Tuesday 26 May 2015

Review of Tower in the Crooked Wood

It was so good on May 25 to see Ursula Pflug posting on Facebook a link to her review of the first edition of Tower in the Crooked Wood back in 2009 for the Peterborough Examiner. That review is excerpted below. The new edition of Tower in the Crooked Wood is due for release from Five Rivers Publishing in early June 2015!      


Tower in the Crooked Wood is a female lead tale set, as are so many fantasy novels, in a vaguely medieval forested land. High Fantasy has changed in the decades since the publication of Tolkien's LOTR trilogy; contemporary readers want to know more about the lives of ordinary folk: what they eat, what they wear, how they raise their children and make a living.
Johanson is brilliant at this kind of local colour. For example, in her travels Jenia relies on her training as an arborist to rehabilitate a martial lord's neglected orchard and later to recognize the dark magic afoot in the crooked wood. The trees within are not what trees should be, and because of it Jenia recognizes that she is close to her goal.
As in all the best quest novels, Jenia learns about herself, about others, and about her place in the world. Just like in real life, work, friendship and storytelling are important parts of Johanson's beautifully built world. The author is an avid kayaker and her love and knowledge of the outdoors imbues her narrative with a rich verisimilitude. As well, the reader will remember spunky, sympathetically drawn Jenia for a long time.


Ursula Pflug is author of the novel Green Music and the story collection After The Fires. Visit her on the web at: http://ursulapflug.ca

Sunday 24 May 2015

King Kwong

My thirtieth book is now available in in print and as an e-book from Five Rivers Publishing. It's a very Canadian story -- the biography of a Canadian hockey player who was an international star in several leagues. The cover art shows a photo of Larry Kwong when he was playing for a team in Nanaimo, BC.


King Kwong: Larry Kwong, the China Clipper who broke the NHL colour barrier
Five Rivers Publishing 2015
ISBN: 9781927400753 $11.99
eISBN: 9781927400760 $4.99
Available as a paperback and an e-book
Includes: black & white photographs, Timeline, References.
 -click here for a link to the publisher's website, where this book can be ordered-

or, click here for a link to Kobo, with a $5 credit for new customers
or, a link to Amazon

Chad Soon, Director of the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives and Okanagan Sports Hall of Fame, says of the biography:
Author Paula Johanson brings justice to Kwong’s extraordinary life.  All the elements of classic fiction are here, and yet this is riveting history. We follow the ultimate long shot as he chases the 'impossible'…and triggers a shift in his society.

Saturday 23 May 2015

Creating Page Content!

Hello, I'm Paula Johanson, the author of several books that I'm promoting here on my website.


As first posts go, this is a pretty basic one. You can see at the top of the page that the site has pages for differing categories of my books, such as Biographies, Science, Health, Sustainability, Literature, and Fiction. I've been writing posts for these categories, but it's taking a while to get them all placed. Please check back, as during the summer of 2015 I have several new projects being released!




The publishers of my books are listed here. As well as my books, they have other good titles that might interest you. Most of these publishers release books in multiple formats that can improve accessibility.
Rosen Publishing - here are links to my titles with them in print format, or e-books.
Enslow Publishing
ABC-Clio / Greenwood Publishing
Five Rivers Publishing
Okal Rel / Reality Skimming Press
Tesseract Books