Blog Tour: 3,000 Miles to Eternity

Welcome to the blog tour for 3,000 Miles to Eternity by Duane & Selena Pannell!

Years before online dating became a respectable option, two broken and imperfect souls digitally crossed paths as they tried to find their way back to God. This fascinating true story, told through journals and emails, will have you smiling from start to finish and shedding a few tears along the way. Engaging and entertaining, it’s the perfect reminder of the power of love, redemption, and hope.

About the authors:

DUANE AND SELENA PANNELL “met” online while living in Virginia and Alberta, Canada.  After a complicated long-distance relationship spanning four years, they married and have a son together. Their first book is borne of yet another separation in their lives when Selena was in Alberta for several months in 2013 with her dying father.

Duane was going through their old correspondence because he is a “mushy man” and thought this was a story worth telling.  After some coaxing, he convinced Selena, and with a little help from Google Docs, they began their collaboration on “3,000 Miles To Eternity.”

Today they serve as missionary group leaders in the LDS (Mormon) Addiction Recovery Program where they lead two 12 Step meetings a week.  Duane is putting the final touches on a manuscript addressing addiction recovery while Selena homeschools their son and teaches archery in her spare time.

Review:

As the internet began booming, there were new things being explored all the time. One of these includes online dating. Enter LDS Singles Online, a group where people were looking for love. Or not in the case of Selena. As a divorced mother of 5, Selena decides that studying the men on LDSSO would be an interesting undertaking. One day she begins talking to Duane, a man 3000 miles away. What unfolds becomes an intriguing tale of forgiveness, letting go of the past, and learning to open yourself up to new possibilities.

The story of Duane and Selena begins separately, told through their individual journal entries. Both of the have led lives that are different from many of their fellow congregation members. Duane was a drug addict and alcoholic, married to an equally self-destructive woman. As Duane hit bottom and began the long road to cleaning up his life, his wife was less interested. They eventually divorced. So Duane was left with children and a good sense of humor. Selena meanwhile married a nice man, but someone who was not LDS. This led to some conflict eventually, and she soon began to realize that the love was not there anymore. It was Selena's sense of humor that made Duane message her, while Selena found a willing partner in answering her probing questions about men in general (and LDS men in particular). 

This book was fascinating! I think the circumstance of meeting online allowed Selena and Duane a certain freedom. They both intended on never seeing the other one really. Of course, like many great stories things didn't happen how they planned it. They soon found themselves looking forward to their conversations and talking to each other. They do have some ups and downs like any couple. I appreciate that they were so willing to show everything. There were so many things they they talked about that I found so interesting. This book reads like a romance novel with the satisfaction of knowing that it was in fact real. It was a super fun book to read!

Book provided for review.

Hope After Suicide Blog Tour

Welcome to the blog tour for Hope After Suicide by Wendy Parmley!

We all have a story—hidden secrets buried in dark and rocky earth. Our task is to unearth—to release the pain and discover the good, discover the healing, discover the love. Uncovering the darkness makes space for the light.

After her mother took her own life, Wendy Parmley learned firsthand the heartache, despair, and loneliness that accompanies losing a loved one to suicide. At one point she even contemplated taking her own life as well. In this uplifting true narrative, you too can discover how to:

• Forgive yourself and others
• Open your heart
• Seek help when you need it
• Draw closer to the divine

Embrace the light and learn how to heal your soul and overcome loss as you read this touching and tender account of a woman opening her heart years after her mother’s suicide.

Purchase Hope After Suicide: One Woman’s Journey from Darkness to Light at:

Amazon Barnes & Noble Books & Things

Courtesy of Alyse Neibaur at Diamond Eye

Wendy Parmley suffered a disabling bike accident in September 2011.  Unable to return to her 20 year nursing career because of the continued effects of her injuries, Wendy began the slow and painful penning of her angel mother’s story and Wendy’s healing journey following her mom’s suicide death.  Wendy’s mom took her own life when just 31 years old, leaving behind her husband of thirteen years and their five young children.

Wendy has long advocated for suicide prevention and has participated on various professional and community based groups dedicated to that end.  She also recognizes the need to unashamedly support those who must continue to live in the painful aftermath of a loved one’s suicide and passionately lends her voice to that cause.

Prior to her bike accident, Wendy worked in nursing leadership for 14 years, earning her MBA degree from Brigham Young University in 2007.  Despite her continued limitations, Wendy is grateful to spend more time with the love of her life, her husband Mark.  She is ever grateful for his support and the support of their three married sons and their wives, their amazing daughter, and their beautiful two grandchildren who fill their life with sunshine.

www.wendyparmley.com

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Review:

Wendy was just 12 years old when she was awoken by the cries of her father. Her life would never be the same. Her very young mother had just died, and Wendy was left as the oldest of 5 children. To make things even more difficult, Wendy soon discovered that her mother had actually taken her own life. It's not until Wendy is an adult that she begins to truly process what happened. As she begins her journey to deal with the pain of her mother's suicide, Wendy manages to discover that a wound she thought would remain raw forever can in fact be healed. Wendy shares her journey in this book.

Suicide and mental illness have been brought to the forefront of public awareness due to the recent suicide of actor Robin Williams. This is a subject that is very difficult for a lot of people to understand. What drives a person to take their own life? The author of this book had to try and figure that out for herself very early in life. This book gives a very realistic and emotional view of what it is like to be the child of someone who must deal with the suicide of a very close loved one. Wendy thought her mother could do virtually no wrong, and yet her mother had demons that she could not escape. However, Wendy manages to find great hope in her religion and beliefs. Unfortunately she must first progress through the pain again first.

Wendy doesn't hide anything in this book, and a lot of her family's skeletons are laid out for all to see. I think this is a good thing though. None of us come from perfect families or ideal situations in life, and the more we see that others have issues too the more we can truly bear each others burdens. This book takes an unflinching look at suicide and loss, but the author manages to keep anyone from looking like a bad guy. She is able to see the good in so many things. While this book wasn't an easy read per se, it was a very interesting read. I couldn't put it down. It helped me to see that even in the darkest of times, we can find hope. That is a very inspiring thing.

Book provided for review.

Review: Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Title:		Escape
Author:		Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer
Publisher:		Broadway Books
Pub. Date:		10/16/2007
ISBN:		0767927567 (ISBN13: 9780767927567)
Pages:		413

The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.

When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.

Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.

Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.

(Summary and cover via Goodreads)
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Review:

Carolyn Jessop was born into a life of servitude and abuse as a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS. The FLDS had originally broken off from the mainstream LDS church to continue the practice of polygamy. However, things became more extreme as time went on, and things like abuse or women and children soon became the norm. Carolyn dreamed of going to college and even becoming a doctor, but soon after graduating high school she found herself becoming the 3rd wife of a powerful member of the community. She's soon caught up in a vicious cycle of abuse from her husband and her sister-wives. Carolyn finally does the unthinkable and escapes with her 8 children. Her fight for freedom manages to help not only her immediate family but also many young people who were caught up in the traumas of the FLDS as well.

As a member of the mainstream LDS church, this was a book I was very interested in reading. It was amazing to see how twisted and corrupt things quickly became within the FLDS. I also found it frightening what these people had to go through, specifically the women. Men fared much better (at least until Warren Jeffs began exerting his power). Carolyn was very lucky in some respects as she was allowed to get an education, even if it wasn't in the field she wanted to study. This put her in a much better position when she finally got out. It also allowed her to see that life didn't have to be like this. Carolyn's biggest struggle for a long time was the strength of her beliefs. When she felt so strongly that the things she was taught were true, she struggled with thoughts of leaving. Eventually her unhappiness overcame this though, and she was able to see with more clarity.

This book was interesting to me from the start, and I read it very quickly. I did understand a lot of the ideas presented as they seemed to be very twisted versions of many pieces of LDS doctrine, but some of it was definitely things I had never heard of before. I wanted to be able to help her and other members who try to escape as they really can have a bleak future ahead. While this was a sad book in some respects, it also felt full of hope as it showed that things could get better. The saddest part for me was the decisions of her daughter Betty. This book is very interesting, and it will give you insight into the minds of at least some women involved in things like this.

Married at Fourteen Blog Tour

Welcome to the blog tour for Married at Fourteen by Lucille Lang Day!

Looking back at her adolescence, Lucille Lang Day describes herself as a juvenile delinquent and teen mother. She ran away at thirteen, got suspended from school and married at age 14, gave birth to her first child at 15, divorced her husband at 16, married him again at 17, and left him at 18 to go back to school. 

Her autobiographical quest, Married at Fourteen, presents her unrelenting and ultimately triumphant journey across the badlands of familial trouble, emotional chaos, and the social and cultural upheaval in the '60s, to find fulfillment in romance, marriage, motherhood, and high accomplishments in both the arts and sciences. Lucille holds an M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University, an M.A. in zoology and a Ph.D. in science and mathematics education from the University of California at Berkeley.

One of the great American contemporary memoirs, Married at Fourteen is a testament to the human spirit and a book for all of us who have sought independence, emancipation, true love, and personal fulfillment against all odds. 

About the Author:

Lucille Lang Day has published creative nonfiction in The Hudson Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Passages North, River Oak Review, Willow Review, and many other journals. She is the author of the children's book, Chain Letter, and eight poetry collections, one of which received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award. Married at Fourteen has been excerpted in many literary magazines. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she also served for 17 years as the director of the Hall of Health, an interactive museum in Berkeley. For more info, visit http://www.lucillelangday.com

Review:

Married at Fourteen is the autobiographical story of Lucille Lang Day. The first half is a fairly chronological telling of her life including marriage at 14 and a child at 15. The second half of the book is a series of intermingled tales from throughout her life. Through it all, Lucille has to navigate some very hefty stuff much earlier than most girls must learn these difficult last lessons. Some of the lessons take much longer to learn, but ultimately this is a story of triumph and self-discovery.

This book was so interesting. Lucille decided very early on that she had an unhappy home-life, and that the best way out of it was to get pregnant and get married. I think life for her was probably very rough growing up. It seems like her mom needed more help than she was getting. I found it both a bit fascinating and sad that Lucille became so convinced that marriage and a child were her ticket to freedom and happiness. Clearly in hindsight she can see how warped this thinking was, but she was certainly single-minded as a teenager. Her tenaciousness was very apparent through her life. Whenever Lucille decided to do something, Lucille did it. Whether it was getting multiple degrees or finding true love, she rarely wavered from her course. There is something to admire in that.

While at times things were a train wreck, this ultimately became a story of success despite the odds. With all the less than desirable decisions Lucille made at different times, I really feel like she ultimately was able to find her own happiness. There's a lot to learn from that. Everyone has messy lives to some extent, so we have to decide what we are going to make of it. Lucille decided that she would be successful. There are a lot of wonderful things to learn from this book. It will make you think and perhaps even find renewed vision to do all the things you always wanted to do. In the end, Lucille did that. She didn't let anything get in the way of her dreams.

Book provided for review.

I have a copy of this book to giveaway! Unfortunately this giveaway is for US residents only due to mailing costs. There is one easy entry and an entry for following this blog. Thanks for stopping by!

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Review: In the Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

Title:		In the Sea There Are Crocodiles
Author:		Fabio Geda (Howard Curtis- Translator)
Publisher:		Doubleday Books
Pub. Date:		8/9/2011
ISBN:		0385534736 (ISBN13: 9780385534734)
Pages:		215

When ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbari’s small village in Afghanistan falls prey to Taliban rule in early 2000, his mother shepherds the boy across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there all alone to fend for himself. Thus begins Enaiat’s remarkable and often punish­ing five-year ordeal, which takes him through Iran, Turkey, and Greece before he seeks political asylum in Italy at the age of fifteen. 

Along the way, Enaiat endures the crippling physical and emotional agony of dangerous border crossings, trekking across bitterly cold mountain pathways for days on end or being stuffed into the false bottom of a truck. But not every­one is as resourceful, resilient, or lucky as Enaiat, and there are many heart-wrenching casualties along the way. 

Based on Enaiat’s close collaboration with Italian novelist Fabio Geda and expertly rendered in English by an award- winning translator, this novel reconstructs the young boy’s memories, perfectly preserving the childlike perspective and rhythms of an intimate oral history. 
 
Told with humor and humanity, In the Sea There Are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiat’s moving and engaging voice and lends urgency to an epic story of hope and survival.

(Summary and cover via Goodreads)
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Enaiatollah Akbari has lived a fairly normal life in Afghanistan, that is until one day when he finds himself being rushed away from his village by his mother. The Taliban has taken over, and Enaiat's mother does not want him there. She leaves him in Pakistan, and Enaiat must learn to take care of himself. Constantly wanting a better life, he finds himself trying to find ways to improve his living conditions. This often involves trusting human traffickers to get him from place to place. Enaiat will travel to Iran, Turkey, Greece, and finally Italy where he seeks asylum. Of course, his path is never easy. However, Enaiat will not rest until he has found a way to make his life more like what he wants it to be.

This was a very interesting story on a couple levels. The first thing that struck me was the things a mother will do to protect her child. Enaiat's mother knew the life they were going to experience in Afghanistan was not the one she wanted Enaiat to have. The only way to try and improve thing for him were to smuggle him out of the country. However, she did have other children and family. So she leaves Enaiat in Iran. I can't imagine how hard this must have been for her, not knowing whether Enaiat would survive all this. She was willing to give him a chance though, and this was probably the best she could do for him. I'm glad she eventually gets to discover that her efforts were successful.

Of course Enaiat's story after getting to Iran is equally amazing. He survived with some good instincts and a lot of luck. It was so sad to see him and so many people trying to get themselves smuggled to new countries just to try and live a good life. I found it interesting how Enaiat seemed to keep running into people he knew. They clearly have some ways to communicate back to their friends in other countries. The story is told in a very interesting way. It feels very much like you're sitting listening to someone tell their story as opposed to reading their words. This book made me appreciate my life greatly, but it also made me want to help other people like Enaiat. His story was incredibly moving, and I hope that he continues to have a wonderful life where he is now.

Galley provided for review.

Review: Surviving the Taliban by Jay D. Fluckiger

Title:		Surviving the Taliban
Author:		Jay D. Fluckiger
Publisher:		Cedar Fort Books
Imprint:		CFI Distribution
Pub. Date:		12/06/2011
ISBN:		1599559641 (ISBN13: 9781599559643)
Pages:		192

In a culture where Christianity is punishable by death, an extraordinary man known only as The Poet has survived repeated assassination attempts and spent eleven years on the run in his search for truth, safety, and freedom. Delve into a hidden world of cruelty, suffering, and extremism, where despite the deadly consequences, the Poet has tested the limits of human courage and endurance and embraced the gospel of Christ.

(Summary and cover via Goodreads)

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For a man simply known as "The Poet," living in Afghanistan and Iran has been beyond horrible. His natural curiosity and love of learning has made him suspicious to the Muslim extremists around, especially those in his own family. Much of his life, he is forced to constantly run from those who want him dead. After being nearly killed by his brother, The Poet pays smugglers to take him to London. There he converts to Christianity, and becomes even more of a target to extremists. The Poet paints a heartbreaking picture of what life is like for anything trying to live their own lives in a rigid belief system.

I had a couple problems with this book. While The Poet mentions early on in the book that his dealing were with the most extreme of Muslim fundamentalists, I felt like this wasn't emphasized enough throughout. Maybe something was lost in translation? I guess I just would have felt better if he had consistently referred to them as "extremists' or "fundamentalists" other than the general "Muslim" term. The other thing is that The Poet presents some pretty harsh accusations about the current government in Afghanistan and current US and UK governments but presents little to no solid evidence. I just feel like that is just fueling people who are looking for any reason to hate. It just didn't sit right with me.

Those things aside, this book was a very compelling story. The things The Poet has be forced to endure is horrific. It does make one very grateful for the freedoms we have, especially as it pertains to our freedom to worship however we choose. What this man had to go through even before he converted was very difficult, and it makes me wonder if that hasn't colored his view of his past some. If nothing else, the story of The Poet should remind us that we need to recognize and celebrate the differences we all have. Helping and learning from each other will make this world a much better place.

Galley provided for review.

Virtual Book Tour- Under the Neon Sky: A Las Vegas Doorman's Story

Welcome to the virtual book tour for Under the Neon Sky: A Las Vegas Doorman's Story by Jay Rankin!


Today I have a guest post by the author, a review, and a giveaway.

 Under The Neon Sky: A Las Vegas Doorman’s Story by Jay Rankin

Under The Neon Sky is a gripping, true story about a Las Vegas doorman who works the graveyard shift at one of the major hotels on the Strip. The sights, smells, and page popping characters are unforgettable as we take a journey that will transform how we used to envision the city that never sleeps. We watch as this doorman begins to emotionally break and wonder if he will become broken seeing his friends, his wife, hotel guests, and himself cross too many boundaries in this riveting, page turning story.

• The National Best Books 2010 Award Finalist in the Memoir category
• Indie Excellence Book Award  Finalist in the Memoir category
• 2011 International Book Award Finalist-Autobiography/Memoir category

Read Chapter 1 – Under The Neon Sky: A Las Vegas Doorman’s Story by Jay Rankin

Under The Neon Sky: A Las Vegas Doorman’s Story

Author: Jay Rankin

Genre: Non-Fiction – Autobiography/Memoir

Published by: Jay Rankin (October 10, 2009)

Age Recommendation: 15+ For Mild Sexual Content & Mature Language

Format: Hardcover, Perfect Paperback & eBook

ISBN13: 978-0984210916Number of pages: 268

For his guest post, I asked Jay Rankin to tell us a little

 something about why he wrote this book.

I think my background has a lot to do with why I felt the need to write this book. I was a pretty wild kid and it took me a long time to shed my ways as an adult. I worked in a country & western nightclub as a bouncer, was a probation officer for Los Angeles County. In time, I decided to try and find out why it was difficult for me to mature so I did what a lot of people do and took psychology in college looking for some answers. I loved the study of human behavior. I even figured out some inner questions. In time, I received my Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology. Years later I got the job as doorman at the MGM. Working in the middle of the night at the biggest hotel in the world, on the Las Vegas Strip was like working an intergalactic party on planet Azor located 13, 000 light years from our galaxy. The sights, sounds, smells, and behaviors weren’t addressed in any of my psych. books so I decided to write my own. I knew I had a story to tell.

Jay Rankin, author of Under The Neon Sky: A Las Vegas Doorman’s Story

Jay Rankin was born in Los Angeles, but he grew up in Hollywood, Ca. He held some amazing jobs. He worked his way through college inside the locked unit of a psychiatric hospital, was a Los Angeles County Probation Officer, worked at several detention camps, was a bouncer at a country and western nightclub in Los Angeles and built custom homes in Connecticut and Las Vegas. Jay studied and received a Master’s degree in clinical psychology. He now lives in Los Angeles and where he is raising his 9 year old son.

Find and follow Jay Rankin:

Author Website
Twitter – Under the Neon Sky & Jay Rankin
Goodreads
Facebook Page

Buy the book at:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble

Check out the review and giveaway after the break!

Review and Giveaway: The Next Fifteen Minutes by Kim Kircher

THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES:

Strength From the Top of the Mountain

By Kim Kircher

Kim Kircher lived life hanging onto the edge of a mountain. When she wasn’t rescuing wounded skiers as a member of the ski patrol or bombing snow-congested mountainsides to control avalanches, she and her husband, John, were proving to the world that a full life was possible in spite of each living with an autoimmune disorder. Their days were full of early morning runs on perfect powder, slicing through the stellar crystals to the envy of holiday skiers.

When John’s congenital liver condition – primary sclerosing cholangitis – approached the terminal phase, Kim was determined to use all of her mountain-borne skills to save him and return them to the adventurous life they both loved. But as his condition worsened and their worst fears became a reality, she knew that it would take more than tenacity. Without a liver transplant, John had nine months to live.

THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES (Behler Publications, October 2011) offers a rare glimpse into the strange and fascinating world of a ski area professional, where steep terrain and deep snow, the twin fuels that run the business, teach patrollers how to get through the worst trials just fifteen minutes at a time. Kim seized the EMT training that helped her avoid panic when a fallen skier had to be delicately lifted from a tree to manage the life-and-death situation facing her husband.

As radiation therapy made John grow sicker it became obvious that he would not have the two to three years necessary to receive a liver from a deceased donor. The race to save John’s life became a gathering avalanche that Kim desperately tried to brake as volunteer after volunteer was rejected as a donor.

Desperate to save John, Kim joined the ranks of potential donors, but lurking behind the scenes was her juvenile diabetes. In spite of her expertise in managing her condition, her body simply could not handle the rigors of such surgery. She had survived avalanches, insulin shock in the sub-zero cold and skiing down the treacherous face of Crystal – but she couldn’t save her husband’s life.

When all seemed lost, hope arrived in the person of a formerly rejected donor whose personal health improvements made him an ideal candidate. But was it too late? Had the cancer spread and could John’s body, burned by radiation, handle the delicate and difficult surgery? They would know the answer in the next 15 minutes.

THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES:

Strength From the Top of the Mountain

By Kim Kircher

Behler Publications, October 2011

ISBN 978-1-933016-11-5

260 Pages

Kim Kircher's life has always been a bit of a balancing act. As a member of the ski patrol, she always has to balance her own safety with her ability to keep other people alive and well. On top of this, Kim has diabetes, so keeping her activity and blood sugars balanced is sometimes very difficult. Kim managed to keep things running fairly smoothly until her husband John's health began to decline. He had a liver disease, and this soon put him in a critical state. John desperately needed a liver transplant. Now they had to search for a living donor as trying to get a liver from a deceased donor would take longer than John had. Kim must used every bit of knowledge she's gained from her life and experiences on the mountains to help cope with what is happening. 

This book was so inspirational! At first I thought I would have a hard time reading it because I did not understand skiing terminology. While the author tries to explain everything, I had a really hard time with it. However, I soon found myself having a fairly good understanding of what was going on, which made things so much easier to understand. I was incredibly moved by the story. Seeing Kim struggle with the realities of her husband's medical problems was sad yet heartwarming. She had so many things that helped her cope, and I think everyone can learn from those same coping strategies. One of the main ones as learning to take things in 15 minute intervals. In general the time interval is not the important part, but learning to take things one step at a time very helpful.

This would be wonderful book for anyone struggling with hard times, but it will probably be most helpful for people who are dealing with medical issues. It will help give inspiration and comfort. It would be a wonderful gift to give someone whose loved one has just received a difficult diagnosis or even just someone who wants an uplifting story that brings peace and comfort. It is beautifully written, and I'm sure it will help many people.

Book provided for review.

Check out the giveaway after the break!

Blog Tour- I Pray Hardest When I'm Being Shot At by Kyle Garret

Welcome to the blog tour for I Pray Hardest When I'm Being Shot At by Kyle Garret!

I have a guest post, review, and giveaway!

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, eighteen-year-old Robert Stuart had a decision to make: keep working at the steel mill in Warren, Ohio, or volunteer to serve his country. Stuart's father had served in the first World War, and service was in his blood, so he enlisted in the Marines.

Anne Davis had a decision of her own to make. The girls in her high school were going to send letters to alumni who were going off to war. She looked at the list of soldiers and saw a familiar name: Robert Stuart.

The letters Anne sent would mark the beginning of a relationship that would span sixty years, two marriages, two children, and three wars.

Over half a century after those first letters were sent, the Stuarts' grandson, Kyle, began chronicling their life together. He would discover pieces of a family history that only he dug deep enough to learn. But in the back of his mind, one concern lingered: the story of a person's life can only have one ending, and his grandfather's health was deteriorating.

I Pray Hardest When I'm Being Shot At is a true story of love and war, of three generations and two romances, one of sixty years, the other of just a few months. Pray deals with one generation trying to connect with another and how it affected them both.

Author Kyle Garret has written a guest post today:

What I Do To Prepare To Write

    Writing is hard.

     I’ve always found that saying to be funny. On one hand, writing is hard. I think that’s something that’s universally accepted. Those who have no desire or affinity for it struggle with it, and those who claim it as one of their life’s passions…well, they pretty much struggle with it, too. It’s amazing to think that the simple act of communicating can be so hard for so many people, but it is.

    When I’m not writing, the only thing in the world that I want to do is write.When I am writing, I want to do anything but. It’s a maddening cycle, but it’s one I’ve come to accept. I know the cycle exists, though, and if I learned anything from GI Joe, it’s that knowing is half the battle.

    So to get myself to write, I have to set the mood. I have to put myself in a headspace where I’ll not only do the work, but stick with it. This is difficult for me, as I have the attention span of a Cocker Spaniel. Even on my best nights, I probably don’t manage to write for more than fifteen minutes at a time without taking a break.

    My formula is strangely romantic, given that I’m writing alone: a single light, sometimes a candle, and always slow, occasionally sad music. The sole purpose of all this is to get my brain to relax, to get it to shut off enough for me to be able to give all my attention to my writing.

    In the past, I would warm up by writing in my journal, but in recent years I’ve warmed up by blogging. Blogs don’t have to be masterpieces of modern literature, so it allows me to ease myself into the writing process. It gets my brain in line with that kind of thinking.

   When I finish writing for the night, I make sure that I end at the beginning of a new section so that I have somewhere to pick up. It is so much easier to go back to something if it’s already been started. Just one sentence of a new section is like a trail of bread crumbs back to that mind set. That first line sets the tone of what’s to come, and being able to just follow what I’ve already started makes it much easier to come back.

   When I was in college, my professors all gave me the same advice: write every day. The theory – and it’s one I agree with – is that only a small percentage of what you write is going to be any good, so you need to write every single day so that you can get to that small percentage sooner rather than later. But that’s easy advice for a professor to give a student; in the real world, we have jobs, jobs that are often frustrating and demoralizing. We have places to go and people to see and writing doesn’t pay the bills or put food on the table. Writing every day is a luxury that most of us just don’t have.

   To make up for this, I write in big chunks of time. I set aside three to four hours every few days and lock myself in my office. The major downside to this is that I’m putting all my eggs into one basket. If I don’t accomplish a good amount of work on these days then I feel like I’ve fallen behind – like I wasted that time. Then again, there’s a point, an hour or so into a long writing session, when things just start to gel. You kind of get into “the zone,” as they say in sports, and the writing comes much easier.

   That’s my process. I’m sure there are probably better, more productive ways of writing, but that’s the one that works for me.

Kyle Garret, 

author of I Pray The Hardest When I’m Being Shot At

Kyle Garret is a writer from the Midwest living on the West Coast by way of the South. He was born and raised in Kent, Ohio, and attended Ohio University where he received his Master’s degree in Creative Writing. After a few years in Atlanta, he moved out West. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Nicole, and their two cats. He is currently finishing work on a novel and a young adult book.

Where you can find and follow Kyle Garret:

Author Website
Book Website
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Goodreads Profile

Buy the BOOK at:

Amazon.com
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Check out the review and giveaway after the break:

Review: No Permanent Scars by Michael Hemery

Title:		No Permanent Scars
Author:		Michael Hemery
Publisher:		Silenced Press
Pub. Date:		01/31/2011
ISBN:		0979241065 (ISBN-13 9780979241062)
Pages:		294

No Permanent Scars reads how creative nonfiction should read: Like fiction. Like nonfiction. Like memoir. Like humor. Like literature. Like life. It’s about childhood, adulthood, the neighborhood and what it means to be a kid, a parent, a teacher, a human. Michael Hemery illuminates an honest working-class existence, offering both the sober realities of class discrimination and the humor and love of family. Intertwined with serious issues such as suicide, alcoholism, abuse, religion, and immigration, Hemery also endures a painfully slow and often naive coming of age (he once mistook an obvious prostitute for an office supply store employee). This is going to be the best book you’ll read this year.


(Summary and cover via Goodreads)

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This book is a basically a memoir told in a series of non-fiction essays. It skips around chronologically but combines different parts of the author's life to touch on different themes. A wide variety of themes are discussed, ranging from humorous to serious and everything in-between. Although this book differs from  memoir in that you don't necessarily get a "life story", you certainly get a very good sense of the who the author is.

The essays vary from very short to much more detailed. I had a hard time connecting with some, but there were many that I absolutely loved. I particularly enjoyed the stories about his piano playing "career" and his teaching career. Although they varied greatly in tone, they were both prime examples of great writing. I was also amazed that the author was able to convey a lot of emotions in very few words sometimes. The sections involving his wife tended to be short, but you absolutely can feel the affection and love that is there. He made me love his wife and parents, which can sometimes be hard to do when dealing with some of the tough subject matter in here.

I thought this book was very good. There is beautiful flow to the stories. I think that it's rather fascinating to get to see inside of a person, and the author certainly lays it all out there for you. In holding nothing back, you get to live parts of his life with him. It seems like despite what may have been some tough times, he has weathered the various storms rather well. When a book like this makes me think the author and I could be friends, I feel like it's done a great job.

Book provided for review by Librarything First Reads.