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| >> BIBLIOGRAPHY | >> J. GREGORY SMITH |
 "Greg Smith's Final Price is a fantastic book, well worth the price. I haven't even finished it yet but right from the first paragraph I was hooked. Final Price has the suspense, mystery and thriller effects that would be a great film. You can 'see' the action taking place and 'picture' the scenes like a movie. The formatting is good and author does such a good job with the storyline. Hoping for a follow up book." - M.A.R (Safford, Arizona) "I loved this book. Not what I normally would have purchased, but the price was right. Scary for sure, I would hate to go car shopping any time soon. I found it difficult in the beginning to be jumping from one person to the next person (new chapter) but I soon got the hang of it and enjoyed it. The story was easy to follow, and kept me flipping pages. I finished the book in record speed." - Cheryl Mercer (Nebraska) "This was the first book I bought for my Kindle, and I bought it because of recommendations on the Kindle forum. It was a bargain price, and I didn't expect too much from it but I really enjoyed it. I think I read that it is a first book for the author and I am impressed. I like my mysteries to be a little more complex but I really like the main protagonists, and I hope he writes more books featuring them because I find that characters evolve throughout a multi-book series." - Ekory |
Prior to writing fiction full time, Greg Smith worked in public relations in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. He has an MBA from the College of William & Mary and a BA in English from Skidmore College. "When I was still holding down a regular job I found time to write by forgoing a social life and other pastimes and substituting large amounts of caffeine for sleep. Looking back, it wasn't the best approach but it did make me focus on the task at hand and eventually I was able to finish my first full length manuscript. That book had its bright spots but isn't fit for human consumption. However, I did prove to myself I could complete a novel length piece of fiction. From the point I committed to writing a full length novel it's been about sixteen years. In that period I've written four novels and a bunch of short stories, including Street Smarts, which was published in "Stories From the Ink Slingers" (Gryphonwood Press, 2007.) I first wrote Street Smarts when I was part of a local Wilmington writers group called, The Written Remains. It's about a graduate student at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University who is working with some of the most prominent doctors in the country to find a cure for an out of control bio-weapons virus. I was thrilled to see it in print in the anthology compiled by the Written Remains founder, Joanne Reinbold and also to learn that it had been nominated by the publisher for a Washington Science Fiction Association's Small Press Award. I got to read a portion at the book launching party. It can be uncomfortable to hear written words out loud, particularly if they're yours. The whole time I was speaking, part of my brain kept trying to edit the text! Writers curse, I suppose." Final Price won First Place in the 2010 Delaware Press Association's Communication contest (Fiction category) and was selected as a Quarterfinalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. First released as a self-published work, it is now under contract with AmazonEncore, a new publishing imprint from Amazon.com. Final Price will be re-released in November 2010 and will be available at Amazon.com, bookstores nationwide and in e-book formats. "After I launched Final Price as an Independent author I've learned tons about how to market a book. The local bookstores have been terrific, and I had my first book signing late last year. For an unknown author it's a bit different than the long lines of adoring fans an established writer can get. It is a lot more like sitting at a table while people walk by on their way to the stack of bestsellers. Occasionally someone will stop by to chat and each sale feels great. Some day I may even get recognized, but for now I'll have to accept being "unrecognized" like the lady who checked out my table and then looked right at me and said: "I'm sorry, I don't know you!" In addition to ongoing marketing efforts for 'Final Price', Smith's young adult novel, 'Prince Dale and the Crystal Mountain', made the Quarter Finals in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. He has a second thriller, 'Noblesse Oblige', currently under consideration by a publisher. Finally, he's started work on a new thriller, which will draw from some of the characters from my first book. However, it'll be a "start from scratch" effort with a very different and more complex plotline. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware with his wife and son. |