Romance is My Day Job: A Memoir of Finding Love at Last

Patience Bloom, a successful editor for Harlequin Books, chronicles her search for love in Romance Is My Day Job. The memoir commences in 1984 at a high school dance, when bookish wallflower, Patience, a sophomore, is ditched by Ken, her good-looking, 'Harlequin-hero'-like date. Sam, a popular, fun-loving senior rescued Patience, the two of them taking to the dance floor and even posing as a couple for the event photographer. 

The picture is all that remained from the thrill of that night. For the next 25 years, Patience endured a series of bad relationships as she moved around the U.S., lived in Paris and finally landed in New York at Harlequin. By the time she turned 40, Patience—professionally successful, but still single—concluded, "My life is nothing like these books, not even a little bit."

References to popular romance books and movies infuse Bloom's honest, witty narrative as she offers a clever, humorous take on hero archetypes and compares lessons learned, often the hard way, from her own romantic entanglements. When Sam contacts Patience via Facebook shortly after her 41st birthday, the two, living on different continents, court each other via Skype for four months. They share an intimacy that affirms Patience's faith in love, encouraging her to reflect upon her life and open her heart. But is Sam too good to be true? Once they finally meet again, face to face, will they be compatible? Suspense deepens as Bloom's beautifully rendered love story illustrates how real life can often be as engrossing as romance novels.

Romance is My Day Job: A Memoir of Finding Love at Last by Patience Bloom

Dutton Adult,  $26.95 hardcover, 9780525954385, 320 pp

Publication Date: February 6, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

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 (2/14/14), click HERE

Before We Met

Middle-aged Brits, Hannah and Mark Reilly have enjoyed an idyllic marriage for eight months when Hannah eagerly drives to Heathrow Airport to pick up her husband, who was away on a business trip in New York City. But when Mark doesn't return on his scheduled flight, and Hannah cannot track him down by phone, she begins to worry. Days later Mark re-surfaces, claiming plausible, yet rather questionable excuses, which plant a seed of suspicion in Hannah, who grew up with a cheating father and a chronically skeptical mother. Hannah tries to convince herself that she has no real reason not to trust Mark, but her doubts cannot be diverted when she learns that Mark's whereabouts in New York City cannot be confirmed and coworkers in Mark's office—a lucrative software company, which he founded—cannot corroborate his story, either. Hannah stitches together other unexpected revelations including Mark's contact with a mysterious woman doctor, funds withdrawn from Hannah's bank account and the return of Mark's long lost brother. At every turn, Mark seems to have answers to explain everything, but can Hannah believe them?

Doubts, secrets and lies drive the engrossing suspense of the narrative. Author Lucie Whitehouse (The Bed I Made) effectively employs flashbacks in examining the before and after of Hannah and Mark—their single lives, their working lives, the influences of their dysfunctional families and the life they created together. This well-written and well-plotted psychological thriller peels back layers of information, deepening implications that will keep readers guessing through chilling twists and turns.

Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse

Bloombury USA,  $25.00 hardcover, 9781620402757, 288 pp

Publication Date: January 21, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

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 (1/28/14), click HERE

Dog Songs

Dog Songs is a collection of new and favorite poems by esteemed, popular poet Mary Oliver. The 35 poems plus one longer prose-poem-essay that cap off this slender volume, revolve around dogs and all they mean personally to Oliver, while elevating to more universal themes of the human-canine bond and how the companionship of dogs anchors people to the natural, "heaven of earth" world.

Pen and ink drawings by illustrator John Burgoyne mirror the unadorned language that makes Oliver's poetry both intriguing and accessible. Each poem evokes poignant, thoughtful observations about the dogs that have enriched Oliver's life and work. Often in just a few, carefully chosen phrases, simple dog pleasures such as daily walks, frolicking in the grass, smelling flowers, chasing mice, darting ahead and going off leash depict a dog's ability to live joyfully in the moment without the anxieties of the past or the future. These vivid metaphors inspire human counterparts to also seek a more vibrant richness of life.

Oliver's poems about her beloved dog Percy—named after Percy Bysshe Shelley, the English Romantic poet—are succinct and clever. Percy's evolution is creatively explored with insight, compassion and humor as he mischievously eats books, has a rendezvous before he's neutered and even keeps the author company while she does her income taxes. "I am trying to live...the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine," writes the poet. Dogs, in their carefree, unconditional friendship and adoration, offer Oliver—and readers—a hopeful respite.

Dog Songs by Mary Oliver

Penguin Press HC, $26.95 hardcover, 97801594204784 , 144 pp

Publication Date: October 8, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

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 (10/22/13), click HERE

Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton

In Saltscapes, Cris Benton, retired professor of architecture at UC Berkeley, has focused his camera upon the southern end of San Francisco's historic South Bay—the site of salt evaporation ponds that are being restored to tidal wetlands and marshes after a century of industrial salt production. For ten years, Benton researched and was intrigued by the history of these landscapes right in his own backyard. He hiked the salt-pond levees and took photographs of the region. Sky reflections from the earthbound perspective, however, did not do justice to his attempts to capture the confluence of snowy-looking white salt, marsh grass and mudflats. Therefore, Benton began to experiment and decided to attach his camera to a kite.

The book details, in fascinating depth, how he developed his gear and the various prototypes that led him to successfully master Kite Aerial Photography (KAP). Mounting his camera to a radio-controlled kite, Benton has photographed the region from heights up to three hundred feet. This unique, bird's eye vantage point produces distinctive images that peer straight down into the water and the land to reveal unexpected, breathtaking color saturations, textures, shapes, details and form that go beyond what the eye can discern from the ground.

In the foreword of the book, image comparisons are made to the abstract expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko and Benton, himself, pays homage to the artist. This collection of stark, striking photographs visually engage spatial sensibilities and illustrate exciting, fresh perspectives of a largely unexplored American territory in restorative transformation.

Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton by Cris Benton

Heyday, $50.00, Hardcover, 9781597142472 , 176 pp

Publication Date: December 1, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

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 (12/17/13), click HERE

Favorite Reads of 2013

As a book reviewer for Shelf Awareness, I read and review at least three titles per month. Those titles are culled from an often eclectic list of nonfiction and fiction (mysteries and romances) - books I might not normally choose for myself, per se, but titles I have enjoyed reading that broaden my range. This blog tends to highlight a majority of those titles. However, I read a lot more than what I post on this blog.

Below is a list of my favorite reads from 2013. Please note: there is no special ranking. Each book is vastly different in content, form, tone and subject matter, and I feel it is unfair to qualify them in that manner. The numbers are simply there to keep the list orderly. 

To learn more about any of the selections, click on the highlighted titles for additional information:

Fiction:

1)      The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

2)      The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

3)      The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

4)      Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

5)      The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

6)      Tapestry of Fortunes by Elizabeth Berg

7)      Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

8)      Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding

9)      The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

10)    The Widow Waltz by Sally Koslow

Nonfiction:

11)    This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

12)    Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton by Cris Benton

13)    Killing Jesus: A History by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

14)    Things that Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics 

          by Charles Krauthammer

15)    The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee      

The First Phone Call From Heaven

Mitch Albom, the author of The Five People You Meet in Heaven, delivers a novel which questions the idea of life after life. 

In The First Phone Call from Heaven, select inhabitants of Coldwater, Michigan start receiving brief, often cryptic, calls from loved ones who have died. Some in the sleepy little town look forward to the calls, taking solace; others find them much too emotional and avoid them. Some choose to keep their conversations secret, but folks like Katherine Yellin—a 46 year-old divorced mother—believe the calls received from her beloved, deceased sister must be shared. When Yellin goes public, others, too, come forward until the mysterious communications from the afterlife grab worldwide media attention, turning Coldwater into a circus-like, pilgrimage destination.

Religious and anti-religious wrestle with the implications, along with skeptics like local resident Sully Harding, a former pilot whose wife died while he was serving prison time. The single father's heartbreaking back-story figures prominently into the suspense of the plot. When Sully's seven-year-old son expresses a longing to receive a call from his own deceased mother, Sully sets out on a quest to prove the phone calls asserting that heaven exists are all a hoax.

Albom's ensemble cast of characters reflects varying attitudes, fears and hopes of people coping with guilt, grief and loss. Interjected throughout the briskly paced narrative are details of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, what it meant for his own life and its context in the modern world. Albom's dialogue-driven story culminates near Christmas. The story ultimately becomes a social commentary about human connection, encouraging readers to question the meaning of their own lives, faith and beliefs.

The First Phone Call from Heaven by Mitch Albom

Harper, $24.99, Hardcover, 9780062294371 , 326 pp

Publication Date: November 12, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Mary Kay Andrews: Creating Her Own World Order

The Writer's Life

photo: Bill Miles

Mary Kay Andrews started her career as a journalist, covering what would later become known as the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil murder trial. After leaving the newspaper business, she turned to writing cozy mystery novels, including the Callahan Garrity series about a former cop–turned–struggling private eye–turned cleaning lady. After 10 mysteries, Andrews began writing women's fiction.

Christmas Bliss (St. Martin's Press, $16.99) is her latest--her 21st book, and the fourth in the Savannah series--more adventures featuring Eloise "Weezie" Foley and her Southern belle best friend, BeBe Loudermilk. Weezie is an antique dealer who has a cheating ex, an alcoholic mother, a forgetful father and a gay uncle who was a Catholic priest. BeBe is a thrice-married restaurant owner who is now expecting a baby. In Christmas Bliss, Weezie is pulled in many directions as she prepares for the holidays and her impending Christmas Eve nuptials to her long-time love, a chef suddenly being wooed by the New York restaurant scene.

Andrews's novels offer an absurdist, comic slant on serious issues, where quirky characters merge with plots that are always full of surprises, laughs and heartwarming endings.

How did the Savannah books come about? Did you know from the start this was going to be a series?

Savannah, Ga., was where my husband and I started life as newlyweds--way back when. It's truly a place of my heart. Evocative, parochial and dripping with Spanish moss and Southern charm. I had no intention of writing a series because I'd just ended the Callahan Garrity mystery series, with eight installments.

How do you come up with the clever names of your heroines, especially those in the Savannah novels?

Weezie is named after the heroine of the Kay Thompson's Eloise children's books, which I've always loved. I heard an Atlanta socialite referring to her youngest child as "bay-bay," which she informed me was French for baby--and I knew I would steal that for a character.

And speaking of names, your Callahan Garrity mysteries (published under the name Kathy Hogan Trocheck) have been re-issued under your name. Will you ever return to writing about Callahan?

I loved writing about Callahan and Edna and the House Mouse "girls," and I do sometimes miss them, so who knows? Maybe someday they'll reappear. After 21 books, I've learned never to say never.

You've delivered, on average, a book a year. How do you remain so prolific?

Fear is a great motivator. If I'm not working on a new novel, I start to worry that my readers will forget me and move on to the next hot thing. This past year was a two-book year, with the release of Ladies' Night and Christmas Bliss within five months of each other. Not a feat I want to repeat. Maybe it's the good Catholic girl syndrome that Nora Roberts talks about. You sign a contract, you deliver the goods. I always tell my agent I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Does your Catholic upbringing and faith inform your work?

I'm sure my faith informs my work--hopefully in subtle ways. I believe in family, in faith, in faithfulness. I want the world to be fair, and I dislike bigotry, gratuitous violence and cruelty. I suppose writing fiction is my way of creating my own world order.

If a character from any one of your books could live off the page, which one would you most like to spend time with and why? Is there any character you would try to avoid?

Mary Bliss McGowan, the protagonist of Little Bitty Lies who faked her husband's death in a boating accident, is somebody I'd like to share a drink with. I admire her gutsiness. Scheming, conniving females like Celia Wakefield, the romantic rival in Spring Fever, give me a rash. I'm always wary of women who distrust other women.

How has your journalism background influenced your career as a novelist?

Being a reporter teaches you to ask the hard questions and pay attention to the answers--not just listening, but watching. It teaches you the importance of story structure--beginning, middle and end. It teaches you there's no such thing as writer's block. And you learn the incredibly important skill of working with a good editor, allowing the give-and-take that can lift a so-so piece of prose into something special--or at least something that doesn't suck.

You're passionate about "extreme junking," the search for antiques at flea markets and estate sales--in real life and in your novels. Do you tend to keep things you find and restore, or has eBay become your best friend?

My mother was a junker, and as an impoverished child bride of 22, I learned that I could make a home with somebody else's cast-offs. I've been junking ever since, keeping what I love or passing it along to my grown children or even selling it in my booth in a gift shop on Tybee Island, outside of Savannah. I'm too impatient to wait on the outcome of an eBay auction.

Why do reinvention and the idea of "home" (literally and figuratively) figure so prominently as themes in most of your books?

Most of my readers are women, but I think all of us, deep down, long for home--for that sense of belonging, of being rooted in something, whether it's a physical place, or just an emotional attachment to someone or something. And reinvention is universal, too. Who doesn't dream of having a do-over in life?

You've had a long, varied and prosperous career. Is there anything else you'd still like to explore in your writing?

I joke about my evil plot for global domination, but sure, I'd like to try my hand at writing a screenplay and seeing my story on a big screen--or even a small screen. I've got a cookbook simmering at the back of my mind, and it would be really cool to write a children's book, too. So many ideas, so few hours....

What can readers expect from you next?

I'm working on next summer's book, set in Savannah, with a protagonist who is a wedding florist. Look for Save the Date in early June! 

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (12/17/13), click HERE

Christmas Bliss

Christmas Bliss is Mary Kay Andrews' fourth installment in the fun and breezy series set in Savannah, Georgia.  You don't need to have read the others novels to enjoy this one, but you're likely to seek out more once you spend time with antique dealer Eloise "Weezie" Foley. Her whirlwind Christmas season seems far from "bliss" as it snowballs with unexpected surprises and secrets.

Weezie is being pulled in many directions as she prepares for her Christmas Eve wedding to long-time beau, Daniel Stipanek, who has set off to New York City to serve as guest chef at a hot new downtown eatery. With Daniel away and Weezie in full impending nuptial mode, Weezie envisions the restaurant owner, Carlotta Donatello, to be "a senior citizen in a flour-dusted apron, wielding a wooden spoon." But when Weezie stumbles upon a gossip column picture that depicts Daniel stepping out on the town with a woman "with a long lustrous mane of hair and huge, long-lashed doe eyes, which, in the photograph were fixed longingly on (Weezie's) fiancé . . . she (also) had a generous helping of cleavage pressed against Daniel's chest," Weezie's life is turned upside-down.

At the urging of BeBe Loudermilk, Weezie's lovable, Southern belle best friend and maid-of-honor—also a commitment-phobe ready to give birth any day—Weezie drops everything and hops a plane to NYC to check up on and nurse Daniel, who comes down with the flu. What ensues are unexpected glitches and adventures for Weezie, who is faced with a clock ticking toward Christmas Eve.

While Weezie faces challenges in New York, BeBe is faced with troubles of her own in Georgia. The past pays the expectant mother a visit, delivering shocking news that forces her to secretly go behind the back of her live-in love, Harry, in order to set matters right. 

Rounding out the lively drama are a cast of recurrent, small town characters who enrich the lives of these two women in crises.

In true Mary Kay Andrews' style, she spins yet another clever, charming tale full of laughs and a heartwarming ending that arrives at the eleventh hour.

Christmas Bliss by Mary Kay Andrews
St. Martin's Press, $16.99, Hardcover, 9781250029721 , 304 pp

Publication Date: October 15, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Happy Thanksgiving!

Opinion: Cultivating Gratitude

Plant a seed of gratitude to harvest new hope

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Opinion/Editorial (Section A-22)

BY KATHLEEN GERARD

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

Maddie's Choice

Newly single, native New Yorker, Maddie Taylor is a romance writer stuck in the throes of a writers' block when she receives news that Jonah Spartman, an older man she met by chance ten years before, has bequeathed her half of his cattle ranch in Arkansas. The land can be hers, but only under the condition that she stay on the ranch for a period of three months.

Eager for a change of scene, Maddie heads west, where she meets Gideon Spartman, Jonah's grumpy grandson, a man with rugged good looks, who owns the other half of the ranch. Gideon is a troubled Afghanistan military vet who struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He has also become the guardian of his two, lonely orphaned nephews, Abe and Mark, whom he orders around like "hired help." Even though Gideon is initially leery and standoffish with Maddie, the two are instantly attracted to each other.

Do the secrets and scars that Gideon carries prohibit him from loving another person? And does the same hold true for Maddie and her life of isolation, lived on the pages of her romance novels?

As prideful Maddie tries to settle in to the Spartman Cattle ranch, she starts writing again, while growing closer to Abe and Mark and making friends with the townsfolk.

With yearnings suddenly awakened in Maddie for Gideon (and vice-versa), the two become fearful, suspecting that the depth of their feelings may be life-changing. But do either one of them really want their lives to change?

Zeller has written an intriguing Western-themed, contemporary love story, blending well-defined, wounded characters--from two different worlds--mired in the pull and tug of romance. Zeller also weaves in a suspenseful subplot regarding the harrowing struggles of a beef cattle farm in financial crisis.

Maddie's Choice by Joyce Zeller

Camel Press, $14.95, Paper, 9781603819596 , 274 pp

Publication Date: September 1, 2013

To order this book via AMAZON link HERE

This book has been reviewed as part of a blog tour hosted by Tribute Books. To be entered to win a $25 Amazon.com Gift Card (or PayPal cash), link HERE 

All Aboard: Riding the Rails in Fiction

For many of us, trains are fascinating: cargo and passenger trains, subways, high-speed rail. The call of a train whistle--the rumbling, chugging sound--awakens the spirit and encourages the imagination to crisscross time and place. That's what inspired me to write In Transit, a woman-in-jeopardy novel published two years ago. It's the story of a misguided, rookie NYPD transit cop assigned to the labyrinthine New York City subway system and how, when she falls in love with the wrong man, her life derails.

In Trains and Lovers by Alexander McCall Smith, four travelers, diverse in backgrounds and ages, are brought together on a train bound from Edinburgh to London. They pass the time by telling tales of how the railroad played a significant part in each of their love lives.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline is a coming-of-age novel that connects the disparate lives of two women. The story is based on the program that, from the 19th century until the Great Depression, carted orphans via train to adoptive families in the Midwest.

Pandemonium infuses Mrs. Queen Takes the Train. In William Kuhn's clever, inventive novel, Queen Elizabeth gets fed up with the demands of life at Buckingham Palace, slips on a borrowed hoodie and goes rogue, taking public rail transportation to Scotland.

The Train of Small Mercies, a collection of short stories by David Rowell, links the poignant, personal experiences of six ordinary people who witness and grieve as the train carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy from New York City to his final resting place in Washington, D.C.

The idea of riding the rails conjures romance, intrigue and drama as trains take us on collective and individual journeys--both on the page and off. 

NOTE: This article is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this column as published via Shelf Awareness for Readers (11/5/13), link HERE