TLC Book Tour: Prism

PRISM, by Roland Allnach

Paperback: 282 pages

Publisher: All Things That Matter Press (July 3, 2014)

Prism presents the best of Roland Allnach’s newest stories together with his most acclaimed published short fiction. These selected stories fracture the reader’s perceptions among a dazzling array of genres and styles to illuminate the mysterious aspects of the human experience. Roland Allnach has been described as a ‘star on the rise’ (ForeWord Clarion), ‘a master storyteller with a powerful pen’ (Cynthia Brian, NY Times Bestselling author), with writing that is ‘smart, elegant, and addicting’ (San Francisco Review).

Prism collects seventeen stories into one volume, following a trail of diverse genres and narrative forms. From literary fiction to speculative fiction, from humor to horror, from tragedy to mythical poetry, Prism represents a wide ranging journey united by contemplations on the human condition. Including Allnach’s award winning published fiction (“Conquest’s End” and “The City of Never”), a Pushcart Prize nominated story (“Creep”), Prism also consists of the previously unpublished pieces “Titalis” (a tragedy along the lines of Shakespeare and Greek theatre), “Of Typhon and Aerina” (a tribute to epic verse), “Tumbleweed” (a humorous ditty), and “Dissociated”, a surreal short to cap off the collection.

I’ve been on a short story binge lately (Olive Kitteridge, Strange Love), so the timing was good for me to read/review this collection for TLC Book Tours.

There are seventeen stories in this volume, and they cover the gamut of genres and narrative forms. There’s everything from literary fiction, humor, horror, tragedy, mythical poetry. The author portrays human experience in every form, and his writing style is smart and sometimes edgy. And while the collection demonstrates a deep breadth of imagination and perception, I found it difficult reading in one sitting. Perhaps the fault is mine - having read several collections of linked stories, I had trouble staying focused with the kaleidoscopic nature of these varied stories and characters, who portray many of the dark sides of human nature.

I think readers who enjoy an eclectic mix of genres and are interested in the darker facets of humanity would likely find Prism a more satisfying book than I did.

About the Author:

Roland Allnach, after working twenty years on the night shift in a hospital, has witnessed life from a slightly different angle. He has been working to develop his writing career, drawing creatively from literary classics, history, and mythology. His short stories, one of which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, have appeared in many publications. His first anthology, Remnant, blending science fiction and speculative fiction, saw publication in 2010. Remnant was followed in 2012 by Oddities & Entities, a collection spanning horror, supernatural, paranormal, and speculative genres. Both books have received unanimous critical praise and have been honored with a combined total of twelve national book awards, including honors from National Indie Excellence, Foreword Reviews, and Readers’ Favorite. Prism marks Roland’s third stand alone publication.

When not immersed in his imagination, Roland can be found at his website, rolandallnach.com, along with a wealth of information about his stories and experiences as an author. Writing aside, his joy in life is the time he spends with his family.

You can also find Roland on Facebook.

You can find PRISM on Goodreads, and you can purchase it from Amazon and IndieBound and Barnes & Noble.

TLC Book Tours: Last Night at the Blue Angel

“My mother’s feelings are the curb I walk, trying to keep my balance, and I get tired of it, being careful, and mad at her at the same time. But then she takes my hand and smiles at me. You’re my favorite, she says. And suddenly I’m on solid footing again, struck smooth, the moment perfect, our life perfect, and me, perfectly loved.” from Last Night at the Blue Angel, by Rebecca Rotert This debut novel is an intensely moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship, told largely from the point of view of a precocious 10 year old named Sophia, who has grown up standing in the wings of various nightclubs listening to her mother Naomi perform the jazz music she loves so much. Sophia’s voice is so endearing: she is at once needy and strong, smart and innocent, haunted and fearless. She is desperately seeking stability, love, and family, but is also afraid of it, keeping herself in the shadows of it like a feral cat.

Naomi lives for her music, for the possibility of fame, which she thinks will “solve everything.” When faced with true love, she throws it away every time, yearning for a normal life, but also afraid of it, afraid she will disappear, become powerless, dependent on a man.

This character driven novel really drew me in from the first page. Rotert’s writing is evocative and reaches the readers deepest emotions. Naomi and Sophia both "depend on the kindness of strangers,” and the supporting cast of characters (which includes a nun and a transvestite) are engaging and well drawn.

This is a novel to savor, and one that shows great promise. I look forward to reading more from this author in years to come.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this novel.

Connect with the author here: Twitter.

Buy the book here:  Amazon, IndieBound, and Barnes & Noble.

The Lives of the Poets

Lately I’ve been reading and studying about the lives of poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. Frankly, I’m obsessed with them.

It all began with a quote of Hall’s which led me to some of his prose writing, which led me to his poems, which led to more of his prose, which in turn led to Kenyon and her poems…and well, here I am, surrounded by piles of books about two people whom I’ve never met but with whose lives I feel utterly familiar.

This isn’t the first time I’ve become enthralled with the lives of poets. When I was a teenager, it was Emily Dickinson who caught my attention, that brilliant recluse in her white dresses, floating through the woods with tiny scraps of paper drifting behind her. Then in college I developed a macabre fascination with Sylvia Plath, her life, her work, her death, all of it appealing to a morbid streak I’ve never been able to quell. My bookshelves are still testimony to both these obsessions, overflowing with texts by and about these two women.

Is there a purpose to such enchantment, besides my simple curiosity? Are poets and writers my “celebrity” obsession, the way some people fixate on movie stars or sports heroes? Or am I looking for insight into my “teachers,” the people whose work and minds I admire?

I think (or at least I hope) that it’s more the latter. Writers like Hall and Kenyon have a rich inner life which they translate into magical poetic imagery. But their outer lives, their day to day existence, is really much like my own. They loved their home, they protected their solitude, they were happy slaves to their daily routine. They cherished the mundane, yet gave us a body of literature conveying life’s sacredness.

I often write about the extraordinary ordinary, how the seemingly small events of everyday life take on great significance if you look at them with an awesome perspective, the way these poets often do in their verse. “The newspaper, the coffee cup, the dog’s/impatience for his morning walk/These fibers braid the ordinary mystery,” writes Hall in his poem The Coffee Cup. “Ordinary days were best/when we worked over poems in our separate rooms,” he writes in Letters With No Address, after Kenyon’s death. “In the bliss of routine/coffee, love, pond afternoons, poems/we feel we will live/forever…"

Kenyon focuses her bright poet’s eye on the “Luminous Particular," imbuing powerful emotion into a particular  image or event which in turn becomes luminous in importance. “I scrub the floorboards/in the kitchen, repeating/the motions of other women/who have lived in this house./And when I find a long gray hair/floating in the pail/I feel my life added to theirs.”

These days I am living in what Hall would probably describe as one of the best years of my life.  They are the years, he said, that “you remember least because nothing notable happens.” They are not the years of disease or sadness, not even the years of great events or travel. They are the years filled with one ordinary day after another. “The best moments of our lives,” he wrote, “were the days of repeated quiet and work.” Work meaning doing the things they loved - reading, writing, walking their dog, climbing the mountain, eating sandwiches, watching baseball, playing ping pong.

“It might have been otherwise,” Kenyon writes in what is probably her best loved poem (Otherwise) as she lists the things she does on a day she obviously considers one of the best. Getting out of bed on “two strong legs", eating cereal with “sweet milk, a ripe flawless peach,”  taking the dog "uphill to the birch plantings", eating dinner with her mate at “a table with silver candlesticks.”

“But one day, I know,” she concludes, “it will be otherwise.” As of course it was, when just a few months after writing those words she was diagnosed with leukemia and was dead just a year later.

How extraordinary is the best of everyday, especially when seen in the light of what might be otherwise. Even today, when yesterday’s promised hope of spring has dissolved and the sky hangs heavy with clouds and cold icy rain. I am blessed with my warm house, with the companionship of these small dogs who are sentinels at my feet. With tea in a green cup crafted by the hands of a friend. These fibers “braid the ordinary mystery."

The lives of the poets remind us. Their work gives us a way to see it anew.

Because we know otherwise will come.

*April is National Poetry Month. Poetry has always been important in my life. I’ve written more about that here.

TLC Review: Bellagrand, by Paullina Simons

Gina and Harry gave up everything to be together. But they both want different things—from their marriage, from life, from each other . . . and from the shifting world around them. Gina, independent, compassionate, and strong, desperately wants a family. Harry, idealistic and fiercely political, wants to create a better world, a better country. At a crossroads and at cross-purposes, they pursue their opposing dreams at great cost to themselves and those near to them. Through years of passion and turmoil they rail, rage, and break each other's hearts, only to come face-to-face with a stark final choice that will forever determine their destiny.

Their journey takes them through four decades and two continents, from extreme poverty to great wealth, from the wooden planks of the troubled immigrant town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to the marble halls and secret doors of a mystical place called . . . Bellagrand.

Simons recent novel, Bellagrand,  fills in the gap between two previously published novels, Children of Liberty and The Bronze Horseman, delving into the lives and relationships of Harry and Gina Barrington over a period of four decades, beginning in 1911. Although I hadn’t read the books on either side of Bellagrand, I was easily caught up in the story and able to orient myself to the plot and the characters.

The novel centers on the relationship between Harry and Gina, and the great love that exists between them, a love that remains steadfast through every trial Harry puts it through. Because Harold Barrington is a cock-eyed idealist, a man who steadfastly adheres to his anarchic political agenda through arrests, imprisonment, poverty, and loss of citizenship. A man who never gives up, even though it means dragging his family into the weeds with him time and again.

Bellagrand, the palatial home in South Florida that Harry’s mother bequeathed him, is the only place - literally or figuratively - where Harry and Gina have any peace. In this beautiful tropical paradise, Harry (who is under house arrest) seems to have come to terms with his revolutionary ideas, and their idyllic life makes Gina happier than she has ever been. Bellagrand becomes symbolic of all she had hoped her life would be. Yet once Harry is free, he is drawn inexorably back into the world of fomenting revolution - with disastrous results.

I flew through reading Bellagrand, my haste fueled by my anger at Harry for his ridiculous adherence to The Cause, no matter how devastating it made life for his family. How could Gina continue to stay with him and put up with it? I wondered. Her devotion to him was legion, and it saddened me to think that she might have had a far better life if only she had stood her ground. Their sexual attraction never wavered, no matter how difficult Harry was being. Gina seemed to be under some sort of spell, bewitched by this man beyond even the scope of time, place, and “traditional” women’s values.

I always enjoy a huge family saga, especially if it’s historical in nature, and read through the 400 pages of this one in just over three days.  Bellagrand was an interesting, fast paced read, but I found myself more aggravated with the characters than enraptured by them.  I’m a sucker for a happy ending, and there was no such thing to be found in this novel, which didn’t really entice me to continue reading the next installment of the series. If you’ve read the previous novels, Bellagrand provides some hefty “meat" in the middle of that bookish sandwich.

Thanks to TLC Book tours for the opportunity to read this book.

Bellagrand (uncorrected proof), by Paullina Simons

published by William Morrow, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-06-209813-9

Buy the book from Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indie Bound

New Thoughts for The Journey

While I’m sitting here in my cozy room very early on a bitterly cold winter morning, my husband has just left for a meeting at his office about 30 miles away. He is not a morning person, and when a 7:00 a.m. meeting is called, my heart sinks for him because I know how difficult his day will be. He has worked in the professional world for almost 40 years now, and during that time has spent long, long hours hunched over drafting tables and computers. He has crawled through scaffolding in probably every automotive assembly plant in this country. He traveled to China thirty years ago (before it was cool to do so) to instill “American quality standards” in his company’s operational facility in a small village in Outer Mongolia.

But his working days are winding down, and we are blessed that his current job allows him a great deal of flexibility in time and working  conditions. These early morning meetings are rare, and he can often work from home if he chooses. In fact, I was somewhat surprised to hear him say recently that he wouldn’t mind working at this job until he was 65 or even older.

Nevertheless, we are beginning to think about another new stage in our lives. The Third Act is a term I’m hearing bandied about among folks our age - that time when your children have all not only flown the nest, but are independently managing nests of their own, when you’ve “retired” from the daily grind, when you’re still (hopefully) physically fit enough to live without assistance.

I’ve been re-reading Katrina Kenison’s book Magical Journey (which was this week released in paperback). I read the book for the first time last January, and was so moved by the way she wrote about facing the challenges of mid-life and how a woman re-fashions her life during this time of change. But here is what I love about re-reading…now, a year later, I come to the book at a different stage in my own life, and with a new focus and interest. Last year, so intent was I on my own inner journey, that I didn’t fully absorb what Kenison has to say about what happens to a marriage during this time.

To grow without growing apart, to allow the one you love to be different today than he or she was yesterday and to love him or her anyway, even as you struggle to figure out what’s changed: Perhaps this is the challenge that must ultimately be surmounted in every long term relationship if it’s to remain fresh and resilient, rather than growing stiff with age, too brittle to bend and stretch with time. I know my husband and I love each other. But now it seems we’re both coming to see that love alone isn’t enough to keep a commitment alive; we need imagination, too. And enough creativity and courage to create a new form for our marriage, a marriage that’s growing old and being forced to adapt, just as we are.

I think of the evolution of our relationship over the 37 years we’ve been married, how we slipped easily and naturally into roles often driven by the demands of Jim’s work. Because he worked SO much, was gone from home for many long hours, even weeks sometimes, I became the one who kept the home fires burning. The details of domesticity were things I could handle to give him as much free time as possible. When Brian was born, I became the primary caregiver, happy to be a “SAHM" and devote much of my time and energy to making a home. I became accustomed to doing my own thing, to setting my own schedule, to finding ways to nurture my own interests. And although we remained close as a couple and still loved our time together, in some ways we led separate lives which intersected whenever Jim’s workday happened to end.

Now the dynamic is very, very different. I realize I’ve been chafing against that for a while, with one foot in that old life where I run things on my schedule, based on my calendar and my needs. Who is this interloper, I was thinking, this man hanging around my house so much of the time, interfering with my plans for laundry and cooking and piano practice?

But I feel a shift in my attitude these days, a sense of gratitude for his presence, for this extra time we’re able to share. After all those years of being apart for hours and hours every day, now there are many days when we potter around the house together, doing our separate work and meeting in the kitchen for lunch. On nice days, he joins me for the morning dog walk. We start every day (even early morning meeting days like today) with coffee and our books.

"To grow without growing apart, to allow the one you love to be different today than he or she was yesterday and to love him or her anyway, even as you struggle to figure out what’s changed…"

Change. There’s that word again, the one I used to be so afraid of.

But now when I say it, when I think of it in terms of our relationship, I feel a tiny frisson of anticipation. We talk about ways we can spend winters in a warmer climate, how we might even like to spend a few months living in the UK once, just to see what that’s like.  We wonder about ways to pursue our mutual interests in music. We smile at thoughts about watching our grandson grow up and imagine the things he might do. And even knowing there will inevitably be hard changes ahead does not dampen my enthusiasm for this new opportunity to renew and re-imagine our relationship.

“I stepped into marriage twenty five years ago,” Kenison writes, “convinced that passion would sustain us; now I know better. We will endure by the grace of acquiescence, cooperation, patience, and the small daily rituals that keep us close even as change transforms the landscape of our lives."

We have certainly grown so much from those dewey-eyed 20 year olds who committed ourselves together for life, not knowing what would be written on the landscape of our years together. So as we travel into the future together, still not knowing the details, I’m confident in our ability to sustain through the “grace of acquiescence, cooperation, patience, and the small daily rituals that keep us close."

And I’m so grateful for my partner on the journey.

Magical Journey is a transformative book, one I keep on my bedside table to dip into at regular intervals for a dose of guidance and inspiration. It was released in paperback this week, and I was thrilled to have an opportunity to participate in the launch team. I’ve purchased several copies that will be gifted to close friends. You can be one of those people - if you’d like a copy of the book, please leave a comment below and tell me a little about where you are on life’s journey. I’ll choose a random winner on January 30, 2014.

Magical Journey (paperback)

Author: Katrina Kenison

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, a Division of Hachette Books

Pages: 288

Buy a Copy: Amazon|Barnes & Noble