Guest Post - Aaron L.

CAN THE WORST OF TIMES MAKE FOR THE BEST OF LINES?

I think I heard somewhere that "life is pain". I beg to differ. Life is the
ability to survive the pain.

When I began my journey into creating my novel, "Light Under the House" I
only had a germ of a plot and not much else. I was a college drop out at the
time and didn't have much going for me. I had also sown a lot of seeds into
endeavors that turned out to be useless. I had a mountain of wasted
opportunity and regrets piled up. I wasn't trained expert in any field. What
did I know? Then again, I did know a few things.  I knew about rejection. I
knew about the loss friendship. I knew about living with frustration, anger,
and fear. I knew those things. I knew I had a story to tell.

So I asked myself, what does it look like to overcome the wounds I've been
dealt? What does it look like to fail and come back again? What does faith
in action look like? As I started to ask myself these questions, the novel
grew and so did I.  In the process I learned some key things:

If you want to challenge the reader you have to challenge yourself. "Light
Under the House" is a novel about character. I knew I wanted to be better. A
better brother. Son. Friend. A better man. If I didn't find it challenging I
was certain no one else would.

Don't be afraid to be open and generous. I've learned not be afraid to talk
about issues through my story and its characters that are personal to me
and my struggles. Our scars are just proof that we're still alive, we can
show them.

Everyone has a strength, let yours shine. Don't get me wrong, it's not all
pain. I've lived a very blessed life. While it was true that I didn't have
any technical expertise, I did have life experience. By the time fifteen I
had lived in numerous places in the U.S. and abroad. I had been around the
world. I had diverse experiences to draw upon in dealing with people and
life. It also helped to hone a unique perspective. What are your strengths?

So can the worst of times make for the best of lines? I think it can. If
not, I'm sure I'll survive it.


Aaron is the author of:

Light Under The House by Aaron L.

Paperback, 362 pages

Kindle and EBook

Ravensbrook Press

Good Reads Summary:

"Sarai Ravensbrook has never known power. She has never been in control of anything in her world. She has lived in the shadow of her step father and uncle's abuses to both her mind and body. All she has ever wanted was to have what was hers, to control her own destiny. But when a beautiful and mysterious woman comes into her life, Sarai is guided down a strange path....a path that will lead her to a queen from the ancient past and to a destiny that is finally her own....or is it?" 

Sarai Ravensbrook, the sly John Quince, the wise Dr. Levi and Tanis. All are characters involved with the Levi family and the secret lying just beneath their house that could potentially ruin them. A secret that an ancient evil will stop at nothing to uncover. Light Under the House by Aaron L. and Donna Dawson, chronicles the lives of the Levi family for a generation, taking readers on an exciting and thought-provoking journey. 

This page-turning story is set in the late 1960s during a period of cultural rebellion, with a flashback to Biblical times, as well as a flash-forward to the 1980s and the present (2005). The events of this allegoric novel are interwoven within several themes that create cohesion for the story. Messages of courage, forgiveness, faith, the power of consequence, and the hope of redemption are all found within the pages of Light Under the House.

Light Under The House is currently a Good Reads Giveaway! To enter please go to http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/17519-light-under-the-house

Giveaway ends March 2,2012

Aaron is a Good Reads author: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4967287.Aaron_L_

Comments Always Welcome!

Waiting on Wednesday - Melanie Milburn

I am selecting a book that is already out but we are waiting for our review copy. We are very excited about it. It looks like it will be a fun book for us. I think it would be a great gift so I decided to show it to you now with gift giving holidays upon us.

I LOVE YOU MORE THAN CHOCOLATE by Melanie Milburn

ISBN: 978-1604587203

I Love You More Than Chocolate by Melanie Milburn uses the theme of chocolate to acquaint children with the meaning of love.

Milburn, a self-avowed chocoholic, has whipped up a book about a mom's love for her daughter and her love for chocolate that will melt readers' hearts. It's a rhyming book with beautiful illustrations on scrapbooking paper by Cindy Coleman.

A CD of Melanie singing I Love You More Than Chocolate is included in the book. This easy-to-memorize song is sweet and allows children to follow along with the text, giving them the impression that they are reading the book themselves. 

A nightly rhyming game after bedtime reading with her young daughter led Melanie to first produce the song. A year later she had the idea to make it into a fully illustrated children's book. Their "I Love You More" game had only two rules. It had to be something that rhymed and it had to be about something they both loved. One verse included in the book goes like this: 

I love you more than the color blue.

I love you more than a day at the zoo.

I love you more no matter what you do.

I love you more than chocolate!

Melanie has learned much about life and love from her many years working with preschoolers, where she is truly in her element. Kids gravitate toward her big heart, sense of fun, and her music. Many of her songs are inspired by her real life experiences with children in the classroom. No wonder her husband calls her a "kid magnet!"  She has been writing songs for over 20 years and has produced two CDs for children.

  

For more on Melanie Milburn, her book and music, please visit www.melaniemilburn.com.

Comments Always Welcome!            

Guest Post with Katharine A. Russell

Guest Post with Katharine A. Russell

a part of Pump Up Your Books Virtual Tours

Now I Get Why My Parents Seem, Well, So Weird...

When I started writing DEED SO, I didn't think of my book as historical fiction. I wanted to write a coming-of-age novel that touched on all the themes that were important to Boomers as they entered their teens. In psychological terms, we are who we were at about age fifteen, so my plan was to write a book that foreshadowed what the Boomers would become as they journeyed toward adulthood and were shaped by the tumultuous events of the Sixties. I set the story in what I call the last year of innocence, the year before President Kennedy was assassinated. In DEED SO, all the seeds are in place for the conflicts that blossomed in the later part of the decade. The readers knows this, but the characters in the book, of course, are clueless about the changes that are just over the horizon. And yet they sense the tremors.

In a few weeks 2012 will be upon us and the setting of DEED SO will be exactly fifty years in the past, the earliest threshold for a novel to be considered historical fiction under most circumstances. Although I did not start out with this as a goal, I believe I have created an authentic snapshot of the early Sixties -- the feel and the pace of the times, what was important to people, the language, occupations and hobbies, the constraints and the freedoms. At one point in the book, the main character, Haddie Bashford, has to wait through the night to learn the fate of a loved one. She had to wait until the news cycle caught up with events. Since she lived in a very small town, her problem was compounded. In those days, only big city news made the front page in a day. Now cell phones and the internet have destroyed the news cycle for the most part. People in remote rural areas can stream the image of a tornado to a news outlet in seconds. Technological change over the past fifty years has been an eye popper. So has social change. In the early Sixties, women chose among a limited number of career opportunities -- nursing, teaching and secretarial work. Now girls can aspire to be astronauts. African Americans had very limited opportunities not only in terms of careers, but schools, neighborhoods, restaurants and even seats on the bus. We have come a long, long way.

I was very pleased when one reviewer said I had helped her understand her mother. She felt she had a better feel for why her mom reacts in certain ways and why her priorities are the way they are. I hope DEED SO does this for lots of readers. To know what makes a Boomer tick, you need to see what happened to them in their teen years.

DEED SO actually unpacks two generations, the idealistic and materially favored Boomers and their parents, the Greatest Generation, who came of age during the Depression and were victorious in World War II. This generation wanted to build and preserve a safe and predictable world, so they could get back to the business of raising a family and enjoying a close knit community. They wanted to warm their hands around the hearth. The Boomers were bored with the hearth; they want to see the world, the bright lights and the big city. The GGs had seen the big city at 30,000 feet or in house-to-house firefights. They didn't think the city was all that alluring. When you think about it, these two generations were destined for conflict. If Vietnam hadn't come along to set the whole suspicion and mistrust thing in motion, somebody would have had to invent it.

In 1970, my father threatened to disown me for listening to an antiwar speaker at Northwestern University. I threatened back that he would never see his grandchildren. We made our peace long ago, but during the emotional days after Kent State, parents and their college age kids often found themselves on the opposing sides of issues. A quiet family dinner could go ballistic.

DEED SO is a complete story, with a beginning, middle and end, but it also is a stepping stone. Reading it is like watching a generation put a communal foot on the road to maturity. We know that road passed through some pretty treacherous territory, but a lot of good came out of the journey. For me, it is a bit like watching Harry Potter get his wand.

Katharine is the author of DEED SO - Smashwords Link.

It is 1962, and Agnes Hayden Bashford, Haddie, a brainy Southern teen from a tradition-bound family, dreams of breaking free from suffocating expectations placed on girls and from Wicomico Corners. She vows to escape to the exhilarating world beyond its narrow borders, like her handsome, older friend Gideon Albright who is going to Vietnam. A series of shocking incidents brings the outside world crashing down on her peaceful village, exposing long-buried family secrets and setting Haddie on a collision course with an unstable firebrand who will have to silence her to protect his identity. Haddie witnesses the fatal shooting of a black teen by a white down-on-his-luck farmer trying to protect his retarded son. The resulting murder trial attracts outside agitators and political aspirants, and pits townspeople against each other. Excited about being a witness in the trial, Haddie sees her moment of notoriety dissolve into frustration and discomfort and tragedy claim the people around her. The racially-charged case exposes civic fault lines and secrets within Haddie's own family, shattering her comfortable home life, and unleashes an arsonist who terrorizes the community by night. In Deed So, a young girl and an entire town lose their innocence in the last year of innocence, the year before the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights struggle, feminist activism and the Vietnam War changed America forever.

She is also the author of Buddy's Tail. I do not have a cover to share but I do have a book trailer. Very cute for children. It is sold through Smashwords - Buddy's Tail. 

Comments Always Welcome!

The Taste by Alan Orloff as Zak Allen

The Taste by Alan Orloff as Zak Allen

From Good Reads:

After his mother dies, Jake Wheeler returns to his birthplace of Dark Springs, West Virginia, seeking solace among his kin. But his family’s unique comfort food includes some ingredients Jake's not sure he can stomach.
They eat dead people.
Discovering that skeleton in the pantry and adjusting to a new diet turn out to be the least of Jake’s worries. Storm clouds have gathered over Dark Springs, threatening the family’s peaceful existence. Ax-wielding clan patriarch Dallas Pike and his band of renegade followers have decided upon a violent plan to increase the dwindling food supply. Why wait for your next meal to die naturally if you can hunt it down instead?
With the survival of the entire clan at stake, Jake wages war against madman Pike.
He also battles an even more terrifying opponent.
Himself.
After all, Jake has THE TASTE.

My Turn:

I must admit I was fascinated by this book, ( and a little sick). The characters were well written and despite my turning stomach I found myself caring about several of them. The story line absolutely held my interest. I would say this is an Indie book that lets you know just how good Indie Authors can be. It is a horror story that has family loyalty, family feud, love and suspense mixed in. It was a different read for me - most of the books I read lately where someone is eating someone deal with zombies - which made it refreshing. I really enjoyed this authors style of writing. I think you will too, if you are into horror stories. 

  

Currently there is a giveaway on Good Reads for Deadly Campaign. This giveaway ends January 8, 2012 and you can enter it here: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/15656-deadly-campaign

Alan has a website here: http://www.alanorloff.com

He is a Good Reads Author: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3314049.Alan_Orloff

He is on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/alanorloff

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanorloff

Comments Always Welcome!

She Had No Choice by Debra Burroughs

She Had No Choice by Debra Burroughs

Lake House Books

*I was given a copy of this book for review. The opinions expressed are my true feelings. No compensation for this review was received. This review is part of Virtual Tours*

She Had No Choice was inspired by a true story. It starts out with the Ramirez family in Mexico during the time of the Spanish Influenza of 1918. When the flu takes the lives of half of the children, Emilio and Juanita Ramirez make the hard decision to leave everything behind and take their remaining children north to the United States. They hope to make a life there for their family. After 4 years of working in migrant fields, Juanita dies and Emilio makes the decision to send 12 year old Sofia to his sister to raise. It is his hope that she will be taken care of and given an education that will give her a future. Unfortunately, Emilio's sister is angry over not being given a choice in accepting Sofia and takes it out on her. She is given work in her aunt's hotel and home. There is no education and the only love she receives comes from her cousins. After her aunt dies things improve a bit for Sofia since her cousins are free to treat her as family. 

Sofia, still aching to be loved, meets and falls for a young man. He pressures her to have sex with him and when she finds herself pregnant, he dumps her. Her cousins help her as much as they can but an unmarried woman in a well to do family was an embarrassment. Sofia makes friends with Rosa and from her meets Carlos. He takes her and baby Eva to California for migrant work.He does not marry her but they live as man and wife. Carlos does not really love Eva and reminds Sofia that Eva is a bastard. When Sofia tells Carlos she is pregnant, he tells her it better be a boy. It is and Sofia stays with Carlos. Soon after they have twin boys and then a daughter. Carlos drinks and has a temper while he is drunk.  At one point Carlos gives away one of the twin boys. When Sofia finds he is being abused she brings him back home. Other times he is physically abusive. Eva spends her first years wondering why her dad does not love her until Sofia tells her that Carlos is not her father.  Then Eva tries to stay out of his way. Eventually after one of the beating s to Sofia, Carlos "makes up to her" by marrying her. Not the best decision Sofia could have made but then you have to remember this was back in the 1930's when choices for women were limited. We move on to the 1940's and read of the family's hardships with the war and being poor. It was heartening to read that the children were permitted to stay in school. Being a migrant family often meant that children were needed in the fields as they grew up. When Carlos decides that it is time for Eva to join the work she devises a way to stay in school. During the 1950's Eva had left home and Sofia was still with Carlos and their nine children. Eva is living with a nurse and is being given the opportunity to change the course of not only her life but also her mother's. Will she take it? Will she succeed where her mother failed? Or will she, as so many children from DV homes do, follow in the footsteps of her mother?

 For me this book was slow going because of the narrative style. It is  third-person style which I find, at times, to be difficult for me. I find it hard to form a relationship with the characters when a story is told in this style. However it is a compelling look at everyday life in a alcohol related domestic violence home. It is a poignant reminder of how sad and painful that life is for all. Sofia and Eva's hopes for the future and their tenacity at reaching that brighter future brings to mind the resilience of families caught in this nightmare. I found this to be a very interesting story and would like to read what happened after this book ends. 

  

Debra Burroughs is a Good Reads Author: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4586634.Debra_Burroughs

Comments Always Welcome!

TBR Intervention Challenge Week 2

TBR Intervention is a weekly challenge hosted by Dani@RefractedLight , Ayanami@Whatever you Can Still Betray,  and April@Books4Juliet

The goal of this challenge is to help each other (fellow readers and bloggers) manage our enormous and constantly growing TBR (To-Be-Read) List. The rules are simple and everyone is encouraged to participate. It does not force you to commit to more than what you can manage to read in a week or so, but participants are encouraged to read at least one book within a week. You are free to choose the book you want to read and commit to this challenge. You may post your entry every Saturday, at the frequency of your choice--EVERY WEEK or EVERY TWO WEEKS.

Here are the rules:

1. Post the book(s) you committed to read in your last TBR Intervention post and tell us something about it. Did you finish it? Did you enjoy it or not? Post the link to your review (if you have one). 

2. Post a book that you want to read and already own. Pick something that has been sitting on your shelf for too long now (6 months or longer). Commit to read the book in the next couple of days or week.

3. Grab the TBR Intervention Button and post it on your blog sidebar so you will be constantly reminded of the challenge, making it easier for you to commit. This will also encourage other readers/bloggers/visitors to join the challenge.

4. Make sure to visit the other blogs. Comment, encourage, and spread the love to our fellow readers.

My daughter came into town so I have not had a chance to do as much reading or blogging. Sorry everyone. I am still reading The Year She Fell. I am liking it. It is a complicated issue. What do you do when you meet a young man who has a birth certificate with your name on it as birth mother that he says he got from an adoption agency? You are wondering how to prove to this young man that you are not his mother, when you look at the date and realize that your daughter was born only 3 months later. Thinking if someone put your name on there they must know you, you look closer at the young man. Then you realize that while you are not the mother, your husband IS his father. When you confront your husband he says it was a one night stand. He doesn't remember who it was. Only you know he is lying. Why would he lie about not knowing who it was? Was the relationship with someone you know? It must have been since they knew your information. So who is the boy's mother and why is your husband protecting her? That is the main plot of this book. There is more going on, (as in life), in the story. Ellen's mother is giving away the family home plus everything in it to some suave college president. One sister is leaving the convent and the other, a successful actress, may be getting involved with a local guy she dated in high school. But the main plot is Ellen and her marriage, including the mystery of who is the boy's mother and also how will this boy fit, or not, in the family mix. I am really finding it very interesting to read. I keep wondering how I would react in the same situation.  What would I think, feel, do? Intense don't you think? I will have this book done by next week. I promise. *smile*


How did you do with yours? If you aren't doing this challenge, why not join in the fun? It is a great way to get to some of those awesome but buried books on your TBR list.


Coming up:

Be sure to come and join in the fun with different authors on each blog every day. There will be giveaways too!

Comments Always Welcome!

TBR Challenge - Alicia Rasley

Enter The Gratitude Giveaway for a $25 Amazon Gift Card

TBR Intervention is a weekly challenge hosted by Dani@RefractedLight , Ayanami@Whatever you Can Still Betray,  and April@Books4Juliet

The goal of this challenge is to help each other (fellow readers and bloggers) manage our enormous and constantly growing TBR (To-Be-Read) List. The rules are simple and everyone is encouraged to participate. It does not force you to commit to more than what you can manage to read in a week or so, but participants are encouraged to read at least one book within a week. You are free to choose the book you want to read and commit to this challenge. You may post your entry every Saturday, at the frequency of your choice--EVERY WEEK or EVERY TWO WEEKS.

Here are the rules:

1. Post the book(s) you committed to read in your last TBR Intervention post and tell us something about it. Did you finish it? Did you enjoy it or not? Post the link to your review (if you have one). 

2. Post a book that you want to read and already own. Pick something that has been sitting on your shelf for too long now (6 months or longer). Commit to read the book in the next couple of days or week.

3. Grab the TBR Intervention Button and post it on your blog sidebar so you will be constantly reminded of the challenge, making it easier for you to commit. This will also encourage other readers/bloggers/visitors to join the challenge.

4. Make sure to visit the other blogs. Comment, encourage, and spread the love to our fellow readers.

This sounds like an awesome challenge. I have many books on my TBR! The one I am choosing this week is: 

Here is the blurb:

The tragic mystery at the heart of their family has finally surfaced . . .

When Presbyterian minister Ellen Wakefield O'Connor is confronted by a young man armed with a birth certificate that mistakenly names her as his mother, she quickly sorts out the truth: his birth mother listed Ellen on the certificate to cover up her own identity, but also because Ellen is, in a way, related to the child.

The birth father is Ellen's troubled husband, Tom.

The secrets of the past soon engulf Ellen, Tom, and everyone they love. This drama of love, loss, family and betrayal will capture readers with its unforgettable power.

I cannot recall when I put this on my TBR so I figure it will be a good place to start. It sounds like it will be interesting. I cannot imagine how I would react if  somebody came to me with a birth certificate that listed me as the mother, much less how I would react to find out my husband was the father. I am hoping it is as good as it sounds. What is your choice?

Thanks to Ayanami, April and Dani for this awesome meme!

Comments always welcome!