August 2014
Welcome to Issue 46 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
Hello Everyone,
First, I am pleased to announce that the tickets are now on sale for my original play Willpower about Marquette’s ossified man, Will S. Adams, who despite his illness, had an incredible creative output at the turn of the last century. The play has been receiving great publicity, including the actors portraying the characters on the historic cemetery and bus tours in Marquette this summer. And I’ve attended some of the rehearsals and can promise you it’s going to be a stellar production with an extremely talented cast. Take this opportunity to time travel back to old Marquette and hear an incredible story of overcoming adversity. Performances will be Thursday, September 18, and Friday, September 19, at Kaufman Auditorium in Marquette, MI. Tickets are available at www.nmu.edu/tickets. For more information about the play, visit my website at: http://www.marquettefiction.com/Willpower.html
There’s also still one more chance to catch me at a summer book signing to get a copy of my new book Arthur’s Legacy: The Children of Arthur, Book One, as well as my other titles. I’ll be at Art on the Lake at the Erickson Center in Curtis, MI on Saturday, August 30 from 10-5. I’ll be joined by my good friend and fellow author, Gretchen Preston, author of the Valley Cats children’s book series. Find out more about Gretchen’s books at www.PrestonHillPress.com
And don’t forget to eat some ice cream, drink some lemonade, run through a sprinkler, or spend a day at the beach reading a great book. Below are some new ones for you to choose from.
Enjoy the rest of your summer, and as always, thank you for reading the Superior Book Productions newsletter.
New Books
Winner of the 2014 Reader Views Literary Awards for Best Historical Fiction, sponsored by Tyler Tichelaar, Fall Down Seven is the moving and dynamic story of a Japanese-American family’s experiences when World War II begins.
Written from the perspective of thirteen-year-old Emiko Arrington, this young adult novel will appeal to readers of all ages because of its graceful and enlightening handling of a difficult subject about how Japanese-Americans were treated in the United States during World War II.
On December 7, 1941, Emiko and her family witness from a distance the bombing of Pearl Harbor, an event that will soon put her own family in peril. Emiko’s father is a white, American-born lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, and consequently, he is soon called to fight in the Pacific. Emiko’s mother, Arika, is a Japanese-born woman who came to the United States at the age of six with her family. While most Japanese in Hawaii were not interred in concentration camps, like the Japanese on the West Coast were, Emiko’s father feels that she, her eight-year-old brother Charles, known as “The Whizz,” and her mother would be safer going to Connecticut to live with his sister, Emiko’s Aunt Ellen.
To read more, visit Fall Down Seven.
Whether or not readers are familiar with Portch’s Spirian Saga series, if they enjoy the paranormal, myths, and magic, they will be delighted with her new stand-alone story, Aeneas.
The action begins when we are introduced to the narrator, Connor, a Spirian with a human mother, Elle, who mated with an Angel. Both Elle and the Angel had been lovers in a previous life in ancient Sparta, and Connor’s father in that lifetime left behind a magical sword named Aeneas.
Connor has never known his father, but he knows if he can obtain Aeneas, he can connect with his father again. Unfortunately, the Shadows—a group of evil Spirians—want the sword because of its magical powers. But if Aeneas falls into the wrong hands, it has the power to cause massive destruction. Can Connor acquire the sword before the Shadows?
To read more, visit Aeneas.
In Sheila Paxton’s new fable Getting Past Jaded: The healing journey of becoming open to love, the main character, Audra, has gone through several failed relationships. She’s tired of men who don’t appreciate her, tired of dating, sick of dating websites, ready to stop focusing on others, and wanting to start doing something for herself.
That something is getting a tattoo to declare her freedom and independence, but it’s a decision with surprising consequences. When Audra goes to the tattoo shop, she looks at the tattoo samples and decides to get a dragonfly tattoo. But Lily, the tattoo artist, tells Audra, “It takes a special type of person to be able to wear the dragonfly. You must have a sense of freedom and an ability to change direction quickly. You also need to understand your values and always move toward them, no matter what happens.” Audra suddenly discovers there’s a lot more involved with getting a tattoo than she first thought, but she decides to go ahead with getting the tattoo anyway, and here is where her journey takes many surprising turns, with Lily serving as her—and the reader’s—guide along the way.
To read more, visit Getting Past Jaded.
Set in the not-too-distant future, Ohio 2029 depicts an America suffering from the results of a catastrophic economic collapse that has led to the Southern Red States seizing power in the U.S. Government and setting up reform zones in the United States, largely to punish states, particularly Ohio, that have disagreed with their past policies. Now it is 2029 and the reform zones are being closed, save for the one in Cincinnati.
Spearheading control of these reform zones is U.S. Senator from Georgia, Ted Marshall. Ted is extremely bitter about the past and what led to the demise of America’s greatness. When the collapse began, Ted and his family had been friends with the Garners, their next-door liberal neighbors in Atlanta, but the friendship quickly ended, their political ideologies separating them. The Garners soon left Atlanta and ultimately ended up in Cincinnati in the reform zone. This separation hurt members of both families, but most hurt were the Marshalls’ daughter, Mary Catherine, and the Garners’ son, Maddy. Yes, Mary Catherine and Maddy are star-crossed lovers, so in love that after high school, Mary Catherine decides she will run away and go to Cincinnati to be with Maddy.
To read more, visit Ohio 2029.
Julia Estrella is a multicultural woman if there ever was one, and in Being Local in Hawai’i, she tells the fascinating story of her multicultural life and diverse experiences. Her first name was chosen for her from the Bible, but Keiko is her Japanese name. Her father was Japanese, her mother Okinawan, and her husband Filipino. She has lived in Hawai’i and California, but she has traveled around the world, including Okinawa, the Philippines, Cuba, and Kenya. Born less than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, she grew up knowing many of the Japanese in Hawai’i and California, who were sent to the U.S. concentration camps for the Japanese. She experienced institutional racism through the tracking system in Hawaiian schools, and despite it, she went on to have a successful and meaningful career, pursuing higher education, serving many organizations, and being heavily involved in various churches.
To read more, visit Being Local in Hawaii.
While I have read many books about reincarnation, very few treat multiple lives that one person has experienced. In The Pact, Barbara Sinor, however, shares many memories of past-life experiences, weaving each into a short narrative. She has lived in Atlantis, in ancient Egypt, on the seventeenth century American frontier, and in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake, and she explains what she learned in each of these lives. What results is an affirmation of life, its meaning, its many possibilities, and the immortality of the soul.
Barbara’s journey began with the death of her husband, David. Prior to his death, she had shared with him her belief in reincarnation and they made a pact—hence the book’s title—that he would try to contact her from the other side.
To read more, visit The Pact.
Sincerely, The Mentor is the story of an unnamed young woman simply referred to as “She.” The story is told by “The Mentor” whose actual name is also not given—perhaps to protect client confidentiality, but I have a feeling The Mentor is not a psychologist or professional or even a relative of She, but rather a guiding force—readers are left to figure it out for themselves, and I’m sure they will.
The book begins with the main character’s idyllic childhood. She is shown as a child playing with an older male family member, scavenging fruit trees and building sandcastles. The two have a very strong, fun, and trusting relationship...until the day he begins to abuse her sexually.
From this shattered world of innocence, the main character grows into an adult, carrying with her several issues about trust, intimacy, and sexuality, not to mention the usual confusions that people experience just trying to decide what they want to be when they grow up.
To read more, visit Sincerely, the Mentor.
