Welcome to the new home of Author & Professional Speaker, L. Diane Wolfe (AKA "Spunk on a Stick") and The Circle of Friends!

The Circle of Friends series follows a group of young adults as they face different challenges and learn to overcome. The emotionally gripping stories focus on love, friendships and the pursuit of dreams. Aimed at adults/young adults, these books defy the growing trend of salacious titles, especially for teenagers. Positive and uplifting, this series will leave readers determined to overcome their obstacles and achieve their goals.

This blog is now the home of the original The Circle of Friends website.


Monday, November 7, 2016

How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically

I’ve had the pleasure to meet author Carolyn Johnson Howard in person. She is a dynamo when it comes to book promotion and I got a sneak peek at her latest book!

The Web—more explicitly Amazon and other online bookstores—have changed the face and nature of reviews in the last couple of decades. Carolyn Howard-Johnson, known for her author advocacy and how-to books for writers—has released a new book (the 3rd) in her multi award-winning and bestselling (at many different levels) HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers.

With the release of Howard-Johnson’s How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career authors—both traditionally published and self-published—can now approach the daunting task of the whole spectrum of reviews from getting and using reviews online and in prestigious review journals efficiently. She also shows in the 340 page book, how to writing reviews as part of an author’s overall campaign and authors can use review of their own books and the ones they write toward building both a market for their book and building their own writing career.

This new how-to book is third in Howard-Johnson’s multi award-winning How To Do It Frugally Series. The first book in the series, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won’t, was named USA Book News “Best Professional Book 2004," and Book Publicists of Southern California honored it with their Irwin Award. Now in its second edition, Bookbaby.com calls it a “classic” and it has helped more than 40,000 authors since its release. The second in the series, The Frugal Editor, is her most award-winning of the series including honors from Day Poynter’s Global E-Book Award, USA Book News, Reader Views Literary Award, Next Generation Indie Book Award, and won a special Marketing Award from New Millennium Book Awards. It is now available at Amazon.

In the works are books like The Frugal Self-Publisher: The Quick, Down and Dirty Guide for Publishing Anything for Any Reason—Personal Professional or Poetic.

The author says, "This series is the result of a combination of experience gained through trial and error in promoting my own literary works and my professional experience in marketing, PR, journalism, editing and publishing in general."

Howard-Johnson was an instructor for UCLA Extension's Writers' Program for nearly a decade, was named Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by members of the California legislature, and was given her community’s Diamond Award and honored for her work with tolerance by her city's Ethics Committee. In addition to dozens of literary awards and honors, she was also featured by Pasadena Weekly in their “Pasadena Women Who Make Life Happen” for her advocacy in the publishing industry. Learn more about Carolyn at her website.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

The Follow-up to an IPPY Silver Medalist - Mâtowak: Woman Who Cries! Plus Crystal Collier's Timeless

Mâtowak: Woman Who Cries

The follow-up to Broken But Not Dead, an IPPY Award Silver Medalist

A murder enveloped in pain and mystery...

When Canada's retired Minister of National Defense, Leland Warner, is murdered in his home, the case is handed to Corporal Danny Killian, an aboriginal man tortured by his wife's unsolved murder.

The suspect, 60-year-old Sally Warner, still grieves for the loss of her two sons, dead in a suicide/murder eighteen months earlier. Confused and damaged, she sees in Corporal Killian a friend sympathetic to her grief and suffering and wants more than anything to trust him.

Danny finds himself with a difficult choice—indict his prime suspect, the dead minister's horribly abused wife or find a way to protect her and risk demotion. Or worse, transfer away from the scene of his wife’s murder and the guilt that haunts him...

“From its gripping beginning to its thrilling end, Matowak: Woman Who Cries delivers a fast-paced ride in this skillfully-written mystery from Joylene Nowell Butler.” - Mystery writer Elizabeth S. Craig

“A psychological puzzle unfolding from two very different points of view...an excellent whodunnit for the thinking reader.” - Patricia Stoltey, author

“…as complex in its plot as it is in its character development.” – Stuart Aken, author

Release date - November 1, 2016
$18.95 USA, 6x9 trade paperback, 312 pages
Thriller/Psychological (FIC031080) and Mystery (FIC022020)
Print ISBN 9781939844231, eBook ISBN 9781939844248
$4.99 eBook available in all formats

Joylene, Métis, is the author of Dead Witness, Broken But Not Dead, and Break Time. She and her husband and their two cats reside in Canada for the summers and Nayarit for the winters. They believe life should be an adventure.


Follow her blog tour for reviews, excerpts, interviews, guest posts, and your chance to win a copy of Mâtowak: Woman Who Cries.

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Timeless by Crystal Collier

Visit her site to enter the giveaway!

Time is the enemy.

In 1771, Alexia had everything: the man of her dreams, reconciliation with her father, even a child on the way. But she was never meant to stay. It broke her heart, but Alexia heeded destiny and traveled five hundred years back to stop the Soulless from becoming.

In the thirteenth century, the Holy Roman Church has ordered the Knights Templar to exterminate the Passionate, her bloodline. As Alexia fights this new threat—along with an unfathomable evil, and her own heart—the Soulless genesis nears. But none of her hard-won battles may matter if she dies in childbirth before completing her mission.

Can Alexia escape her own clock?