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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Happy 200th Birthday, Pride and Prejudice!





Would Pride and Prejudice be a bestseller if it were released today?

January 29, 2013
Opinion/Editorial (Section A-9)
BY KATHLEEN GERARD

To read the article in its entirety, click on the highlighted title above


Thursday, January 24, 2013

NEWS: IN TRANSIT featured in USA Today


The story-behind-the-story 
of my novel of romantic suspense
has been featured in 
USA TODAY 

To read the article, link HERE
                                                   
                                                      

Sunday, January 13, 2013

American Ghost


A town and culture are haunted by acts of violence in American Ghost by Janis Owens (My Brother Michael, The Cracker Kitchen). Set in Hendrix--a fictional, contemporary, hardscrabble Florida Panhandle town--this perceptive, well-paced novel was inspired by true events and centers upon a notorious lynching from 1938, the result of a white shop owner who was brutally shot and killed in a robbery by a black man. Secrets and long-buried acts of racism are unearthed when Sam Lense, a Jewish, Miami graduate student in anthropology, comes to town to study and write an academic paper about the ethnic inhabitants of the region, a group of close-knit townsfolk who are distrustful of outsiders.

While doing his research, Sam falls in love with Jolie Hoyt, the humble, sheltered daughter of a protective, old-school preacher. The intensity of the young couple's three-month affair is the talk of the town. Some believe Jolie is rapt by Sam because he is a "rich Jew" while others feel that Sam is using Jolie and her connections to the "useless old lynching" for his own gain. Tensions mount and threaten the small community until Sam's work is dramatically cut short and the bond between the lovers is ultimately severed. 

The second half of the book fast-forwards twelve years. Jolie and Sam, transformed for better and worse, are reunited when a black businessman embarks upon Hendrix to reconcile his father's memory. Complex strands weave together this captivating narrative rife with historical context and characterizations that reflect the foibles of human nature.

Scribner, $25.00, Hardcover, 97814516774637,  288 pp
Publication Date: October 9, 2012
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (10/19/12), click HERE.



Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New Year Resolve


To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.


"New Year Resolve" by May Sarton, from Collected Poems 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton & Co., 1993.  Reprinted with permission.  As featured on The Writer's Almanac 12/30/12 

Purchase more of May Sarton's work HERE