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……..of Goodbye For Now by Laurie Frankel
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Nicole from Tribute Books is stopping by today to introduce us to a new author that she is touring with, Ms Kathleen Toomey Jabs. I am looking forward to hearing about her book as it sounds like a great summer read!! So please help me welcome them to the CMash blog!!
KATHLEEN TOOMEY JABS
Kathleen Toomey Jabs is a 1988 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. She served on active duty for six years and is currently a Captain in the Navy Reserve. She holds an MA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Her stories have been published in a number of literary journals and received several prizes, including selection in the National Public Radio Selected Shorts program. She lives with her husband and two children in Virginia.
Connect with Kathleen on Facebook and Goodreads.
GUEST POST
How did you draw from personal experience in writing your book?
I entered the Naval Academy in 1984, a member of the eighth class to accept women. I had no idea what I was getting into or what military life entailed. In Black Wings, Bridget Donovan experiences some of the same disorientation I did. I drew some of Bridget Donovan’s early adventures from my real life experiences. For example, Bridget is originally from Boston and she is not a particularly squared away plebe when she arrives at the Academy. I’m also from Boston and I certainly had my share of culture shocks, especially during the first summer.
I used some of the my own remembrances to inform those critical early scenes—unpacking the myriad of uniforms and issued equipment, trying to race to morning formation, sitting erect and attempting to eat and answer questions in King Hall (the dining hall), struggling to march and conduct rifle maneuvers as well as the sheer physical exertion of constant physical training (PT). There was a danger with drawing on my own experience though. Bridget’s character is different from mine. I needed to experience the scenes through her.
At one point, as I read over an early draft of a PT scene in Black Wings, I counted 8 pages for Bridget to do 2 push-ups. Every drop of sweat was (literally) a sentence! I had to ask myself: was I recreating memory or did I really believe this description of Bridget’s ordeal somehow furthered the plot? I eventually cut the push-ups to a paragraph. Plebe summer scenes with uniforms and rifles underwent similar revision as I separated my memories from Bridget’s world. I’m not as brave or as mouthy as Bridget nor as resolute as Audrey, but through their experiences I was able to do and say things I wished I had. It was incredibly freeing.
When I moved into the post-Academy worlds of Audrey and Bridget I relied less on personal experience. As an officer, Bridget is part of the public affairs community. I’m also a public affairs officer or PAO in the Navy reserve. I know that world so I could draw on it, but I wasn’t constrained by it.
It was helpful to be familiar with so many different settings. I visited the Naval Academy several times to refresh my senses and took notes while I was on duty in the Pentagon. I’d walked onto an aircraft carrier, spent time in Quantico and Pensacola, and lived in the Arlington/Alexandria metro area so I felt confident writing about them. I did research on things I wasn’t familiar with like flying a jet and attending flight school. Even so, with all the research and memories, I took a lot of liberties.
Writing Black Wings, I approached the keyboard with a sense of wonder rather than a list of memories or specifics. I walked the Naval Academy cemetery to capture the mood and some of the landmarks, but when I sat down I wrote about mausoleums that didn’t exist, honor boards that weren’t held. I continued on that way, blending real-life places and bits of memory with fabrications to create what I hoped was a true depiction of Naval Academy life in the early years of female integration. I did the same with Bridget; I set her free to experience and react to the world on her own terms.
ABOUT THE BOOK
LT Bridget Donovan suspects the worst when her former Naval Academy roommate, Audrey Richards, perishes in a botched take-off from an aircraft carrier. The Navy says it’s an accident, but facts don’t add up. Could it be suicide, or murder? Donovan’s unofficial investigation into what really happened, both during their past Academy days and in Richards’ final hours, forces her to examine the concepts of honor, justice and the role of loyalty in pursuit of those ideals.
Watch the trailer:
Book Details:
Price: $19.95 paperback, $9.99 ebook
ISBN: 9780984141272
Pages: 314
Release: December 2011
Purchase links: Amazon B&N
THANKS TO AUTHOR, KATHLEEN TOOMEY JABS, I
HAVE ONE (1) EBOOK EDITION TO GIVE AWAY.
CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.
DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com,
Barnes & Noble and/or any other retail/wholesale
outlets either online and/or elsewhere.
I am providing this link solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.
I do not receive any monetary compensation from any parties
JUNE 26th to JULY 10th, 2012
BLACK WINGS
by KATHLEEN TOOMEY JABS
*GIVEAWAY ENDS JULY 10th AT 6PM EST*
DISCLAIMER / RULES
YOUR JAVA SCRIPT MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED
IF YOU AR EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY
USING THE RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM
Hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading
As I searched for something to say, I worried that if I waited much longer you’d begin slamming your face with your own palms, martyring yourself on your bed, not just to punish me but to punish the world for making you be alive in it.
page 85
Today Nicole from Tribute Books is stopping by to introduce us to an amazing, busy and talented author as she talks about her new memoir. So please help me welcome Ms. Molly Best!
ABOUT MOLLY BEST TINSLEY
Air Force brat Molly Best Tinsley taught on the civilian faculty at the United States Naval Academy for twenty years and is the institution’s first professor emerita. Author of My Life with Darwin (Houghton Mifflin) and Throwing Knives (Ohio State University Press), she also co-authored Satan’s Chamber (Fuze Publishing) and the textbook, The Creative Process (St. Martin’s). Her fiction has earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sandstone Prize, and the Oregon Book Award. Her plays have been read and produced nationwide. She lives in Oregon, where she divides her time between Ashland and Portland.
Connect with the author at: Fuze Publishing’s Facebook, Fuze Publishing’s Twitter, Fuze Publishing’s Website, Fuze Publishing’s Blog, Entering the Blue Stone Blog Tour Site, Tribute Books Blog Tours Facebook
GUEST POST
Entering the Blue Stone is a memoir of my parents’ final years, when my father was afflicted with Parkinson’s, my mother with Alzheimers. My siblings and I had to move them from their home to an independent living apartment in a continuing care facility, then to the assisted living wing, and finally to the nursing home on the bottom floor. It’s a fairly common experience nowadays, but it feels extraordinary when it happens to you, a cross between a comedy of errors, a crusade for humane treatment, and, of course, a prolonged funeral. In order to maintain my sanity, I transcribed events almost as they were happening, including conversations verbatim. I was coping with the chaos by keeping notes—trying to contain it in words.
As the months passed, and their situation plummeted from difficult to impossible, the writing began to serve a purpose beyond my own mental health. I wanted to tell a cautionary tale so that other families might begin this end-of-life process with more information. Because our experience became so surreal, however, I chose an almost documentary tone recount it. No hysteria, no exclamatory outrage–just the facts. We felt as if the administrators in the continuing care facility had lost their minds while those with diagnosed dementia exemplified grace and a certain common sense. I had to make sure I didn’t sound like a crazy person myself—even if I felt that way sometimes!
At the same time, if the story was going to make an impact, it would have to bring the experience to life in a nuanced, three-dimensional world, creating our parents and their care-givers as characters, conveying the sensory texture of our struggle, and its ineluctable arc. The real information is in the concrete details, not in some sort of abstract power point presentation. So I didn’t spare them. Based on my notes, I painted the fullest picture I could of our search for a care facility and then our adaptation to one frustration after the next–the scenes, the dialogue, the unexpected sweet times, the inevitable bad. My book is an account of what-not-to-do, but maybe its portrayal of the challenges and struggles that come with being human will assure others in similar circumstances that they aren’t alone.
Entering the Blue Stone Summary
What happens when one’s larger-than-life military parents–disciplined, distinguished, exacting–begin sliding out of control? The General struggles to maintain his invulnerable façade against Parkinson’s disease; his lovely wife manifests a bizarre dementia. Their three grown children, desperate to save the situation, convince themselves of the perfect solution: an upscale retirement community. But as soon as their parents have been resettled within its walls, the many imperfections of its system of care begin to appear.
Charting the line between comedy and pathos, Molly Best Tinsley’s memoir, Entering the Blue Stone dissects the chaos at the end of life and discovers what shines beneath: family bonds, the dignity of even an unsound mind, and the endurance of the heart.
BOOK DETAILS
Price: $14.95 paperback, $9.99 ebook
ISBN: 9780984990818
Pages: 195
Release: May 2012
THANKS TO THE KINDNESS OF AUTHOR, MOLLY BEST TINSLEY,
I HAVE ONE (1) EBOOK EDITION OF HER MEMOIR TO GIVE AWAY.
CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.
DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com,
Barnes & Noble and/or any other retail/wholesale
outlets either online and/or elsewhere.
I am providing this link solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.
I do not receive any monetary compensation from any parties
JUNE 25th to JULY 9th, 2012
ENTERING THE BLUE STONE
by MOLLY BEST TINSLEY
*GIVEAWAY ENDS JULY 9th AT 6PM EST*
DISCLAIMER / RULES
YOUR JAVA SCRIPT MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED
IF YOU AR EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY
USING THE RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM
Hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading
Today’s question:
Do you set goals for yourself, while reading? For example, “I want to get this book finished this weekend“, or “I will read __ pages today“, etc. Why, or why not?
My answer:
I think this is a great question!! I do, however, I don’t always succeed. Because I had a very bad reading year in 2011, I wanted to try to read at least 2 books a week. But, of course that doesn’t always happen depending on RL, size of book and Partners In Crime Tours work. Another reason I try to put goals in place is due to the problem of not being able to say NO to a book. At times I have more books coming in than me finishing, and then I become anxious that I am getting back logged. I tend to be more disciplined with my goals if I sign up for a Read-A-Thon, which I have been trying to participate in more this year to reach my goal of one of my challenges, which is Outdo Yourself.
What about you? Do you set reading goals?
June is being hosted by Alternative Read
ARC–Simon & Schuster
…….of Buying America Back by Alan Uke
11 Chel Pay Tweet About the Giveaway
An email has been sent to the winner and they have 48 hours to respond with their mailing address or another winner will be chosen. Thank you to all that entered.
