Welcome to the BalonaBooks Newsletter. You can use the newsletter to stay informed about upcoming BalonaBooks, get hot information about our staff, comments from readers and reviewers, have a direct line to new free stuff, eksedra (as we pronounce et cetera in Balona).

If you would like to let other readers know your opinion of one of our books, just send us your brief, self-signed BalonaBook review you would like to see published on this page. E-mail it HERE and, if it isn't too insulting, everyone in the English-Speaking World will be able to read it.

We also occasionally get suggestions from readers. The suggestions are sometimes very pointed, but we'll skip those for now. A few give us ideas for new books, and we share those ideas with Jonathan, Joaquin, and others, hoping that the germ will grow into a full-blown infection of creativity. We hope to hear from you.

Here's a review recently received from Sheila Ruth Portney, 16, California. (She gives us permission to use her name, but not her specific location. OK, Sheila, here it is:)

I was asked to be a pre-publication critic of Joaquin Peralta's new BalonaBook titled An Almost Private Eye. I thought it was going to be a mystery, and it was, sort of. Except that narrator Joey Kuhl strays a lot from the mystery part to talk about school (which classes he cuts regularly), girls (about which he isn't particularly suave), cars, Balona customs, and his weird family members. He finally gets around to solving the mystery of the fires of Balona, and in fact it's a pretty funny book. Only I wish it had a lot more sex in it, and maybe a good fight or two, which it has neither. Joey Kuhl is a cute guy, wants us to think he's another Matt Damon, but he's no Brad Pitt either. However, when you get right down to it, if Joey was real, I'd date him (and make some changes there).

Balona's good friend artist Linda Miramontes Gray was so taken with the stories about (and by) Joseph Oliver Kuhl that she whomped up this portrait.
Here is Linda's idea of Joey at, say, age 15. He's now older and, uh, wiser? You'll find out in Joaquin Peralta's new opus featuring this fine fellow available right now, An Almost Private Eye.

If you are practically slobbering for more Balona news, you could click Newer Newsletter and get a load of whassup.