Angie Gallion's Blog, page 5

The Heart of a Firefighter by T. Lamar Baker

I think this book will be the last of my shorts series for the time being.  It is not necessarily a series of short stories, but I found that each chapter stood nicely alone so I feel comfortable including it here.  T. Lamar Baker is a retired veteran Firefighter/Engeineer with Dekalb County and Fire/Rescue in metro Atlanta with over 20 years in service.  His book, The Heart of a Firefighter, is published by Yawn's Publishing out or Canton, Georgia, and reads very much like a journal, a personal memoir of experiences lived.  It takes the glamour out of the firefighter trade and imbues it instead with a healthy dose of reality, brotherhood, and duty.  Baker does not waste great detail on explaining the fires, it is hot and visibility is poor, his stories are of the people he encounters through his years of service, the ones saved and the ones lost.  There are moments I found humor and moments when I had to set the book aside because my eyes had blurred.   There are a couple of chapter that broke my heart and made me grieve alongside Baker.   His emotion is so true and honest that I found myself gaining even more respect for the men and women who dedicate their lives to the service of others.  Things happen quickly in this book, much as they do at the firehouse, and often the simple normalcy of the firefighters having a meal was the saving grace for me, and helped me understand the "why" of what these people do.  Very often Baker goes through an explanation of what was happening before the call, to give a full picture of th impact.  There is no hint of sentimentality in this transcription, it is a retelling with both eyes open.  Baker begins his book with a tribute to the firefighter who have gone before, those who have given their lives in service, particularly those who responded to the terrorist attacks on 911.  He comes back to that later in the book, and his explanation of what those firefighters did, how they continued up the towers, knowing that there was possibly not return, sent chills through me and brought the horror of that day back in vivid detail.  Baker takes on the ideas of political correctness and explains how being "kind" can get people killed, he takes on Hollywood for it portrayal of firefighters, with their chiseled abs and golden hero looks.  He explains that the reality of being a firefighter is a lifestyle that includes having more than one job, that includes a great deal of time away from home, that includes bonding with your coworkers as an extended family.  The chilling reality that every time the bell rings a firefighter may be walking his last steps put the serice they offer in perspective.  This isn't a career that looks like a good job, it's something you have as a calling or something you don't. Throughout the book Baker places quotes that capture very nicely the themes of each given chapter, and I liked that I could pause and reflect upon what I had read.   I appreciated those quotes because it gave me a moment to process.  This book is chock full of moments, life and death encounters, and the pause helped me absorb.  I don't know if Baker's intention was to give the reader that moment, but for me that was the effect.  Over the two days that I read this book, I had a hard time setting it aside.  I liked the frank honesty of Baker's writing.  I appreciated the glimpse inside the life of a firefighter.  This is a book that would be good reading for anybody considering a life in service to others.  Perhaps the most poignant concept in the book, for me, was in a scene where a woman asked our narrator if he was paid enough to do this job and his response, and I paraphrase, "You couldn't pay me a million dollars to run into a burning building, but I'll do it for free."   This book is aptly titled, and well worth the time spent reading.  This book will make you better appreciate the men and women we take so much for granted.  I dare say it will make you appreciate all the people of you life a little more, because between the front and the back of the book are moments, seconds really, that transform the world. 

The Heart of a Firefighter by E. Lamar Baker

I think this book will be the last of my shorts series for the time being.  It is not necessarily a series of short stories, but I found that each chapter stood nicely alone so I feel comfortable including it here.  T. Lamar Baker is a retired veteran Firefighter/Engeineer with Dekalb County and Fire/Rescue in metro Atlanta with over 20 years in service.  His book, The Heart of a Firefighter, is published by Yawn's Publishing out or Canton, Georgia, and reads very much like a journal, a personal memoir of experiences lived.  It takes the glamour out of the firefighter trade and imbues it instead with a healthy dose of reality, brotherhood, and duty.  Baker does not waste great detail on explaining the fires, it is hot and visibility is poor, his stories are of the people he encounters through his years of service, the ones saved and the ones lost.  There are moments I found humor and moments when I had to set the book aside because my eyes had blurred.   There are a couple of chapter that broke my heart and made me grieve alongside Baker.   His emotion is so true and honest that I found myself gaining even more respect for the men and women who dedicate their lives to the service of others.  Things happen quickly in this book, much as they do at the firehouse, and often the simple normalcy of the firefighters having a meal was the saving grace for me, and helped me understand the "why" of what these people do.  Very often Baker goes through an explanation of what was happening before the call, to give a full picture of th impact.  There is no hint of sentimentality in this transcription, it is a retelling with both eyes open.  Baker begins his book with a tribute to the firefighter who have gone before, those who have given their lives in service, particularly those who responded to the terrorist attacks on 911.  He comes back to that later in the book, and his explanation of what those firefighters did, how they continued up the towers, knowing that there was possibly not return, sent chills through me and brought the horror of that day back in vivid detail.  Baker takes on the ideas of political correctness and explains how being "kind" can get people killed, he takes on Hollywood for it portrayal of firefighters, with their chiseled abs and golden hero looks.  He explains that the reality of being a firefighter is a lifestyle that includes having more than one job, that includes a great deal of time away from home, that includes bonding with your coworkers as an extended family.  The chilling reality that every time the bell rings a firefighter may be walking his last steps put the serice they offer in perspective.  This isn't a career that looks like a good job, it's something you have as a calling or something you don't. Throughout the book Baker places quotes that capture very nicely the themes of each given chapter, and I liked that I could pause and reflect upon what I had read.   I appreciated those quotes because it gave me a moment to process.  This book is chock full of moments, life and death encounters, and the pause helped me absorb.  I don't know if Baker's intention was to give the reader that moment, but for me that was the effect.  Over the two days that I read this book, I had a hard time setting it aside.  I liked the frank honesty of Baker's writing.  I appreciated the glimpse inside the life of a firefighter.  This is a book that would be good reading for anybody considering a life in service to others.  Perhaps the most poignant concept in the book, for me, was in a scene where a woman asked our narrator if he was paid enough to do this job and his response, and I paraphrase, "You couldn't pay me a million dollars to run into a burning building, but I'll do it for free."   This book is aptly titled, and well worth the time spent reading.  This book will make you better appreciate the men and women we take so much for granted.  I dare say it will make you appreciate all the people of you life a little more, because between the front and the back of the book are moments, seconds really, that transform the world. 

Alison's 1 Year Anniversary

I absolutely amazes me to realize that it was already a year ago that I released Intoxic.  It seems, at the same time, like a lifetime ago and just a week.  It took me 25 years to let her go, to share her with the world and I am thrilled every time a reader reaches out to tell me that there is something in Alison's journey that speaks to them.  Her story has really touched people across gender and generation lines.  At one year, I am thinking about what comes next.  Of course, I'm always hopeful that the right person (someone with a platform to spread the word) will pick her up and realize she's something a little bit special.  I would love to see Alison "go wide," as they say in publishing.  Until then, I'm happy.  I'd like to earn more, of course, so I could afford to have more edited, so I could publish more.  Time is on my side and I have a lot of words yet to say.   I am working on a new series, which I am very excited about.  Alison isn't done, though, not by any means.  This morning as I was taking the kids to school I had a quick flash of Alison's next book, and I suddenly knew where the next one starts and the arc of the story.  I want to finish what I'm working on now, because I don't want Alison's story to be all I have to offer, but I came home and wrote down the flash, so it wouldn't evaporate.  In honor of Alison's 1 year Anniversary I am offering the digital version of Intoxic for .99 through the month  of August.  If you haven't already started her journey, now is a perfect time. Thanks for all the encouragement along the way.  I am honored.  

On the Edge: Poetry by a Mentally Ill Poet by Hayley Timmons

I am not a poet.  Poetry to me, is like the rending of a soul.  I do not profess to know what makes good poetry and I do not profess to be any sort of authority.  With all of my reviews, I am simply sharing my very personal responses to a piece of work.  Several weeks ago I was invited to The Emerging Authors Showcase at the LaGrange Memorial Library and I met several new authors as well as saw some authors I already know, including David Allman, Author of Acorns to Wheat, Lee St. John, author of the She's a Keeper series, and Janet Hogan Chapman, author of Madam May.  I was so happy to see them, out promoting their books, which I enjoyed reading in their turn.  Both Chapman and St. John have new books out this year and Allman is working on a sequal to his epic history. Writers write, it is true, and it is nice to see those writers out there publishing, fullfilling their ambitions without any help.  Hayley Timmons is a poet, and by her own admission, mentally ill.  We had a quiet conversation as the Emerging Authors event was closing down.  She is a fascinating woman who has seen darkness from an angle most of us can't even imagine.  As I mentioned, I'm not a poet, I don't know what makes for good poetry in any academic platform, and to say I enjoyed this book would be wrong.  I didn't enjoy it, I experienced it.  She left me with chills walking down my spine and opened my eyes to the true horror of undiagnosed mental illness.  This is not a book you read to feel happy. It is more profound than that.  This is a testament to survival.   Timmons is a fighter, and now that she has a named opponent she is better equipped to wage the war.   Her poetry is dark, but not opaque.  So often poetry leaves me trying to understand what has been said, and why.  That is not the case here.  Timmons poems are emotionally complex but they don't pretend to be anything more than the filleting of a soul, the opening of a heart, the sorting of a mind.  I understood from the very first poem exactly what I was dealing with.  I felt the tragedy of feeling unworthy, of feeling the epic "mistake," I felt the heartbreak of loss.  It was a very emotional ride and Timmons shares it all, laying her scars face up and forcing us to see.  Mental illness is real, and undiagnosed mental illness is deadly.  There is no shame in this book.  This is a book about triumph.  This book is about recognizing the fragility of the human mind, which sometimes is wired a different way.  When I was a teen, cutting was a quiet thing, something a handful of kids did that nobody talked about.  Cutting is a theme that runs through my writing.  Is it a cry for help, or is it just a pressure release?  I don't know.  Is it an early attempt at suicide, the testing of a site the gauging of blades and depths?  I don't know.  Timmons does.  She knows.  She was there and she is confronting her demons and vowing to find a better way, a way that produces and doesn't destroy.  She has accomplished that, in this book.  If you have seen the darkness you will understand.  If you have danced with sharp objects, you will understand.  If you have lost a grandmother or a pet, or a love, you will understand.  Timmons stands unbeaten at the end of this book, prepared to continue her own private war.

A Year of Teatime Tales by Angela Webster McRae

As I continue the trend of reading shorts, which is not generally my cup of tea, so to speak, I brought out a book I have had on my shelf for over a year.  A Year of Teatime Tales by Angela Webster McRae is a series of "52 tea-themed stories to fill your cup and warm your heart."   If you are a fan of all things tea, chances are you are already familiar with Angela and her blog Tea with Friends, It was recently ranked in theTop 100 Tea Blogs by Feedspot.  Which I wouldn't have ever dreamed was a thing, but I found it on facebook and confirmed it with snopes, and apparently there are thousands o f tea blogs out there, and McRae's is one of the top ones.  Impressive.  All of that to say that Angela McRae knows tea.  Beyond that, Angela McRae knows how to write.  Her stories are succinct and direct, with each and every word chosen with care and precision to maximize the effect of her writing.  She could have subtitled this "There shall be no skimming."  Not that you will want to skim, but if you are one of those skimming speed readers, you will miss something, it's guarenteed.  I wish I had recognized what was to be had in this book when I bought it, and I would have skipped buying my Grace for Each Moment in January and would have used this instead.  Each of these stories captures something very "true" and the characters are all vivid portrayals.  I would be hard pressed to choose a favorite, but Rose early on in the book said something very profound to me, and Hannah, just a girl from later on, reminded me of someone I used to know.  They are absolutely stories about tea, but more than that they are stories about life, about young love, old love, forgotten love, they are stories about growing old and being young.  They are stories about appreciation and value.  McRae took her time with this book and it is beautifully written.  It is cozy and quiet, just the way a teatime should be.  She has a second book, Dainty Dining: Vintage Recipes, Memories and Memorabilia from America's Department Store Tea Rooms, which I think I may have to pick up.  I suspect that we will see more from McRae, she is a quality writer,  and I anything she produces will be exacting and precise.  I hope to see more from Angela Welbster McRae, but for now, I'll satisfy myself with follwing her Tea with Friends blog and letting her book sit on my desk, for whenever I need a little story about life, I mean, tea, a story about tea.

Bluewater Walkabout: Into the Caribbean by Tina Dreffin

As summer winds to a close I find myself searching for books that I can read in short bursts of attention, beause it is about all the attention I have to offer. With that in mind the next series of book reviews will all be some version of essay, short, story, anecdotes or poetry.  Bluewater Walkabout: Into the Caribbean by Tina Dreffin, is the first of these. Dreffin has two books in her Bluewater Walkabout series: Into the Caribbean and Into Africa. This week I read Into the Caribbean. I expected  a travel guide, which I enjoy plenty well on their own, but what I got was something more. This book is a series of adventures from a life well lived.  Dreffin interjects a certain level of spirituality into her work, and some of the best pieces, for me, were the short quotes at the beginning of each chapter, setting the stage. There are several photographs throughout and I could absolutely see this re-done as a glossy coffee table book. Each story focuses either on a sea creature encountered or a locale. The stories are personable, with small family details intermixed and by the time you pass through the third story in the collection you begin to feel like a stowaway on a family's adventure. Dreffin does a very nice job of bringing her family into the work and making this more than a solitary travel log, while make sure that the family is not the story, they are just witnesses to it.  This book is not the dry stuff of your typical travel book, detailing every nook and cranny for the planning traveller.  This is a Captain's log, it is a love story to all the places this family visits and all the amazing animals and people they encounter.  The stories were sometimes featured as articles in newspapers and periodicals and Dreffin has enjoyed some success with her photography as well. The Caribbean is always one of my favorite destinations, and this book made me start watching Beach House Bargain Hunters and dreaming of escape.  I love the idea of an unfettered life, and Dreffin captures that sense of adventure in these stories.  I enjoyed it, and suspect the memory of feeding the stingray, or watching the hatchling turtles struggle to the sea, will stick with me for a long time.  Dreffin puts enough of her "self" into the work for the reader to feel escorted, but not so much that the reader feels a voyeur.  I walked these stories as if they were my life, and for the short hours it took to enjoy them, it was.   

Last Exit to Montauk by Phillip Vega

I have had Phillip Vega's book, Last Exit to Montauk, sitting on my desk for weeks, really, ever since it released earlier this year.  I've been looking forward to reading it, but but have been hesitant.  I've set myself a mission, with these book reviews to draw attention to small press and indie writers who don't have anybody actively working to make their books a sucess on their behalf.  That is not the case here.  Vega partnered with a newly revisioned publishing house out of Canton, Georgia, thewordverve.com, and they are working really hard to promote this book.  I am seeing interviews, I am seeing Author Highlights, I am seeing Vega everywhere I look.  He's been at book festivals, he's been at book signings in the big chain book sellers.  I know for a fact that they've sold through their first run and are probably closing in on selling through their second run.  That's some impressive work for a man who two years ago didn't know he was a writer.   He has a team backing him, so I didn't feel like he needed my little book review.  His small press is working hard for him, and becasue of that I think thewordverve.com is a small press that we should keep an eye on, they are doing it the old school way, and that's what's been lost by the big house publishing industry, the personal attention, the care.  So, 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 it's 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."

Generational Curses by Malikah Harris

I generally enjoy cross generational stories, I like the impacts that one generation has on the next.  I like looking at the threads that weave between mother and daughter.  I like stories about strong women.  I like breaking apart the broken pieces of a soul and seeing the fragments.  For those reasons I came to this book with enthusiasm.  Milikah Harris's book Generational Curses is written in a very matter of fact manner, almost in checklist fashion.  The book is broken into Journeys rather than chapters and each journey covers a portion of time in our protagonists life.  The novel spans fifty years directly and more than a hundred indirectly. There are large issues being dealt with in this work, incest, rape, slavery, illicit love, homosexuality, murder.  The first journey is overwhelming with it's tragedies.  There are so many skeltons walking the room that it is hard to appreciate them as skeletons.  There could be three books from the circumstances introduced in that first Journey.The most striking thing in this book was the complacent way people accepted rape and incest and violence in the culture Harris writes of.  Husbands are tolerated to molest their children, mothers as well.  Rape and incest are almost a foregone conclusion and simply part of the fabric of our characters day to day existence.  An instrumental character is murdered, the most endearing man in the novel, and his murderer is never brought to justice, or from what I recall, even sought. It just happened and they had to move on so they did.  It's appalling to think that such tragedies and atrocities can be normalized.  Harris calls to question the very fabric of a society that can accept such.Each of the Journeys had the same effect on me.  I wanted more and less at the same time.  I wanted Joanna, our protagonist, to slow down and let me feel with her, but Joanna marches forward with narry a sideways glance.  Fifty years pass and I know a lot of details about things that happen during those years, but I don't ever get to experience them with her.  There are a few problems with the timeline but it doesn't really impact the story, it just makes the story line historically inaccurate.  She uses journals and letters to handle large portions of the tale.  I would love to see Ms. Harris pull each of these journeys apart and flesh them out, and take us more fully on the walk of Joanna's life.  It would be a tremendous life to walk through as she struggles to come to terms with her own demons and the demons others have passed over to her.    There are moments when Harris almost shows the reader, she touches it, that fleshed out character, that, true and honest dialogue, but then she tells the details.  I did enjoy this book, even as I felt I wanted more from it.  Harris kept me moving forward from one page to the next and I read it over a twelve hour span.  More than enjoy, I think I appriciated  the potential I see in the pieces.

Bensy and Me by Kathi Harper Hill

Today I am back to talking about what I'm comfortable talking about, other people's books.  This book, Bensy and Me by Kathi Harper Hill, was one of the nominees in the Georgia Author of the Year Award, and I came across it at the banquet last month.  It is published by Yawn Publishing, a small press out of Canton, Georgia.  I had spent quite a bit of time perusing the nominees, and this particular book kept drawing me back.  There were many great books there, Purgus and Intoxic being among them, but this, of all the others, called to me.  Bensy and Me is set in the North Georgia mountains and is told in a first person narrative from the perspective of Charles, who doesn't like to be called Charlie, a country boy whose roots are deep in the mountains.  Charles and his bride, Bensy are expecting a baby at the beginning of the novel, which turns out to be four.  Charles and Bensy already have two kids, aged two and three.  To say the least they are in for a haul, with this new addition.  The series of adventures that take us through the birth and the first space of the quadruplets life is fun and rollicking, with that very southern humor sprinkling through.  Hill creates a cast of characters that are quirky, memorable and familiar.  They pull together through the novel, as kin and neighbors do, and with a little prevailing help from God, Charles and Bensy are on their way to figuring out their new and burgeoning family.  I remember very clearly the sheer exhaustion I felt when my girls were small, and Hill caputures that sense of being overwhelmed, but in a good way, masterfully.  I felt like I knew these characters, from Uncle Wend, who has his own glossery in the back of the book, to  Ron, a mountain of a man, with some of the funniest tales of the book.  I suspect these characters are drawn out of Hill's memory bank with fondness and remembered hilarity.  It's a good book, light and easy to read, with a solid message throughout.  I definitely recommend it, and will be sharing this copy with my mother, for starters. 

The Alison Hayes Journey

I released Icara to the world last week, and it feels like the completion of a cycle.  It has been an amazing experience, setting these books free.  As alwyas, with the launch of one of my books, I am participating in a Goodreads Giveaway, so be sure to go to Goodreads.com and enter from July 1 - July 15 for one of two autographed copies of Icara, the third novel in the The Alison Hayes Journey.  Alison Hayes is a fictional character who has walked with me since a creative writing class in college.  I was invited back to the university the following year to complete a master's  program in Creative Writing and Literature, with Intoxic being the creative portion of my masters thesis.  I worked really hard that next year and completed my coursework with no problem.  I worked really hard on my novel that year, too, but when it came time to hand it over to a panel of professors for judgement I wasn't ready to share.  I wasn't ready to set Alison free into the world, I wasn't ready for her to be judged.  I walked away from my masters program with my coursework complete.   I put Alison's book in a drawer and once or twice a year I would bring it out and make changes and over the years it transformed.  There is very little resemblence now to the book it started out to be.  It is a much more mature book, because I have enough experience now in living to see life without being sentimental.  A couple of years ago, I reread the book, and realized that I was finally ready to share it.  Through sharing it with the right people and connecting with my editor, Janet Fix at thewordverve.com, we brought Intoxic to press in August of 2016.   At that time I thought I was done.  I had finally completed something, and for the rest of my life I could say that "I wrote a book" and be satisfied.  What I wasn't expecting were the reviews.  I wasn't expecting for people to feel about Alison the way I do, after all, she had been a part of my life for years.  The most frequently asked question about Intoxic was "What happens next?"  I began to realize that I needed to know too.  I started listening again, to Alison in my head, and thinking about the people who could help her find a path.  Once I started listening, I started writing and the second book was completed in 30 days.  It was an incredible, cathartic experience, writing that book.  I sent it to my editor, and, she like me, felt there was something special in Purgus, something powerful.  We released it in December of 2016.I started work on Icara in February of 2017, and all through the writing I hedged, walking with Alison up to the ledge and turning her away.  I had a really hard time writing the story she was telling me, because it wasn't what I wanted for her.  I wanted this third book to show that she had found a path, that she was making good choices, and that her life was better because of it.  I finished it and sent it to Janet, who said what I already knew, "You didn't tell the story you needed to tell."  How she knew that there was conflict in me about this book I will never know.  She was right, of course.  Janet has incredible instincts.  I got the manuscript back and did a ninety percent rewrite, and I let Alison tell her story without me interfering.  It was better, much better.  My editor agreed, even though it was essentially a different novel for her to edit.   We released Icara in June 2017.  I am really proud of this series.  I don't know that it will ever get widespread attention, because it's hard for people to become aware of it if they aren't somehow in my circle.  I would have loved for Oprah to have picked it up, but I think her selections don't usually include independent publishers.  Most big reviewers don't.  After I wrote Intoxic I contacted my small, hometown paper in Illinois, asking if they would do a piece on it.  The only question they asked was who the publisher was, when I said I had self-published they politely declined.  I was didsappointed, because back in the day I was in the local newspaper every couple of months because of my theatre involvement.   I was a hometown girl who had gone into the big world and done something good.  That's how I saw it, anyway.  Unfortunately, even though self-publishing is more respected than it once was, there is still a stigma for those not directly involved.  There are wrtiters who put out novels that are not ready for publication, just to have a byline, and that's a shame, because it deminishes the whole lot of us.  But that's for a different post.  If you haven't read my books, I hope you will.  I think they are powerful.  I think they will take you into canyons and lead you to flight.