Greg Seeley's Blog
April 8, 2021
Agents
Does anyone out there have suggestions for good and REPUTABLE literary agents?
June 8, 2020
Light Mystery - DON'T MISS
In Ashes to Ashes: Diamonds to Dust, Pamela Allegretto-Franz presents us an entertaining departure from her, equally well-done but more serious work, Bridge of Sighs and Dreams.
Ashes to Ashes: Diamonds to Dust is a wonderful romp through modern-day Venice. The story is filled with intrigue, masquerading characters, and constant twists that keep the reader constantly wondering who are the good guys and who are the villains.
Carla Romano wants only to go to annual art exhibition and auction where she can display and sell some of her own art as well as some by her lately deceased friend and fellow artist. By the way, she also wants to dump her best friend’s ashes from a rose-colored decanter into the Grand Canal. All simple enough, right? Wrong!
Everything that can conceivably go wrong for Carla, does. That’s all I am willing to reveal. Read it for yourself and laugh and be entertained like I was. I guarantee you’ll love the trip. As I told the author, I could see a whole series of Carla Romano mysteries. But, of course, that’s up to her. In the meantime, just sit back, read, and enjoy the ride.
I rate this book a solid five stars and recommend it to any fan of light-hearted mysteries. My only regret is that I had many interruptions that kept me from reading the whole novel in a couple of sittings. I intend to remedy that at the first opportunity. Don’t miss it!
Greg Seeley – author, Henry’s Pride and Henry’s Land: A Broken Peace
Ashes to Ashes: Diamonds to Dust is a wonderful romp through modern-day Venice. The story is filled with intrigue, masquerading characters, and constant twists that keep the reader constantly wondering who are the good guys and who are the villains.
Carla Romano wants only to go to annual art exhibition and auction where she can display and sell some of her own art as well as some by her lately deceased friend and fellow artist. By the way, she also wants to dump her best friend’s ashes from a rose-colored decanter into the Grand Canal. All simple enough, right? Wrong!
Everything that can conceivably go wrong for Carla, does. That’s all I am willing to reveal. Read it for yourself and laugh and be entertained like I was. I guarantee you’ll love the trip. As I told the author, I could see a whole series of Carla Romano mysteries. But, of course, that’s up to her. In the meantime, just sit back, read, and enjoy the ride.
I rate this book a solid five stars and recommend it to any fan of light-hearted mysteries. My only regret is that I had many interruptions that kept me from reading the whole novel in a couple of sittings. I intend to remedy that at the first opportunity. Don’t miss it!
Greg Seeley – author, Henry’s Pride and Henry’s Land: A Broken Peace
November 15, 2019
Chriistmas at he Heath Farm now available
My new novella, "Christmas at the Heath Farm" is now available for both your own reading enjoyment and for giving to friends and family. The paperback edition is currently available to purchase and the ebook very soon.
Reasonably priced entertainment. The paperback at $6 is about what you'd pay for the coffee you drink while reading it and the ebook will be $3.
See my previous post for a synopsis and more about the story. Hope you'll enjoy it!
Reasonably priced entertainment. The paperback at $6 is about what you'd pay for the coffee you drink while reading it and the ebook will be $3.
See my previous post for a synopsis and more about the story. Hope you'll enjoy it!
October 15, 2019
Now available - "Christmas at the Heath Farm"
Katherine Howell is a retired and recently widowed physician living in a Chicago high-rise. Just weeks before Christmas, she receives a disturbing e-mail. Her cousin who owns the family farm back in Iowa is planning to tear down the old homestead to make more crop space. What happens next, you won't believe. I promise "Christmas at the Heath Farm" will both warm your heart and bring a tear to your eye. It did to mine when I was writing it.
Available now at Amazon.com
Available now at Amazon.com
July 7, 2019
Wyne Turmel's Medieval Thriller
The Middle Ages are not my historical period of study. That said, Wayne Turmel’s second novel of the period, Acre’s Orphans totally grabbed and held my attention. This work is a worthy sequel to Acre’s Bastard and continues that story in a thoroughly entertaining way.
The story begins where Acre’s Orphan’s leaves off when the title character Lucca Le Pou has returned to his hometown. Saladin’s forces soon arrive to take over the city. At the tender age of eleven, Lucca should still be a boy but has long-since been stripped of his childhood by the reality of a medieval world fraught with strife between Christians and Muslims and filled with sinister and unsavory characters. After being sexually abused by a rogue friar, taught to fight grown men, spying on suspicious actors, committing his first killing, and witnessing the disastrous Battle of Hattin, he now must face the most hazardous task of his young life.
Christian leader, Count Raymond, whom many in Acre consider a traitor, is holed up in the city of Tyre attempting to regroup his forces and somehow prevent the fall of Jerusalem to the Saracens. Lucca must somehow get an urgent message to him. Leading a ragtag group including an aging knight, a young but horse-wise Druze girl (a religious sect despised equally by Muslims and Christians) and a leper nun, he sets out on a perilous journey. Along the way, they encounter bandits, wild beasts, Saracen partisans, steep winding roads, and an unwelcoming city population.
Turmel’s engaging tale could as easily be a modern-day thriller featuring a resourceful, pre-teen James Bond or Indiana Jones but the setting and time frame provide an original twist. The action is non-stop and page-turning. I recommend Turmel’s work for anyone interested in history combined with and exciting and interesting story-line. As with Acre’s Bastard and his previous work The Count of the Sahara, I give this piece a solid five stars.
Greg Seeley – author of Henry’s Pride and Henry’s Land: A Broken Peace
The story begins where Acre’s Orphan’s leaves off when the title character Lucca Le Pou has returned to his hometown. Saladin’s forces soon arrive to take over the city. At the tender age of eleven, Lucca should still be a boy but has long-since been stripped of his childhood by the reality of a medieval world fraught with strife between Christians and Muslims and filled with sinister and unsavory characters. After being sexually abused by a rogue friar, taught to fight grown men, spying on suspicious actors, committing his first killing, and witnessing the disastrous Battle of Hattin, he now must face the most hazardous task of his young life.
Christian leader, Count Raymond, whom many in Acre consider a traitor, is holed up in the city of Tyre attempting to regroup his forces and somehow prevent the fall of Jerusalem to the Saracens. Lucca must somehow get an urgent message to him. Leading a ragtag group including an aging knight, a young but horse-wise Druze girl (a religious sect despised equally by Muslims and Christians) and a leper nun, he sets out on a perilous journey. Along the way, they encounter bandits, wild beasts, Saracen partisans, steep winding roads, and an unwelcoming city population.
Turmel’s engaging tale could as easily be a modern-day thriller featuring a resourceful, pre-teen James Bond or Indiana Jones but the setting and time frame provide an original twist. The action is non-stop and page-turning. I recommend Turmel’s work for anyone interested in history combined with and exciting and interesting story-line. As with Acre’s Bastard and his previous work The Count of the Sahara, I give this piece a solid five stars.
Greg Seeley – author of Henry’s Pride and Henry’s Land: A Broken Peace
December 30, 2018
Henry's Land now available
My newest novel, "Henry's Land: A Broken Peace" is now available on Amazon.com in both e-book and paperback editions." Henry's Land", which begins a week after "Henry's Pride" ends, follows the same characters as they adjust to the aftermath of the Civil War or what title character Henry Hancock called "the nation's nasty business". In Minnesota, the Hancock family faces a harsh climate, an old friend now a new enemy, and continued mental trauma carried over from the war. In the defeated south, characters face a devastated land, newly-found poverty, and a desire for vengeance. In the midst of it all, on both sides, there comes strength and resilience found through faith, family, friendship, and new and unexpected loyalty.
"Henry's Land: A Broken Peace" can be read and understood as a stand-alone story but is easier to follow as the sequel to "Henry's Pride."
"Henry's Land: A Broken Peace" can be read and understood as a stand-alone story but is easier to follow as the sequel to "Henry's Pride."
October 22, 2018
A Great Beta Review - Henry's Land
Thank you to Goodreads author, J.D.R. Hawkins (A Beautiful Glittering Lie, A Beckoning Hellfire, A Rebel Among Us) for your great beta review of my newest novel that will be coming out soon.
Henry’s Land: A Broken Peace begins where author Greg Seeley’s debut novel, Henry’s Pride, leaves off. The Civil War has come to an end and the characters are left in various predicaments. Most of the Federal soldiers have returned home – many bearing the physical scars of war, others with wounds less obvious but equally traumatic. Life, for the most part has returned to normal as it was prior to the war. The Northern economy has prospered. Henry Hancock and his family and friends, although faced with a severe drought, are essentially comfortable and well off in Minnesota.
In the defeated South, some of Seeley’s characters, including a former slave and his one-time overseer are drawn together in an unexpected bond brought on by a common hardship. Meanwhile, ex-Confederate soldier, Darius Morgan, still languishes in a Northern prison awaiting his parole. Southerners struggle with their new-found poverty and with navigating a barren Georgia landscape left in the wake of General William T. Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea.
I thoroughly recommend this book to any Civil War enthusiast and can’t wait to see how the characters’ paths cross in Greg Seeley’s next novel.
Henry’s Land: A Broken Peace begins where author Greg Seeley’s debut novel, Henry’s Pride, leaves off. The Civil War has come to an end and the characters are left in various predicaments. Most of the Federal soldiers have returned home – many bearing the physical scars of war, others with wounds less obvious but equally traumatic. Life, for the most part has returned to normal as it was prior to the war. The Northern economy has prospered. Henry Hancock and his family and friends, although faced with a severe drought, are essentially comfortable and well off in Minnesota.
In the defeated South, some of Seeley’s characters, including a former slave and his one-time overseer are drawn together in an unexpected bond brought on by a common hardship. Meanwhile, ex-Confederate soldier, Darius Morgan, still languishes in a Northern prison awaiting his parole. Southerners struggle with their new-found poverty and with navigating a barren Georgia landscape left in the wake of General William T. Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea.
I thoroughly recommend this book to any Civil War enthusiast and can’t wait to see how the characters’ paths cross in Greg Seeley’s next novel.
July 10, 2018
Tractor Bones - now Available
After nearly three years in development, "Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks: Tales and Recollections of a Heartland Baby Boomer" is now available in paperback and shortly as an ebook.
If you grew up in a Midwestern small town or on a farm in the 1950's and 1960's, here is memory collection. If you didn't, here is a nostalgic view into the growing up years of those of us who did.
Either way, I hope you find it an educational and entertaining peak into the tolerance and innocence that existed in most small rural communities of the time.
If you grew up in a Midwestern small town or on a farm in the 1950's and 1960's, here is memory collection. If you didn't, here is a nostalgic view into the growing up years of those of us who did.
Either way, I hope you find it an educational and entertaining peak into the tolerance and innocence that existed in most small rural communities of the time.
June 18, 2018
Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks - available soon
After two years of writing and editing, "Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks: Tales and Recollections of a Heartland Baby Boomer" is almost here. It will be available soon in both paperback and e-book editions from Amazon.com. The interior file has been approved by Creatspace and all that remains is a minor tweak of the cover. I am really looking forward to sharing this with all of my Goodreads followers and their own followers. If you like it, please pass the word on. Below is a brief description.
"Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks: Tales and Recollections of a Heartland Baby Boomer" is a nostalgic look at life in rural and small-town middle America in the twenty or so years following the end of the Second World War. This collection of poems and essays tells the story of these years through the eyes of a child growing up at the time and those of an adult looking back after years of reflection.
This was a world where the tractors, pickup trucks, and combines that had replaced the draft horses, wooden wagons, and threshing machines were themselves beginning to give out – repaired as far as possible during the war and now reaching their end. Worn out and of little trade-in value, many were towed to the corners of pastures and left to rust away and be overgrown with weeds, wild flowers and saplings.
The poems largely reflect the author’s own childhood experiences growing up on an Iowa family farm. The people and events depicted in the portion, "Stories from Minley", are a mix of truth and products of the author’s imagination. In those instances based on real people, one character and his/her story may represent a blend of several people whom the author remembers while growing up. No names of actual persons are used.
"The town of Minley, Iowa doesn’t exist. It never has, really. I made it up. But in a sense, it is and was real. It is any of hundreds of thriving small communities spread across the heartland between the end of WWII and the time when interstate highways, superstores, and school district consolidations consigned them to history."
It is the author’s hope that fellow heartland baby boomers will find the book a welcome reminder of their growing-up years and perhaps bring back forgotten memories of a simpler and more innocent time in their lives. For those who never experienced farm or small-town life in those years, the book will hopefully provide an educational and entertaining “narration” of what that life was like for those of us who lived it.
"Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks: Tales and Recollections of a Heartland Baby Boomer" is a nostalgic look at life in rural and small-town middle America in the twenty or so years following the end of the Second World War. This collection of poems and essays tells the story of these years through the eyes of a child growing up at the time and those of an adult looking back after years of reflection.
This was a world where the tractors, pickup trucks, and combines that had replaced the draft horses, wooden wagons, and threshing machines were themselves beginning to give out – repaired as far as possible during the war and now reaching their end. Worn out and of little trade-in value, many were towed to the corners of pastures and left to rust away and be overgrown with weeds, wild flowers and saplings.
The poems largely reflect the author’s own childhood experiences growing up on an Iowa family farm. The people and events depicted in the portion, "Stories from Minley", are a mix of truth and products of the author’s imagination. In those instances based on real people, one character and his/her story may represent a blend of several people whom the author remembers while growing up. No names of actual persons are used.
"The town of Minley, Iowa doesn’t exist. It never has, really. I made it up. But in a sense, it is and was real. It is any of hundreds of thriving small communities spread across the heartland between the end of WWII and the time when interstate highways, superstores, and school district consolidations consigned them to history."
It is the author’s hope that fellow heartland baby boomers will find the book a welcome reminder of their growing-up years and perhaps bring back forgotten memories of a simpler and more innocent time in their lives. For those who never experienced farm or small-town life in those years, the book will hopefully provide an educational and entertaining “narration” of what that life was like for those of us who lived it.
May 14, 2018
Great Beta Review
Thank you, Pamela Allegretto for your praise of my upcoming book of poems and essays "Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks: Tales and Recollections of a Heartland Baby Boomer".
“Greg Seeley writes not merely with keen sensitivity, but also with an artist’s eye. His words are like delicate brushstrokes that paint rich, mental images, and his vivid, nostalgicl vocabulary often brings a smile and sometimes a tear. His rare talent for spinning a memorable yarn leaves the reader clamoring for more.” - Pamela Allegretto, author, Bridge of Sighs and Dreams
Once, the heartland was dotted with small farms, small towns, small schools, and small kids. It was the post-war age when new tractors plowed the fields and worn-out ones rusted away in the ditches and fence-rows. To those who never experienced it, here is your chance. For those who lived it as I did, the poems and essays in Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks are your ticket home. Enjoy the journey!
-Greg Seeley
“Greg Seeley writes not merely with keen sensitivity, but also with an artist’s eye. His words are like delicate brushstrokes that paint rich, mental images, and his vivid, nostalgicl vocabulary often brings a smile and sometimes a tear. His rare talent for spinning a memorable yarn leaves the reader clamoring for more.” - Pamela Allegretto, author, Bridge of Sighs and Dreams
Once, the heartland was dotted with small farms, small towns, small schools, and small kids. It was the post-war age when new tractors plowed the fields and worn-out ones rusted away in the ditches and fence-rows. To those who never experienced it, here is your chance. For those who lived it as I did, the poems and essays in Tractor Bones and Rusted Trucks are your ticket home. Enjoy the journey!
-Greg Seeley
