Angie Gallion's Blog, page 2

On the Look Out for VERVE Flash

My kids are home last week for winter break and on Sunday night, at the beginning of break, my eldest and I came down with the respiratory ailment that has been going around. We have tried very hard to stay well this flu season, and thought we'd made it, so you can imagine my disappointment. We've spent the week coming down with and recovering from the cold, and everybody is well on the mend as of this morning. So it was a quiet winter break around here, in which I was able to read a preview copy of VERVE FLASH, the Short Road to Big Fiction, a Multi-Genre Flash Fiction Anthology edited by Janet Fix, published by thewordverve, inc. I was thrilled with the culmination of the project, and excited to find some new writers for me to enjoy in the mix. I want to give a little peek at the authors highlighted and hope you'll take a few minutes to check them out. These authors have Verve, and I'm honored to be in the mix! What a team over at Team V.Deborah BeckDeborah Beck has been with thewordverve since Day One, editing and proofreading books by many of the other authors featured in this collection. Her forte (and favorite role) is continuity editing; if a minor character has green eyes on page 13 and brown eyes on page 267, she will find it.Jeffrey Balanger, the author of thrillers Code Blood Red, Fourth and Dead, and Squeeze Play. You can follow Jeff on twitter @ coachbelanger, listen to him on the Gambling Chalk Talk Podcast, and check out his website www.jeffreybelanger. com. You will also find his books available at any online retailer (in eBook and paperback formats) as well as at www.thewordverve.com/authors/jeffrey-belangerBarbara Cohea, author of Intelligent Life on Earth. You will find her book available at any online retailer (in eBook and paperback formats) as well as at www.thewordverve.com/shop/ inteligent-life-on-earth-humor/ Visit Barbara on Facebook and share some laughs: www. facebook/barbara.cohea.3/Maria De Leon, author of Parkinson’s Diva: A Woman’s Guide to Parkinson’s Disease and Viviendo más allá del párkinson: explorando las posibilidades. You can contact her through www.parkinsonsdiva. org, www.defeatparkinsons.com, and www.facebook. com/defeatparkinsons101. Her books can be found at any online retailer (in both eBook and paperback formats) as well as at www.thewordverve.com/authors/maria-deleonRachel Eliason, author (R.J. Eliason) of YA fiction including the Bear Naked Series and the Mondomin Court Series. Rachel is active on many social media sites and can be found on twitter @racheleliason, Facebook, Google + and Pinterest, to name a few. Her books can be found at any online retailer (in both eBook and paperback formats), including her “Bear Naked” shapeshifter series. This series can also be found at thewordverve. www.thewordverve.com/authors/r-jeliasonPhil Emmert, author of WWII era, When War Was Heck and The Afterglow of War: Lessons Learned. His Christian based works include The Overcomers and America Rebooted. His books can be found at any online retailer (in both eBook and paperback formats) as well as at www. thewordverve.com/authors/phil-emmertAngie Gallion, author of the Alison Hayes Journey, a coming-of-age series. Angie expects to release Off the Dark Ledge, her first psychologic thriller, in spring 2018, and a fourth installment in the Alison Hayes Journey in late 2018. Follow Angie at www.angiegallion.com, where she not only promotes her own novels but others’ as well through her book review blogs.Sue Kotchman, author of children's books With Love, From Grandma; With Love, From Grandpa; Sam; and Mason’s This-and-That-Day. The latter two can be found at any online retailer as well as thewordverve.www. thewordverve.com/author/susan-kotchman/Sue recently earned First Honorable Mention for her short story, “Finding Sofia,” published in the ABC-2016 Anthology of Florida Writers and Poets.Sharyn Bradford Lunn, author of the Southern Skyes series, based on the history of Austrailia, her home country. Learn more about Sharyn on her website: www.SharynBradfordLunnAuthor.com. Currently, five of the six books planned for the series are available for purchase at all online retailers in both paperback and eBook format, as well as at www.thewordverve.com/ authors/Sharyn-bradford-lunn/John Nuckel, author of The Rector St. Series, Drive, The Garden, the Victory Grill. Visit John's website at www.johnnuckel.com. Find John’s books at all online retailers and through thewordverve at www.thewordverve.com/authors/johnnuckelOwen Roberts, author of Indian Feather, and The Black and White Ball. Find Owen’s books at all online retailers or through his publisher: www.thewordverve.com/authors/owenrobertsHelen Ruby, aka Janet Fix, editor and publisher at thewordverve. Janet writes her children’s books under Janet Fix and all other works under her pen name, Helen M. Ruby. Janet’s children’s book series is called Ranch Hero. Ranch Hero and Ranch Hero 2: Moooving Velma are available via all online sellers and at https:// thewordverve.com/authors/janet-fix/. The third book in the series, Ranch Hero 3: An Australian Vacation, is due out in the summer, 2018. Check out the series and other fun stuff at www.ranch-hero.com or on facebook: www. facebook.com/ranchhero/.Rick Sanders, author of The Walking Bridge and Strange Times in Yeehaw Junction. Rick is an artist and a teacher. He is specifically interested in how people and relationships change when they are exposed to changes in their environments—like tragedy, love, death, new social patterns, and even just moving to a new place. You can learn more about Rick, his books, and his art at his website:www.strangetimesbysanders.com and at thewordverve site: www.thewordverve.com/authors/rick-sandersRJ Simon, author of Ruby Lane, geared toward middle graders, Simon inspires little people to drem big. Visit her website at www.booksbyrjsimon.com. Ruby Lane is available in both eBook and paperback formats via all online retailers. You can find it at thewordverve, too, of course: www.thewordverve.com/shop/ruby-laneCindy Solomita, author of The Adventures of Callie the Curious Cat, with more in the series coming soon. Cindy’s work can be found at any online retailer as well as here: www.thewordverve. com/shop/callie-the-curious-cat/.Dave Solomita, is venturing into Flash Fiction with this anthology and has discovered a true hidden talent.Phillip Vega, author of the wildly successful Last Exit to Montauk, Vega is currently in production with his second novel be be released Summer 2018. Follow Phil on his website www.phillipvega.com and find his book Last Exit to Montauk at any online retailer in eBook and paperback formats, or at www.thewordverve.com/shop/last-exit-to-montauk/.

Giving It Up

I had a dream the other night that I was an old woman living out of a van, and I was perfectly happy about that. I think in my soul I am a bit of a gypsy. When I was younger I neve could stand staying in the same place for more than a six month span. I craved changed, flux. I still do, but I'm rooted now, with kids and a husband and a beautiful home. I will probably never move again, and I'm very happy about that. But about once a year my gypsy blood sings and I listen. I hunger for les stuff, less trappings, less roots. I want to pack my family into a camper and work our way across the country in campgrounds along the way. I want to disconnect from all of our de-vices and stop paying attention to the insane news channels. I want to stop seeing selfies on facebook and twitter self-promotions disguised as human interests. I want to discard everything and start over with the most basic of uniforms and housing. I want to have six sets of the same outfit so I don't have to choose what I will wear. I want to discard everything from my pantry that was processed into a cardboard box at a factory and start anew with dried beans and rice and a million spices. I want to plot out and plant my garden. I want to disconnect from the power grid and embrace my inner hippie.[image error]Couldn't we all do with less? Absolutely. We could have many fewer clothes, many fewer possessions and I wonder if that would be the key to a calm soul. My husband and I are not in acquisistion mode, we are not adding to our collections, but we still have so much stuff. It's just amazing. I was looking for a table cloth over the weekend and in the search I opened a drawer that I haven't opened in probably a year. It was full of shirts, t-shirts with logos and slogans that I haven't thought of since I placed them there and haven't worn in even longer. I don't wear t-shirts, but there is a whole drawer in my house set aside to store them. I think that's crazy. We don't need so much stuff!My husband took me and the girls out to dinner last night to celebrate Valentine's Day, a completely commercial holiday, designed to sell cards and flowers in the lull after Christmas, commercialism on steroids. But we have a lot of love in our home and we will celebrate love. During the conversation he asked what we were going to give up for Lent, and after the easy answers I continued thinking about that, because I am already in my gypsy mindset. What am I going to give up, truly? My weekly adult beverage? Facebook, Twitter, politics? Sure, of course, that's easy. I don't require any of that. But there is more, What could I give up, of all the stuff I've accumulated? A drawer full of unloved, unused t-shirts for a start. I asked the question on Facebook (which I'm not giving up) and one person said they were going to start a collection and add one thing every day to donate to the Salvation Army at the end. I loved that idea. I'm going to do that, too. I'm going to start with the drawer of t-shirts and go from there. At the end of forty days I'll post a picture of all the stuff I let go of this year. I challenge each and every one of you to do the same. Release that which does not bring you joy, surround yourselves only with what you need, what makes you whole.From my Gypsy self to yours, let it go.income ratio for all my projects. I vow every year to make an effort toward frugality, and every year I somehow manage to fall short.

Sold by Blair Denholm

My first Gallion Picks Review of 2018 comes to you by way of Australia. Blair Denholm has created a dark and at the same time, comedic, tale. His protagonist, Gray Braswell, is not your typical hero. He's a used car salesman, with a variety of addictions, gambling amongst them. He never says no, to liquor, to drugs, to gambling. His refusal to deny himself any "pleasure" lands him and his long-suffering wife, Maddie, in dire straights. He has borrowed money from Jocko MacKenzie, a loan shark, and when MacKenzie comes calling, with threats, Gary struggles to repay the loan. Even when he has repaid the debt, MacKenzie still expects more, and the story takes off. It is action packed and fast paced.Gary changes jobs from car salesman to a real estate agent, looking for a bigger payout. He's a natural salesman, fast taking, and quick thinking, and soon he has some solid prospects. Unfortunately for Gary, who is nearly always functioning at some level of inebriation, he becomes embroiled in an even more deadly game with overseas investors looking for a money laundering opportunity. It's out of the frying pan and into the fire for Gary. The pit he digs just gets deeper and steeper, and he just keeps digging. Sold is a fantastic romp. I thoroughly enjoyed the vernacular and the Aussie slang. Denholm's writing style is immensely readable, full of dark humor and crass undertones. Denholm looks in the seediest corners of the human soul and paints what he finds in vivid detail, unapologetically. I loved that Gary was such a sot, that he was so unwilling to stop the insanity. Throughout, he is a person who gives in entirely to desire with very little concern for the consequences, which is immensely irritating. I cannot tell you how many times Gary annoyed me. But he was also very charming. It's not often you find a hero so flagrantly unpleasant. I quite liked Gary Braswell, even as flawed as a human could be, he was entertaining. Denholm is a master storyteller. Sold was a romp, easy to read, and enjoy. There are cautionary tales here, but Denholm seems infinitely unconcerned with whether his readers take them to heart. I'm pretty happy (maybe not the right word) that he ended this novel with an opening for more because there has to be more. I'm already looking forward tothe next book of the Gary Braswell Cluster----well, you know.

Vote! A Novel Worth Remembering - Last Exit to Montauk by Phillip Vega

In September of 2017, Intoxic was in the running for Underground Book Reviews Pitch Perfect award. I was thrilled with the honor of being in the running, and while I think Intoxic is good, it's not mass market. It has an audience; it has a segment of the population to which it speaks. Not everybody can identify with Alison and her dysfunctional life. But everybody could identify with the love story, and as soon as I saw Intoxic's competition, I knew I would only be honored by the nomination and not by the win. The winning book for September was a book that I've highlighted on my blog, Last Exit to Montauk. It is a universal love story, without any mush. If somebody had to beat me, I'm glad it was Phillip.Last Exit to Montauk is now in the running for Underground Book Reviews Novel of the Year! The Verve published Last Exit to Montauk, and they will be producing my next book, Off the Dark Ledge. This win will be a fantastic honor for Phillip Vega and The Verve. Last Exit to Montauk was The Verve's first traditionally published offering. Read this novel. Vote for this novel.Last Exit to Montauk is Phillip Vega's first offering, and I for one hope it's not his last. He has a very natural, easy voice that draws the reader right into the characters lives he creates. As a reminder, I'm placing an excerpt from that review: What is Last Exit to Montauk?"...think Less Than Zero minus the drugs and sleaze, but with that same candor, the same "inside your head" walk through another person's life, meets the Outsiders, with its personable characters and the hint of social awkwardness. It's a love story set in Long Island during the 1980's. Those iconic eighties, with the big hair, the boat shoes, MTV, and corded phones, and Vega draws it back into focus with exquisite detail. He draws it up with both eyes open, without a hint of sentimentality. The people -- his mother, who mixes Spanish and English in the same sentence, the siblings, the friends, all of it is so nicely detailed and rendered, even the characters you will hate, they are all handled with care. Vega looks back at this first love, "B," and we fall in love with her right along with him. We fall in love with her laugh, with the way she moves, with the way her mind works, and with her sense of humor. She is encapsulated in this book like a photo in a locket. We love B every bit as much as our narrator does. Every step through this book rings true. It's like Vega filleted his soul for the world to see. Read this book. It will make you feel things you may have forgotten or things you've never known. There is great love in this book and great tragedy. It's a book I'll never forget."

Jean Hines, Spreading Love and Joy

[image error]We've been at our current school for two years now. It's the longest my kids have been in a single system. My oldest started school while we were in Florida and between her kindergarten year and first-grade we moved back to Georgia. She started first-grade in a school close to our interim house. She'd had good experiences at both schools, but it always took her a while to feel like she fit. When we found the Beech House and moved again, my oldest was upset because she would once again have to find her place in a new school. All summer, leading up to her second-grade year she was unhappy every time we drove past the new school. She wanted her old school, her old friends, her former teachers. My younger daughter was a little more pliable, more willing to accept new experiences, confident that she would make new friends and like her teachers. So, the new year arrived, and I started taking them to school every morning, and one of the first people I noticed was the woman I'm highlighting in my People Who Inspire this week. Her name is Miss Jean. Miss Jean was standing every morning at drop off with a big smile and a hug for anyone who wanted one. I started watching because people fascinate me. What I noticed was that Jean didn't just greet the kids that she opened the door for, she offered a smile and side-armed hug to the kids who sought her out. It wasn't long before I noticed my kids brightening when Miss Jean happened to be the one in line to open their door. I would expect this from my youngest, who still hasn't met many strangers, but the older one is reserved, and she waits to get the measure of a person before deciding to like them. Apparently, she'd already gotten the measure of Miss Jean.I started hearing the name, "Miss Jean," in conversations about the happenings of their day, always associated with some kindness offered and I decided it was time for me to meet Miss Jean, officially. The next time I was out the school, I cast an eye out and found her in the hall. "Miss Jean," I called, and we stood and had a fabulous conversation. We have since had many fabulous conversations. I learned that she'd had other jobs, probably that paid more, but that she had come to the staff at our school because she had felt unfulfilled in her other work. I learned a little about her life, because I'm that kind of person and saw that she was living her life to coincide with her faith as if her mission was to spread love, and joy, to all these kids, some who may not have it as comfortable as mine. It seems fitting that this post is falling around the holidays. Christmas shouldn't be a commercial holiday, but sadly it is. Faith isn't present in many of the homes decked out for the holidays. Miss Jean is giving holiday spirit every single day, and for that alone she inspires me. I always am impressed with educators because I like to learn and my teachers have been some of my most significant influencers. As my children have entered school, I see the big picture differently. I remember how important some of the staff was to me. I had a bus driver that probably hated me because I was loud and full of energy and he was old and retired from another career, but still working because he wanted to or more likely because he needed to. His name was Ed, and he drove my bus for several years and was always kind, even when my high pitched voice was probably grating on his nerves. The people who work behind the scenes are as valuable as the ones working in front of the classroom. I suspect my children will learn great lessons from many people in their school, not just from their teachers. I hope that of all the things they are learning it is what Miss Jean is teaching that sticks with them. Love. Kindness. Understanding.Every year I make resolutions, to write more, to exercise more, to do a better job taking care of my home, to do a better job cooking meals. This year, I'll still have all of those, but in 2018 I hope to be more like Miss Jean, sharing the love and promoting kindness.

Year End Thoughts

We had safe travels back from Illinois, and while we had a happily exhausting trip, it's always good to be again at the Beech House. I came home ready for the new year, ready to launch forward toward 2018 with fabulous goals.I have had a tremendous 2017. Intoxic received a bronze medal in the General Fiction Category from the Readers' Favorite Internation Book Awards and was one of the September Underground Book finalists. All three of the Alison Hayes Journey were certified by Underground Book Reviews for quality in independent publishing. I ramped up my Gallion Picks Book reviews and started reviewing for Readers' Favorite, LLC. I read a lot of good books in 2017. I started looking at People Who Inspire and sharing them with the rest of you. I've had my faith in humanity restored by some of the fantastic, loving, courageous people I have met. 2017 was a big year.2018 is going to be bigger. My next book is going offered in the spring of 2018, and it has been a shift for me. Off the Dark Ledge (tentative cover) will classify as Psychological Thriller and has been an adventure in writing. I didn't understand that I was writing in a genre until my editor sent back early comments from her first read through. The rewrites and edits have been almost as exciting for me as the initial writing. I'm finding ties along the way that I didn't even realize I had made the first time through. It is not, perhaps, the book I set out to write, but I think it's pretty unique. I'll be teaming up with the small press, TheWordVerve to publish this work and I am very excited to see how their expertise and industry experience will present my work to a new and broader audience. We are still in negotiations, but I am very confident about this collaboration. I have worked with their editor-in-chief on my Alison Hayes books and respect and valued her input tremendously. In 2018, I also plan to release a fourth, and perhaps a conclusion, in the Alison Hayes series, which for the time being will remain an independent journey.While I have enjoyed the Gallion Picks Reviews and will continue them, but I'll do them with less regularity. Reading and reviewing takes a lot of time away from writing. I had hoped to have Off the Dark Ledge ready for release by the end of 2017, but it was still maturing, and I was preoccupied reading other works.I've set a goal that over the next five years my writing will do more than just support itself, and for that to happen, I have to write, like a job, and build my catalog. I've never been a goal-oriented person, in the writing world I am a what they call a "pantser," but as I begin to see the direction my writing can take my family I recognize that "pantsing" in life is not always the most successful strategy. I look forward to an exciting year. I hope you all have high hopes for 2018 as well.I have met incredible people this year, I've learned a lot about marketing, I've learned a lot about building an online footprint, I've learned a lot about writing as a career choice and not a hobby. It has all been an adventure, and I am proud of what I have accomplished. Last year, at this time, I didn't know enough about the industry to appreciate the value of a team, this year I do. I'm an okay "one-man show," I know my way around a good monologue, but I am so excited to see what we can do with fabulous dialogue. I'm excited. I hope you'll stay tuned for everything coming in 2018.

Non-Stop Norah

When you come home, you have the pleasure of running into people you haven't seen in a long time, and you also hear the stories that have happened since you last were home. Charleston is a small town and the University, when I attended, had the esssense of small-town community.  I maintain friendships with several of my former professors and their families.  It was just that kind of place.While I was home, I learned that one of my former professors lost a granddaughter about a month ago.  Norah was thirteen, and I have watched for years, via social media, as she blossomed from a cute and spunky kid into an energetic and creative teen.  She passed away from a brain aneurysm in her sleep.  It was not preventable, detectable, nor reparable.  There was nothing that anybody could have done to save her.  The tragedy is stark.  I cannot even begin to fathom how a family continues after such a loss.  How do her parents find the courage to face another day, how do her grandparents, aunts, and uncles find the strength to pull themselves through the day?  How does her brother, her best friend, her probable confidante, face the daylight without her in it.  How does the world even still turn, after an unfathomable loss?This family has chosen to give back.  They worked with the team at Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network who found matches for Norah's liver, kidneys, and pancreas.  The girl who received Norah's liver would not have survived without it.  Secondly, they set up the Non-Stop Norah Celebration Fund to help support the Girls on the Run program. As a mother, my heart breaks for this family, for their loss, for the need for them to continue without Norah.  As a human, I am awed by their resiliency, by their generosity.  Their character is showing most amazingly.   I pray for their peace, and hope they can find comfort in the good they have done.  

McGrady Inn, Charleston, Illinois

We arrived in Charleston on Tuesday in the mid-afternoon after spending a pleasant last morning visiting with my mother near Springfield.  Charleston is my old stomping ground, Jeff's as well although he was here for a shorter length of time.  While Jeff joined the military after high school, and I stayed in town to go to the local University, Eastern Illinois.  I was twenty-three before I flew west.  I was a rebounder in my twenties and by the time I got into my early thirties I had decided that Charleston was as good a place as any to settle down and make a life.  It was a town that made sense to me, a place with history.  It was home, and I had finally hit a point where the home wasn't just where I wanted to be when I need time to recover from my latest life adventure/catastrophe.  I remember the building that now houses the McGrady Inn long after it stopped functioning as United Brethren of Christ Church.  It was vacant all the years I lived in Charleston.  The building, constructed in 1919, features a nine-panel stained glass window at the center of the 23-foot sanctuary ceilings and pine floors. The beautiful restoration work is suggestive of the builder's original craftsman style decor.   In July of 1968 the United Brethren in Christ Church became the Otterbein United Methodist Church, and in 1978 the congregation relocated to a different building.  The site of the McGrady Inn was vacant until 2005 when David McGrady purchased the building and began a three-year restoration project.  The Inn features four bedrooms and the one we stayed in offered a choir loft where the master suite was accessible via a ladder or externally by stair.  As I said, we arrived at our sanctuary for the rest of the week late afternoon and spent only a few minutes settling before we headed back to visit with family.  We returned hours later when dark had fallen and settled in for the night.  We were alone in the Inn until nine-thirty with another pair of guests arrived.  We heard them come in, saw lights turned on, heard the hostess again give the explanations about the amenities, then the new arrivals retired to their rooms and the night was silent, peaceful. I dreamt all through the night of the big old house I grew up in, images remembered and refreshed by the dark wood appointments at the inn.   My parents sold that house many years ago and ever since it has never felt quite like coming home to me.  I miss that old building that raised me, where we slept with open windows all through the summer, where we could sometimes see our breath in the cold winter mornings before my father piped heat to the upstairs.   I have missed that home like a friend, like family.  

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

I didn't manage an indie book for this week.  We are gearing up for the holidays and time is hectic.  I doubt I will do any official reviewing before the end of the year.  I don't only read indie and small press books, and I have some favorite authors who have gone the traditional publishing route with great success.  I have hesitated to write about my traditionally published favorites because I feel I have set myself up to do something different.  I want to bring attention to writers that nobody else is speaking for, and I do, almost every week with my Gallion Picks.  I am taking the rest of the year off.  I will be reading and rereading books that I have already read or that I feel drawn to, without any thought for its publication method.   This post is about one of those books.    I don't think of this as a review, it's more just something I needed to write, and since reading The Scorpio Races, I've got no other words of my own. I hope writing this will kickstart me.  This post is me, paying homage to one of the best writers out there.I haven't listened to anything in months, and there is one I've wanted to hear for a long time.  This week I gave in and bought the audio to Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races.  Maggie Stiefvater is not a small press writer; she publishes with Scholastic Press.  She has several books of which I have read The Raven Cycle.  She creates unique characters that live somewhere on the edge of normalcy.  The Raven Cycle is about dreamers and ancient kings, fast cars, ravens, love, friendship, death, and a quest.  Stiefvater has other books about fairies and wolves, none of which I have read.  But the Raven Cycle has lived on my phone for several years, and I have listened to it numerous times.   As many of you know, I'm not a fan of werewolves and vampires, but I am a fan of horses, hence my interest toward The Scorpio Races.  I kept seeing people talking about The Scorpio Races on the author's twitter feed and decided to give it a go.  It's a standalone, about eight hours, so I figured I could give up that much time to see about the fuss.  Well, two days out, and my voice is still highjacked.  I should have known better.  Stiefvater is one of those rare writers that crawl around in the dark crevices of my mind and rules there.   I've not written a word since I started The Scorpio Races and I'm not sure when I'll find my own words again.  It felt like a calling me home, to some island I never knew.  She is masterful in her descriptives; her characters speak in their own words and all of their histories filter through the page like water through the soil.  The capall uisce (COP-ple ISH-ka) are legendary water horses, Steifvater's cappal uisca are conglomerates of many versions of the legend.  They are meat-eating creatures that come up from the sea during great storms or at certain times of the year and ravage sheep or cattle on the Isle of Thisby.  The Scorpio Races offers so much that draws me, horses, resilient people, magic and superstition and the power of both, harsh landscapes, the sea.  The story follows Puck Connolly and Sean Kendrick in the rise toward the races.  Sean is a veteran racer and champion on the island and almost as mythical as the capal uisca.  Puck Connolly and her horse, Dove enter the race out of desperation.  Dove is a regular horse, not of the sea, and there are many on the island who think she should not be racing in a sea-horse race, not as a woman and not with her natural born horse.   Puck is determined, even as she is terrified of the creatures from the sea because she has much to lose.  There is a reward at the end of the race and Puck hopes to save her family home with the winnings.  Sean is racing for a chance to own the horse he rides and has ridden for years, Corr.  Both are desperate, in their way.  Thigsby is a close-knit but hard-bitten island, and the inhabitants are hard and practical.  Survival is the making of hard choices and taking chances.  If you haven't been introduced to Maggie Stiefvater and her body of work yet, let me be the first. (This video is created by Maggie Stiefvater - Animated Trailer for the Scorpio Races)She is incredible. 

Emilia by Ellie Midwood

I have a natural interest in history and when I was in high school I did a lot of reading about World War II.  I have uncles who had faught in the war and my father said they came home changed men.  They never spoke of their time in the war to me.  My grandfather was stationed in the South Pacific through the war, and I never heard his stories, either.  I was fascinated because there was such a clear and present evil and I could never quite understand how the German people allowed Hitler to take them down the road they traveled.   When I was in college I knew a woman who had been a child in Hitler's Germany, and we had some really good conversations about her memories of that time.  I learned a lot from her, although she was very young during the build up to World War II and her perceptions of the time were filtered by what she learned later.   By and large I want to believe that humans are good, at their core, but every time I get caught by an animal cruelty story or see the inhuman acts of mankind toward weaker creatures I am disheartened.  Maybe there are truly great people, and maybe there are also truly atrocious people and most us fall somewhere in the midst.  Emilia, by Ellie Midwood is a book about a truly great person.  The main character is young Jewish woman who is caught in the flood of the war.  She is moved from her home with her family in Occupied Poland in 1941 to the Jewish Ghettos in Krakow and finally to a series of work camps.  The book is written in two parts, part one take us through the war years and the second part, titled Liberation, takes us through the time after the war.  Throughout, Emilia is pragmatic, and although the life she lives out during the the novel is brutal and not of her choosing the most striking thing about her character is that she does not see herself as a victim.  In this day and age where people are seeking  "victimhood" like an identity, it was refreshing to read about a woman who accepts responsibility for the choices she made, even under duress.  Yes, she made a choice, to smile and say "you are handsome" instead of fight and be beaten.  Yes she made a choice to not fight when a guard tried to have his way with her, in exchange for food for her family.  Yes, they are horrible choices to be sure, but choices all the same.  She was in a battle for survival and the only weapon she had was her mind and her body. People in life and death situations make such pragmatic decisions and move forward to the next horror until they can come out the other side or die trying.  Amidst the horror of the war and the aftermath, Midwood does a magnificent job of drawing outour humanity. Not every member of the the German Army is horrible, not every Jewish man or woman in the camp is good.  They are all just people caught on the web of a moment in time, trying to find the path to survive.  It was a very intricate weave.  Midwood delves into the political landscape of the time and gives a certain level of context for the circumstances in the book, it is not a story told in a vacuum.  Emilia is an intelligent representation of a dark history brought into the light.  I appreciated the non sentimental approach.  I also very much enjoyed the writing technigue Midwood utilizes.  Often her sentance structure and word choices were very "formal" and suggestive of the era portrayed.  The writing style set the stage for the story to unfold and made it feel very authentic.  Emilia is a novel that comes full circle, thankfully. Life goes on or it doesn't.  If it goes on, you live it, to the best of your ability.  Ellie Midwood is an author to watch.  I was so taken with this novel that I spent a little time on her website.  She writes history, romance, and war novels and I found this quote that really captures what I saw her doing in this book: "The war stories that I write are the ones where ordinary men become unlikely heroes, where the borders between good and evil are no longer distinguishable, and where uncomfortable truths are revealed through the eyes of the protagonists who don't shy away from reliving their accounts with admirable sincerity." -- from Ellie Midwood's websiteWell, all I can say, if this is her goal, she has accomplished it in spades.