laughter, sadness, elation, surprise, or delight. I’m thrilled when that happens.

Q. Do you think you have a bestseller?

ASP: That’s a loaded question. Every author believes they have a bestseller, but the truth will be known when people read it and recommend it to others. I hope so, but the market will decide that for me.

In light of all the interest in spirituality and religion that was spawned by The DaVinci Code and other books, my book may be of interest. It is about the affirmation of faith; it doesn’t matter what religion you practice or what you believe in as long as you have faith in something. This is the message in my book.

Q. Have you written other novels?

ASP: Yes. Dark End of the Spectrum, my third book, is a mystery suspense thriller about hackers who take over the US power grid and cell phone network. My first novel, The Water Witch, which I wrote in 1990 has to be modernized to bring it into the 21st century, and I have a new one that I started last year, Looking for Lucy, that I hope to finish in the next few months.

Q: Where do you get all these ideas for novels?

ASP: Funny you asked that. I may be reading something in a magazine or online and suddenly an idea jumps into my head – a what if question. Then I do a little research on the question to see if it is plausible and to make sure no one has written a novel with the same concept. If I don’t have the time to research it right away, I write the idea down and do it later.

Q. What are your goals as a novelist?

ASP: I want to tell a story that helps people live more meaningful lives - a story that enables them to better understand the problems facing everyone. A lot of writers write for themselves and there is nothing wrong with this because what they write sometimes helps all of us. I always write with the reader in mind and what they will get out of my work.

Q. What advice would you give to upcoming writers?

ASP: Never give up if you truly want to be an author. It’s a tough road, but every published author I know goes down the same road and has a bag full of disappointment, self-doubt, and loss of purpose. Just keep writing.

About the Author

Anthony S. Policastro has been writing all his life. The publication of his first novel, Absence of Faith, is the pinnacle of his work having previously published articles in The New York Times, American Photographer and other national, regional, and local publications.

Policastro was the former editor-in-chief of Carolina Style magazine, a regional lifestyle publication similar to Southern Living magazine. He was a former journalist, photographer, and web master.
The author’s background is in technology, business intelligence, and communications.

He has two BA degrees - one in Creative Writing, and another in American Studies from Penn State University, both of which have greatly enhanced his writing career.

His short essay on “What does it mean to be an American family” won in the Borders Books Gather.com contest to promote the movie and book, Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.

He currently writes a blog with Michael Neff, creator and editor of the Webdelsol and Algonkian websites, about writers’ issues called The Writer’s Edge. Policastro and Neff have been referred to as the Ebert and Roeper of the literary scene with their point/counterpoint posts.

Born in New Jersey, he now lives in North Carolina with his wife. He has two sons and a daughter.

Danielle Steele has been digitized

Danielle Steele is one of the world's most popular authors and one of the holdouts from the digital revolution, with over 580 million books sold and not one of them in digital form, until now, and they have made quite a splash in the Kindle catalog. A search turns up 71 titles currently available, two at 5.59, ten at $6.00, four at $9.99 and the rest at 6.39. With one click, you can be reading her latest, One Day at a Time ($9.99), in less than a minute. Her entire catalog might take you nearly an hour, between clicking and downloading (although you could start reading as soon as the first one arrived), but would keep you occupied reading for most of the year!

Synopsis
Danielle Steel celebrates families of every stripe in her compelling new novel-a tale of three very different couples who struggle and survive, love, laugh, and learn to take life-Coco Barrington was born into a legendary Hollywood family, her last name loaded with expectations. Her mother is a mega-bestselling author who writes under the name of Florence Flowers-and her sister, Jane, is one of Hollywood-s top producers. They-re not your typical family by any means.-Jane has lived with her partner, Liz, for ten years, in a solid, loving relationship. Florence, widowed but still radiant, has just begun a secret romance with a man twenty-four years her junior. And Coco, a law school dropout and the family black sheep, works as a dog walker, having fled life in the spotlight for the artsy northern California beach town of Bolinas.But when Coco reluctantly agrees to dog-sit in Jane-s luxurious home, she soon discovers how much things can change in just a matter of days.-It turns out Jane-s house comes complete with an unexpected houseguest: Leslie Baxter, a dashing but down-to-earth British actor who-s fleeing a psycho ex-girlfriend. Their worlds couldn-t be more different. The attraction couldn-t be more immediate. Suddenly Coco is seeing things differently: Leslie is not just a celebrity, he-s a single dad to an adorable six-year-old girl. Her mother is not just a self-centered walking advertisement for great cosmetic surgery, she-s a woman in love, with vulnerability and new insight. And Jane and Liz are about to take the bravest plunge of all-into parenthood. As Coco contemplates a future with one of Hollywood-s hottest stars, as her mother and sister settle into their lives, old wounds are healed and new familes are formed-some traditional, some not so traditional, but all bonded by love.With wit and intelligence, Danielle Steel-s new novel explores love in all its guises, taking us into the lives of three unusual but wonderfully real couples. Funny, sexy, and wise, One Day at a Time is at once moving, thought provoking, and utterly impossible to put down.

The most expensive Kindle Book yet!

What do you get when someone self-publishes, no one is checking the price entered and Amazon's software is not set up to at least alert someone to double check the listing if the price is over a certain threshhold? The most expensive Kindle book to date (be sure not to one-click it, even if you do have a very high credit limit on your Amazon linked credit card):


Yes, that's right, you SAVE more than $10,000.00 with the current Kindle discount on this title (that would buy a fleet of Kindle 2's). Those really interested in the subject matter, though, might want to check out the paperback version - it's only $52.95 (currently discounted to $47.65). It won't load on your Kindle, but you could mark up and lose several dozen copies and not put a dent into the price asked for the electronic version.

It's all a pricing error, of course. It's pretty obvious that the publisher was trying to set the price on the two editions, Kindle and Paperback, at the same $52.95 level. But his finger slipped and hit the 3 instead of the period (it's just one key above on the numeric keypad). Not only was the error not seen when submitted, you have to think that someone must have the job of checking the listings once up and that Amazon probably notified them of the listing being up (and probably sent an acknowledgement of the listing when first submitted, which may have also shown the price that was being set). And you would also think that someone over in the IS department might have set up a threshold (whether $100 or $1,000) as Apple did in the AppStore to at least flag items over that price and require a confirmation from the listing person (with a simple form where they retype the price, at least forcing them to make the same error twice), preventing such a listing from even being submitted, let alone posted to the store.

Then again, maybe this is part of the vendors plan to prove to his shareholders that ebooks simply don't sell and that they shouldn't bother with them for future titles. It might backfire - one copy may make more profit than all the paperback copies he sells in a year, if anyone ever actually orders it.

Amazon Kindle 2 ships a day early!

Unlike the prior version of Kindle, which sold out the first day and then was back ordered, sometimes for months, the rest of the 14 months it was out, the Kindle 2 has shipped a day early. Two days really - those who preordered starting seeing charges over the weekend and the Kindles shipped yesterday. For everyone else, you can order today and Amazon has Kindles ready to ship. Rather than being a sign of lack of demand, since all those sold out and undelivered Christmas orders (where Kindle was the best selling Electronics item pretty much the entire season) have been filled with Kindle 2, this shows that Amazon has better prepared (so far) for the demand for their device.

Order today and you can be reading your 28 free Kindle books tomorrow!

Free Ebook on Kindle: The Holy Bible English Standard Version

The Holy Bible English Standard Version (ESV). Publisher: Good News Publishers/Crossway Books (November 29, 2007)

Synopsis
The English Standard Version (ESV) Bible is an essentially literal Bible translation that combines word-for-word precision and accuracy with literary excellence, beauty, and depth of meaning.

This brings the total number of free books (not including public domain and promotional chapters) for your Kindle that are currently available at Amazon to 28.