Lisa from SparkPoint Studio contacted me regarding today’s guest and asked if I would read and review his book.  But since I am behind AGAIN, I disappointingly had to pass at this time.   Oh how I wish I was a speed reader.  There are just too many books I want to read and today’s guest has written one of those books.  It is definitely on my TBR list.  Welcome David Klein!!

DAVID KLEIN

David Klein is the author of the novel Stash, also published by Broadway Books, and his short fiction has appeared in a variety of literary magazines. He currently lives in upstate New York.
Visit David at his website,  on Facebook and Twitter.

GUEST POST

For Better or Worse

There really are no gray areas when it comes to traditional wedding vows. ‘For better or worse’, ‘Richer or poorer’, ‘In sickness or in health’, ‘Until death do us part.’

There’s no mistaking the intent of those vows, or the range of blissful and brutal conditions, emotions, and situations under which you promise to stay married.

In writing my most recent novel, Clean Break, I spent a long time thinking about the language of traditional marriage vows, and how those vows applied to my main character, Celeste. When the novel opens, she’s been struggling for several years with the level of commitment she “owes” her husband. The problem for Celeste is that the first years of marriage were all on the better, richer, and healthy side of the scale. But then her husband, Adam, fell under the spell of gambling. He lost all of their assets, poisoned their marriage, and emotionally damaged their young son, Spencer. And he lost his temper.

Their marriage had gone from better to worse, from health to sickness, from richer to poorer. Does Celeste really need to stick around because she’d made that promise to her husband ten years ago? The difficult question for her is whether Adam is truly ill, or has developed a nasty, addictive habit and a mean streak. You wouldn’t leave your spouse who is suffering from a disease. But you might leave that same spouse if he won’t stop a destructive behavior.

When talking to his son, Adam tries to tell Spencer he has a disease, “like grandma’s cancer,” and that the doctors are treating him so he gets better. But Celeste tells Spencer that no one chooses to get cancer, no makes a decision to get sick, yet Adam chose to gamble. He placed his bets.

Behavioral problems among adults get a lot of attention these days. In many cases, they’re positioned as addictions: gambling addiction, sex addiction, Internet addiction—you name it. Health professionals often prescribe prescription drugs to help sufferers, which some people argue serves to “medicalize” human distress or a person’s lack of accountability.

Even the mental health profession struggles in this gray area. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is used by health professionals, researchers and policy makers to identify, classify and plan treatment for mental disorders. Proposed revisions would add “gambling disorder” to alcohol and drug problems as a “substance use and addictive disorder” that insurers and others would use to make decisions about treatment and coverage.

Better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health—yes. But the gray areas that life presents? Hard to say. For Celeste, like many spouses who may be stuck in an awful situation, it’s hard to know where commitment ends and survival begins. What are your thoughts on this topic?

ABOUT THE BOOK

Today I have the honor to introduce you to an award winning author.  Lisa, from Sparkpoint Studio LLC, contacted me and asked if I would read and review Game Of Secrets.  Whenever I get a request, I always ask if the author would stop by and visit, and she agreed.  Please help me welcome Ms. Dawn Tripp!!

DAWN TRIPP

Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, Dawn Tripp’s fiction has earned praise from critics for her “thrilling” storytelling (People Magazine), her “haunting, ethereal” prose (Booklist), and her “marvelous characters” (Orlando Sentinel). She is the author of the novels, Moon Tide, The Season of Open Water, and Game of Secrets, a Boston Globe bestseller. Her essays have appeared on NPR and online at Psychology Today. She teaches workshops on structuring the arc of a novel out of fragments of fact and fiction. She graduated from Harvard College and lives in Massachusetts with her husband, sons, and 80-pound German Shepherd.
You can visit Dawn at her website and on Twitter.

GUEST POST

ON NOT KNOWING

As writers in the midst of a novel, we are often working to pin down what we know so far about our story: about a turn of events; about what’s going to happen next; about where it’s all heading and how it will end; we are working to figure out our characters—who they are, what makes them tick, what they have done, and why.

Faced with uncertainty, I admit, the impulse is often to nail it all down, map out that arc, make that outline. But I have found that the longer I resist that impulse to pin everything into place, the longer I kick around in what I do not yet know, the better the writing becomes. That doesn’t mean the arc of a story isn’t there. It doesn’t mean some dark underside of my mind hasn’t already figured it out. I put my faith in the fact that there is such an order. And then I write to discover it.

My novels start in pieces, on the page for months, bits of character, story, scene. Those pieces might feel intuitively linked; I might have glimpses of the overall structure. But I don’t have it all figured out. In the early stages of a book, I feel like I am writing into a story that already exists. I write what moves me, what I am impelled by. Sometimes I draft a sequence toward the opening, more often I will draft what I sense to be the ending first. There’s a certain opening of mind, a willingness to dwell in possibility. I don’t polish my drafts up too soon. I leave notes in the margins. I leave some passages entirely without punctuation. I leave things untidy, open to change. That openness, I feel, is critical. I find that when I can let myself stay open to what I may not yet have uncovered, when I can let myself be driven by what I do not yet know, the story often turns, deepens, in unexpected, revelatory ways.

As I was writing GAME OF SECRETS, I felt like I was continually being overturned. And I knew in my gut that I had to stay open to that. Again and again, I would discover some new twist that was not in my original vision for the novel, and often in consequence, the story would change, and I would have to let it change. I wrote what I thought was the ending of the story early on. I fell in love with it. It became that kind of horizon a strong ending can be that drives you, day in, day out, to create the 300 pages leading up to that moment. What I did not expect, and could not have foreseen, was that in fact that ending was not the climax. The most powerful revelation was something I was writing toward without even realizing it, until all at once, I did.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In 1957, Jane Weld was eleven years old when her father Luce, a petty thief, disappeared. His skiff was found drifting near the marsh, empty except for his hunting coat and a box of shot-gun shells. No one in his small New England town knew for sure what happened until, three years later, his skull rolled out of a gravel bank by the river, a bullet hole in the temple. There were rumors he had been murdered by the jealous husband of his mistress, Ada Varick. Now, half a century later, Jane is still searching for the truth of her father’s death, a mystery made more urgent by the unexpected romance that her willful daughter, Marne, has struck up with one of Ada’s sons. As their love affair intensifies, Jane and Ada meet for a casual Friday board game that soon transforms into a cat-and-mouse game of words long left unspoken, dark secrets best left untold.

PRAISE FOR GAMES OF SECRETS

“A combination of thriller, mystery, and literary fiction; the secrets of a murder are revealed through an intense Scrabble game…..An intelligent beach-read.” —The Boston Phoenix

“A gracefully told character study of three intelligent, forbidding women and the men who love them, wrapped up in a taut, suspenseful mystery, Tripp’s third novel builds to a surprising finish” —Booklist

“A page-turning thriller–a game of Scrabble helps two families spell out the history of a small-town murder.” —Better Homes and Gardens

“A brilliant metaphor is at play in the center of Game of Secrets, Dawn Tripp’s extraordinary new novel. In the ongoing play of a board game, in a surprising, hauntingly resonant plot, and in complex, compelling characters, she illuminates deep truths about the way we try to piece the world together into meaning, working with what we are given, struggling with family and fate and desire….This is a truly important work by one of our finest writers.” – Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain

“Lush, perfectly calibrated language that opens doors on every page through which the enchanted reader falls.” —Jenny White, author of The Winter Thief

“Fair warning: Don’t start Game of Secrets unless you’re prepared to finish it in one sitting….because once these characters get into your head they don’t let go.” —Kim Wright, author of Love in Mid-Air

THANKS TO LISA AT SPARKPOINT STUDIO, LLC,
I HAVE ONE (1) COPY OF THIS BOOK TO GIVE AWAY.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.

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.

We have a special guest today as he is on a very busy tour.  Please help me welcome, award winning author, Mr. Joshua Graham!!

JOSHUA GRAHAM

Winner of the 2011 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS, and Amazon.com #1 bestselling author Joshua Graham’s Barnes & Noble #1 bestselling novel BEYOND JUSTICE is taking the world by storm, one reader at a time. Many of his readers blame him for sleepless nights, arriving to work late, neglected dishes and family members, and not allowing them to put the book down.

BEYOND JUSTICE, THE ACCIDENTAL EXORCIST, THE ACCIDENTAL HERO, THE ACCIDENTAL HEALER, and DEATH AND TAXES, have reached the top of multiple bestseller list on Barnes & Noble topping titles by John Grisham, Linda Fairstein, Scott Turrow and James Lee Burke, Ted Dekker and Steven James. Soaring to the top of the Barnes & Noble lists, BEYOND JUSTICE recently hit #1 in the Legal Thriller and Christian Thriller categories, topping by John Grisham, Joel C. Rosenberg, and Michael Connelly. It has also remained on the Amazon.com top 100 bestselling Kindle bestseller list months after its release.

Suspense Magazine listed BEYOND JUSTICE in its BEST OF 2010, alongside titles by Scott Turrow, Ted Dekker, Steven James and Brad Thor.

His short story THE DOOR’S OPEN won the HarperCollins Authonomy Competition (Christmas 2010.)

Publishers Weekly described BEYOND JUSTICE as:
“…A riveting legal thriller…. breaking new ground with a vengeance… demonically entertaining and surprisingly inspiring.”

ABOUT THE BOOK

A thrilling suspense novel about a man’s dark past, his daughter’s mysterious visions, and a psychopath who wants to kill them both.
After scattering her mother’s ashes in Vietnam, photojournalist Xandra Carrick moves home to New York to rebuild her life and career. When she experiences supernatural visions that reveal atrocities perpetrated by American soldiers during the Vietnam War, she finds herself entangled in a forty-year-old conspiracy that could bring the nation into political turmoil.

Launching headlong into a quest to learn the truth from her father, a Pulitzer Prize winner who served as an embedded photographer during the war, Xandra confronts him about a dark secret he has kept—one that has devastated their family.

Pursued across the continent, Xandra comes face-to-face with powerful forces that will stop at nothing to prevent her from revealing the truth. But not before government agencies arrest her for murder, domestic terrorism, and an assassination attempt on the newly elected president of the United States.

Darkroom is a riveting tale of suspense that tears the covers off the human struggle for truth in a world imprisoned by lies.
Read my review here.
Purchase links:  Amazon~Barnes&Noble

I have hosted many gifted and talented authors via WOW and today you will meet another one of their amazing female writers.  I have the honor to introduce you to Ms. Steena Holmes!!

ABOUT STEENA HOLMES

Author of the new heart wrenching story “Finding Emma”, Steena is a woman who believes that ‘in the end, everything succumbs…to the passions of your heart’. Steena’s life revolves around her family, friends and fiction.

Prizes:
First Prize: Work with a Bestselling Author.
Our Grande Prize winner will help create a character for Steena Holmes’ next book!
Second and Third Prize Winners will each receive a signed copy of Finding Emma and a special pewter angel figurine from The Missing Children’s Society of Canada, an organization dedicated to bringing children home.

GUEST POST

Passion. One simple word that means so much.

If you look around, you’ll see passion ever where. It’s in the eyes of a new mom as she gazes down at her newborn. In the face of an elderly man as he holds the woman he’s loved for a lifetime in his arms one last time. It’s the steadiness found in a doctor who prepares themselves to save the life of their patient. It’s there in a child’s determined grip on a pencil as they learn how to write their name for the first time.

Passion is that spark in your heart that gets you through the day when you feel like the world is against you. It’s what help you finish the marathon even when you don’t think you can walk another step. It’s what motivates you to do more — to be more.

It’s hard to watch the passion in someone’s life dwindle and die. You see that sparkle in their eye disappear and it haunts you, knowing that there’s nothing you can do. But it’s an individual choice to allow that passion to thrive – because passion – in any form – requires strength. And let’s be honest, we don’t always have the strength. Sometimes it’s hard to get up every morning and keep doing what you’ve always been doing. It’s hard to always be fighting for what you believe, to always be going against the crowd. To always be wrong when everyone else believes they are right.

But, it’s worth it – isn’t it? It has to be. Passion is what builds nations, or sees communities thrive. It’s what carries on the flame during the Olympics or feeds the hungry in countries without enough resources. It’s what lights up the night sky with fireworks every year to celebrate huge monumental changes in our world and what leaves a lump in your throat when you try not to cry after seeing someone stop during a race to help a fellow competitor who fell. Passion is the key to living a life with purpose and strength and determination.

Passion. One little word that holds the key to so much! Do you have that passion in your life?

ABOUT THE BOOK

 A child torn from the arms of loving parents, a relationship torn apart from loss… Megan sees her daughter Emma everywhere. She’s the little girl standing in the supermarket, the child waiting for the swings at the playground, the girl with ice cream dripping down her face. But it’s never Emma. Because Emma’s been missing for two years. Unable to handle the constant heartache of all the false sightings, Megan’s husband threatens to walk away unless Megan can agree to accept Emma is gone. Megan’s life and marriage is crumbling all around her and she realizes she may have to do the thing she dreads most: move on. When Megan takes a photo of a little girl with an elderly couple at the town fair, she believes it to be her missing daughter. Unable to let go, she sets in motion a sequence of events that could destroy both families lives.

50% of the proceeds of this book will be donated to The Missing Children’s Society of Canada – an organization dedicated to reuniting families. Visit www.mcsc.ca for more information.

THANKS TO AUTHOR, STEENA HOLMES, I HAVE
ONE (1) EBOOK EDITION TO GIVE AWAY.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.

I’m so excited today because we have an old friend stopping by to talk about her latest book.  I am sure a lot of you have read her past works and will want to know what she has been up to.  So without further ado, please welcome back, Kari Lee Townsend!

KARI LEE TOWNSEND

National Bestselling Author, RT Reader’s Choice Award & Agatha Nominee Kari Lee Townsend lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, her three busy boys, and her oh-so-dramatic daughter, who keep her grounded and make everything she does worthwhile…not to mention provide her with loads of material for her books. Kari is a longtime lover of reading and writing, with a masters in English education, who spends her days trying to figure out whodunit. Funny how no one at home will confess any more than the characters in her mysteries!

Kari writes fun and exciting stories for any age, set in small towns, with mystical elements and quirky characters as Kari Lee Townsend. Kari also writes romantic comedies and women’s fiction with the same sense of humor and quirky characters as Kari Lee Harmon.

GUEST POST

Fortune-Telling Research & Future Ideas

 When I first decided to write a mystery series, I chose fortune-telling as a theme because I thought it would be fascinating to learn all about the various techniques. What I didn’t realize is there are many slightly different techniques that psychics use when telling someone’s fortune. The Internet has been an invaluable tool. For the sake of my Fortune Teller Mysteries, I combined several aspects of various techniques and came up with a method my character, Sunshine Meadow’s, would use.

In book one, Tempest in the Tea Leaves, Sunny reads tea leaves as a way tapping into her psychic abilities. She sometimes has trouble interpreting her visions, but in the end, they always work themselves out. The fortune-telling tools simply aid her in tapping into her visions. In book two, Corpse in the Crystal Ball, Sunny reads Crystal Balls. For both tea leaves and crystal balls, there are variations in the process, but in the end, they are not all that different. So it was easy to come up with a method that worked for Sunny. And then she simply had to interpret what she saw.

In book three, Trouble in the Tarot, I found reading Tarot Cards to be the most difficult. There are so many spreads you can use and so many ways of interpreting what you see, that it’s not easy. I spent the most time on my research for reading Tarot Cards. In the end, I ended up coming up with the same preparation for reading the cards and then I used several spreads depending on what kind of reading Sunny was doing. For book four, Peril in the Palm, I will do research on Palm Reading. I am excited about that. This series is holding my interest because I never get bored. I get to find out something new and share it with the world. Hopefully, Palm Reading won’t be that difficult J What kind of fortune-telling tools would you like to learn more about in future books?

To find out more about Kari and all her books go to www.karileetownsend.com  or click on the links below:

Kari Lee Townsend (Website & Newsletter & Facebook & Twitter)
National Bestselling Author of The Fortune Teller Mysteries
TEMPEST IN THE TEA LEAVES 4 1/2 Starred RT Review
Best Amateur Sleuth of 2011 RT Reviewers’ Choice Nominee
Best First Novel Agatha Award Nominee
CORPSE IN THE CRYSTAL BALL – June 2012 (preorder now)
DIGITAL DIVA: TALK TO THE HAND (Kindle & Nook)
DIGITAL DIVA: RISE OF THE PHENOTEENS (Kindle & Nook)
DESTINY WEARS SPURS (by Kari Lee Harmon) (Kindle & Nook)
PROJECT PRODUCE (by Kari Lee Harmon) (Kindle & Nook)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Psychic Sunshine Meadows makes a dark discovery in the woods…

After clearing her name as the prime suspect in a murder, Sunny Meadows hopes she can finally enjoy some serenity in the idyllic town of Divinity in upstate New York. She’d also like a second chance with Detective Mitch Stone. But when Mitch’s gorgeous ex-girlfriend Isabel Gonzales shows up, Sunny’s not sure she can compete. Then Isabel mysteriously disappears. When the police turn to Sunny for help, her visions lead to the discovery of Isabel’s corpse in the woods. Before she died, Isabel scrawled a message in the dirt implicating Mitch in her murder. Now Sunny must help the man she’s falling in love with as she sets out to find the real killer. But this time Sunny’s clairvoyant abilities might not save her—as what she doesn’t see can hurt her…

THANKS TO AUTHOR, KARI LEE TOWNSEND, I HAVE
ONE (1) BOOK AND A SIGNED BOOKMARK TO GIVE AWAY.
U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.

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

What a day!!  Are you sitting down?  If not, you should, because I have a  very special, talented and amazing author visiting today as she kicks off her summer tour.  Plus some very nice giveaways.   Please help me in welcoming Ms. Elin Hilderbrand to the CMash blog!!!

ELIN HILDERBRAND

Elin Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and their three young children. She grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket, which has been the setting for her five previous novels. Hilderbrand is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.
Visit Ms. Hilderbrand on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. But what begins as a graduation night celebration ends in tragedy after a horrible car crash leaves the driver of the car, Penny Alistair, dead, and her twin brother in a coma. The other passengers, Penny’s boyfriend Jake and her friend Demeter, are physically unhurt – but the emotional damage is overwhelming, and questions linger about what happened before Penny took the wheel.

As summer unfolds, startling truths are revealed about the survivors and their parents – secrets kept, promises broken, hearts betrayed. Elin Hilderbrand explores the power of community, family, and honesty, and proves that even from the ashes of sorrow, new love can still take flight.
Read my review here.

Read an excerpt:

THANKS TO ANNA AND THE GENEROUS PEOPLE
AT THE HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, I AM HOSTING
A HUMONGOUS AND FANTASTIC GIVEAWAY!!!!

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO THE GIVEAWAY
ENTRY PAGE TO SEE WHAT YOU CAN WIN!!!!

I have seen this book all over cyberland, as I am sure you have too.  That’s why today you are in for a treat.  The author is stopping by to tell us about her book.  I ask that you please help me in welcoming Ms. Laurie Frankel to our group.

LAURIE FRANKEL

Laurie Frankel lives in Seattle with her husband, her three-year-old son, her border collie, and many, many books. She’s an East coaster originally, a fact people often guess before she’s even opened her mouth. Her second novel, Goodbye For Now, comes out August 2012 in the U.S. The film has been optioned and translation rights have sold in 25 countries. Laurie was just named one of ten women to watch in 2012. She is a proud core member of the Seattle7Writers. Her first novel, The Atlas of Love, came out in August 2010, so August seems to be her month. Until last June, she was teaching writing, literature, and gender studies at the college level. Now she is thrilled, honored, grateful, and occasionally terrified to be writing full-time. It’s quite something.
Connect with Ms. Frankel at her website, Facebook and Twitter.

GUEST POST

I’m never sure whether people will be more interested to hear about the book or its author. As the author, I’m pretty qualified to talk about both, but neither one is as easy as it sounds like it should be. It’s hard to talk about yourself, first off because it’s unseemly to appear so self-satisfied and boastful but also because it’s hard to know where to start: I know a lot about myself. But it’s tough to talk about the book too. I know a lot about that as well having thought about little else for quite a while here. And I was an English teacher for a long time — I’m better at asking questions about books than I am at giving out answers. So here’s a little bit of both — me and the book and how it came to be.

I am a novelist, in Seattle now with my husband and my three-year-old and my border collie, but I’m an East Coaster in the first place. I taught college for a dozen-ish years — writing (fiction, playwriting, rhetoric), literature, and gender studies. I wrote my first novel, THE ATLAS OF LOVE, while teaching full-time. It took a while. I wrote my second novel, GOODBYE FOR NOW, much more quickly because I’d left my day job. Being a full-time writer is wonderful. And terrifying.

GOODBYE FOR NOW is the story of Sam Elling, a software engineer who invents a way for people to email — and later video chat — with their dead loved ones. He creates an algorithm that can make a projection of a person based on their electronic archive: all their old emails and Facebook posts and tweets and video chats. It’s also a love story. I wrote it because it seems so logical to me that this technology should exist. So much of our lives are lived online, so many of our relationships exist primarily on Facebook and other social media sites. I started to ask myself: if the person went away but the online presence stayed, what exactly would the difference be?

My grandmother and I were very close. And we emailed each other a lot. After she died, I just wanted more emails from her. And I thought they could be so convincingly and easily faked, I was amazed that no one had invented that service yet, but since no one else had, I did, and since I’m a writer and not a software engineer, I did it in novel form.

One of the best things about the book is it’s about blogs and social media, connecting online and virtual technologies, so I’m looking especially forward to connecting with readers through those mediums. Welcome — it’s great to meet you, however electronically.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the spirit of ONE DAY, comes a fresh and warmhearted love story for the 21st century. Sometimes the end is just the beginning . . .

Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can’t get a date. So he creates an algorithm that will match you with your soul mate. Sam meets the love of his life, a coworker named Meredith, but he also gets fired when the company starts losing all their customers to Mr. and Ms. Right.

When Meredith’s grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam uses his ample free time to create a computer program that will allow Meredith to have one last conversation with her grandmother. Mining from all her correspondence—email, Facebook, Skype, texts—Sam constructs a computer simulation of Livvie who can respond to email or video chat just as if she were still alive. It’s not supernatural, it’s computer science.

Meredith loves it, and the couple begins to wonder if this is something that could help more people through their grief. And thus, the company RePose is born. The business takes off, but for every person who just wants to say good-bye, there is someone who can’t let go.

In the meantime, Sam and Meredith’s affection for one another deepens into the kind of love that once tasted, you can’t live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to? This entertaining novel, delivers a charming and bittersweet romance as well as a lump in the throat exploration of the nature of love, loss, and life (both real and computer simulated). Maybe nothing was meant to last forever, but then again, sometimes love takes on a life of its own.

THANKS TO ANDREW and DOUBLEDAY BOOKS, I HAVE
THREE (3) COPIES OF THIS BOOK TO GIVE AWAY.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO THE GIVEAWAY
ENTRY PAGE. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.

We are all affected by it.  It’s on the news every night, we read about it in the paper and we all have had conversations about it.  What am I talking about?  The economy!!  That’s why when Tracy from Media Muscle (The Book Trib) contacted me regarding today’s guest, I jumped at the opportunity to host him as a guest and hear about his book.  So please help me welcome Mr. Alan Uke.

ALAN UKE

BUSINESS AND CIVIC COMMUNITY LEADER
Thirty-four years ago, Alan Uke started a company out of his University of California – San Diego dorm room. His dorm room dream grew into a successful scuba diving equipment company. It employs over 100 people in San Diego County, exports products to over 60 countries, and infuses millions of dollars into the local economy annually. Underwater Kinetics not only provides excellent products and customer service, but had provided hundreds of jobs and revenues for the San Diego area for over 40 years. In recognition of his outstanding business skills, Alan Uke was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Entrepreneur of the Year Institute and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

As a business owner, he quickly learned the importance of balancing budgets, creating jobs, managing people, and cutting waste. Over time, Alan’s innovative business skills have become one of his greatest assets. He was able to use those skills to help bring the U.S.S. Midway to San Diego, turning it into a financially solvent tourist attraction that pumps $20 million a year into our economy.

WORKING FOR A STRONGER AMERICA
As a member of the World Presidents’ Association, Alan served on numerous top-level delegations in Washington and represented the voice of American business to our nation’s leadership. He met with President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, the Congressional leadership and cabinet secretaries in an effort to strengthen the U.S. economy and reduce reliance on foreign countries for vital resources. Alan also served on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Taxpayers Association. During his time on the Board and as President of the Association’s foundation, Alan committed himself to eliminating waste in local governments and lowering taxes. His commitment to protecting our tax dollars stays with him today.

Uke has experience with bringing labeling ideas before. Years ago he had an idea to inspire drivers to choose cars with lower air pollution rates rather than forcing compliance with ride sharing. After dealing with everyone from car manufacturers and the Sierra Club to the EPA, Uke’s Smog Index eventually ended up on all cars sold in the U.S. Today being able to identify cleaner cars is a major selling point in American automobiles.

Uke wants to make significant change possible again – change that will bring an immediate and lasting benefit to all Americans. By BUYING AMERICA BACK we can reclaim our strength as a world leader.

Alan Uke is a San Diego entrepreneur, community leader and founder of Underwater Kinetics, which he started 41 years ago as a sophomore at the University of California San Diego. He holds more than 50 patents and the majority of his SCUBA diving and his industrial lighting products are exported to more than 60 countries. He has won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Consumer Products from the Entrepreneur of the Year Institute, is a member of the World Presidents Organization and conceived of and founded the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum.

Q&A WITH ALAN UKE

1) What is “Buying America Back” about?
It’s about making educated choices about what you buy and how it affects the American economy. I have a business that works with countries all over the world, and the economies that do well are the ones that try to buy products that are good for their own economy. We don’t do this in the United States.
It’s hard for Americans to do because we don’t have the proper labeling on products. I’m suggesting we put labeling on products — like we label food — to tell us exactly where the products come from and in what percentages. And that will make people conscious of what products they buy and how those purchases can be beneficial to America. There is a solution and it’s in our hands.
2) What does balanced trade mean?
It means we export the same percentage of products to a country as they export to us. Right now the United States imports almost 25 percent more than it exports. This excess results in the creation of overseas jobs at the expense of American jobs.
3) Who is the audience for this book?
This book is for everybody — because it affects everyone in this country. Two-thirds of the economy is driven by consumer spending, and buying American could eventually eliminate our unemployment and our trade deficit. Countries like China do everything in their power not to buy American products. The average American doesn’t know that. What I’m hoping is that those countries that see this kind of response from American consumers will have to respond and change their policies.
4) Why should the average voter be interested in reading this book?
The solution to the American economy is in every consumer’s hands. It’s going to take mass action by the general public to get this working. We, as a culture, have to do different things – like we did with the environment. The environment was being destroyed, until we acquired an awareness by everybody of what was going on and what we needed to do.
5) You were instrumental in getting the Smog Index legislation to be adopted by the American automobile manufacturers – how did your experience with that prepare you for launching this bill?
With the Smog Index, I thought that people should know that certain cars will produce more pollution than others, because only engineers knew that, not the average person. They just didn’t think of it. But now they know, and they can feel good about knowing more, making a choice, and making a difference. The labeling bill will be similar. How and where I spend my money affects me, it affects my economy, affects employment, and affects the environment around me.
6) Tell me about the Country of Origin Labeling Act.
Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) will introduce the legislation. There are already country-of-origin labels now, but we’re trying to improve the rules. We want the labels to be more detailed and to list the percentages of each product that are made in a certain country.

ABOUT THE BOOK

San Diego entrepreneur Uke presents a straightforward thesis in this engaging policy proposal: consumer thirst for cheap imports has strangled U.S. manufacturing employment and stifled our economy. The manufacturing sector, which lost 5.2 million jobs from 2000 to 2010, accounts for only 10% of the economy compared with its dominant role in 1965. Uke explodes the myth of a shift to high-tech output and notes that Germany and other countries with higher labor costs than ours compete successfully with Asia. He argues convincingly that the offshore exodus of production facilities entails the loss of high-paying spinoff jobs, the departure of R&D facilities and other centers of innovation, and the erosion of service-sector jobs. The proper response, Uke plausibly argues, is not across-the-board protectionism or isolationism, but empowering the consumer by toughening disclosure of country-of-origin product data. Accurate disclosure would enable consumers to reward local producers or those with high local-product content. Uke perceptively points out that this approach is increasingly popular with food, and prevalent in many other countries. Determined consumer leadership on this issue, he maintains, could goad Congress into action and prompt corporations to revive domestic production. Uke’s refreshingly invective-free writing and hands-on manufacturing experience compel our consideration; his proposal is simple and his goals are lofty. Attention should be paid. Agent: Bill Gladstone. (Apr.)

BOOK DETAILS
BUYING AMERICA BACK:
A Real-Deal Blueprint for Restoring American Prosperity
By Alan Uke
SelectBooks; April 9, 2012
164 pages; $16.95
ISBN-10: 1590792300
ISBN-13: 978-1590792308

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