One Paper Heart e-book on Amazon

 Exciting News

Award-winning romance, One Paper Heart, will now have an e-book

version on Amazon.com to complement its paperback edition.

The e-book preorder goes live June 21, 2025. Click on the following

link to read a synopsis and learn more.

One Paper Heart e-book

A Lost Night - Romance Release Success

 Dear Romance Readers.

Thank you for making the first weekend of A Lost Night, Love on Ice a successful launch. E-book sales exceeded expectations.

For paperback readers, this version is in the works.

For KindleUnlimited readers, A Lost Night is free for a limited time.

Read a prior blogpost to get the synopsis, or go to 

www.amazon.com/dp/B0F8WCPVVZ or, if you prefer,

click on this link to save time: A Lost Night, Love on Ice

All reviews are welcome and appreciated.

If so inclined, catchup on prior Author Donan Berg novels.

There's thirteen including mystery, thriller, fantasy, and

a Gold Medal First Place romance. Enjoy.

A Lost Night Romance a Preorder

 Romance Author Donan Berg has announced a new romance, A Lost Night, Love on Ice.

It's available for preorder at www.amazon.com/dp/B0F8WCPVVZ 

Here's a synopsis:

Cherry Everex and Shane Hull kept their developing romance a secret from her father, Lionel. He was the owner of the Red Lions, a minor league hockey team located in the Big Easy. As his first rule, he forbade his players from dating his daughters.

Two league titles were won by the Red Lions thanks to Shane, their star player; however, they flamed out in the playoffs. The defeats cast an indelible feeling of a team not up to being the best.

Before the three-peat season, Lionel Everex died. His will divided his ownership three ways. Daughters Cherry and Blossom split ninety percent. A youth hockey charity, where Rufus (a Red Lions executive) controlled the voting, received 10 percent.

Cherry’s “No” to Shane’s first marriage proposal shattered his dreams. Her eventual "yes" led to a Las Vegas chapel wedding.

Shane's alcohol abuse left the marriage's consummation uncertain. Cherry's worry over her Red Lions shares prompted her to file for an annulment.

Multiple team concerns burdened Cherry and the Red Lions team she inherited. A prospective team sponsor attempts to wrest control from Cherry. Her sister offers her team shares to the highest bidder. People spread rumors Shane is behind an opening day boycott.

A complex, macho Shane conceals a secret. In the midst of Cherry's turmoil and his suffering, he looks for comfort in admitting the truth to Cherry and the world.

Cherry confronts her emotions, particularly the grief of her father's death. She and Shane re-evaluate their carefree romantic getaways.

Is Shane's love for her a reflection of her parents' love? Ought she to reconsider her refusal and accept that Shane truly loves her for who she is and nothing else?

If she does, will her heart forever accept her decision?

All's Forgiven is number one most popular

 All's Forgiven has been Number One most popular on AuthorsDen.com for a second week.

Visit the mystery, suspense novel by clicking on this link All's Forgiven.

 Author, character "coming of age"

Author Donan Berg in "Lucia's Fantasy World" creates a story that follows a young girl, Lucia, as she learns of her full potential while experiencing coming-of-age moments while trying to rescue a sick friend facing death. (Literary Titan, Five Stars)

When asked for his inspiration, Author Donan Berg expanded upon his own childhood. He said a phrase and the experience of having no crayons when starting first grade stood out.

The phrase, he attributed to the Orient, was: "Fall down seven times, stand up eight."

His first-grade experience required a little background.

He recounted that he'd spent six months with his mother and brother in Ireland, the country of his birth, before he and his mother had, years before, joined her husband and his father in the United States heartland.  As a rambunctious five-year-old in Ireland, he'd played with cousins and explored the creek that flowed through the garden behind his grandmother's candy store. In doing so, he'd missed kindergarten in the United States. 

On returning to his hometown to begin first grade, he learned that his classmates had in kindergarten received a new box of sixteen crayons to be carried over for use in first grade. Thus, in his having missed kindergarten, he had no box of crayons. To compensate, his first-grade teacher removed a crayon discard box from a windowsill and gave it to him for his exclusive personal use.

To this day, he can still recall his fellow students teasing him for having to use stubby crayons without sharpened points.

However, he was happy. He took pleasure in the positive.

While his classmates had only one crayon of each color, he laid out and counted six reds, eight greens, et cetera, many more crayons than the sixteen his classmates were limited to.

Years later, he adopted his youthful experience in Lucia's Fantasy World. Lucia, although her parents are split, has basic needs fulfilled. She has shelter in an apartment, food enough not to starve, and enough clothing to keep her warm. Although she might not be a school "glamor" girl, she has fun snow sledding with Johnny. He shares his sled and doesn't complain his one leg is in a metal brace. 

Yet, in her own mind, Lucia longs for material things her mother can't afford, especially a Christmas tree. Friend Omar has access to multiple Christmas trees as a Boy Scout working at a site that sells trees to support his troop, however, he can't just give her a tree.

Lucia is forced to rely on her own determination, to build a trust in her own ability, and to learn the value of human relationships. In her journey, the fantasy world she encounters and conquers teaches her lessons of survival and exposes her to values applicable to her physical world. The experience also brings forth her hidden talent.

Was she wrong to long for material things like a Christmas tree?  No. Lucia's desires are, by themselves, neither right nor wrong. It's the pathway to understanding one's morality and the relationship to others that's important. 

As Author Donan Berg would explain, material items like crayons have no intrinsic value beyond coloring, yet sometimes they do. The item gives the youth who is given it but one perspective on their place in society and the world at large. Society promotes a standard. You're given a box of crayons. You're to be limited to this box.

But are you?

What if you can achieve the same or greater artistry with discards? 

What if anything does the discard tell us? What role does human determination play? Shouldn't it require us to do better than good?

Check out history. Well along in the advance of civilization, man communicated by chiseling images on rock. How troubled would we all be if one minor error in what we sought to express required us to begin again with a new rock, a new boulder?

Then again, how often are we advised to wipe the slate clean?

A conundrum? Yes. Is there one in Lucia's Fantasy World? (www.authorsden.com/visit/viewwork.asp?id=79192 or an e-book at www.smashwords.com/books/view/1142569)

Yes. Yet, to read Lucia's Fantasy World may personally help.

 

Thread suspense into the story

 

Thread suspense into the story

How does an author keep the reader interested?

A surefire way is to add the element of suspense. When incorporated into the story, this provides a payback to readers who have trusted you with their precious time.

The simplest definition of suspense is not knowing what will happen. For this, there needs to be a character the reader can emphasize with. Without reader empathy, adding an obstacle or visible peril won’t have pages turned.

If the reader cares, the creation of suspense requires the dilemma to linger before resolution. Let’s look at an example.

A bookstore browser enthusiastic for historical fiction is introduced to a 19th Century female coming of age. She has attractive attributes but fears a family history of sterility will damn her to spinsterhood. She meets the male heir to a stable of pedigree, prize-winning racehorses. He expresses a desire to raise a family.

Our heroine reluctantly explains to him that, if he should marry her, the odds of his attaining his goal is not guaranteed.

They nevertheless marry.

After two years, she’s still unable to conceive.

They adopt a young baby boy abandoned by a traveling gypsy caravan. Happy, the couple is heartbroken when authorities identify the boy as kidnapped, and the boy’s real father appears.

In secret, the heroine learns of an experimental method to be impregnated, and she volunteers to be a medical test case. When she becomes of child, she tells her husband. They are overjoyed to wait.

Within a month, the heroine miscarries.

For a second time, dread descends upon the heroine for life’s uncertainty has dealt her and her husband unexpected blows.

Will the reader keep on reading? The ending has not yet come. Will it be tragedy or success?

As the author, you know. And, by threading suspense of what the unexplained, but believable outcome, lies on upcoming pages will create a great incentive to keep the reader along in lockstep to complete the journey.

All's Forgiven by Donan Berg Earns 5-Star Review

 

5.0 out of 5 stars 

Trust No One, but Revel in the Mystery

Reviewed by Michael P. Hartnett in the United States on November 19, 2023

Donan Berg’s All’s Forgiven is one of those wild mysteries that keeps the reader guessing to the very end. Much of the lively engagement of constantly shifting suspicions comes from the novel centering on the viewpoint of Jenny Olsen, who’s a bit loopy and is recovering from an accident that also led to the death of her niece Eileen. Jenny is often uncertain and the reader more so. I can never fully trust her intense, emotional sister Ruth, her gruff Uncle John, the police officer and possible love interest Robert, and the urbane, mysterious professor Holmes, who also might be another love interest. The plot involving that niece’s death, car accidents, a valuable brooch from Queen Elizabeth’s inauguration, and, most importantly, the kidnapping of Jenny’s mother percolates along with amusing interactions and disarming twists.

The novel is filled with gothic elements, including the mysterious basements at home and at the bookstore where Jenny works. Berg plays with these subterranean notions which such lines as, “For Jenny, someone might well padlock her future behind the wall, never to be revived.” A single boot that may or may not belong to Jenny’s kidnapped mother, a missing garage key, and that brooch whose history and provenance vex and confound are situated around a group of characters prone to lying and keeping their counsel at inconvenient intervals. That Jenny’s bookstore borders on Riddle Jewelry where sister Ruth works adds another layer of proximity to their sibling tensions.

Little wonder Jenny makes asides like, “Afraid my memory gets jittery.” Oh, the revelations keep coming in a novel that subtly considers what is counterfeit and what is genuine. Without giving too much away, the reader is guessing right up to the final pages, where he discovers he’d been given sufficient clues all along. He was just too wrapped up in the crazy family drama and the bizarre combinations of romance and manipulation to center his pleasures on piecing together the puzzle. Donan Berg has given us quite a yarn across a snowy lowan landscape, one that keeps the reader involved and intrigued throughout.

All's Forgiven is available in paperback and e-book format at major book retailers. Click Purchase e-book here. Click