Category: book news

Bryson City Recipes by Renea Winchester is Here!

It’s here! The recipe book that acts as a companion to Renea Winchester’s celebrated novel, Outbound Train, and first published in France is now available in the US! Bryson City Recipes was inspired by the authentic characters in the Appalachian set Outbound Train, and the classic, Southern recipes are amazingly easy to follow! From Appalachian Spiced Tea to Macaroni and Cheese with Tomatoes, you’ll delight in this recipe book!

In 1976, memories from a night near the railroad tracks sixteen years earlier haunt Barbara Parker. She wrestles with past demons every night, then wakes to the train’s five-thirty whistle. Exhausted and dreading the day, she keeps her hands busy working in Bryson City’s textile plant, known as the “blue jean plant,” all the while worrying about her teenage daughter, Carole Anne. The whistle of the train, the hum of those machines, and the struggle to survive drives Barbara. When an unexpected layoff creates a financial emergency, the desperate pressure of poverty is overwhelming.
Unbeknownst to Barbara, Carole Anne sneaks out at night to walk the tracks so she can work at Hubert’s Bar. She’s hoarding money with plans to drive her mother’s rusty, unused Oldsmobile out of Bryson City, and never return. She only needs one opportunity … if she can just find it.
When Carole Anne goes missing, Barbara finds herself at a crossroad—she must put aside old memories and past hurts to rely on a classmate for help finding her daughter. But this is the same man she blames for the incident years ago. Is she strong enough—or desperate enough—to do anything to keep her daughter safe?
In Outbound Train, the Parker women struggle to make frayed ends meet in a town where they never quite do … at least, not without expert weaving and a bit of brute force.

Renea Winchester

Renea was born and raised in Bryson City, North Carolina. She began her writing career in Georgia where she penned several non-fiction works including Farming, Friends & Fried Bologna Sandwiches (Mercer University Press) which was nominated for the prestigious SIBA award, earned Renea a nomination for Georgia Author of the Year, and received the endorsement from The Pulpwood Queens, the largest book club in the country. After winning the Wilma Dykeman Award for Essay and the Appalachian Writer’s Award, Renea focused on transitioning to fiction.

Renea has served on the Atlanta Writers Board, Georgia Writers Association, and judges multiple literary awards. In April 2020, Firefly Southern Fiction released Outbound Train. Set in her hometown of Bryson City, North Carolina, in 1976, Outbound Train is a triumphant story of perseverance and hope despite the harshness of poverty.

Renea is passionate about literacy, Appalachian Heritage, preserving rare seeds, cultivating endangered plants and meeting new friends.

Book Release: Scare Your Soul by Scott Simon

Most books are meant to be read.
This one is meant to be lived.

It’s not easy to be courageous. Feelings of fear and uncertainty often stop us dead in our tracks. But what if you had the courage to take action anyway? What changes would you make to transform your current reality into the life of your dreams?

Here’s the good news — like a muscle, courage grows stronger the more you exercise it. And Scare Your Soul will not only teach you how to exercise courage but will guide you in taking small, boundary-pushing actions to expand your comfort zone (so that you feel less fear and more confidence with each action).

By combining research on positive psychology with real-life stories of Scare Your Soul participants, international thought leader and happiness entrepreneur Scott Simon challenges you to confront your limiting beliefs. With writing prompts, activities, and real-world challenges, Scare Your Soul is an interactive roadmap to building bravery.

Scare Your Soul teaches you that the greatest antidote to much of what ails you in your life isn’t achievement, it’s action. So if you crave an extraordinary life but feel like you don’t know how to take “extra” ordinary action, this book is for you.

It’s time to Scare Your Soul.


Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is an empowering and inspiring book! If you want to lead the life you’re meant to lead, this is the compass you ought to take along.”―Tal Ben-Shahar, author of international bestsellers Happier and Being Happy

“In a world that feels so dark and full of fear, this book is a lantern for the courageous way forward.”―Jennifer Pastiloff, best-selling author of On Being Human

“I used to think being fearless was enough, until I read this book. It’s a game-changer.”―Turney Duff, author of the New York Times bestseller The Buy Side

“For any wallflowers desiring to encompass boldness—this is for you.”―Janne Robinson, author and poet –This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Scott Simon is a happiness entrepreneur and founder of Scare Your Soul. He is dedicated to creating, curating, and leading opportunities for people around the world to be happier and more courageous. Scott founded the Scare Your Soul organization in 2015, organically growing it from one Facebook post to a global movement with sixty volunteer ambassadors worldwide. He has presented to groups around the world, appeared widely on TV and podcasts, given a TEDx Talk, and brought his passion for courage to retreats, a life coaching practice, and mindfulness meditations in person and online.

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Beasts Of The Earth by James Wade

Beasts of the Earth

Image of Beasts of the Earth

Buy on Amazon

Reviewed by: 

Claire Fullerton for The New York Journal of Books

We know from the start LeBlanc is wounded, that his limping spirit is tantamount to the spare, prison-like furnishings of the low-ceilinged duplex he’s rented on the shanty side of town for the past 20 years, that his economic speech has little to do with still waters running deep, that it’s born of a wariness from what he’s hiding.

It is the economic downturn of 1987 in Coral County, Texas, where thirty-something Harlan LeBlanc works alongside the small crew of Carter Hills High School’s Grounds and Maintenance Department, and partakes of a cursory friendship with a troubled, young co-worker named Gene Thomas. A man of habit gripping to a rote, daily schedule, LeBlanc tends the high school’s football field with each step carefully taken, in a manner telling of his mind frame. “LeBlanc reveled in such undertakings—the opportunity to create boundaries, to ensure the proper area for the rules to be applied. There was an element of control, an upholding of justice, that brought peace

to his mind.”  

It is 1965 in the bayou of Assumption Parrish, Louisiana, and 13-year-old Michael Fischer’s hardscrabble world grows harder when his regionally shunned, depraved criminal father is released from prison. “A boy should be happy when his father returns, but Michael was not happy. He had memories of Munday—memories distorted by time and hearsay—and though there existed still a longing for the comfort and protection of a father, dread guided the boy.” Used to being the man of the house for his morbidly obese mother and younger sister, Michael is in fear when his hard-drinking father is home, and only breathes easy when he habitually disappears.

After home circumstances take an unspeakable, dark turn at the hands of his father, Michael flees to the woods, where he’s met with more danger still, until he’s found by a dying recluse of a poet named Remus, who takes the injured Michael to his cabin, and begins the long road to repairing the traumatized, now displaced, youth.

Over time, the strangers warm to an alliance, and Michael “played at having a father, and Remus played at being one. But the past is not a thing to sit still, and there are no new beginnings. The world itself was begun only once. And since that beginning its every rotation has depended on the one before—each circumstance born from the last.”

Cassie Harper has broken Gene Thomas’s heart. A student at Carter Hills High, there is

more to her than meets the eye. When Cassie is found murdered on school grounds, it rocks the entire community. When circumstantial evidence comes to include Gene Thomas, it strikes LeBlanc too close to home, casting aspersions on his character, and giving rise to his secret, haunted past.  

Author James Wade treads a tight wire between Beasts of the Earth’s dual storylines. He deftly keeps the reader guessing about common ground throughout the tumult of the three-part story. The tone is shadowy and off-kilter, with elements of gothic-tinged realism vested upon an innocent heart, and a mind in peril of becoming unhinged.

There is much to keep the reader invested. Wade’s pitch-perfect, personality-driven dialogue sings in the voice of life, and his ability to meld existential thought, situational metaphor, and cinematic setting is a full-bodied experience: As Harlan LeBlanc sets out to right a wrong from the past, “He walked along the river in the morning light and watched it widen and grow as it approached Port Neches and then on to the Gulf of Mexico, and he wondered if the river might hold itself or some piece of itself out there in all that ocean—might cling at some molecular level to whatever made it a river in the first place, salt or no salt. But he knew the answer and knew the difficulty in fighting back against an ever-growing tide.”

Beasts of the Earth satisfies the discerning reader. Its balanced, oscillating chapters are played out in riveting complete scenes that take you deeper into the gritty backstory of Harlan LeBlanc, a man you care about, and somehow understand from what he’s not saying, while the town around him holds him in suspicion and his moral compass covertly guides him to truth and justice sought at a personal cost.

A soul-deep exploration of a wounded man in crisis, James Wade’s Beasts of the Earth follows his two widely acclaimed novels, All Things Left Wild, and River, Sing Out, and secures his position as an author of extraordinary merit.  

Author James Wade

James Wade lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and daughter. He is the author of River, Sing Out and All Things Left Wild, a winner of the prestigious MPIBA Reading the West Award for Debut Fiction, and a recipient of the Spur Award for Best Historical Novel from the Western Writers of America. His third novel, Beasts of the Earth, is now available from Blackstone Publishing.

Celebrating Literary Connections!

This post is in celebration of the surprising connections made from years of being a writer. I have four books and one novella out in the world, and another–fingers crossed- hopefully, making its way through the labyrinthian path from my computer to bookstores, but that’s another subject!

I’m thinking about the countless, sung and unsung heroes with whom I’ve had the pleasure to align over the years. “Book people” are passionate people committed to staying the course of what can only be described as an incremental growth pattern fueled by perseverance and dedication to the love of reading and writing. I’ve found the two arenas are tightly woven. You simply cannot have one without the other. It’s a particular breed of cat who knows this, and they are the breed who derive great satisfaction and personal fulfillment in centering their days on the written word.

Writers, and, readers, and bloggers, and book promoters breathe the very life force into the existence of a writer. They are the stalwart citizens of the literary world who take a writer’s work and magnify it, launching it into a wider sphere by ripple effect, creating attenuation by virtue of the fact that they have an audience of like-minded fellows. My gratitude for these passionate people is endless. They understand the solitary creation of writing as an art, and their support is humbling, sustaining, and imperative.

It’s fair to say that authors spend just as much time promoting their books as they do writing them. On average, each of my books took two years to produce, and that’s about the same amount of time I’ve dedicated to book promotion. It takes time to get the word out that a book exists in the first place, and getting to readers is not something that happens overnight; it’s a process, a build that feels like an uphill climb with countless stops along the way. One cannot do it alone. It takes a village, and much is furthered when an author takes the time to compare notes with those who have gone before them.

Which brings me back to the connections worth celebrating made from being a writer. I will now combine a radio host, an author, and a particular outfit dedicated to championing the literary arts to illustrate a case in point:

Bobbie Jean Bell has enjoyed a long career as the co-host of The Writers Block show on LA Talk Radio, which you can access from their online website. It has been a high honor, over the years, for me to appear on the show three times. Sadly, Jim Christina, Bobbie Jean’s charismatic, one-of a kind co-host of many years, died this past year. With continued commitment and touching sensitivity, Bobbie Jean Bell took the show into her own hands in honor of Jim, and rebranded the show, Rendezvous with a Writer, which airs every Thursday night on LA Talk-Radio. https://www.latalkradio.com/content/rendezvous-writer

Johnnie Berhard is the author of four gorgeous novels. She currently lives in Mississippi, and maintains a strong rapport with her native Texas. Looking back now, I cannot recall how I first crossed paths with this extraordinary writer, but I can report I met her in person at The Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Weekend in Jefferson, Texas in 2020– or was it 2018? I think it was both, but I digress. Let’s just say the fruits of coming to know Johnnie Bernhard are endless. It has been my pleasure to feature Johnnie’s work here on my blogsite. In a minute, I’ll tell you how Johnnie fits into this, but while I’ve got you, look into Johnnie Here: http://johnniebernhardauthor.com/bio

The Catholic Literary Arts is an outfit that conducts itself in the highest manner. Their mission, as stated on their website ( https://www.catholicliteraryarts.org/) is this: “Catholic Literary Arts exists to provide a welcoming home for people of all faiths and goodwill to learn, to improve writing skills, to meet fellow writers and publishers, and to enjoy spiritual and intellectual formation in the great literary traditions of Western civilization.”

How the aforementioned entities collided with yours truly now delighted to be right in the middle is this: I had the pleasure of watching author Johnnie Bernhard teach a virtual class on the mechanics of writing fiction for The Catholic Literary Arts, and in later talking with her about the endless merits of such an important forum, Johnnie introduced me to Sarah Cortez, in the hope she and I would explore common ground. We did. Our common ground is this: Sarah Cortez is the president and founder of The Catholic Literary Arts, and I have much to say about the art of launching a book! Ms. Cortez took me seriously when I told her it would be my honor to teach a class for her noble organization. I am enthusiastic to report I will do just this on Tuesday, September 27th at 7:00 CST. Here is the link to register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/363439757097

And because Bobbie Jean Bell invited me to be a guest on Rendezvous with a Writer from 6:00PM to 6:50 PST on Thursday, September 15, to talk about books and writing, we will also be talking about my virtual class on Preparing to Launch a Book!

This is what I meant when I said I celebrate the surprising connections made from years of being a writer. The magical alchemy that results from staying the course is the gift that keeps on giving!

I hope you’ll join me on Rendezvous with a Writer on Thursday, September 15th ( link above) and that you’ll register for the class and tell your friends about my virtual class with The Catholic Literary Arts where I share all I know about preparing to launch a book!~

The Butterfly Bruises by Palmer Smith

ABOUT THE BUTTERFLY BRUISES 

Smith’s debut collection consists of 80 poems and several short stories. It is a meditation on miscommunication, childhood, Northeastern vs. Southern American culture, family, nature vs. technology, and the imagination of the introvert.

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“From sonnets to somnambulance, from algae to oxytocin, from manatees to Manhattan, Smith rides the riptides of memory’s fictions and frictions in this prolific debut. The Butterfly Bruises is a gem mine of poems and stories that write through grief and growing up, personal and planetary survival, with words rugged and glistening like seashell shards.”

-Poetry Critic and Scholar, Professor Robert Dewhurst 

Meet the Author

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Having grown up in NYC and the Southeast, Palmer is presently an MA student at The University of Virginia. Read More

Claire Fullerton’s Reviews > The Butterfly Bruises

The Butterfly Bruises by Palmer Smith

The Butterfly Bruises
by Palmer Smith (Goodreads Author)
Claire Fullerton‘s review  

An assembly of deep probing, masterfully crafted prose and poetry for the discerning reader. The tone is insightful, the use of language impressively beyond the pale. Thought provoking and at times seemingly personal and confessional, the contents of Palmer Smith’s The Butterfly Bruises is breathtaking as her subjects range from a mirror reflection to the death of the family dog to musings on how butterflies survive in winter. This is a book to savor; extraordinary, creative writing that reads as a series of vignettes written from a fresh perspective. A list of eleven discussion questions at the book’s end for book clubs and readers will prompt your powers of reflection, and there is much to reflect upon in this resonant, meditative book! I thoroughly enjoyed it and will certainly revisit its pages.

Meet Palmer Smith

Passionate about writing and poetry, Palmer 

is a current English MA student.

Her poetry and short stories have appeared in:

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Refresh Magazine

The Crime Yard

Newark Library Literary Journal

The Online Journal for Person-Centered Dermatology

Ninshar Arts

Opal Literary

Sea Maven Magazine 

Soul Talk Magazine 
Calm Down Magazine 

For Women Who Roar

A New Ullster Magazine

Poethead: The Irish Poetry Journal

Potted Purple Magazine 

Push Up Daisies Magazine

Level: deepsouth 

The Remington Review

The Scissortail Quarterly… amongst many others.

​

Her poetry was recently praised by the CFO of Garden and Gun Magazine. 

The Butterfly Bruises is her first published collection of work.

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Butterfly Bruises

https://www.thebutterflybruisesbook.com/

Multiple Author Book Giveaway Party All Weekend!

Book Giveaway!

The moderators behind the wildly popular Facebook Book Page, Tattered Page Book Club are throwing a party today and tomorrow, and it’s a great way to discover new authors and books! A group of authors were invited to introduce themselves by sharing a bit about their book then instructing readers on how to enter to win!

I’m giving aways an author signed, print version of my 4th novel, Little Tea. Little Tea is actually a character whose real name is Thelonia Winfrey. The story takes place in the Deep South ( because I grew up in Memphis and never tire of singing the South’s praises) and concerns those long-lasting friendships formed in youth that see us through a lifetime. I began writing Little Tea with the desire to capture the way women relate to each other when they’ve known each other forever: the sense of humor, insider’s language, and secrets we THINK we keep, although, as we all know, with women friends, there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide! The story of Little Tea takes place in 3 places: Como, Mississippi, Greer’s Ferry Lake in Heber Springs, Arkansas, and Memphis. It’s a Southern family saga in that it depicts the influence and power of one’s family.

This is the link that will take you to the party! https://lnkd.in/gwQUKF7A

Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan

Release Day!

Image of Once Upon a Wardrobe

Author(s): Patti Callahan

Release Date: October 19, 2021

Publisher/Imprint: Harper Muse

Reviewed by: Claire Fullerton for the New York Journal of Books

Once Upon a Wardrobe tells the story of the inspirational threads author C. S. Lewis wove together in his 1950 fantasy novel for children, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Author Patti Callahan unfurls the story through the eyes of siblings in two timeframes, maintaining a sense of awestruck wonder, while revealing the inner workings of the man behind the magic.

The story opens in idyllic, 1950 Worcestershire, England, at the bedside of eight-year-old George Devonshire, who suffers from a congenital heart condition that in no way dampens his shinning spirit. A voracious reader with an unstoppable imagination, George tasks his 17-year-old sister, Megs, a mathematics student on scholarship at Oxford University, with tracking down the university’s English literature tutor, author C. S. Lewis, to ask where the land of Narnia came from in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Although she loves her brother to the point of no refusal, at first Megs balks and tells George that C. S. Lewis’s famed book is mere fantasy, but reconsiders when George says with heartbreaking sincerity, “I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the world is held together by stories, not all those equations you stare at.” And so begins the journey of discovery that changes Megs by widening her focus from the neat grid of numbers and equations to the realm of uncharted imagination—all in the name of selfless love for her brother.

Snow is on the ground in the month of December when Megs follows C. S. Lewis to his house after one of his Oxford lectures. It takes her two returns to muster the courage to knock on the door, yet when she is discovered hiding on the grounds by C. S. Lewis’s elder brother, Warnie, she’s invited into the brothers’ home to meet the great author and is received with open arms.

The magnanimous C. S. Lewis, known as Jack, understands the question Megs asks regarding Narnia on behalf of George, yet sets about answering it in a protracted way that requires multiple return visits. Rather than succinctly telling her where Narnia came from, Jack encourages Megs to form her own conclusion as he incrementally tells her the story of his own life. Jack says to Megs, “Who knows when exactly a story begins? Probably at the start of time. But maybe Narnia had its first seeds in a land that my brother and I imagined as children in our attic,” and adds, “Perhaps I was training myself to be a novelist.”

There are myriad mysterious influences that spawn a novelist’s inspiration, and Callahan suggests many with a gentle hand and deep wisdom through Once Upon a Wardrobe’s characters. With regard to the importance of reading, Jack tells Megs, “Every life should be guided and enriched by one book or another, don’t you agree? Certainly, every formative moment in my life has been enriched or informed by a book. You must be very careful about what you choose to read—unless you want to be stuck in your opinions and hard-boiled thoughts, you must be very careful.” 

Because Jack suggests that Megs listen to his stories then go home and write them down from memory, each time Megs returns to the bedside of George, she reads from her notebook and, in time, surprises herself by developing the finesse of a seasoned storyteller. The series of stories she tells is fascinating in that they parlay the background and maturity of a world class author as he navigates the ambiguity of life’s tribulations. From the building stories she tells George of Lewis’s life, Megs realizes, “George’s imagination is taking him places while I ramble on about stories and facts about Mr. Lewis. George takes something of this world and travels to another as if the story world and the real world run right alongside each other.”

At 17, Megs centers her life on education and her beloved brother, but when she is befriended by Padraig Cavender, an Oxford student who hails from Northern Ireland, the wheels are set in motion to fulfill George’s only wish for Christmas, which is inspired by C. S. Lewis’s popular book, and results in a thrilling adventure to Ireland that illuminates the answer to George’s initial question.  

The broadly researched Once Upon a Wardrobe is written in enchanting language apropos to the setting’s time and place and regales the reader with little known tidbits pertaining to the inspiration behind The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. With elegant prose, Callahan invites the reader to intuit creativity’s source. Once Upon a Wardrobe is a captivating story for all ages; a standalone book combining fact, and fantasy, and its peek behind the curtain crafting is an important adjunct to C. S. Lewis’s Narnia chronicles.

Claire Fullerton’s most recent novels are Little Tea and multiple award winner, Mourning Dove. Honors include the Independent Book Publishers Book Award Silver Medal for Regional Fiction, the Reader’s Favorite for Southern Fiction Bronze Medal and various other literary awards.

https://linktr.ee/cffullerton

Book Introduction: Boop and Eve’s Road Trip by Mary Helen Sheriff!

Boop and Eve's Road Trip: A Novel

Book Description:

Eve Prince is done—with college, with her mom, with guys, and with her dream of fashion design. But when her best friend goes MIA, Eve must gather together the broken threads of her life in order to search for her.

When Eve’s grandmother, Boop, a retiree dripping with Southern charm, finds out about the trip, she—desperate to see her sister, and also hoping to alleviate Eve’s growing depression—hijacks her granddaughter’s road trip. Boop knows from experience that healing Eve will require more than flirting lessons and a Garlic Festival makeover. Nevertheless, Boop is frustrated when her feeble efforts yield the same failure that her sulfur-laced sip from the Fountain of Youth wrought on her age. She knows that sharing the secret that’s haunted her for sixty years might be the one thing that will lessen Eve’s growing depression—but she also fears that if she reveals it, she’ll lose her family and her own hard-won happiness.

2020 American Fiction Awards Winner in Coming of Age
2021 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal Finalist
2021 Eric Hoffer Category Finalist
Buzzfeed’s 12 Most Anticipated Books of Fall
Popsugar’s “The 21 Most Exciting New Releases Hitting Bookshelves Throughout October”
Parade’s “Highly Anticipated Books of Fall”
Frolic’s “Ten Books Perfect for Your Book Club”

“A touching intergenerational romp through the coastal South.”
—Kirkus Reviews“

Endorsements:

Boop and Eve’s Road Trip will touch your heart. A beautiful and emotional story of sisterhood, family, and friendship. From the first page, Mary Helen Sheriff’s lush and lyrical writing draws you in. Fans of Patti Callahan Henry and Kristy Woodson Harvey will adore this debut.”

–Kerry Lonsdale, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Last Summer“

Boop and Eve’s Road Trip is warm, witty, and wise, with characters I loved and characters I loved to hate. Filled with twists and turns and many a bump in the road, this trip is a delight from beginning to end.”
–Han Nolan, National Book Award-winning author of Dancing on the Edge

Meet Mary Helen Sheriff

When I was a kid I wanted to be a model, an actress, a teacher, and a writer. Lack of height, smoking good looks, and talent lost the first two of those professions for me, but I’ve had the pleasure of exploring the latter two.

I’ve spent 14 years in classrooms teaching elementary school, middle school, college, and professionals. 

During this time, I’ve also had the pleasure of dabbling in writing for children, teenagers, and adults in a variety of forms including fiction, poetry, blogs, and nonfiction. I even spent several summers immersed in an MFA program in children’s literature at Hollins University (which I suppose isn’t exactly dabbling).

I’m taking a break from the classroom to concentrate on my writing. My debut southern women’s fiction, Boop and Eve’s Road Trip, was published on October 6, 2020

Great E-Book Deal!

Ebook on sale for the first time ever! Boop and Eve’s Road Trip was just nominated for a Zibby Award for best opening sentence: “Boop loved her daughter to the moon and back, but Justine had a way of sucking the joy out of a room faster than a vampire bat.”
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Blog
Mary Helen Sheriff on WordPress!
Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys August Book Club Selection!
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Introducing The Desideratum Podcast!

Legions of authors adore Narrator Theresa Bakken, who produces and hosts The Desideratum Podcast. The ultimate in author-talk happens on Desideratum, and I’m excited to share that I just got booked to record for an appearance on this wonderful Podcast in late August. Watch this space! Desideratum is available now on Anchor, Spotify, Apple, Google and more! Now also carried by Authors on the Air Global Radio Network!

Desideratum is a Latin word meaning things that are desired as essential. Longing for stories to share and wishing for moments with gifted storytellers inspired this podcast. Each episode features a recorded short story or excerpt from an author’s latest book or audiobook, and a conversation with the writer about their craft and what they believe is essential. Tune in to hear an author you love, or to find your next favorite storyteller.

Meet Theresa Bakken, a multi-talented Podcast host and audiobook narrator!

Follow Theresa Bakken here on WordPress! Theresa Bakken Narrator, Blog at WordPress.com.

And here’s a sample of Theresa Bakken’s audiobook narration! https://www.amazon.com/The-Storm-Beyond-the-Tides/dp/B08NTXG7VV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EMKX6JKFHCO&keywords=the+storm+beyond+the+tides+by+jonathan+cullen&qid=1612714947&sprefix=the+storm+beyond+the+tid%2Caudible%2C211&sr=8-1

You can email Theresa here for inquiries about her work!

Email tbnarrator@gmail.com to get started on your audiobook.

Little Tea!

I woke up this morning to the surprise of this on Goodreads.

This, I think, is proof of the scales balancing in that Little Tea was released at the beginning of the pandemic, which meant the book tour primarily in the Deep South that I had scheduled was canceled. I had ten events scheduled, back-to-back, in three Southern states including radio, bookstores, and television. The cancelation left me, as well as legions of authors, not only disappointed, but baffled about how to get the word out about our books. I owe endless gratitude to WordPress Bloggers, book clubs, podcasts, libraries, Facebook book pages and book groups. ZOOM and StreamYard have been phenomenal venues.

Below is Landis Wade of the Charlotte Reader’s Podcast.

Southern Culture … Old Friendships … Family Tragedy

One phone call from Renny to come home and “see about” the capricious Ava and Celia Wakefield decides to overlook her distressful past in the name of friendship.

For three reflective days at Renny’s lake house in Heber Springs, Arkansas, the three childhood friends reunite and examine life, love, marriage, and the ties that bind, even though Celia’s personal story has yet to be healed. When the past arrives at the lake house door in the form of her old boyfriend, Celia must revisit the life she’d tried to outrun.

As her idyllic coming of age alongside her best friend, Little Tea, on her family’s ancestral grounds in bucolic Como, Mississippi unfolds, Celia realizes there is no better place to accept her own story than in this circle of friends who have remained beside her throughout the years. Theirs is a friendship that can talk any life sorrow into a comic tragedy, and now that the racial divide in the Deep South has evolved, Celia wonders if friendship can triumph over history.

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Little Tea: Book of the Year by the Independent Authors Network: 2nd Place
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Reader’s Favorite: Gold Medal in Southern Fiction
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Summer Reading List: Deep South Magazine
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Top Shelf Magazine Award Winner
Contemporary & Literary Novel Writing Contest | Chanticleer Book Reviews
First Place in the Somerset Awards
Zoom Meeting with The Pulpwood Queens Book Club of Jackson, Mississippi . Little Tea was the August, 2020 Selection of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club!
And, if you want to hear my Southern accent, here is the video of the Beaufort, South Carolina Chapter of the Pulpwood Queens, who had me as a guest after they read Little Tea! The Pulpwood Queens Host Novelist Claire Fullerton, author of Little Tea – YouTube

Meggie Daly
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2021 Verified Purchase
Gosh, there were so many wonderful things about this book! I loved the protagonist’s voice, the sassy banter among the girlfriends, tackling hard family, marriage, and race issues. A subtle wisdom fanned out from the pages. Fullerton is an expert in backstory integration! Needless to say I went into mourning for a day or so after I finished the book–as I always do when I have to say goodbye to characters that I have loved!

Little Tea is available at online book outlets and book stores!

Little Tea (bookshop.org)

https://amzn.to/3hemNqD