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9. Sounds like Jackie Brown, but Pam Grier smuggles money, not drugs. From the novel Rum Punch be Elmore Leonard
10. It's a Wonderful Life. (Your clue today nailed that for me, because the original clue was too common!) James Stewart   From a story, The Greatest Gift, by Philip Van Doren Stern (had to look up that last bit).

Thanks, everyone. There's still time to finish  if you've started reviewing it - and get mentioned in the Acknowledgements!

Thanks, JP! This marketing thing is a pain. And the industry has us indies by the short ones. Lower your price to get more downloads or face oblivion among the slew of books coming out every day. Amazon loves it; readers, who like free/almost free, love it. Artists in the music industry face the same challenge - give your creations up for pittance in return for a wider audience. But that audience - and mine - will wait for the next deal before shelling out money. And I can't blame them. (sigh) If there's any consolation, it's that the stuff-shirt Big-5 publishers are feeling the pain. But I'm happy being an author associated with an indie publisher. I've already had a career, and this is just fun!

Woman to Winston Churchill: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd have to give you poison."

Churchill's response: "My dear, if I were your husband, I would gladly take it."

In the book I just completed (still up on site if you're interested ), I had Vietnamese characters speaking to each other. To me, it was obvious they would be speaking in their native language, and I thought no such explanation from me (author intrusion) was needed. Later, a Vietnamese character talks to an American. Because he's become a successful businessman, he has learned English, though he hasn't quite gotten down the use of contractions - a way to set his voice apart. And this same character speaks to an ethnic-Chinese Malaysian, who has had more of a worldly experience than the man from Vietnam, so he speaks in rather fluent English. It's the context of the characters that provides the background for the speech, obviating the need for the author to "explain." The reader will understand. In another story of mine, I have a Lebanese-American ISIS soldier meeting an Arabic sheikh. He speaks Arabic to the sheikh in the greeting, but then the author (me) states that the sheikh switches to English in talking with his acolyte. He does this so his Iraqi bodyguards will not be privy to the conversation. Again, I don't need to say why he does this - it's for the reader to figure it out.

It's a discussion-worthy topic that probably has classes devoted to it in Creative Writing courses. Thanks for bringing it up, Dirk.

I got about a 50% review rate from the Read and Review program, though it's supposed to be 100%. The fee (they have discounts occasionally) covers 30 book requests. Some of those scofflaws had the nerve to request another book when I used Choosy again. I politely told them, sure, I'll send you the next book after you give that review you promised for the first one. I wouldn't use that program again. Regarding Bookbuzz, I have no experience.

Another thing I forgot to mention is Editorial Reviews on your Amazon author page. Select a line or two from your best reviews and post them there. Author Central will explain how to do that.

Excellent!

There's an art to reviewing - sounds pretentious, but it's true, taking the literal meaning of the word. A reviewer is not a publisher's editor or agent and must take the story as presented, despite their own ideas of how they would do it differently. Suggesting a change in sentence structure, or even recommending rearranging a paragraph is fine. But not a rewrite of the story. Thankfully, I have not had such a reviewer, but I feel your chagrin. There are, however, a few reviewers I've encountered  here who want to rewrite almost every sentence. Not because of grammatical issues, but just because they prefer a different way to say the same thing. Reviews don't come from on high, so feel free to ignore the ones that don't help you attain the vision you had when starting out with the project.

Thanks, JP! You'll be invited to the premier!