Christine Nolfi's Blog, page 16
June 2, 2013
Tips for Better Sleep
A short siesta can recharge you, but avoid napping for more than 40 minutes during the day. A long nap can disrupt the neurochemicals needed for your body to feel the need to sleep in the evening.
Avoid caffeinated beverages after 3 p.m. Alcohol can also wreak havoc on quality sleep, especially if you have more than one drink in the evening.
While we all need adequate exercise, avoid strenuous workouts within 2 hours of sleep. Exercise stimulates your brain, forestalling your ability to fall as...
June 1, 2013
Fun Facts About Bibliophiles
Are you smarter and healthier than the co-worker who plays Angry Birds on her lunch break? Go on—grab your eReader and delve into your latest novel:
Reading improves your ability to comprehend written material—a skill helpful in any career.
Neurobiologists have tracked increased blood flow in the brains of readers as well as improved cognitive functioning.
Reading improves your vocabulary and makes you a more creative thinker.
Reading is more demanding on your brain than processing images or speech. This neurobiological workout keeps your brain sharp, and improves powers of concentration.
The structure of fiction—with a beginning, middle and end—trains the brain to think in sequence, to link cause, effect and significance.
The average reading speed is 200 – 250 words per minute.
Modern life bombards us with too much information, which we learn to tune out. Reading reduces stress by allowing your brain to focus on one task.
Reading improves the relaxation response, lowering heartbeat and pulse rate.
Photo: Dreamstime
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May 26, 2013
Summer’s Fresh Tastes, Health Benefits Year Round
Herbs provide some of summer’s brightest tastes—and health benefits. Rich in vitamins, minerals, and agents that reduce inflammation, herbs are also high in antioxidants that interfere with the free radical damage to cells that can lead to cancer.
To enjoy year round:
Mince fresh herbs by hand or in a food processer. Pack firmly into ice cube trays. Add enough water to cover.
After the ice cubes are thoroughly frozen, bag each type of herb separately in your freezer. Add cubes directly to heated dishes while cooking, or defrost to sprinkle on fresh salads.
© photo: dreamstime
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April 27, 2013
The Woman I Raised
Welcome to a Celebration of Women!
Today is the start of a week long celebration of women and what better way to celebrate than to host a huge giveaway! I want to share some thoughts on the Woman I Raised and after that please find the details for our giveaway!
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At age six, a full year and two months before we met, my daughter was abandoned in the Philippine jungle. She survived, a remarkable feat for any child. What makes the story miraculous is that she kept her three younger siblings alive as well.
Mothers are allowed to fall in love with their children, and my story is no exception. I first went head over heels for my daughter while seated in my office sifting through case studies of children from the developing world. It was a heart-wrenching portfolio of sibling groups waiting for a forever home. I stopped dead at a photo of four malnourished children.
The oldest child looked angry and proud as her younger sisters and brother leaned against her legs. And I wondered: how could any child survive abuse and neglect, yet come out of it with a heart blessedly filled with fire?
A novelist thrives on symbols, and it has never been lost on me that my daughter arrived in the world named Christian. She is the biological child of a woman named Mary and the adopted child of Christine. This heavy dose of Biblical symbolism was never far from mind as I steered my daughter through what was left of her childhood and into womanhood. We laughed, cried and fought. We engaged in all the classic mother-daughter rituals but with a powerful twist: I was raising a child God had saved for reasons as mysterious as the female heart.
A few facts about Christian: she weighed 42 pounds upon arrival in the U.S. One month later, she entered 
first grade—and excelled—even though she didn’t yet speak English. Most days, she lorded over her younger siblings then would find a quiet corner where she’d stroke her first pair of shoes like cherished pets. She wept when she couldn’t color inside the lines with her brand new Crayolas. She adored stories of princesses, her Brownie troop, penguins and peanut butter. She hid food inside her pillowcase in case the good times ended. At Christmas, she worried that Santa Claus wasn’t such a great guy because he didn’t bring presents to every child on earth.
Throughout those childhood years, she was a brown-skinned beauty in a lily-white Ohio town, a girl more comfortable leading others than blindly following.
My late father had a saying, a moral guidepost that still guides my days: Do you want to be a follower or a leader?
Christian’s birthday is Dad’s death date. She’s always been a leader.
Some days, I’m not sure I ever did raise Christian. Perhaps she was always the teacher and I, the student.
~ ~ ~
Share a story from your own childhood or one about raising kids. I’m giving away a Charleston goodie basket–candy, cookies and Low Country treats–for U.S. or Canada delivery. Post your comment today! Please contact me at christinenolfi@gmail.com after you’ve left your story. I’ll announce the name of the winning entrant on May 6th.
~ ~ ~
On to the Giveaway!
We are giving away 67 different prizes! An iPad Mini or one of 60 eBooks by our group of authors are just the start of the prizes. Enter the Rafflecopter below:
You aren’t finished yet!
In addition to the iPad Mini and the eBooks, all the other authors are giving away prizes today. To enter their giveaways, follow the links below to enter to win:
Steena Holmes bestselling author of Finding Emma is giving away a chocolate gift basket to someone who leaves a comment about their fairy godmother
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Rachel Thompson, bestselling author of Broken Pieces is giving away an Amazon Gift Card to a lucky commenter about “sisters”
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Patricia Sands, bestselling author of the hot new release, The Promise of Provence is giving away a beautiful book on the Most Beautiful Country Towns of Provence from Amazon to a lucky commenter about Women’s Friendships.
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Karla Darcy, bestselling author of 7 Regency Romances including The Divided Hearts is giving away an Amazon Gift Card to a lucky person
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Bette Lee Crosby, ten-time award-winning author of Spare Change is giving away an Amazon Gift Card for answering a question.
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Make sure you keep your eyes on our website, Her Best Books, and subscribe to our newsletter for more deals and giveaways coming your way this summer!
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April 21, 2013
Gifts Galore Celebration
Join the HerBooks authors April 28 – May 5 for a weeklong celebration of the women we love with heartwarming essays and giveaways including an iPad Mini, 60 eBooks from 6 bestselling authors, and special prizes listed at each author’s site.
You’ll have six times as many chances to win wonderful prizes as you visit each of our blogs to read the stories of why we think women are so very special. Just by visiting each blog, you’ll be entered into the gigantic sweepstakes to win an iPad Mini, six individual prizes or one of 60 bestsellers by these authors:
Bette Lee Crosby – Ten-time Award-winning Author of Spare Change
Christine Nolfi – Award-Winning Author of Treasure Me, a USA Today “Best Pick”
Steena Holmes – Featured Speaker at the London Book Fair & Author of Finding Emma
Rachel Thompson – Author of Broken Pieces, nominated for Women’s Studies Global e-Book Award
Patricia Sands – Bestselling Author of the Hot New Release The Promise of Provence
Karla Darcy – Bestselling Author of 7 Regency Romances including The Divided Hearts
Get going right now…visit the Her Books Facebook Page where you will find all the links you need to be part of the fun…like the page and come back often because something special is always going on!
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April 14, 2013
Share Your Dream and Win
I like parties, don’t you?
Help celebrate the May release of The Dream You Make, an uplifting story about Annie McDaniel, a woman 
determined to make her dreams come true despite every obstacle in her path. Grand prize: a $25 Amazon gift card and a Dream eBook. If you don’t win the grand prize, you’re still eligible for one of the twenty Dream eBooks I’ll award on the novel’s launch day. Simply enter the Rafflecopter.
There’s more: if you’re one of the first twenty readers to share a dream YOU made come true, you’ll immediately win an eBook of Treasure Me, Second Chance Grill or The Tree of Everlasting Knowledge (your choice). To do this:
Tell the dream you made come true in the comment field below this post. Then contact me at christinenolfi@gmail.com. In your mail please mention which novel you would like to receive.
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March 22, 2013
Coming Soon…
I’m taking a much-needed spring break with my children and putting the final touches on my April release. Happy spring, everyone!
March 20, 2013
One Shade of Red
Women want the perfect man, so they can change him. But when university student Damian Serr discovers a rich, beautiful woman who’s voracious about sex, he doesn’t try to improve on perfection. It’s all that he can do to hold on for the ride.
Damian has always followed the rules, always tried to please others. At 20, he still dates the girl next door because his parents like her parents. When Nick, his university roommate, asks Damian to take over his pool-cleaning business so he can take an internship in London, Damian can’t say no — especially to Nick’s first and only client, a rich widow.
But widow Alexis Rosse is far from helpless or lonely. This beautiful financial genius is busy turning the markets upside-down, and she revels in sex wherever, whenever and with whomever she wants.
Over the summer, Alexis gives Damian an intense education. Day after day, she pushes him to his sexual limits. The only question he has is: will she break them?
–Scott Bury is a journalist, editor and writer living in Ottawa, Canada. His articles have been published in newspapers and magazines in Canada, the US, UK and Australia. He is a recipient of Maclean Hunter’s Top 6 Award and a member of a team that won a Neal Award for business reporting.
March 13, 2013
Treasure Me on Sale this Weekend!
From Friday, March 15th through Sunday, March 17th my award-winning Treasure Me eBook is on sale at Barnes & Noble and Amazon for 99 cents. “Highly recommended” by Midwest Book Review and “One of the best of the Indies” by USA Today, the sweet and sassy blend of mystery, romance and comedy is the first book in the Liberty Series. An excerpt:
Chapter 1
“Where are you? Give me back my wallet!”
From somewhere inside Birdie Kaminsky’s apartment, the man in blue pinstripe stormed through the rooms like a long distance runner stoked on Red Bull. Flinching at the fury in his voice, she dangled from the window ledge and stared with wide-eyed fear at the pavement three stories below.
The man was seventy years old if he was a day. He probably worked out, which explained how he’d pursued her up three flights of stairs and made it into her apartment before she locked the front door.
Old men and their treadmills. It was something she should’ve considered before she’d picked his pocket on her way home from a light day of breaking and entering.
Birdie tried to ignore the sickening whoosh of fear zigzagging through her body. Her teeth were chattering, so she clamped her mouth shut. Three stories above terra firma made a straight drop a stupid idea. Like any good thief she was agile. But the last time she’d checked she hadn’t sprouted wings. If she let go of the windowsill and took the plunge, she’d break her legs.
“Where are you hiding? You aren’t taking my money, do you hear me?”
Something crashed to the floor inside her apartment, the sound too close for comfort. Had it come from the hallway that led from the closet-sized living room to the pea-sized bedroom? With any luck, Marathon Man would stop in the bathroom to check if she was hiding behind the shower curtain.
She gasped as her hold on the windowsill loosened. “Oh, shit!”
Pressing her long legs forward, she flattened against the building’s brick façade. To her left, the drainpipe snaked down to the street. Reach for it and risk falling? Today was her thirty-first birthday and therefore a lucky day. On the other hand, her landlord had threatened to evict her this morning if she didn’t make good on her rent and a demonic old geezer was pounding on the bedroom door she’d had the sense to lock before she’d stupidly made her escape.
The window on the other side of the drainpipe slid open with a bang! Fear scuttled her heart. Mr. Chen stuck his head out and relief swamped her.
“Birdie! What happened?”
“Uh . . .”
Another wave of fists pounding and Mr. Chen’s mouth formed an O. “Is it the police? Did they threaten you? You didn’t squeal on the Poker Kings, did you?”
Mr. Chen held Poker Kings, a Tuesday night game, in his apartment. He did a great job of seeding his hand with Aces and he was always worried the cops would find out. Birdie figured he should worry about the other tenants learning he was fleecing them. The overworked Lexington Police Department had bigger fish to fry.
She smiled at him gamely. “Um, Mr. Chen, could you help me out? I’m gonna fall if you don’t.”
“Oh. Right.”
To her surprise, he jimmied a brick from the wall. Then another. When he’d finished, he grabbed her left foot and steered it toward the handy inverse steps he’d created. Stretching to the drainpipe, she grabbed hold then started toward his window. For all she knew, he hid his ill-gotten poker winnings behind the bricks.
No matter—his thieving heart was her salvation. She shimmied toward him with her pulse rattling inside her skull.
When she reached his window he helped her through and into the kitchen.
The fragrant scents of ginger and garlic mingled in the air. A wok sat on the counter. Evidently Mr. Chen had been preparing an early dinner while she’d been chased upstairs by the man whose pocket she’d picked.
Ignoring the rumbling in her stomach, she darted through the apartment. In the living room she found Mrs. Chen seated in the shiny new wheelchair Birdie had snagged from an assisted living facility last month. It hadn’t seemed fair for Mrs. Chen to spend hours on the phone, arguing with bureaucrats in her broken English. All she’d needed was a new set of wheels. Birdie was familiar with the pricey new facility—she’d eaten a free lunch in the cafeteria on more than one occasion. So she’d dolled up in a tight-fitting nurse’s uniform and set out to snatch a wheelchair.
She’d marched right into the lobby, cornered a hunky security guard lounging by the front desk, and announced she needed to assist a woman who was having trouble getting out of her car. All too eager to help, the security guard was still checking out her ass when she rolled the wheelchair out to the parking lot.
Dismissing the memory, she paused before the wheelchair. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Chen.”
“Birdie, hello. You stay for dinner?”
“Naw. I have to leave the city.”
“For good?”
“My time in Lexington is up.”
“You a crazy white girl, but we miss you.” Mrs. Chen thrust out her lower lip. “Wish you stay longer, steal a car for Yihung. His Buick is a beater.”
“I’ll grab him a Mercedes the next time I’m in Kentucky.” Regret sifted through her and her fingers were stinging, too. Hell, her thumbs were bleeding—she nearly had lost her purchase on the windowsill and plummeted to the ground. “You take care of yourself, okay?”
Mrs. Chen glanced at the ceiling, where pounding footsteps sounded. “You got money?” When Birdie started rifling through the pockets of her army surplus coat, the woman reached for the purse she’d left on the couch. She handed over a wad of bills. “Not much. You take.”
“Mrs. Chen . . .”
“Take!” The woman’s dark eyes snapped. Mr. Chen came into the room and she looked up at her husband. “Make her take my dough from bingo. I only give back to St. Vincent’s Church if I keep.”
There wasn’t time to argue. Birdie took the cash. Then she sighed at the sight of the large Mason jar in Mr. Chen’s hands, the one he sat beside his chair on Tuesday nights. Quarters, nickels, dimes—his poker winnings over the last few weeks. His generosity was sweet, but she couldn’t possibly lug a gallon jar to the Amtrak Station without drawing stares.
“Mr. Chen, I can’t—” She cut off when he opened a pocket on her oversized coat and poured in coins. She found her voice as he moved to the other side, to weigh her down equally. “I won’t be able to run if I’m lugging this much cargo.”
“With legs like yours? You can run, Birdie. Now go. I’ll keep the man upstairs busy. It’ll give you time to get away.”
“You’ll do that for me?”
“Sure I will.” Mr. Chen bounced his gaze across the pockets adorning her army coat. “Have you got the story with you?”
She’d placed the newspaper clipping from the Akron Register in a Ziploc bag for safekeeping. It was stashed in a zippered pocket above her heart.
Mr. Chen was the only person she’d shown it to. She didn’t trust anyone else in the building, not with a potential windfall at stake. Every family had a legend or two, and while Birdie’s clan also possessed stories of prison breaks and deals gone sour, a yarn from the Civil War probably didn’t amount to much. It was also possible her mother, who was an expert at deceit but an amateur with the truth, had pruned important facts from the story. She wasn’t above playing Birdie like a mark if it suited her purpose. And a tale of lost treasure, hidden away by a freedwoman when Abe Lincoln was in office, seemed more like a fairy tale than anything else.
But on the chance the newspaper article led to something of real worth, Birdie kept the clipping on her at all times.
She made a tapping motion over her right breast. “I’ve got it.” When Mr. Chen nodded with satisfaction, she added, “Thanks for taking care of the guy upstairs. Oh. Give this back to him.”
She pulled the man’s wallet from her army coat and flipped it open. Jackpot—four hundred dollars was inside. It was more than enough to cover a quick grab-and-dash excursion to Ohio.
Pocketing the bills, she thrust the wallet at Mr. Chen. “Gotta go.” The ceiling above them quaked. “I’ll call sometime next week to see how you and Mrs. Chen are doing.” She gave him a quick hug, then dashed out of the apartment.
A blast of November wind nearly took her off her feet as she headed down the street. The Greyhound station was only three blocks away. It was no problem to hoof it.
Thirty minutes later, she was elbowing her way through the crowded aisle to a seat in the back of the bus. The floor was wet with a slushy snow-rain mix. Somewhere up front, a baby’s wail cracked the air. Newspapers rustled and someone popped open a can. As the bus lumbered from the station, she glanced out of the window at the buildings streaming past, a few parking lots, then they were outside of the city with the rolling Kentucky hills turning white beneath the falling snow.
She pressed her face to the window and blew out a breath. A moist haze settled over the countryside reflected through the glass. Sunlight pooled in orange puddles beneath the hills as the blue of night bled into the horizon. It would be dark soon, and her muscles were leaden with exhaustion.
Staying in any town for too long was never a good plan, but she’d really taken to the Chens. She didn’t relish the possibility of never seeing them again. Mrs. Chen had taught her how to fold dumplings so the papery skins resembled tiny kites and Mr. Chen had become an unexpected confidant. The minor criminal tendencies that lured him to the card table enabled him to accept, if not admire, her larger transgressions. Their daily conversations about Mrs. Chen’s cardiovascular health and the gossip they shared about the other tenants had provided an endearing constancy. It had been some time since she’d stayed in a city long enough to learn her way around, let alone make an acquaintance. Friendship was rare, a gem she unearthed when the Chinese immigrant lobbed questions at her every time he found her creeping down the hallway.
It might be several years before Birdie risked another friendship. By necessity, a thief avoided the gummy substance of relationships. Familiarity was dangerous leverage in an alliance if one member made her living slipping wallets from pant pockets and lifting bills from unattended purses. The threat of prison time plagued her and she’d tried to go legal.
Learning the knack was impossible.
Summoning up her mother’s lessons required less discipline. In a busy department store, she’d dart through the mysterious contents of a purse swinging from a woman’s shoulder while its nearly unconscious owner wandered through the silks and taffetas. She didn’t consider her targets ‘marks’ as her mother did. Rather she viewed the unlucky souls as members of a separate tribe. Her greatest shame came not from the money she took but from the personal mementos that found their way into the pockets of her coat: a crumpled grocery list, the cheery newsletter from an elementary school. A photograph of a family pressed close together before a mantle festooned with greenery.
Of course, she’d taken nothing from the Chens except their unprejudiced affection. For the space of nine weeks they’d been everything to her. Pulling her collar up to her ears, Birdie rocked in time with the rumbling bus. The loneliness she wore like a second skin became unbearable. She began chewing her nails.
Across the aisle, a man with a beard was devouring a cupcake with brown frosting. It dawned that her birthday was nearly over. Thirty-one years old . . . most women were settled down by now with a husband and children. Not that she understood much about family life. Her mother, the notorious Wish Kaminsky, never stayed long with any man. She’d dragged Birdie from state to state as if they could live with their roots sheared off or flourish without a sense of permanency.
The bus shook and bumped down the highway. Her mood sinking, Birdie slid low in her seat. Cupcake Man leered at her with dots of icing on his teeth. Curling her body toward the window, she drew out the Ziploc bag and unfolded the newspaper clipping with exquisite care.
Second Chance in Small-town America. A journalist named Hugh Schaffer had written the article. It was a nice feature with several photographs of the restaurant, The Second Chance Grill. The restaurant’s owner had sold off everything she owned to save a local girl with leukemia. When the story broke last summer, Birdie watched the coverage on the national news. She thought nothing of it until her mother, Wish—who’d recently landed on the Fed’s radar and was now scamming her way toward Mexico—mailed off the paper before hopping a bus in southern Ohio.
The article told of an auction at the restaurant. Once people learned the proceeds would be used to save the sick girl, every last item was returned.
Including a Civil War-era portrait in a shadowbox frame. Bringing the article close, Birdie gazed intently at the photograph.
Curiosity swirled through her. No, she wasn’t responsible for the slaves her French ancestors had owned in the dawning years of the new republic. She’d only traveled through the South a few times and had never set foot on a plantation. Houses outside suburban Charleston now sat on the thousands of acres once owned by her forebears, the illustrious Postells. It was only fitting that their mansions had burned to the ground during the Civil War. Like slavery itself, they’d gone to ash.
Still, the story of a singular love had traveled down through the generations alongside the tales of slavery. Love between a plantation owner, who was Birdie’s ancestor, and the beautiful slave who’d comforted him after his wife’s death. The slave became a freedwoman and traveled north with riches given to her by her beloved. According to legend, the treasure had been stashed away for all these years.
Was any of it true? Birdie wasn’t sure. The bits and pieces of lore gleaned from her mother never gave enough detail to tell.
In one of the Akron Register photographs, The Second Chance Grill’s buxom chef stood in the foreground. But it was the portrait, clearly visible behind her, that gripped Birdie’s attention.
Is the woman in the portrait the freedwoman Justice Postell?
She knew enough American history to realize a daguerreotype of a black woman, taken in the mid-1800s, was unusual. The dress she wore was elegant, the collar tightly ruffled with tiny beads—like pearls—scattered across the bodice. Could a freedwoman have owned a dress so luxurious? The portrait seemed to confirm the stories passed down in Birdie’s family of how the plantation owner sent the black slave, Justice, north to freedom with hidden fortune. Once free, Justice became a successful businesswoman and wealthy in her own right. After she’d escaped slavery in South Carolina, where had she gone? In what state had she lived? The answer was shrouded in history.
Still, Birdie wouldn’t have believed she was actually looking at a portrait of Justice Postell if it weren’t for Hugh Schaffer’s article. The feature seemed to unravel some of the mystery behind a scrap of parchment her mother kept in a safety deposit box in Santa Fe. Wish swore the parchment had once belonged to Justice and was a clue to the location of the treasure.
Liberty safeguards the cherished heart.
The parchment had been passed down through generations in Birdie’s family as the once-proud plantation owners bred low and became a family of con artists and thieves. The cryptic message was never decoded. During those infrequent times when Birdie and her mother landed in the same city—and if they were getting along—they’d stay up late drinking Rum and Cokes and theorize about the meaning behind the words.
Every snippet of family lore agreed on one fact: Justice never sold whatever she’d carried north to freedom. Gold bullion? Antique French jewelry worth thousands on today’s market?
Liberty safeguards . . .
So many guesses, and Birdie had never fully believed any of the stories. Until now.
The town where the portrait resided was Liberty, Ohio.
* * *
“Don’t even start with the excuses, Hugh. You’re fired.”
Trapped inside the glass-walled office, Hugh Schaeffer planted his feet before the City Editor’s desk and tried to get his bearings. Outside in the newsroom, journalists and copy editors were hard at work. He would have been too, if Bud Kresnick hadn’t confronted him the moment he stepped off the elevator and ordered him into the corner office.
It was just like Bud to incinerate a relatively happy Monday by leveling threats. ‘Relative’ being the operative word. Hugh’s latest live-in love, Melissa, had moved out of his apartment, taking his flat-screen TV with her.
Women, the thieving witches, always took something on the way out. His flat-screen TV. His microwave. Last March, Tamara Kelly made off with his entire sound system including the speakers he’d installed in every room of his condo. From the looks of the plaster, she’d used a blunt spoon to dig them out.
The weaker sex, my ass. Every last member of the pilfering sex should be banished to the seventh circle of hell.
Hugh grappled for a sense of calm. “You don’t want to fire me.” His trusty intuition warned that this time the City Editor would make good on the threat. “I’ll work late. Move up the deadlines, pile on the work—I’m your man.”
“Bullshit. You missed another deadline.”
“An oversight.”
Bud folded his hands over his expansive gut. “I went to press with a hole on page one. Know what I filled it with? Page four fluff. A ribbon cutting ceremony that’ll make me the laughingstock of every respectable paper in Ohio.”
“It won’t happen again,” Hugh said, thinking, this is the third deadline I’ve missed this month.
It wasn’t his fault. Melissa had been spilling tears across his apartment, in some sort of premenstrual funk over the sculpture she couldn’t finish. She blamed his vibes, claimed his energy was dark and repressive and his inability to commit thwarted her creative flow. He’d vacillated between consoling her and camping out in front of the tube to watch the Browns lose to the Steelers, with a six-pack at his elbow.
On the other side of the desk, Bud wasn’t buying. “You’ve got an addiction, pal. Now it’s cost you your job.”
Hugh glowered. “I’m not a heavy drinker. Not anymore.”
“I’m talking about women.”
He flinched. “Okay—you’re right. I need a twelve-step program.”
“You also need a job since you’re no longer employed by the Akron Register.” When Hugh grumbled a protest, Bud waved the words away. “Listen, I was excited when I hired you. I knew you’d been thrown off four other newspapers. I also knew you’d once been a fine investigative reporter, one of the best in the state. I even felt bad last summer when I gave you the Liberty gig. You’re a cold-hearted bastard, and writing cotton candy prose must’ve nearly killed you.”
Which was true. Writing an upbeat feature about the money raised to pay for a kid’s bone marrow transplant wasn’t exactly Hugh Schaeffer material. No one had been gunned down at close range or absconded with thousands of dollars of public money. There was no sexual impropriety in high office to report or juicy grist about a corporation dumping some toxic stew into Lake Erie.
But he’d taken the assignment without complaint because Bud wanted to punish him for missing yet another deadline. Not my fault. Hugh was between live-in lovers at the time. When he met Zoe, a vivacious personal trainer, he left the article on union corruption in limbo.
Dodging the thought, he stuffed his pride. It was time to grovel. “If you fire me, there isn’t a newspaper in Ohio that’ll put me on the payroll. Not with five strikes against me.” Nervous tension wound through his muscles—this would be the end of his career. What would he do? He’d be a failure, a has-been—he’d be pathetic. “I’ll do anything. Give me one more chance.”
At the desperation in Hugh’s voice, Bud lowered his brows. But the City Editor surprised him when his expression softened. “Maybe you should try therapy.”
“What?”
Bud slowly rubbed his chin. “Seriously, pal. Get a therapist. Talk about it.”
“Talk about . . .” A sense of foreboding crept into his blood.
The members only club of newspaper editors was so tight knit, it was nearly incestuous. Had Bud heard through the grapevine about Hugh’s involvement in the Trinity Investment scandal? Ancient history, but it was the kind of archeological dig that could bury a man for years.
Fourteen years had passed since he’d written the article that derailed his life. Had Bud learned the sordid details from a colleague? The article, written when Hugh was a rookie, brought him perilously close to his subject. Naïve and eager, he plunged into the murky world of celebrity when he was too young to comprehend the danger. Had he loved the celebrated philanthropist, Cat Seavers? Impossible to recall—the intervening years had washed away the particulars of his emotional state even if they hadn’t absolved him of his sickly remorse. Her death and the subsequent uproar nearly destroyed him. He sought absolution in drink and women. He survived, barely, and his journalistic style became edgier, more in-your-face.
When he couldn’t find his voice, Bud said, “What are you, two years away from forty? All you do is chase tail, which has me thinking you aren’t chasing so much as running.”
“I’m not running from anything,” Hugh replied with enough heat to nearly convince himself. But if the City Editor had been a goddamn mystic he couldn’t have been more accurate.
“Tell you what.” Bud turned toward his computer and navigated through the Internet. “Remember those websites for the Perini girl? The ones where people donated cash for her bone marrow transplant?”
“Of course.”
“They’re still up, bringing in money.”
“She had the operation months ago.” Hugh’s inner antenna went on alert. Why were people across the country still making donations? Blossom Perini was on the mend. “What’s her father doing with all the cash?”
“Gee, Hugh, I don’t know. Think he’s funneling greenbacks into a vacation condo?”
“Could be.”
“Lots of good people donated money for the girl’s medical expenses. A real shame if Anthony Perini misappropriated the funds.”
Hugh’s brain whirled. “He could be doing anything—investing, buying cars—I’ll bet he’s already put thousands in his 401k, the bastard.”
“You tell me.”
“Okay, I will.” It might take a few weeks to uncover the scam, but if it put him back in Bud’s good graces, what the hell.
“But don’t tell me on my dime because you’re fired. You want to do some digging? Do it without an expense account from the Akron Register.”
Stunned, he let out a gargled laugh. “You’re telling me to spend a few weeks in Liberty without a paycheck or an expense account? Are you shitting me?” How much did he have in his checking account—a thousand dollars? Saving for a rainy day had never been his style. “If you want me to jump through hoops, I will. But not without greenbacks to make the gymnastics palatable.”
“Then forget it. I’m cutting you loose.”
The irritation churning Hugh’s gut mixed with fury. “That’s it? I’m fired unless I dig up dirt without pay?” Which wasn’t the worst of it. Liberty was a time warp from the 1950s. They rolled up the sidewalks and turned out the lights at 9:00 P.M. No nightlife, nothing. “You think I’m so desperate I’d consider it?”
Bud picked up a pen and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger with galling disinterest. “I have work to do.” He turned back to his computer. “And stay away from women while you’re in Liberty. Who knows? You might produce decent copy if you give your gonads a rest.”
“What sort of asshole demands work without pay?”
“Watch it—”
Hugh placed his palms on the desk. “I won’t do it.” Scowling, he leaned close. “You got it, Bud? The answer is no.”
March 5, 2013
Interview with Uvi Poznansky
Last year you published three books, in a variety of genres. Tell us about them.
Yes, last year was a special year for me, and a prolific one too: first came my novel, Apart From Love, which is a mixed genre: Romantic Suspense and Family Saga. It earned 45 rave reviews from readers on Amazon. Then came my poetry book, Home, which is in tribute to my father. It has 10 rave reviews. And in the last days of 2012 I published my Biblical Fiction book, which already has 11 rave reviews. It is a new-age twist on an old, biblical yarn: A Favorite Son.
Why are you moving from one literary genre to another?
This is a question I often ask myself. My books cannot easily be classified in the narrow confines of a particular genre, because life as we know it–and my art, which mirrors it– constantly change from one genre to the next. One moment is is humorous; the next, it is erotic; then, it might be a tragedy.
I thrive on writing both poetry and prose. They look different on the page: the white space surrounding the letters, in my mind, is like the surface of an ocean. In poetry, it covers nearly all the page, allowing only the words of the poem to erupt over the surface, because a poem in essence is a burst of emotion. But reading a poem, you cannot see under the white surface–there is so much hidden underneath! In prose, on the other hand, the writer ‘mines’ through all these undercurrents and the landscape sunk beneath the surface, so there are many connections being created and being understood by the reader.
My writing has often been called ‘lyrical’ by many of my reviewers on Goodreads and Amazon, perhaps because I treat each word with great care, and give thought to every sentence, every phrase, every comma. Similar to the rhythm and rhymes in poetry, I listen to the rhythms of our speech, so the characters in my prose will talk in the flow that reflects their feelings. So all in all, I think I use parallel techniques for both my poetry and prose.
I bring everything I have experienced, everything I have learned into my work. Also, my art and my writing are two sides of the same coin, which you can easily realize when you see the cover images of my books, and read them.
What is in the works for you this year?
In addition to writing my next novel? I am so excited to tell you: In response to popular demand, my novel, Apart From Love, is now in production–soon to become an audiobook! It will be told in two voices, Ben’s and Anita’s, as the interplay between the two of them is the essence of the story. Having listened to many auditions for the roles, I have chosen two amazing narrators!
This, to me, is the amazing this: my characters have been talking in my head for an entire year. Then they came to life in the minds of thousands of readers. And now, they will have an actual voice! This is a bit similar to being pregnant, imagining your baby, and then being surprised at the sound of his first cry!
And the other great news: A Favorite Son is also in production, and it will come out even sooner. My narrator for Jacob’s role has a warm, versatile voice: in reading this book, he will start out as an old man, tortured by his memories of a crime he committed; then, as he delves into the past, his voice will become young and vibrant. I can’t wait to hear the story in full!
Do you think the market for audiobook editions is different than the market for print editions or ebook editions?
Listening to a story predates reading: people would sit around the fire and listen to the bard’s telling a story, before they learned to read. I believe that the various editions of my work will end up complementing each other. We live in a fast-pace world, and listening to my story during a long commute would make the time fly by quickly. Then, when you come home, you may open the ebook, which–through whispersync technology–will open on the same page, and curl in bed with it.
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