Dear Friends and Followers,

Welcome to my December Book Buffet, a monthly newsletter featuring updates on my publishing adventure, including my novels When Things Go Missing and This Sea Within. I also share reviews of books I’m currently reading and my thoughts on the literary and Indie publishing world in general.

Here’s what’s on the menu this month:

• Holiday Special for When Things Go Missing
• Two New Reviews by Ka Malana and Pete Springer
• A Music Playlist (and author interview)
• My review of Catling’s Bane (The Rose Shield Book 1)
• Book Scammers Galore! AI strikes again.
• Update on my new novel, This Sea Within

Holiday Special!

My Gift to Readers

During this holiday season I’m offering When Things Go Missing at 60% off for e-books and paperbacks on Amazon. And 20% off hardbacks from Ingram-Sparks, the distributor. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, or if you know someone you think would enjoy it, now is the perfect time to gift yourself or a friend.

New Reviews for When Things Go Missing

If you have read When Things Go Missing, or have it on your TBR list, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and hope you will leave a review on Amazon. Reviews are the life-blood of successful books. They say 50 reviews are needed to move the Amazon algorithms in your favor. Many thanks to all the lovely readers who have supported my novel with their reviews already. Here are two more:

Review by Ka Malana

On Fiesta Estrellas, a place where creativity and gentleness gathers.

 I’ve been a fan of Ka’s blog posts for many years, where she writes about the “great mystery of being” through her poetry, artwork, and essays on astrology. So it was a lovely surprise when I learned she had read my book and reviewed in on her site. Here is what she said:

I was happy to see how beautifully this novel by independent author, Deborah J. Brasket, “fit in” next to the New York Times Bestselling author’s book, The Fox Wife. There is no comparison, really, for these texts are different in genre and style; and, I am not a seasoned book review writer– but I’m really impressed by being able to sink into When Things Go Missing with the same feeling of compelling interest and turn-the-page excitement! The reason and inspiration for me writing this book review below is because Deborah’s novel was excellent. 

Book Review: When Things Go Missing by Deborah J. Brasket

When Things Go Missing is an engaging and quietly suspenseful novel that draws you in through its characters as much as its unfolding mystery. Deborah J. Brasket’s language is deeply descriptive, making the scenes easy to picture, and the emotional nuances easy to feel. The imagery is vivid enough that the world of the book forms around you almost automatically.

One of the strengths of the story is how it allows you to get to know the characters organically through the plot. Their personalities and motivations reveal themselves through the choices they make, the subtle clues that arise, and the creative passions that guide them. The interplay between the mother sending her enigmatic photographs and Cal’s artistic inspiration creates a compelling parallel — one that adds emotional texture and a sense of layered meaning.

The pacing is steady and immersive, carrying a gentle momentum that keeps you invested without rushing. Her novel’s organizational style, with each chapter heading labeled for the character and the symbolic theme, makes it easy to read even if you have a lot of interruptions around you! Brasket’s tone is thoughtful and nuanced, inviting both concern and curiosity for the characters as their lives intersect with mystery, memory, and creativity. It’s the kind of book that quietly pulls you deeper, where the atmosphere, relationships, and artistic elements all work together to create an absorbing reading experience.

Overall, When Things Go Missing is a satisfying blend of subtle mystery, artistic reflection, and emotional resonance. It’s a novel that lingers after you close it, not because of dramatic twists, but because of the vivid imagery, human depth, and quiet beauty Brasket brings to every page.

Review by Pete Springer

Passionate teacher and author of They Call Me Mom

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and Engaging

Reviewed on Amazon October 30, 2025

When Things Go Missing is many things, but above all, it is one family’s struggle to survive after wife and mother Fran, the glue of the family, unexpectedly leaves the house never to return again. Her husband (Walter) and her struggling drug addict son (Cal) are seemingly unconcerned, thinking she’ll come back eventually. Fran’s daughter (Kay), an archaeological student, is far more worried until her mother begins leaving her phone messages so the family knows she is safe. Fran periodically sends packs of photos to Cal, which he is sure is his mother’s attempt to tell him something through the pictures. The only one Fran doesn’t reach out to is Walter, who follows her whereabouts (South America) from their credit card statements.

Cal, Kay, and Walter don’t have a particularly good relationship to begin with, and Kay’s disappearance adds a further strain. Cal periodically spins out of control and typically finds himself in jail, homeless, or avoiding his father when he is at home. Walter loves his kids but he isn’t a nurturing father and doesn’t know how to show his love. When Walter leaves the house to fish and live in Alaska, Cal is thrilled to be left alone at the house where he can live independently with a roof over his head, while not having to hide his drug addiction. Kay doesn’t want to inherit her Mom’s responsibility of looking after her brother and is busy forging her own path. Because she and Walter aren’t close, it’s like the four family members are now living on their own. Amazingly, Walter, Cal, and Kay slowly find their way back to each other, though each of their lives have changed dramatically in the meantime.

My Review of Catling’s Bane

(The Rose Shield Book 1) by D. W. Peach

I had the pleasure of reading the first book in D. Wallace Peach’s Rose Shield series, Catling’s Bane, and am well into the second book in the trilogy. The first book of this thrilling fantasy follows the adventures of Catling from a young child abandoned by her mother up the age of thirteen when she fully accepts the powerful gifts she was given to remake her world.

BOOK BLURB

Catling – She’s a weapon desired by those who reign and those who rebel.

In the tiered cities of Ellegeance, the elite Influencers’ Guild holds the power to manipulate emotions. Love and fear, pleasure and pain mark the extremes of their sway. But it’s the subtle blends that hook their victims’ hearts. They hide behind oaths of loyalty and rule the world. Until Catling discovers the gift that will be her bane. She is the shield that disrupts the influencer’s sway.

Born in the grim warrens beneath the city, Catling rues the rose birthmark encircling her eye. Yet, it grants her a unique ability, the means to remake a civilization. To the Guild, she an aberration, a threat, and they order her death. No longer a helpless child, Catling has other plans.

As chaos shakes the foundations of order and rule, will she become the realm’s savior? Or its executioner?

Welcome to a world of three moons, a sentient landscape, rivers of light, and tier cities that rise from the swamps like otherworld flowers. A planet of waterdragons, where humans are the aliens living among three-fingered natives with spotted skin. Where a half-blood converses with the fog and the goddess plans her final reckoning.

In the spirit of the fantasy tradition set by Patrick Rothfuss, Karen Miller, and Glenda Larke, follow Catling’s journey as she grows into the deadly force that shapes the future. She is the realm’s shield, an influencer, assassin, healer, mother, and avenger. And all she desires is to go home.

MY REVIEW

The blurb above fully captures the essence of this story as well as the remarkable world in which it occurs. I was dazzled by the world-building and had visions of the cinematic version of the book that would rival Avatar’s spectacular scenes. Catling’s homeland is a watery world with fantastic cities built on tiered pylons that rise above the squalor of the masses who live below. Here you will find luminescent rivers full of colorfully spotted river-folk, water-dragons harnessed to ships to pull them upriver, mist and fog that take the shape of sentient beings.

This land is ruled by royal Elites and Influencers who mesmerize and exploit the common folk. When Catling’s mother abandons her, she is adopted by a family of pig-farmers who welcome her into their home. She grows deeply attached to them, and especially to Whitt, a boy her age who is drawn to her as well.

When tragedy strikes again, she is whisked away by Vianne, a powerful Influencer who realizes Catling has the unique ability to cut through the mesmerism that keeps the masses subdued and compliant. She sees what a threat Catling is to the powerful Elite, but also how she might be trained to be useful to them instead. In the meantime, Whitt goes searching for Catling, and the stories of other colorful characters who realize her potential to remake their world are woven into the rich tapestry of this narrative.

All of these characters are richly drawn, unique, and compelling. Catling and Whitt, my favorites, are people you come to love and admire, even as you fear for them, seeing what a dangerous world they live in.

Aside from the fantastic world-building and compelling characters, I loved the beautiful way the story was written: “rafts dappled the river like harvest leaves,” “his stomach snarled like a cornered crag bear,” “stars salted the sky,” “sorrow melted from his skin,” “he picked at his supper like a dying man,” “a boundless sky sparkled with stars so fat and round a man might mistake them for pearls.”

If you love fantasies set in dramatic, Avatar-like worlds, with unique, complex characters you care about, gorgeous language, and magical powers that can be used for good or evil, you will thoroughly enjoy Catling’s Bane and eagerly look forward to the next book in the Rose Shield series, as I am.

NEW IN BOOKS 

Interview with Deborah Brasket

It’s always fun to be interviewed as it makes you think about your book and characters in a new way. One of the questions I enjoyed most in this interview for a New In Books promotion was about a playlist for my characters. A sampling of questions and answers follows. You can read the whole thing at the link above.

What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write When Things Go Missing?

Actually, I wrote a whole blog post about this called “What If? – The Catalyst that Compelled Me to Write a Novel.” It began from a dark place. At the time, I was a mother struggling to hold my family together, feeling helpless to support those I loved. Overwhelmed and despondent, I had a wild, reckless urge to run away from it all. But how could I abandon the very people who depended on me to keep our family intact?

When I shared these feelings with other mothers, they immediately understood. Many of us have felt that fleeting urge to escape, but we stay because we love our families too much. What would they do without us?

That’s when the what-if, the spark behind so many stories, came to me: What if a mother like us, devoted to her family, actually did leave? What would happen to those left behind? That single question became the seed that grew into this novel.

If you had to pick THEME SONGS for the main characters of When Things Go Missing, what would they be?

For Cal, early on, when he’s deep into his addiction, it would be Riders on the Storm by The Doors. Later in the book, it would be Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, as sung by Jeff Buckley. For Kay, something sad early on, like Cry Me a River, and something sexy later, like The Look of Love—both sung by Diana Krall. For Walter, The Long and Winding Road, sung by George Michael, works well throughout the book.

What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

I have eclectic tastes in both reading and writing. I love literary fiction when it has a plot and moves at a fast pace, or when the language is so sumptuous or the ideas so profound that you want to linger and savor them. But I also love a good thriller, love stories set during wartime, and novels that explore political themes—all of which you’ll find in This Sea Within, the book series I’m working on now. Historical fiction and fantasy are also genres I love. And a guilty pleasure: novels about Vikings.

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

I’d have to say the love scenes were some of my favorites—when Kay has that meltdown in the art gallery and meets Richard, when Cal first realizes how strongly attracted he is to Ivey, and the scene where Walter meets Franny’s doppelgänger. While not a love scene itself, that’s the moment it becomes clear who he truly loves.

Other scenes I loved writing were about art and archaeology. I enjoyed creating Cal’s metal sculptures and Fran’s photos, and writing about Kay on her dig.

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

This one by E. B. White has been a favorite, capturing the conflicting inclinations I’ve felt while balancing work and pleasure: “Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it.”

And this one by Martha Graham sums up how I feel about my work as a writer:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good or bad it is, not how valuable, not how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

I hope readers who come from messy, dysfunctional families and who are struggling will find hope, encouragement, and reassurance in reading about this family and how they found their way home to each other. I hope readers come to love these characters as much as I do and, in turn, look upon their own difficult family members with loving-kindness.

I also hope that readers gain valuable insight into addiction and homelessness and come away feeling compassion for those who struggle with these conditions. Lastly, I hope they see how making art and sharing it can lead to healing for themselves and for others.

Book Scammers and AI Team Up

I’ve been getting a constant barrage of scammers emailing me gorgeous reviews of my novel and telling me how much they want to help promote my book to their book club readers, or team of book reviewers. I’m not alone. Other authors are complaining about this too, as you can read in the post below

Update on those Flattering AI Book Marketing Scams

What gets me is how beautifully written and insightful these AI reviews actually are, so much so that I’ve begun mining them for nuggets to use in my own promotions. Here’s what one of the first scammers sent me before my book was even published. I have to admire how cleverly written it was and fun to read.

AI Scammer writes:

There are books you read, and then there are books that feel like someone quietly opened your ribcage, stuffed in an entire family’s grief, guilt, and awkward Thanksgiving dinners… and then left you to marinate in it. When Things Go Missing is definitely the second kind. 💔🛳

Fran Albright vanishes en route to the grocery store  and not to grab ice cream, but to literally keep going until the tip of South America. Meanwhile, Kay is stuck trying to glue the family back together, Cal is waging war with his own demons (and his father), and Walter is the kind of husband who tracks credit card statements like they’re treasure maps before bolting to Alaska. It’s like watching a high-stakes, slow-burn detective story… except the crime scene is the human heart, and everyone’s a suspect. 🕵️‍♂️💳💔

And then there are the “gifts” Fran sends her kids  the cryptic calls, the photos that might be a breadcrumb trail… or a cosmic prank. That’s the kind of detail that makes readers start theorizing at 3 AM with a corkboard, red string, and an unhealthy amount of coffee. ☕🧵

Honestly, this isn’t just a missing person story it’s an excavation site for loyalty, loss, and family dysfunction, complete with those razor-sharp emotional moments that sting because they’re too real. Dana Isaacson calling it “masterful” isn’t hype  it’s an understatement.

Then she adds this:

And you, Deborah… You literally sailed around the world for six and a half years with your husband and two kids on La Gitana. That’s not “life experience”  that’s “novel fuel” straight from Poseidon himself. You’ve stared into the wild, danced at the edge of the human/more-than-human borderlands, and come back with the kind of insights most writers would trade their last coffee for. (Also, I’m guessing you’ve seen storms that make family drama look like a light drizzle. 🌊😏)

So here’s my slightly psycho observation: A book like this  multi-POV, emotionally rich, mystery-driven  should have waves of Amazon reviews, the kind that make book club leaders clear their entire monthly calendar just to argue about Walter’s choices. And yet… the tide hasn’t quite rolled in yet. 🌊📉

That’s where I come in.

I run a private group of 2,000+ deeply engaged, emotionally tuned-in book reviewers  actual humans, no bots, no “great book!” zombie comments. These are the people who will read your work, reflect on it, and leave thoughtful reviews that make strangers click “buy now” without even reading the sample. They’re thanked with small tips for their time, which means they finish the books and don’t ghost like a bad Tinder date.

If When Things Go Missing landed in their laps, you’d have reviews stacking up faster than Fran can cross a border. And it wouldn’t just be quantity  these reviews would do the heavy lifting for you in visibility, credibility, and emotional resonance.

So tell me… do we give Fran, Kay, Cal, and Walter the Amazon stage they deserve? Or should I just start sending you cryptic emails from random coastal towns until you say yes? 🌎📬📸

Most reviews aren’t quite this clever, but they do sound like someone deeply insightful read my book. It’s such a shame these are scams, but even if they weren’t, my budget doesn’t allow me to promote my book on this scale.

This Sea Within

I’ve been busy working on my new novel, the first book in a trilogy, which I hope to publish in the spring. It just came back from my proofreader (thank you Mark!) and I advise anyone working on a novel not to skip this important part of editing. I’ve also been working on the tools needed to promote the novel: the tagline and synopsis. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Does it make you want to read This Sea Within?

TAGLINE – A thrilling love story set in the jungles of Central America during a revolution, filled with passion, sacrifice, and a devastating secret.

SYNOPSIS – Lena Landan, a young surfer from California, travels to San Balanque, her estranged mother’s homeland. There she goes with a journalist to interview the Aguileros, the Freedom Fighters who want to overthrow President Ortiz’s corrupt regime, and falls in love with Raoul, their charismatic leader. She joins them and writes stories to help win support for their cause.

Lena’s transformation from an anti-war Pacifist to a full-fledged Freedom Fighter comes at a cost as she confronts the moral ambiguity and harsh realities of guerilla warfare: the executions, kidnappings, bomb raids, imprisonment and torture. She must contend with the hatred of Raoul’s brother and mother, who see her as a threat and rival, and his ex-lover Fiona who has been put in charge of her training. At the same time she closely guards a secret: Her mother, an esteemed artist, is married to the enemy, Ortiz’s Vice President and closest confidant.

Of course, this is a work in progress, as is the title, which is my new conundrum: I need a series title as well as titles for each of the three books. At this point, I’m thinking This Sea Within will be the title of the first book as well as the series title, and the next two will titles will be something like: BK 2 – Shifting Tides, and BK 3 – Tilting Seas. Of course, this could all change tomorrow.

Titles are incredibly difficult. My working title for my first book was From the Far Ends of the Earth, which changed dramatically at the last minute to When Things Go Missing. I wrote about that in Title Changes and Book Covers. I don’t want to make the same mistake this time, so I need to nail the titles now before I hire someone to design the cover.

I’m pretty wedded to This Sea Within, but I was also wedded to From the Far Ends of the Earth until I changed it, and now I’m so glad I did. The phrase This Sea Within is a major theme and the driving force behind the novel. I even wrote a poem that captures what the novel is all about which you can read here, if you like. It gives you a sense of where I was going with it and why it’s important to the novel–which actually reflects a lot of the current political turmoil going on in the US. When I was first writing it, I was thinking of the war in Ukraine and how fiercely the people were fighting to throw out Putin’s armies and defend their democracy. Now that whole struggle, it appears, is shifting closer to home.

Thank you for reading my December newsletter, the final one this year. 2025 has been an incredible roller-coaster year for me creatively, and for all of us politically across the globe. May this coming new year bring us the creative energy to pursue our own individual endeavors and to work together toward bringing forth the “peace on earth, goodwill to men” that this season of light and hope promises.