Throwback Thursday - Guest Post: Murder on Ice by Alina Adams

Today, we welcome author Alina Adams for this week's edition of Throwback Thursday.  Her book, Murder on Ice was recently reissued as an Enhanced Multimedia Edition.  Welcome Alina!

 
Author: Alina Adams

Publisher: Berkley

First published in November 2003 by Berkley

The first in the Bex Levy figure skating series.

Since starting her research job at Network 24/7, Bex Levy has had to learn everything there was to know about figure skating. That way when TV commentators Francis and Diana Howarth are commenting on a live show they have all the needed material at their fingertips. At the World Figure Skating Championship's in San Francisco, everyone expects cute Erin Simpson to take the gold.

When the final results are tabulated, the Russian girl Xenia Trubin wins the top prize. The fans, the TV commentators and Erin's mother all say that Erin was cheated out of the gold. The four Russian judges voted for Xenia and the four western judges voted for Erin. The tie breaker vote was cast by Italian Judge Silvana Potenza who later was found murdered in the refrigerator room of the ice skating rink. The director of 24/7 tells Bex that if she wants a job next year she has to figure out who the killer is, which leaves her skating on thin ice.

My thoughts:
Murder on Ice is a very entertaining mystery.  The author definitely kept me guessing as to who the killer was, which is something I have always liked in a book.  Bex is a great character.  She is smart and has lots of courage to try and figure out who the killer is.  The other characters in the book definitely enhance the story.  I loved the scenes with Frances and Diana as they were very amusing!  I did have problems connecting to the videos of the skating through my Kindle, but that could have just been my connection at the time.  When I switched to reading on the computer, I had no issues.  I like the videos because it added a nice visual to the story.  If you missed this first in the series, pick it up.  Old or new version, I know you will be entertained by a great mystery.

Alina Writes:

Picture It: Enhanced E-Books

By Alina Adams

As we learned from both “The Princess Bride” and “The Wizard of Oz,” nothing is really dead until it’s really most sincerely dead.

The same applies to publishing.  In theory, once a book is out of print, it’s dead.  Well, mostly dead, as Miracle Max would say.  (Really, if you haven’t read “The Princess Bride,” do yourself a favor and hop to it, ASAP.  It has all the great lines from the movie, plus about a thousand more zingers.  But, I digress….)  You might be able to find a copy of an out of print book in a used book shop, or borrow it from a friend.  Maybe the library will stock one, for old times sake.

But, it used to be that out of print meant as good as dead.

Not anymore.  Thanks to the explosion of e-publishing, not only can currently released book ostensibly live on forever (shelf space just isn’t as important anymore), but even books once given up for… well… dead (how’s my leitmotif going?  Sick of it yet?), can find new life.

From 2002 to 2007, I published five Figure Skating Mysteries, “Murder on Ice,” “On Thin Ice,” “Axel of Evil,” “Death Drop,” and “Skate Crime,” with Berkley Prime Crime.

In 2011, I reacquired my rights, and will be reissuing them as e-books, one by one, starting in December 2012.

But, because I’ve never been very good at doing things the traditional way (ask any teacher who ever had the misfortune of catching me behind a desk in their classroom… or my poor, beleaguered parents who spent 12 years playing peacemaker between me and the Department of Education), and because I’m married to a man whose idea of a good time is finding new uses for computer code, I won’t be releasing them merely as e-books.

I’ll be releasing all five as enhanced e-books.

What, you may ask, are enhanced e-books?

Well, they’re books.  That are electronic.  And enhanced.  With audio, video, links, etc…

They are, depending on who you ask, either the next great step on the literary frontier, or a fad.  You know, like the talkies.

I, obviously, am leaning towards the whole great step/literary frontier thing.

In addition to all the text of my paperback original, the enhanced multimedia editions will feature professional skating videos, courtesy of The Ice Theatre of New York (http://www.icetheatre.org/) – American’s premiere ice dance company – as an integral part of the story.

You’ll be reading along (engrossed, I hope, by the mystery of who killed the skating judge? The coach? The ex-champion?) when you’ll come upon a picture.

Nothing unusual about that.  Books have featured illustrations since around the middle of the 17^th Century.

And then you’ll click on the picture.  And it will come to life.  (Take that, 17^th Century.)

There has been a lot of talk lately about how e-books, and especially enhanced e-books, will be the death of reading and the final, irrevocable step into the abyss of video-gaming up our culture.  (Is that a thing?  I just made it up.)

I don’t see it that way.  I see enhanced e-books as simply another step in the evolution of story-telling, something that has been a part of human history from the beginning.  And hopefully always will be.

About the author:

Alina Adams is the author of four romance novels (“When a Man Loves a Woman” is available as an enhanced multimedia edition), five skating mysteries, two non-fiction books, and three New York Times best-selling tie-ins to the soap operas, “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light.”  She is currently in the process of digitizing and enhancing her entire backlist, as well as partnering with other authors to do the same for their out of print books and media properties.  Read all about it at her website, http://www.AlinaAdams.com, or follow her on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002949310031