Introducing our #newrelease : #Memior BORN TO FLY by #pilot Paul Misencik

Available here!

Paul R. Misencik was born to fly. 
Since he was four and tagging along with his father to air shows in rural Ohio, through his career as an airline captain with American, Middle Eastern and African airlines, Misencik spent his life doing what he loved: flying airplanes. BORN TO FLY chronicles both the inside scoop on a pilot's career as well as the exotic locations his airplanes took him, sometimes being joined by the love of his life, Sally. Highly entertaining and enormously informative. Now available in paperback right here.

Paul Misencik, native of Northern Ohio. 
Graduate University of Akron, 1963, M.A. American History specializing in Native American Culture and Colonial American History. While in high school, he was regular on Saturday afternoon TV show hosted by Jim Breslin, where Paul discussed Ohio Native-American culture and society. After college, Paul taught school and coached high school football in Akron Ohio. On weekends and during the summer he worked as a flight instructor, stunt pilot, and aerobatic instructor. He fondly recalls flying with Richard Bach the author of Jonathon Livingston Seagull, and he provided aerobatic instruction to George Peppard, the star of the WWI flying movie, The Blue Max. In 1967, Paul was hired as a pilot with Eastern Airlines and flew as a captain, flight instructor, and check-airman until they ceased operations in 1991. While at Eastern, h was artist and cartoonist for the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) Airline Pilot Magazine. After Eastern Airlines, he flew as an international airline captain with four other airlines including USAfrica Airways which was headquartered in Reston Virginia. As a captain with non-scheduled Airlines, Paul has had some of his most memorable aviation adventures. In 1996 Paul was hired as a major air carrier investigator with the national transportation safety Board and in 1998 he was promoted to his present position as the chief of the operational factors division at the NTSB. 

#NewRelease Blue Heron Book Works presents A LIFE IN #TUSCANY #cooking

Discover this hot #1 New Release by Alessandra Benvenuti!

Allesandra Benvenuti shares the joy of her inheritance of sun and cooking and family in this charming book about growing up Tuscan. Contains authentic Tuscan family and regional recipes. She was born in 1969 in Arezzo -Tuscany. In spring 2001 she started her own business, the best in the world: she rents her family villa in the Tuscan countryside where she hosts guests from all around the world! She has a degree in political science and studied racial discrimination in the USA, particularly Supreme Court's decisions. She is married to Massimo Boncompagni and they have 2 children: Federico 12 years old, and Elena 8 years old. Visit La Maestà at http://www.lamaestatoscana.com.

Read an excerpt here: A Life In Tuscany 

Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com 

 

#BHBW author Jim McGarrah @jmcgarra anounces new #poetry collection

Jim McGarrah, author of OFF TRACK and MISDEMEANOR OUTLAW is very pleased to announce that Lamar University Press will be doing a 20-year retrospective of his work this summer entitled "A Balancing Act, Selected and New Poems 1998-2018." There's a wide spectrum of subject matter and styles to make even the most critical of you happy. Here's a sample.

National Anthem

David writes the President once a month
ever since he walked, stoned outta his gourd, off Khe Sahn.
Swear-to-God, once every month, no matter who’s President.

He hopes someone in the White House might remember
what could have been had we not stumbled on our own clichés,

trading handmade tie-dyes for MTV stock, swapping
vinyl records & beer bottles that pry open, for IPods, Blue Rays,
anthrax in the mail & malt beverages flavored with exotic fruits.

He chooses to ignore why we deal conscience,
like scrap metal, for corporate logos and Kalashnikov’s.

Instead, David asks the President to replace
our Star-Spangled Banner with “Sugar Magnolia” and have
a marble statue of Jerry Garcia sculpted for the Rose Garden,

painted black and back-lit with a neon bulb flashing
—Gratefully Dead—twenty-four hours a day.

Celebrate #womenshistorymonth2018 : Read about living legend @LynnieGodfrey

Lynnie Godfrey: Sharing Lessons Learned While Seeking the Spotlight

"Lynnie writes with such a warm narrative style, you can just envision yourself sitting down on a porch with her and drinking a glass of home-style lemonade.
You feel her passion for the creative arts as she takes you on her personal journey in show business.

"Lynnie's drive and discipline for her art and humanity weaves a thread through all the chapters. Her love for her parents and her heartbreak in missing them, and other members of her family is truly evident. The morals, values, and strong Christian faith Lynnie learned from her mom and dad, is a part of her DNA; which she so eloquently expresses in her book.

"Lynnie's guide to working toward your passion and keeping it authentic, resonates with the reader throughout this book. I am forever moved and inspired by Lynnie's book."

-Deborah Fudge - Rhem
College Instructor of Communications

Connect with Lynnie online: http://www.lynniegodfrey.com

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Here's a little present for you, friends! Our newest book preview #tuscany #reading #cooking

Here's a snippet from an upcoming book by Alessandra Benvenuti who combines life with cooking in a totally original way!

"Even those beloved people who have passed away are kept alive by a memory of a particular food, the way it was cooked in the past and how it’s done now. It’s not just about some ingredients mixed in a rational way following a process, it’s an alchemy of love that memory keeps alive with smells and tastes we are able to recreate every time.

"I’ve carefully and jealousy kept gorgeous sets of dishes, silverware, cutlery, crystal glasses from the ‘20s that belonged to my Grandma Lelli and to Aunt Lina that I still use on special occasions with family, friends and my guests at La Maestà. But I’ve also kept simple dishes, wooden or marble rolling pins, tools, pots, lids, some of them fixed by my Grandpa Giorgio, that I still use every day … and every day and every time they bring me back to people I loved.

"Still cooking recipes that my family have always cooked before, it’s like having them beside me, continuing together the long journey of life."

Discover Alessandra Benvenuti here at LA MAESTÀ TOSCANA, located in the central part of Tuscany. 

Spotlight on #author Nicholas DiGiovani @nidigiovanni @VCCA

Today's Friday Fellow is Nicholas DiGiovanni, a fiction writer, essayist and award-winning journalist from New Jersey. Nick is currently completing his fifth residency at VCCA (Virginia Center for the Creative Arts) and reports that he has written over 10,000 words during his stay!  

His essay collection, 'Man Has Premonition of Own Death,' was inspired by his strange tale of his great-uncle, a 23-year-old carpet-mill worker, in the 1920s -- and by the author's own sudden encounter with serious illness. Below is a sample. The complete work is available on Amazon. http://amzn.to/2BIWO6w

The old radio star Edgar Bergen had a ventriloquist dummy named Mortimer Snerd who had a well-known catchphrase: “Who woulda thunk it?” 

I’m here to say “Who woulda thunk it?” And I’m here to talk about death, mortality and a young man named Thomas Crooks.

Years ago, I stumbled upon, in an old Bible, a yellowed newspaper clipping from a now-defunct daily newspaper in my old hometown, The Yonkers (N.Y.) Herald Statesman. The headline read: MAN HAS PREMONITION OF OWN DEATH. The article, from 1923, was about the death of a 25-year-old worker at the Alexander Smith carpet mill.

It reported that young Crooks had met his fiancé for lunch one afternoon at a lovely old burial ground across the street from the mill. When the whistle blew at the carpet mill, young Thomas headed back to work. That’s when, the article reports, Thomas stopped, turned around, looked back at his fiancé and declared, “I am going in. But I shall be carried out.” 

Fifteen minutes after relaying his bizarre message to his girlfriend, Thomas “fell” into a shallow vat of acid that was used in the carpet-curing process. Workers pulled him out. Others ran to fetch the lad’s mother. She rushed to the hospital, got there while Thomas was still alive but mortally injured, and held her son in her arms. The last sentence of the newspaper article:: “Mrs. Crooks was burned about the face as she continually kissed her dying son.”

Mrs. Crooks was my maternal great-grandmother. Thomas was my mother’s uncle and my grandmother’s brother. I, of course, never knew him, but I have been to his grave – in the same cemetery, across from the same carpet mill.

I’d been working on this eclectic collection for a while when I had my very own Mortimer Snerd moment. One night, I went to plug my telephone charger into a wall outlet and toppled over as I lost my balance. After that, it’s all very vague. I remember a couple of young policemen, I remember being in the emergency room. I don’t remember getting there. An emergency CAT scan determined that I had a foreboding mass of some kind at the back of my head. The tumor was removed in emergency surgery – and so my own battle unexpectedly began.

Who woulda thunk it?

Read the 5* buzz for THE SOLDIER'S RETURN @historicalfiction #series from #BHBW

The Soldier's Return, the second book in our historical fiction series, just concluded a virtual book tour. We'd like to share some of the buzz with you! 

From Donna Maguire of Donna's Book Blog: "This is a great story and a really good historical fiction novel.  I love the setting and I am a fan of that period of history and crave reading anything by new authors to me.

"The plot in the book was well researched and it was historically accurate for the period.  The writing style and pace is spot on for the book and I loved the characters and their interaction.  They work so well together to give an excellent book all round.

"The Soldier’s Return is the second book in the Heaven’s Pond Trilogy, I am yet to read the first book and did not feel at any detriment from this so I would say that the book is fine to read as a stand alone.

"Five stars from me for this one – a really enjoyable read!"

THE SOLDIER'S RETURN is available here:    Kindle Edition     Paperback Edition

The year is 1626. A senseless war rips through parts of Germany. Ongoing animosity between the Catholics and the Protestants has turned into an excuse to destroy much of the landscape situated between France, Italy and Denmark. But religion only plays a minor role in this lucrative business of war.

The young dutchman, Pieter van Diemen, returns to Amsterdam in chains after a period of imprisonment in the Spice Islands. He manages to escape but must leave Amsterdam in a hurry. Soldiers are in demand in Germany and he decides to travel with a regiment until he can desert.

His hope of survival is to reach Sichardtshof, the farm in Franconia, Germany; the farm he left ten years ago. His desire to seek refuge with them lies in his fond memories of the maid Katarina and her master, the humanist patrician Herr Tucher.

But ten years is a long time and the farm has changed. Franconia is not only torn by war but falling victim to a church-driven witch hunt. The Jesuit priest, Ralf, has his sights set on Sichardtshof as well. Ralf believes that ridding the area of evil will be his saving grace. Can Pieter, Katarina and Herr Tucher unite to fight against a senseless war out of control?

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Jim McGarrah @jmcgarra offers #Memoir Workshop at the TYCA-SE #Conference Feb 22

February 22, 2018: Blue Heron Book Works author Jim McGarrah will offer a memoir workshop at the TYCA-SE (Two-Year College Association) 

Marine, social worker, carpet layer, janitor, bartender, race horse trainer, and college professor, Jim McGarrah lives in Louisville, Kentucky, close enough to Churchill Downs to hear the crowd roar each year at the Kentucky Derby.  His memoir of war, A Temporary Sort of Peace (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2007) won the national Eric Hoffer Legacy Non-Fiction Award, and the sequel, The End of an Era, was published in 2011.  He is editor, along with Tom Watson, of the anthology Home Again: Essays and Memoirs from Indiana and the former managing editor of Southern Indiana Review.  His most recent memoir, Misdemeanor Outlaw: A Confession of Life, was published in June 2017.

Jim is also a poet and author of three award-winning books of poetry: Running the Voodoo Down (Elixir Press, 2003); When the Stars Go Dark(Main Street Rag, 2009); and Breakfast at Denny's (Ink Brush Press, 2013).   His poems, essays, and stories appear frequently in literary journals such as Bayou Magazine, Breakwater, Cincinnati Review, Chamber Four, Connecticut Review, and North American Review.

For more information, please visit the conference website: http://www.tycase.org/2018-conference-info

Or visit the event's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/514318808952575/

Available here!

Nothing cozy about this #cozymystery by #BHBW author @BathshebaMonk

 

 

 

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

 

I don't like cozy mysteries and I don't like amateur detectives, which is why I did like Bathsheba Monk's DEAD WRONG, her first Swanson Herbinko crime novel. The Swedish and the French, with their absolutely gruesome fictional mysteries, have shown us, once and for all, that murders never are cozy, and only the British still believe that gentlemen (or gentlewomen) operatives can ever get anything done, which may explain why they lost their empire to the Cambridge Spies. Ms. Monk's surprisingly good-natured (and funny) book has crimes gruesome enough to be Scandinavian, but her investigator, a neophyte divorce lawyer who doesn't see herself as a detective, wisely employs a proper ex-cop (the multi-purpose Dick) to do her sleuthing. Which is a good thing because the book's central skullduggery is slowly revealed as a complicated tangle, and so the breathless reader is genuinely grateful to have Ms. Herbinko along as a tour guide for the bumpy, surprising ride. Swanson's job is to share the reader's dumbfounded reaction to the book's felonious gumbo even as her smart mouth and wicked sense of humor function to take the edge off a series of bloody murders committed by a set of comic opera villains. The intestinal respite this amusing-yet-frightened voice provides from the drippy mayhem is a service to the reader that Henning Mankell might consider adopting as he moves forward.

As I read DEAD WRONG, I thought of Janet Evanovich and Jennifer Weiner and their sassy female PIs, but now, with the mayhem and revelations over, I think of the book as the print incarnation of Gosford Park, the wonderful country house murder film by Robert Altman and Julian Fellowes. Both pretend to be murder-filled cozies. Both have intriguingly messy plots with dozens of quirky characters. And both of them are stage-managed by an inept police officer who simply joins the agog reader for the ride through the thicket of man's inhumanity to man. The cop in Gosford Park is a bumbling Lestrade-like detective played marvelously by Stephen Fry, while the often clueless mistress of ceremonies in Ms. Monk's book is her heroine, Swanson Herbinko, who claims she got her name from a TV dinner and who sometimes seems more worried about her expansive waistline and her nicotine habit than she is about the bodies dropping around her. I enjoyed Fry's performance in the Altman movie immensely, and I was just as pleased with Ms. Monk's use of Swanson as an everywoman, who should be told--by the way--that a size i2 is undoubtedly smaller than the dresses worn by most American women. Give yourself a break, Swanson.

Bathsheba Monk is the author of 7 novels, three plays, editor at Blue Heron Book Works and the creator of the popular Swanson Herbinko Mystery series which is being written by Andrew Sloan, Joe Taleroski, and Paul Heller. She writes young adult novels under the pen name, Maddy Wells.

#BHBW author Nicholas Digiovani is awarded @VCCA fellowship @nidigiovanni

https://nicholasdigiovanni.com/

Nicholas DiGiovanni, author of the essay collection “Man Has Premonition of Own Death,” published in June by Blue Heron Book Works, has been awarded a month-long fellowship and writing residency at the prestigious Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

VCCA fellowships aim to intensify creativity by freeing more than 350 artists a year, up to 25 at a time, from the disruptions of everyday life. Fellows have a private room and studio, with three meals a day.

Fellowships have been awarded to more than 4,000 writers, composers and visual artists nationwide and from 63 different countries since 1971. Honors accorded VCCA Fellows have included MacArthur genius grants, National Book Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy in Rome, and the Guggenheim and Pollock-Krasner Foundations.

Admission to VCCA is highly selective, based on a review of applications by panels of professional artists. There are separate panels for each category (poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, playwrights, performance, film and video artists, painters, sculptors, photographers, installation artists, composers and cross-disciplinary artists) with over 50 panelists serving at any one time.

DiGiovanni plans to work on a new novel while in residence at VCCA.

Available here!

"How strange that a book so unrelentingly about death should contain so much life. But that’s what we have in Man Has Premonition of Own Death, which stands athwart decay and demands to know why."