Category: WOW Tours

 Posted in Guest Author, Showcase, WOW Tours

WOW! Presents: GAMBLING ON GRANOLA by Fiona Maria Simon (Guest Post & Showcase)

 CMash  January 18, 2018  Leave a Comment on WOW! Presents: GAMBLING ON GRANOLA by Fiona Maria Simon (Guest Post & Showcase)

Fiona Maria Simon’s
WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING TOUR

OF

GAMBLING ON GRANOLA

Tour Begins November 13th!

UNEXPECTED GIFTS ON THE PATH OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Gambling on Granola: Unexpected Gifts on the Path of Entrepreneurship, Simon shares a tale that is uplifting and inspiring but also raw and honest. This is a business memoir but also a love story―the love for her daughter, of a journey in uncharted waters, of the products and company she created, and of the continued challenge to follow her dream.

We see her growth and healing over fifteen years, as mistakes, weaknesses, and naiveté evolve into resilience, resolve, and inspiration. For Fiona, it started out as all new businesses do―with an idea. But her world quickly became more complex as she established her company, developed new product lines, forged personal relationships in a competitive environment, grew her business, and held onto her deepest values―all while raising her daughter, Natalie, as a single mom.

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Terra Nova Books

Publication Date: January 1, 2018

ISBN-10: 1938288920

ISBN-13: 978-1938288920/center>
Pages 200

PURCHASE LINKS:

FIONA MARIE SIMON

Fiona Maria Simon is a former journalist, travel writer, editor, and communications director of the Boulder, Colorado, Chamber of Commerce. She is passionate about developing healthy food products, writing, traveling the world, and inspiring and empowering others with her story. Lured by the adventures of entrepreneurship, she launched her own organic granola company and led it to success despite having no business background and simultaneously juggling the demands of being a single mom. Her book is a story of challenges, hardships, and triumphs, both personal and professional.

Connect with Fiona at these sites:

WEBSITE TWITTER

Praise:

“Fiona’s story is both personal and transformative. She lays bare the hopes and anxieties, challenges, betrayals and lessons learned in creating her own business. From the mountaintops of a solar observatory where she was raised, to the struggles and triumphs, her story is like a path of granola crumbs leading the reader to understand how to succeed at any enterprise.”
– Jeff Kline, M.A. Ed., Chairman, Hispanic Communications Network, Washington, DC.

“Fiona Simon is an engaging storyteller and her narrative moves right along. It should inspire and motivate anyone who needs to remember the importance of persistence, belief in oneself, and vision in pursuing a goal. Her granola is good and so is her book.”
– Bob McCormick, Publisher, Editor, Author

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. 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 or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

 Posted in Guest Author, Showcase, WOW Tours

WOW! Presents: EVIDENCE OF FLOSSING: What We Leave Behind by Jennifer A. Payne (Showcase & Guest Post)

 CMash  December 11, 2017  1 Comment on WOW! Presents: EVIDENCE OF FLOSSING: What We Leave Behind by Jennifer A. Payne (Showcase & Guest Post)

Jennifer A. Payne’s

WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING TOUR

OF

EVIDENCE OF FLOSSING: What We Leave Behind

Tour Begins November 27th, 2017!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Would God floss? Do spiders sing? Can you see the Universe in your reflection? Find the answers to these questions in more in this new book by Connecticut writer Jen Payne. Her poems in EVIDENCE OF FLOSSING: WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND investigate the human condition and its folly, the beauty of our natural world, and the possibility of divine connection. 80 original and vintage photographs include a series of discarded dental flossers that inspired the book’s title.

ALA Notable Book author Dale Carlson calls the book “a brilliantly incisive commentary on our simultaneous human sense of beauty and waste and loss.”

EVIDENCE OF FLOSSING speaks to the common heart that beats in you and in me, in the woods and on the streets, across oceans and around this planet. It asks us all to consider the effects of our actions and how they influence everything else in the Universe.

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Poetry

Publisher: Three Chairs Publishing

Publication Date: October 1, 2017

ISBN-10: 0990565114

ISBN-13: 978-0990565116

Pages 180

PURCHASE LINKS:


Author photo by Christine Chiocchio (Branford, CT)

Jennifer A. Payne

Jen Payne is inspired by those life moments that move us most — love and loss, joy and disappointment, milestones and turning points. Her writing serves as witness to these in the form of poetry, creative non-fiction, flash fiction and essay. When she is not exploring our connections with one another, she enjoys writing about our relationships with nature, creativity, and mindfulness, and how these offer the clearest path to finding balance in our frenetic, spinning world.

Very often, her writing is accompanied by her own photography and artwork. As both a graphic designer and writer, Jen believes that partnering visuals and words layers the intentions of her work, and makes the communication more palpable.

In 2014, she published LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, a collection of essays, poems and original photography. Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind is her second book.

Jen is the owner of Three Chairs Publishing and Words by Jen, a graphic design and creative services company founded in 1993, based in Branford, Connecticut. She is a member of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, the Branford Arts and Cultural Alliance, the Connecticut Poetry Society, Guilford Arts Center, the Guilford Poets Guild, and the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Installations of her poetry were featured in Inauguration Nation an exhibition at Kehler Liddell Gallery in New Haven (2017), and Shuffle & Shake at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven (2016). Her writing has been published by The Aurorean, Six Sentences, the Story Circle Network, WOW! Women on Writing, and The Perch, a publication by the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health.

You can read more of her writing on her blog Random Acts of Writing, http://www.randomactsofwriting.net.

Connect with Jennifer at these sites:

WEBSITE TWITTER

GUEST POST

FINDING INSPIRATION

When I told a friend last spring that I was writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month, she asked me how I found the inspiration for 30 poems.

“It’s like rummaging around in a junk drawer,” I told her. “You’re bound to put your hands on something!”

And sure enough, in April, I found inspiration from a seagull, bugs, a haiku class, a trip to the Dollar Store, and pizza. Among other things. (See the full tally here: https://wp.me/PKhyg-3lf)

Now granted, they are not all masterpieces. But that’s not the point. Like any writing challenge— NaNoWriMo, HistNoWriMo, SciFiWriMo — the goal is simply to get into the habit of writing.

“Simply” of course being somewhat of an issue if you are lacking inspiration. Which brings us back to that junk drawer. There are so many things in your junk drawer – think about it!

the first time you rode a bike
your best friend from kindergarten
your mother
what you had for breakfast
your first kiss
last night’s dream
what you saw on a hike last weekend
your favorite painting
the song you can’t get out of your head (and why)
an object sitting on your coffee table

So, GO! Rummage around — see what you can find. Reach way far back if you have to…and then CREATE! Describe, elaborate, enumerate, paint a picture with words (or even paint if you are so inclined). It doesn’t have to be perfect…as Nike says, JUST DO IT!

Here is some evidence of rummaging. This quirky little poem showed up from a post-it note I found on my desk one morning:

(Chinese Food)

The note says (Chinese Food)
but it is random
out of context on a piece of paper
in a stack of papers
at least 2 months passed

my past included (Chinese Food)

but what?
and with whom?
and what is the purpose
of this little clue
set out for me to follow
too early even for General Tso,
though I never met him personally

rumor has it, he was a press man…

as a proponent of the written word
do you think he rose early
to consider form and function,
rhyme, reason and rice —
like this poet now hungry
for the pork fried variety at 6?

But a fair warning about rummaging…you have to be brave. You have to be brave because you never know what you’re going to find in that drawer. Sometimes, it will be as benign as a post-it note about Chinese take-out. Other times, you may pull out a ghost, some long lost memory that needs to see the light of day.

Hans Christian Anderson is credited with saying: “Everything you look at can become a fairy tale, you can get a story from everything you touch.”

Ultimately, isn’t that our job as creatives? Telling the story. No matter our medium — poetry, painting, prose — we are charged with the task of putting our hands on the story and sharing it with others.

So, get in there! Rummage around for the inspiration. Reach way far back if you have to…and then TELL THE STORY!

Praise:

“The poems in Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind are a brilliantly incisive
commentary on our simultaneous human sense of beauty and waste and loss.” — Dale Carlson, ALA Notable Book author

“In Jen Payne’s exquisite introduction to Evidence of Flossing, she provides the purpose of this book: to illustrate, poem by poem, the very fraught relationships which define us, human to human, human to earth and animal, and human to the unifying spirit, which may or may not be her lower case “god.” She is sober, admonitory, enraptured and antic by turns, her illustrative photographs always a source of pleasure or irony — often both. This is a most unusual book, richly thoughtful and sorely, sorely needed.” — Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely, author, Letter from Italy, 1944

“It’s uncanny how Jen Payne grabs hold of seemingly ordinary strands of life — then surprises us with new meaning. A master at storytelling, Jen brings us to the realization that the stories she shares are actually ours. An engaging, thought provoking and masterful reflection on our collective legacy in this world.” — Mary O’Connor, author, Life Is Full of Sweet Spots and Dreams of a Wingless Child

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. 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 or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

 Posted in Guest Author, Showcase, WOW Tours

WOW! Presents: BURTRUM LEE by Mary Maurice (Showcase & Guest Post)

 CMash  November 16, 2017  Leave a Comment on WOW! Presents: BURTRUM LEE by Mary Maurice (Showcase & Guest Post)

Mary Maurice’s

WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING TOUR

OF

BURTRUM LEE

Tour Begins November 13th!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Coated with a life of lies and deceit, Burtrum Lee Conner is sick to her stomach. Dozens of times throughout her life the feeling of not being who she is has tormented her. But she kept it to herself, believing that maybe it’s just a chemical imbalance of some kind considering she is one of the first artificially-inseminated babies of the nineteen sixties. Now, there’s more though, something much deeper, much more maniacal than she could have ever imagined. She’s not the first test tube baby at all, but the first….

Burtrum Lee Conner, born into a world of scientific mystery, discovers that the life she’s been leading for the past forty years, is the wrong one. Her parent’s Jed and Jane Conner, stealing her as an infant, brought Lee up as their own. Even her devoted grandmother, Clair Conner, kept this secret close to her chest until they were found out. And now, Lee Conner’s biological mother, Katie Lee, wants her back, but not before the diabolical Dr. Stone has his say.

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Scientific Mystery

Publisher: Silver Leaf Books LLC

Publication Date: August 28, 2017

ASIN:B07576YGKS

Pages 219

PURCHASE LINKS:

Mary Maurice

When I was a child growing up in the Detroit area, I thought I wanted to be a painter, and then as a teenager the idea of being a musician intrigued me, then as a young adult, I realized that I’m a writer.

After attending Western Michigan University for two party filled years, I decided to leave academia and explore the real world to learn what life is truly about. For fifteen years I’ve traveled the country working in restaurants, writing and doing readings wherever I was welcome.

While living in Minneapolis during my twenties, I was fortunate enough to be tutored by Dr. Jonis Agee, who was at the time head of the creative writing department at St. Catherine’s College in St. Paul. Her lessons were imprinted in me for all of these years, and have influenced my writing ever since.

My adventures landed me in San Diego, Chicago, San Francisco, and Oregon, finally leading me to the Land of Enchantment where I’ve resided since 1994. Living in Santa Fe, and the beauty and isolation that surrounds me, has inspire my creative muse in ways that no other place has. While still working in the hospitality industry, my passion for the craft of writing has never been stronger. And I know with each sentence I write, and every paragraph I compose, my ultimate goal is to find the perfect word.

Keep on bookin!

Connect with Mary Maurice at these sites:

WEBSITE TWITTER

GUEST POST

Finding My Muse

When I awoke this morning I looked under my bed to see if my Muses had tucked themselves away while I wasn’t looking. But all I found were shoes. I went to the closet wondering if maybe that’s where they’ve disappeared. But all I found were coats. I strolled into my work-room, knowing it’s one of their favorite haunts, but all I found were words. Grabbing my aged dictionary, I flipped through the used pages and surfaced in the land of the M’s. It was there I found them. Hanging out next to their name: Muse-To become absorbed in thought. To turn something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively. To wonder, to marvel, to think or say something reflectively. The Nine Sisters in Greek Mythology. Inspiration! I ponder these definitions, and ask myself what do I think about the most? What do I turn over in my mind and think of obsessively? What does inspire me? And the same two words keep surfacing. My writing! I think I found my muse!

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. 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 or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

 Posted in Guest Author, WOW Tours

WOW! Presents: THE FOG OF FAITH by Dr. Leona Stucky

 CMash  November 8, 2017  Leave a Comment on WOW! Presents: THE FOG OF FAITH by Dr. Leona Stucky

Dr. Leona Stucky’s

WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING TOUR

OF

THE FOG OF FAITH

Tour Begins November 6th!

SURVIVING MY IMPOTENT GOD

ABOUT THE BOOK

After the trauma of a savage attack, a farm girl recovers physically, but her identity, faith, and relationships are shattered.

This is the true story of Leona Stucky’s childhood on a Kansas farm, surrounded by a loving family and the simple tenets of her Mennonite community. Violence enters her world in the guise of a young man who seems normal to everyone else but who Leona knows to be deranged in his obsession with her.

His unrelenting abuses take root, and Leona must deal with them utterly alone. Her pacifist father cannot avenge or protect her, nor can a callous justice system. Even God is impotent.

Leona is cast into a bewildering life of disgrace and poverty—with a baby, a violent husband, and battered faith. Through a series of page-turning events, she hacks through the bones of her naïveté to confront harsh realities and to probe the veracity of religious claims.

The Fog of Faith is a suspenseful and morally unflinching drama of shame and survival, as well as usable and unusual wisdom.

This edition includes thoughtful questions for readers and groups to further explore their own stories.

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Prairie World Press

Publication Date: May 25, 2017

ISBN-10: 099864742X

ISBN-13: 978-0998647425

Pages 340

PURCHASE LINKS:

Dr. Leona Stucky

She fit bucking bales into God’s plan, but bucking fear left this Mennonite farm teen begging and now, after 30 years as a professional psychotherapist, Dr. Leona Stucky narrates her unflinching faith-and-violence dilemma in a riveting memoir, The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God, which spares neither God nor violence against women and has been recommended by MS Magazine.

Dr. Stucky first received a degree in psychology and philosophy from Boston College, graduating summa cum laude, before plunging into seminary, first at Andover Newton Theological School and then at Eden Theological Seminary. She earned a doctorate from Southern Methodist University with honors, and a Diplomate certificate from the American Association of Pastoral Counselors—their highest credential—for teaching, supervising, and offering therapy services. She currently has standing as a Unitarian Universalist community minister.

These professional explorations might have quieted her mind, but the areas where integration seemed impossible became mental sand kernels disrupting many intellectual resting places. Being fiercely honest in confronting contradictions, she honed her wisdom, gained unusual insights, and enjoyed a professional and personal journey that could only be shared by telling the whole story. After numerous failed attempts, Dr, Stucky finally completed The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God.

The provocative title aptly indicates the unflinching moral dilemmas she reveals. The gripping story reads like a real-life thriller that readers can’t put down. Still, each step grounds itself in nuanced networks of passion, relational complexities, cultural and religious dilemmas, circumscribed choices bound by woman’s poverty, persistent violence, and an untamable resilient desire to redeem herself with or without God.

Connect with NAME at these sites:

WEBSITE

GUEST POST

Growing Up Mennonite

We looked enough like a normal Midwest farm community that you might not guess we were Mennonite unless you knew our history, motives, thought processes, or noticed our controlled impulses and abundant gentleness. What you couldn’t see revealed the most about us. Underneath our disciplined exterior burned passion. We focused it on doing what Jesus wanted.
Our faith, the well from which we drank our identity, defined what our lives should be. We learned how to judge each event and where to place our trust. We knew another world loomed out there, a bad one that often dismissed our re-purposing of Jesus’s sermon on the mount. My family didn’t touch or taste that world, and seldom did that world intersect ours. Being held in Jesus’s love and resting in His arms was poignant enough for us.

– The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God

Perhaps the one identity in which we were allowed to show pride, and not feel sinful about self-promotion, was in being Mennonite. That was the right thing to be and as a young girl I was certain I could be proud of that and of having a long line of forbearers who were also Mennonite as far back as anyone could remember or discover, on both sides of my family. I thought of myself as Mennonite through and through and had no desire to be anything else, in fact, I couldn’t have guessed what ‘anything else’ might have been, other than wrong in the eyes of God.

And, as is characteristic of most faith stories, when doubts or cognitive dissonance ruffled my brain, I found ways to get back into the straight and narrow, at least for a long time.

Here is the story of one such experience told in The Fog of Faith.
One Sunday when I was seven, our tribe came to church late. Embarrassed, Dad and we big kids—Mom tended her babies in the nursery—tiptoed into an empty pew at the back of Hopefield Mennonite Church. I was expecting another mind-numbing repeat of the good things we’d heard and said before. Dad pretended to tickle me, and I squirmed and slid down the pew to escape.
“Da-a-ad,” I whispered, giving his title three syllables. “We’re supposed to be quiet. You’re not helping!” Gradually I settled into boredom, until the spoken word about the Biblical David sounded a discordant note.
“What does this mean?” I mumbled to Dad. “David did all those bad things and God helped him? God even made him kill a giant and lots of other people?”
He shushed me, but my thoughts ran wild. Didn’t God tell us never to kill anybody? Wasn’t that our Church’s point? We didn’t believe in killing anyone, not even bad people! I was guessing that God was no better than the rest of the evil world, when a safer idea landed—this must be a bad minister who preached bad stories about a bad God. How dare the preacher tell us that God is not as good as Mennonites!
I poked Dad’s side and said, “How come our minister says that God does bad things, even killing people?”
“Honey, he’s asking us to think about things a little differently.”
“It’s more than a little different if you say God likes killing! Isn’t that what the rest of the world thinks? Those who go to war? I thought we weren’t supposed to like killing. That’s what the Bible tells us.”
Dad’s red face sprouted purple lines. Beads of sweat rolled down my back. I stood up, thinking I might run.
“Is what he says about David actually in the Bible?” I continued.
“Yes, it’s in the Bible, but in the Old Testament, in a time before Jesus.”
“Are you saying that God was mean before Jesus came, but then He got nice?”
“Sort of like that,” Dad said, motioning for me to sit down and hush up. I wanted to stomp my foot so bad it ached from holding it back. I sat with my arms crossed, fingers digging into my skin, and glowered at our minister.
But I considered that I was in church and I should be kind. Because … Because … Jesus wanted me for a sunbeam. I was no dumb bunny. I knew that for sure.

I should also confess to you blog readers that when I was young, and throughout most of my life, I harbored a deep desire to be a good girl. Few things are more boring to readers than good girls. As the old adage says, good girls don’t make history.
That simple fact separates my memoir from most other stories. I am not a heroine. I did not inherit a swift and decisive mind, a strong will that demanded others conform, a sense of justice that made me react instantly when I was marginalized, a body build that allowed me to win at sports, or an extroverted demeanor that dominated discussions and the moods of people around me. No. The classic heroine lives at the opposite end of the personality spectrum from where I land.
Thus you, as a reader, are in for an unusual experience if you pick up the book. Readers say that once they start the memoir they can’t put it down – that it moves fast and is thrilling and scary each step of the way. But the speed, I can assure you, has nothing to do with the grounded molasses that is me. I’m guessing that partly due to my lack of heroine qualities, Ms. Magazine calls The Fog of Faith a great summer read, and some critical reviewers have called it both a fascinating story and an important read. I wonder what your experience will be.

Praise:
The voice of this woman’s spirit and courage rings clearly as she faces the personal challenges of her faith—when the adversity in life tests the veracity of her beliefs against the reality of terror. This book is an important, insightful book that I highly recommend.
– Michael Paymar, author of Violent No More: Helping Men End Domestic Abuse

Naked with fear, aflame with rage, at once heart-pounding and heart-breaking, this true tale climbs from the wheat fields of Kansas to the promised Heaven above—and down again.
– Robert Mayer, author of The Origin of Sorrow, The Dreams of Ada, Superfolks, and other books

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. 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 or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

 Posted in Guest Author, WOW Tours

WOW! Presents: FREE WILL ODYSSEY by Larry Kilham

 CMash  November 1, 2017  1 Comment on WOW! Presents: FREE WILL ODYSSEY by Larry Kilham

Larry Kilham’s

WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING TOUR

OF

“Free Will Odyssey”

Tour Begins October 30th !

Peter Tesla, a prodigious young inventor, develops an electronic device to enhance the user’s free will. A major application is drug detoxification.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Peter Tesla, a prodigious young inventor, develops an electronic device to enhance the user’s free will. A major application is drug detoxification. Peter’s star client is the U.S. president. Along the way, Peter is tried for the mysterious death of a girlfriend and struggles with the machinations of a secretive industrialist.

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Science Fiction

Publisher: FutureBooks.info

Publication Date: Aug. 27, 2017

ASIN: B07566LDCQ

Pages 158

PURCHASE LINKS:

LARRY KILHAM

Larry Kilham has traveled extensively overseas for over twenty years. He worked in several large international companies and started and sold two high-tech ventures. He received a B.S. in engineering from the University of Colorado and an M.S. in management from MIT. Larry has written books about creativity and invention, artificial intelligence and digital media, travel overseas, and three novels with an AI theme.

Connect with NAME at these sites:

WEBSITE TWITTER

GUEST POST

Free Will is a concept or phenomenon that appears through all literature and common discourse since civilization began. In some sense, it definitely exists, but it means different things to different people. It is a semantic construct, not a defined constant like the physical law of gravity. With this latitude for interpretation, free will has become a favorite subject for philosophers.

Many scientist and religious philosophers argue that there is no such thing as free will. They go so far as to say that we have no more latitude of choice in thought and action than a bee in the hive. Others say we cannot describe the thought as mechanistically as describing a computer or a bee’s brain. They all agree that full understanding of human consciousness will not be completely understood for a long time, if ever.

Looking back on my life, I wrote, in part:

As a child on a farm
I knew the totality of creation
And in that wonder life had no end.

This is the mindset in which free will, as I understand it, can thrive. In my current book, Free Will Odyssey, I have my inventor protagonist grow up on a farm to illustrate the impact country life can have on free will. My father, who in real life was a prolific inventor and is thinly disguised in that same part of the book, advised me to project my mind to a new space when inventing. I received three patents and I now realize I was profitably harnessing my free will when following his advice.

Beginning in graduate school at MIT, I studied cognitive science and AI. Free will kept emerging as an important and misunderstood issue. In this book, I explore it from a number of points of view. I’m not trying to settle a philosophical argument. I’m trying to shed more light on the subject from many points of view and to emphasize its importance in some current societal problems.

DISCLAIMER
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

 Posted in Guest Author, WOW Tours

WOW! Presents: FAREWELL ALEPPO by Claudette E. Sutton

 CMash  October 30, 2017  2 Comments on WOW! Presents: FAREWELL ALEPPO by Claudette E. Sutton

Claudette E. Sutton’s
WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING TOUR

OF

“Farewell Aleppo”

Tour Begins October 23rd !

My Father, My People, and Their Long Journey Home

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Jews of Aleppo, Syria, had been part of the city’s fabric for more than two thousand years, in good times and bad, through conquerors and kings. But in the middle years of the twentieth century, all that changed.

To Selim Sutton, a merchant with centuries of roots in the Syrian soil, the dangers of rising anti-Semitism made clear that his family must find a new home. With several young children and no prospect of securing visas to the United States, he devised a savvy plan for getting his family out: “exporting” his sons. In December 1940, he told the two oldest, Meïr and Saleh, that arrangements had been made for their transit to Shanghai, where they would work in an uncle’s export business. China, he hoped, would provide a short-term safe harbor and a steppingstone to America.

But the world intervened for the young men, now renamed Mike and Sal by their Uncle Joe. Sal became ill with tuberculosis soon after arriving and was sent back to Aleppo alone. And the war that soon would engulf every inhabited land loomed closer each day. Joe, Syrian-born but a naturalized American citizen, barely escaped on the last ship to sail for the U.S. before Pearl Harbor was bombed and the Japanese seized Shanghai. Mike was alone, a teen-ager in an occupied city, across the world from his family, with only his mettle to rely on as he strived to survive personally and economically in the face of increasing deprivation.

Farewell, Aleppo is the story—told by his daughter—of the journey that would ultimately take him from the insular Jewish community of Aleppo to the solitary task of building a new life in America. It is both her father’s tale that journalist Claudette Sutton describes and also the harrowing experiences of the family members he left behind in Syria, forced to smuggle themselves out of the country after it closed its borders to Jewish emigration.

The picture Sutton paints is both a poignant narrative of individual lives and the broader canvas of a people’s survival over millennia, in their native land and far away, through the strength of their faith and their communities. Multiple threads come richly together as she observes their world from inside and outside the fold, shares an important and nearly forgotten epoch of Jewish history, and explores universal questions of identity, family, and culture.

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Terra Nova Books

Publication Date: October 1, 2014

ISBN-10: 1938288408

ISBN-13: 978-1938288401

Pages 180

PURCHASE LINKS:

CLAUDETTE SUTTON

It’s no coincidence that family is the central focus of both Farewell, Aleppo and the work that has been the driving force of its author’s professional life.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in the close-knit community of Syrian Jews all were part of Claudette Sutton’s childhood in suburban Maryland, along with her parents and siblings. Years later, as a young mother in Santa Fe, it seemed only natural to think of creating a similar kind of close support for families in her new hometown by means of her journalism training and experience.

Thus began what is now Tumbleweeds, an award-winning local publication that for over twenty years has been expanding its role in serving the city’s families. As the quarterly newspaper has grown, so have its scope and community contributions, mixing news, commentary, personal writing, advice, and activity guides—all reflecting Claudette’s vision of a community resource to help her neighbors face the challenges of parenting.

Claudette’s eloquent writing, the other great strength she combines with the paper’s wide-ranging utility, has been a door to the world for her since she was a teen-ager. As a reporter, she realized early, “You can learn about everything”—a much more appealing option after high school than the enforced specialization of college.

After three years writing for the Montgomery County Sentinel in Maryland, Claudette moved to New York, where she earned a bachelor’s degree from the New School for Social Research. Living in proximity to another side of her extensive family, she built a deeper understanding of the Jewish exodus from Syria that has formed the backdrop for the story she tells so movingly in Farewell, Aleppo.

The narrative chronicles her father’s youth, his odyssey across oceans and continents, and the new life he made in America. But as Claudette talked with him and researched more deeply, she saw also the essential elements of the larger tale. What began as one man’s story grew into a portrait of the history that made his journey necessary, and of how a vibrant people have preserved their community and culture through the thousands of years from biblical times to today.
Connect with Claudette at these sites:

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GUEST POST

What is It?

When I finished writing my book Farewell, Aleppo back in 2014, the very last words I chose were the subtitle.

The book is a memoir of my father’s relocation from Syria to America in the middle of the last century. Brainstorming together, Dad and I decided on: “My Father, My People, and Their Long Journey Home.” There’s a bit of irony there, since his family was forced out of the Jewish community that had been their home for centuries, and came here to build a new life.

“[They] brought religious practices, household traditions, foods, familial bonds, and tenacity,” I wrote in the epilogue. “Everything else could be replaced.”

In talks I’ve given on the book since then, questions about home have come up often. Is home something we make, or something we are given? Is home rooted in place, or is it portable? Is it “where you hang your hat” – or where your ancestors hung theirs?

What is home? It’s a question the whole world seems to be asking right now, when record numbers of people have been displaced by war, famine, natural disaster, religious or political oppression, and human trafficking.

As a Jew living in America, I have conflicting ideas of home. For the Jewish people, mobility is an integral part of our identity and our narrative. We are the “people scattered among the nations,” the “Wandering Jew.” Diaspora and exile have been central to our heritage from our very beginnings. Home is something we carry within.

Americans, by contrast, are epitomes of stability. We give bragging rights to those who can claim ancestry dating back to the Mayflower (or, in New Mexico, where I live to the first Spanish explorers who came up the Rio Grande in the 1500s). My parents and siblings live within 20 miles of the D.C. suburb where I was born. (I’m the exception: I moved from Maryland to Santa Fe three decades ago.) Home is our connection to a place.

But as I’ve learned from sharing my father’s story in the past few years, few of us have to dig deep in our past before hitting experiences of displacement. Whether as refugees, immigrants, slaves, or people of conquered nations, we all know the challenge of finding home. We are a mobile species, whether by force, choice or need. Perhaps home is as much an ideal as a reality.

For me now, hearing the windows rattling on a windy night in the mountains, home is shelter. Home is my husband and cat. Home the soup on the stove, the wine in my glass. And home is a sense of longing, a restlessness born of ancestry and experience, less a fixed location than a direction. Home is an emotional North Star.

Praise:

“A multi-faceted biography of her father and his long-ago journey from ancient Aleppo to skyscraper America, the story of the vanished Syrian-Jewish culture in Aleppo, now a battleground in Syria’s civil war, [and] a look at how that culture still survives. A treasure of a book.”
-Bernard Kalb, former correspondent for the New York Times, CBS News and NBC News, moderator of CNN’s Reliable Sources and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs

“Sutton merges the best of family biography with relevant and fascinating historical, social, and religious knowledge. Incorporating elements of history, religious struggles, pursuit of dreams, and the strength of kinship to create a stirring tribute to the foresight of her grandfather and the strength and perseverance of his offspring, Sutton craftily weaves interesting story lines into an encouraging and intriguing narrative.”
-Foreword Reviews

Claudette Sutton takes the reader on a courageous journey as she tells the story of her father, whose world changed with the winds of World War II. Farewell, Aleppo is a story of how people are shaped by their past. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to explore this rich culture that many people do not know very much about.
– Elise Cooper, Jewish Book Council

An engaging, evocative, deeply touching book that is part memoir, part history and part a personal journey….virtually a love-story of a daughter to a father.

– James McGrath Morris, author of Pulitzer, and Eyes on the Struggle

This book is a jewel box, and Sutton’s father’s shimmering memories of growing up Jewish in Aleppo, Turkey, and Shanghai are the precious jewels. I could taste the food, feel the anxiety after the founding of Israel, experience the highs and lows of life in Shanghai during the Second World War. The specificity of the Mizrahi lifestyle––which continues in America to this day–– will be of great interest to readers.

– Judith Fein, author of The Spoon From Minkowitz and Life is A Trip

Sutton manages to walk that fine, fine line of making the personal universal and the universal personal. [She] interviewed her dad over a period of nearly twenty years and did a tremendous amount of research for this book, but the sprawling story of “China Mike” is somehow concise, a tidy 155 pages in a pleasing design with photos, maps, and enough historical context to complete the reader’s understanding. We are indebted to her for this outstanding book.

– Barbara Gerber, author of “Love and Death in a Perfect World”

Farewell, Aleppo: My Father, My People, and Their Long Journey Home offers the reader a graceful blend of “China Mike’s” biography and a history of the Jewish people of Aleppo. When I finished Claudette Sutton’s tribute, I felt I’d traveled many miles and gotten to know Miro, Son of Selim Sutton. A true father-daughter story, Farewell, Aleppo is loving, informative and unforgettable.

-Elaine Pinkerton Coleman, author of From Calcutta with Love and The Goodbye Baby

There certainly must have been something unique about the Jews of Aleppo to have allowed them to survive there for thousands of years and preserve a sense of tradition and community in America for the last 100 years. A remarkable tale of the power of family, tradition, culture and history. Makes the current devastation of Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War all the more tragic.

– Ellen Zieselman, retired Curator of Education, New Mexico Mexico Museum of Art; Youth Director, Temple Beth Shalom

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. 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 or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

 Posted in Guest Author, Showcase, WOW Tours

THE DIGITAL RABBIT HOLE by Larry Kilham (Showcase)

 CMash  July 11, 2017  2 Comments on THE DIGITAL RABBIT HOLE by Larry Kilham (Showcase)

LARRY KILHAM

Larry Kilham has traveled extensively overseas for over twenty years. He worked in several large international companies and started and sold two high-tech ventures. He received a B.S. in engineering from the University of Colorado and an M.S. in management from MIT. Larry has written books about creativity and invention, artificial intelligence and digital media, travel overseas, and three novels with an AI theme. Currently, he is writing a novel about free will.

Connect with Larry at these sites:

WEBSITE TWITTER

ABOUT THE BOOK

Will digital media sweep us into a new era of prosperity? What new advances in entertainment, culture, education, and knowledge can we expect? Will we get stuck in Cyberland only to be saved by digital detox?

The Digital Rabbit Hole reveals that we are becoming captive in the digital universe. The portals are smartphones and the world is the Internet. We immerse ourselves in social media; we learn through packaged feel-good information; and we will leave the hard work to robots and AI. The book details digital media and discusses smartphone addiction problems. It proposes solutions to stimulate creativity and education and to recapture our humanity.

BOOK DETAILS:

Paperback: 144 Pages
Genre: Social Science/Non Fiction
Publisher: FutureBooks.info; 1 edition (January 1, 2016)
ASIN: B01A3MTVBS

PURCHASE LINKS:

FOLLOW THE TOUR

Monday July 10th @ WOW! Women on Writing
Interview & Giveaway
http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/

Tuesday July 11th @ CMash Reads
Cheryl Masciarelli spotlights Larry Kilham’s “The Digital Rabbit Hole”. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about Kilham and his many published works.
http://cmashlovestoread.com/

Wednesday July 12th @ Bring on Lemons with Cathy Hansen
Educator, Business Owner, and Mother Cathy Hansen reads and reviews “The Digital Rabbit Hole” by Larry Kilham. Read her thoughts today!
http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/

Thursday July 13th @ Linda Appleman Shapiro
Author and Psychotherapist/Addictions Counselor Linda Appleman Shapiro shares her thoughts and insight after reading and reviewing “The Digital Rabbit Hole” by Larry Kilham.
http://applemanshapiro.com/category/book-reviews/

Friday July 14th @ Bring on Lemons with Crystal Otto
Avid reader and reviewer (and social media lover) Crystal J. Casavant-Otto reads and reviews Larry Kilham’s “The Digital Rabbit Hole” and shares her thoughts about how social media has changed our lives.
http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/

Monday July 17th @ Beverley Baird
Writer, Reader, and Book Enthusiast Beverley A Baird reviews Larry Kilham’s “The Digital Rabbit Hole” and shares her experiences with her readers.
https://beverleyabaird.wordpress.com/

Tuesday July 18th @ Bring on Lemons with Troy Pflum
Midwestern father and avid reader Troy Pflum reads and reviews Larry Kilham’s “The Digital Rabbit Hole” and shares his ideas and afterthoughts with readers at Bring on Lemons.
http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/

Wednesday July 19th @ Constant Story
Fellow author David Berner reads and reviews Larry Kilham’s “The Digital Rabbit Hole”.
http://davidwberner.blogspot.com/

Thursday July 20th @ Book Santa Fe
Reader and book enthusiast Tange Dudt reviews Larry Kilham’s “The Digital Rabbit Hole” and shares her thoughts with readers at Book Santa Fe.
http://www.booksantafe.info/

Friday July 21st @ Eric Trant
Fellow author Eric Trant shares his thoughts after reading and reviewing “The Digital Rabbit Hole” by Larry Kilham.
http://diggingwiththeworms.blogspot.com/

Sunday July 23rd @ Hott Books
Today’s author spotlight at Hott Books is none other than Larry Kilham. Find out more about this accomplished author and “The Digital Rabbit Hole”
http://hottbooks.com

Monday July 24th @ Lisa Haselton Reviews and Interviews
Lisa Haselton interviews Larry Kilham about “The Digital Rabbit Hole”
http://lisahaseltonsreviewsandinterviews.blogspot.com/

Tuesday July 25th Bring on Lemons with Tess Fallier
Tess Fallier is today’s guest blogger with a review and insight into Larry Kilham’s “The Digital Rabbit Hole”. Don’t miss this blog stop!
http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. 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 or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

 Posted in WOW Tours

WOW! Presents: David W. Berner

 GHott  December 8, 2014  2 Comments on WOW! Presents: David W. Berner

WELCOME Author

David W. Berner

David W. Berner-the award winning author of ACCIDENTAL LESSONS and ANY ROAD WILL TAKE YOU THERE-was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he began his work as a broadcast journalist and writer. He moved to Chicago to work as a radio reporter and news anchor for CBS Radio and later pursue a career as a writer and educator. His book ACCIDENTAL LESSONS is about his year teaching in one of the Chicago area’s most troubled school districts. The book won the Golden Dragonfly Grand Prize for Literature and has been called a “beautiful, elegantly written book” by award-winning author Thomas E. Kennedy, and “a terrific memoir” by Rick Kogan (Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio). ANY ROAD WILL TAKE YOU THERE is the author’s story of a 5000-mile road trip with his sons and the revelations of fatherhood. The memoir has been called “heartwarming and heartbreaking” and “a five-star wonderful read.”

Connect with Author:

WEBSITE TWITTER

The Disciplined Writer

by David W. Berner

I was lucky. In fact, I would consider myself privileged to have been chosen to finish the manuscript for Any Road Will Take You There during a 2-½ month stay at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando. That’s pretty special. I was named the writer-in-residence at the Kerouac Project and was honored by the opportunity to write, uninterrupted, for 10 weeks while I lived in the home where Kerouac lived just after the big splash for his masterpiece, On the Road. It was an amazing experience.

But of all the things I gained from that time in Orlando, one of the most important for me as a writer was perfecting the art of discipline.

I thought I had always been pretty good about considering writing as a job. What I mean by that is to treat the work of writing as just that, work. Get up, get dressed, go to the office (your writing space) and get down to the business of putting words on paper. When I wrote Accidental Lessons–my first memoir–I spent 30 minutes every weekday morning at my laptop before going to my job as a teacher, and the on weekend mornings I spent at least two hours at my desk, starting at sunrise. I was living alone at the time, so that made it easier. But that shouldn’t matter. Tell those you live with that “this is your writing time” and to give you the space, leave you alone, unless the house is on fire. The idea is to keep your writing time¬–when and wherever that is–sacrosanct.

However, when I arrived at the Orlando house, I knew I had to keep an even more disciplined routine. The Kerouac House is in a quaint part of city, College Park. There are great restaurants, coffee shops, a solid bookstore in an adjacent neighborhood, then you have the ocean only a drive away, and plenty of bike trails. Oh yes, golf courses, too. One could easily get lost in Florida’s charms, so in order to battle that I set up a schedule. I would rise around 6AM each day, make coffee, and sit myself down at a small desk in the same tiny room where Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums and I would write for two hours. I’d then break, make breakfast, take a short walk, and then return to the desk. I would write until noon or 1PM and then call it a day, returning to the writing work only if I was particularly moved to do so. I would fill the rest of the afternoon with exercise, exploring the town of College Park, golf now and then, and a bike ride or two. In the evenings after dinner, I would play guitar or read. And then I would get up the next day and do it all over again.

There were times I would make adjustments. My son came to visit for a few days, I had some freelance journalism work to complete and that required some local travel. But generally, I stuck to that plan because it worked for me. I got words on paper every single day.

Many times at writing workshops I’ve been asked how to find the time to complete a book, a novel, even a short story. How do you find time for writing? It’s a simple answer, really. You have to make the time, and keep it sacred. I teach college and work in broadcast journalism in Chicago, I’m busy. But when I’m working on a writing project, I set up my schedule and I stay with it. You must think of the writing process like working out. You want to lose weight, get in shape, then you have to stick to a disciplined routine and it’s same thing for writing. You can make it work for you by locking in designated times or word counts as mileposts. Set goals, but don’t set the bar too high. Even if you can block out just 30 minutes a day, or knock out 500 words a sitting, that’s good. It all adds up.

And one other thing: forget about waiting for the muse. There is no such thing. Writing is a job–an artistic, creative job–but it’s still a job. There’s work to be done; get to it.

Any Road Will Take You There, my latest book is about a 5000-mile road trip I took with my sons after a family secret was revealed. The journey becomes an examination of fatherhood and how all men will be forever influenced by the fathers who came before them. But to make this cross-country trip a success, just like the work of writing, I needed to devise a plan. Map out some travel, book camping reservations, and rent a vehicle–one of those tacky RVs. I had to plan meals and pack food. But I also had to permit myself to break the rules, to forget about plans and go with my gut. We took some unfamiliar roads, made a lot of extra stops, and explored far more than was on the itinerary. So, despite all the talk here about being disciplined and scheduled with your writing, it’s also important to occasionally throw all of that out the window. Discipline gets the work done, but freeing yourself from it helps feed the soul. Remember both.

I completed the manuscript for Any Road Will Take You There at the Kerouac House that summer in Orlando. There would be more edits and some touch-ups to perform before publishing, but I was able to complete a very solid draft because, in part, I stayed true to the work. There’s no magic to it. Just start typing.

ABOUT Any Road Will Take You There

Any Road Will Take You There: A Journey of Fathers and Sons is a heartwarming and heartbreaking story told with humor and grace, revealing the generational struggles and triumphs of being a dad, and the beautiful but imperfect ties that connect all of us.

Recipient of a Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, Any Road Will Take You There is honest, unflinching, and tender.

In the tradition of the Great American Memoir, a middle-age father takes the reader on a five-thousand-mile road trip — the one he always wished he’d taken as a young man. Recently divorced and uncertain of the future, he rereads the iconic road story — Jack Kerouac’s On the Road — and along with his two sons and his best friend, heads for the highway to rekindle his spirit.

However, a family secret turns the cross-country journey into an unexpected examination of his role as a father, and compels him to look to the past and the fathers who came before him to find contentment and clarity, and celebrate the struggles and triumphs of being a dad.

BOOK DETAILS:

Number of Pages: 300
Genre: Memior
Publisher: Dream of Things
Publication Date: September 23, 2014
ISBN-10: 0988439096
ISBN-13: 978-0988439092

PURCHASE LINK: