Pearl Luke's Blog: Pearl Luke's Book and Writing Blog, page 14
December 17, 2012
Dec 17, Pursue your creative writing dreams with creative writing tips, help, and resources from novelist Pearl Luke.
December 10, 2012
Dec 11, ADVENTURE MEMOIR December 6 BOOK GIVEAWAY at BookClubBuddy.com
ISLAND BORN by Frank Burnaby is an unforgettable adventure memoir about how the author and his wife stopped their sailing adventure to have their baby on a deserted island!
This book would make a great Christmas gift!
I am particularly delighted to see ISLAND BORN now available, as I first became aware of it a few years ago when the author asked me to do a manuscript evaluation.
I had trouble putting it down and was so impressed with the story that I asked my literary agent if she would take a look at it. She also loved the book, and she offered to represent Frank. I was thrilled for him.
But, oddly, the agent was unable to place the book. Publishers liked the story, they said, but they believed it would be difficult to market. The author discusses this in an INTERVIEW about the book and makes their comments available on his website.
So I highly recommend this fascinating adventure memoir about how the author and his wife had their first son on a deserted island in the Indian Ocean!
About the author:
As a youth, Frank Burnaby says he survived his parent’s good intentions when they enrolled him in military school in the seventh grade. There he learned to disassemble and reassemble his rifle with his eyes closed, and to pull weeds for not having a mirror shine on his shoes. He spent his high school years at a boarding school in New Jersey.
In 1969, after a stint at San Francisco State University film school, Frank boarded a freighter bound for North Africa. Hitchhiking across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, he made his way through India and South East Asia, to remote islands in Indonesia by native boat, and finally on to Hong Kong where he taught English.
Landing back in New York City he drove a taxi at night, and studied acting at Herbert Berghof Studios. He found work as an actor and was offered the principal part in a travel adventure feature film, but instead of pursuing an acting career he opened a vegetarian taco stand, which thrived on the edge of the meat packing district.
Drawn to the sea and his dream of sailing to a tropical wilderness, he took a job as an apprentice shipwright in a Los Angeles marina. Soon after, he set off with his soon-to-be wife, Gayle, to purchase a small vintage sailboat in England. He was 27, and she was 17. The ensuing five year voyage, eastward across the Indian Ocean, and their experience living on an uninhabited island changed his life forever. This is the story, Island Born.
To read more about this book and enter the draw, please visit Island Born at BookClubBuddy.com and follow the directions at the bottom of the page. DRAW ENDS midnight December 12, 2012
Dec 11, Finding a Literary Agent
December 9, 2012
Dec 9, Where to Read Short Stories Online
November 23, 2012
Nov 23, November 22nd BOOK GIVEAWAY at BookClubBuddy.com
The Village of Many Hats is an endearing children's book and would make the perfect stocking stuffer.
Written for ages 7 to 10, it will be enjoyed by a wider age group, and will be particularly enjoyable and heartwarming for adults who read with their young ones. I read it on the plane, all the time wishing I were reading it with my grandson, who will love it.
The Village of Many Hats is a novella told from the point of view of nine-year-old Gina. She and her family live in Silverado, a mountain village, which used to be prosperous but has now fallen on hard economic times.
Gina's sister, Sara, is ill with a heart condition, and the book is about how the village pulls together to assist with this crisis and others, and how they show their kindness to Gina, as well, who suffers not only loneliness and worry, but guilty feelings of being overlooked. In the author's words, "It takes a village to raise a child and to care for families in crisis." It is impossible to read this book without understanding the value of a caring community. It's a thought-provoking read for children and adults!
To read more about this book, please visit The Village of Many Hats by Caroline Woodward, at BookClubBuddy.com and follow the directions at the bottom of the page.
November 16, 2012
Nov 17, November 15th BOOK GIVEAWAY at BookClubBuddy.com
With Reconciliation, Dorothy Speak's third collection of stories, I feel as if I have discovered this author all over again, with the same degree of guilty pleasure I experienced when reading her novel The Wife Tree (Random House, 2001)--guilty because when I recognize myself in her characters it is often through their flaws, as they act in ways I understand, but wish I did not.
The characters in this collection are strong, sometimes selfish, sometimes unkind, but always fascinating. However they act, whatever befalls them, it's easy to admire them because they carry on and persevere.
Dorothy Speak writes that she feels most comfortable among friends, because she "believes the only reason to be alive is to connect with others." Reading Reconciliation, one will recognize the compassion and acceptance with which Speak observes those around her.
BCB: In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?
Dorothy Speak: Nature, tennis and good films (usually foreign).
BCB: What do you think readers would be most surprised to learn about you?
Dorothy Speak: That I’m shy.
BCB: What’s the best decision you’ve ever made, and why?
Dorothy Speak: To leave my government job and become a writer. There is little latitude for independence and creativity in bureaucracy. I am lucky I had the liberty of abandoning a good salary to pursue my true calling.
To read more about this book and enter the draw, please visit Reconciliation at BookClubBuddy.com and follow the directions at the bottom of the page until November 20, 2012.
November 8, 2012
Nov 9, November 8th BOOK GIVEAWAY at BookClubBuddy.com
November 8th BOOK GIVEAWAY at BookClubBuddy.com
INTERSECTING SETS: A Poet Looks at Science by Alice Major.
This smart book of essays won the Wilfrid Eggleston Award, and I like what the prize jury said about it:
"For the elegance and precision of its language, the encyclopedic reach of its knowledge, and the daring of its thought, this book is a winner.
"Every page offers fresh insight and challenging intellectual vistas, yet the text never loses itself in a fog of abstraction. There’s always someone or something – a cat named Pushkin, a bird on a credit card, an old man walking, walking, reciting his poems—to ground the conceptual universe in the sensory world.
"Measured against the writer’s intentions and the pleasure it offers to readers, this book is practically perfect." - Jury Comments, Wilfrid Eggleston Award
Alice Major has published nine highly praised poetry collections, three of which have been shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award, given annually for best book of poetry by a Canadian woman. In 2009, she won that award for The Office Tower Tales.
She has also received the Stephan G. Stephansson Award (for Memory’s Daughter). For Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, she has received the Wilfrid Eggleston non-fiction prize by the Writers Guild of Alberta and a National Magazine Award gold medal.
She was born in Scotland and grew up in Toronto, before coming west to work on a weekly newspaper in the Cariboo. She arrived in Edmonton in 1981 and has made her home here ever since. During that time she has also contributed extensively to the writing community. as president of the League of Canadian Poets, president of the Writers Guild of Alberta and chair of the Edmonton Arts Council. She has also worked on the boards of local groups like the Stroll of Poets Society and Edmonton’s Litfest.
From 2005-2007, she served as first poet laureate for the city of Edmonton. During that time, she wrote poems on subjects from potholes to hockey playoffs and served as an ambassador for her art form, and founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival. In June, 2012 she was inducted in the Edmonton Arts and Culture Hall of Fame.
To read more about this book and enter the draw, please visit Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science at BookClubBuddy.com and follow the directions at the bottom of the page.
November 2, 2012
Nov 2, Creative Writing Contest
October 31, 2012
Oct 31, Creative Writing Contest
October 18, 2012
Oct 19, TRACIE'S REVENGE AND OTHER STORIES by Wade Bell. October 18th BOOK GIVEAWAY at BookClubBuddy.com.
If you enjoy hard hitting literary fiction, the short stories in Tracie's Revenge and Other Stories are exceptional. We see characters act in ways or have thoughts that few people would admit to in life. "Tracie's Revenge" is about a young woman who daydreams that her husband will die at the sawmill where he works so she can have his truck and life insurance. She's no criminal, just a young mother married to a man upon whom bill collectors call often:
If the phone call was from someone collecting a debt, it would mean Gene wasn't at work. They always went there first to look for him and phoned him at home as a last resort. He wouldn't be in the bar or any other place in town where they could find him. He'd be driving around the country roads with a bottle of rye and his shotgun. (copyright Wade Bell)
A number of the stories are both shocking and memorable.
To read more about this book and enter the draw, please visit Tracie's Revenge and Other Stories at BookClubBuddy.com and follow the directions at the bottom of the page.
ALSO FEATURED THIS WEEK: LOVE ANTHONY, fiction by New York Times bestselling author LISA GENOVA. Enter by October 23RD for your chance to win a copy of either book.
Pearl Luke's Book and Writing Blog
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