Griffie World Happenings

Motherless Child - stories from a life
by Sarah Gordon Weathersby

Copyright © 2008

$ 17.99 Paperback
268 pages

ISBN: 978-0615212944

Opening the cover of Motherless Child - stories from a life is like arriving at Sarah’s home, where she welcomes you with that special brand of southern hospitality, invites you to sit down for a spell and have  a nice tall drink of ice tea while she tells you stories from her past.  Reading this book brought back memories from my own childhood of sitting in my grandmother’s parlor and having her tell us stories of life from yesteryear, while gently rocking back and forth in her rocking chair.  I could almost hear the creak of the floorboards as her chair went back and forth over that well worn track.

I tend to stick more with fiction reading than non-fiction, but as I was looking at the previews for potential review, Sarah Gordon Weathersby captured my attention.  The preview left me wanting to read more and to find out what happened to the people that I had already met through the pages of the preview.  Ms. Weathersby tells her life’s story in a very conversational style, inviting the reader to get to know her and her family in a very cozy manner.  She starts off with some of her earliest memories, which happen to be when she was two years old.  Being the youngest of 7 children of an Episcopalian minister, Sarah was both the pampered pet, and at the same time left to her own devices quite a bit because everyone was going in different directions all of the time.  One of her earliest memories was of being a two year old at Christmas time.

    My brothers enjoyed participating in the fantasy for me, and that year they came home on Christmas Eve wanting me out of the way so they could wrap gifts, told me I had to go to bed because they heard sleigh bells in the sky, and sent me off to bed clutching my favorite rag-doll, Sally. The next morning, there were animal footprints through the house, that my brothers said were made by the reindeer. I found out years later they had dragged the dog through the dirt, and walked him  through the house.

 Can’t you just imagine the boys dragging that poor dog through the house to make the footprints?  Although Ms. Weathersby starts with some of her earliest memories, and the book ends with the most recent, Motherless Child  is not written in a strictly chronological manner.  She starts off to tell you about one point in her life, and in order to help you understand will embark on another story which provides the back story to the fabric of her life.  Through the telling of her life, Ms. Weathersby also provides the reader with a keen perspective of history as it was happening from her point of view.  We see the major events, such as John F. and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations, as well as Martin Luther King’s through her eyes and her observations of her family and friends to the same events.

Motherless Child was written to give her daughter Teal, whom she had to put up for adoption 40 years before, the story of her life and why she couldn’t keep her baby.  The agony over the decision to do so, and the hole that left in her heart for all of those years after, come shining through the words on the page.   We feel the pain of separation along with Sarah, as well as her inability to forgive herself for having made that decision and how it colors her life from that point on.

Through Sarah’s eyes, we see her awakening to the division of people by the color of their skin, how her mother developed her sense of pride of self and what she could accomplish, and how it felt to go from an all black school to a racially integrated one.  Through the pages of Motherless Child  I came to admire Ms. Weathersby a great deal.  No matter what she set her mind to accomplish, she did.  After choosing to attend a university which only had six black students in her first year, she decided to learn German and ultimately studied abroad for a year in Germany.  She spoke the language so fluently that when she confronted a professor about the lack of black faculty on the staff, she was then offered a position at the school as long as she completed the necessary graduate work.  While she chose not to follow that course of action, she later decided to throw her hat into the extremely male dominated technology ring at a time when it was just starting to put its name on the map.  Working myself in the technology arena, I am well aware that it is still male dominated, but far less so than when Ms. Weathersby joined the ranks, and yet she continued to excel in her field.  I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she might not succeed at anything she tried, and so she did succeed.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the cover of the book.  It is very simple in concept as it appears to be family photos on a mantle, yet in its simplicity conveys to the reader a sense of what the book is about.  While Motherless Child - stories from a life was written for her long, lost daughter, and was extremely cathartic for the author to be able to tell her story, it has a much broader appeal.  My husband an I recently attended a production of the musical version of The Color Purple, based on the novel by Alice Walker, and I feel that the appeal of Motherless Child mirrors the appeal of The Color Purple.  Through the eyes of Sarah Gordon Weathersby, we see and experience a slice of life from a very intimate perspective.  This book delivers laughter and tears as we experience Sarah’s life with her, and leaves the reader feeling uplifted.  Bravo.

Originally reviewed for the Lulu Book Review.
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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Gardner-Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

I’m not really a believer in resolutions.  The word resolution to me is like the phrase, “I’ll try.”  When someone says, “I’ll try,” what they really mean is “don’t hold your breath.”  It’s like a built in excuse for failure.  With “I’ll try”, if I succeed, then I’m the hero, if I fail, well, I never promised anything.  A resolution tends to work the same way.  If I make a resolution, the first failure “breaks” the resolution, so I’m off the hook.  While this is the time of year to reflect on what has happened during the course of the year and make resolutions for the new year, I tend to set goals.  I like goals because you can set interim goals that help you achieve the long term goal.  And goals don’t break.  If I fail at an attempt, the goal doesn’t go away.  I pick myself up, dust off, and take another run at it.

At the start of 2008, I had definite plans in place.  I created a list of goals to accomplish and was ready to tackle them.  Well, as is the way in life, things did not go exactly according to plan.  Looking back, I have still accomplished the majority of the goals that I set and I feel content with my accomplishments for the year.

2008 saw the distribution of Misfit McCabe, which was a very proud accomplishment for me.  To actually hold a bound copy of my work for the first time was fantastic and seeing it on Amazon.com and other online stores was even better.  One of my major goals for 2008 was to develop marketing materials for Misfit McCabe and to start the marketing effort.  So, I have bookmarks, handout cards, wrap sheets, book review blurbs, give-away copies, in other words, the standard marketing fare.  I wasn’t satisfied with my efforts on that score because I wanted something that would really help promote the book itself by giving it more visibility.  With the limited budget of all POD authors, I was trying to think of someway to get my book seen by a larger audience of my target readership.  The light bulb finally went on in October and I was hard at work ironing out all of the details for Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?

I love those Eureka! moments as an author.  As soon as I had the idea, I knew it was the one for me.  The Lulu Book Review kindly offered to help me bring visibility of this marketing concept to a wider group of people, you can check out what it entails by checking out the WITW is MMC? tab.  This also opened a few more avenues as far as marketing materials.  I have posters which have become a part of my marketing scheme for sending to schools and will be soon going to local bookstores and libraries with them.

One of the unexpected and exciting things to happen during 2008 was to start reviewing books for the Lulu Book Review.  I enjoy reading other authors work and reviewing it gives me the opportunity to help encourage other POD authors with their writing quest as well as helping to bring visibility to those works.  I also get to read things that I may not otherwise have run across.  And it keeps me writing.

Another unexpected happening in 2008 was an invitation to participate in the Pearson Prize Book Award contest for 2009 put on by the Learning for a Cause organization. To me it is an honor to have Misfit McCabe invited to participate in the contest, especially since invitiations are issued based on students requests. The winners for this contest are selected by a focus group of 100 high school students, which means that my work will be read by all of the members of the selection group. For me, as an author, it doesn’t get better than that.

One of my goals for 2008 is currently in progress and while I will not meet the original target I set for myself for completion, I will extend this one into the early months of 2009, which is to write the sequel to Misfit McCabe.  What is really nice is that I do have a readership which is clamoring for the sequel (ok, so it’s a small clamor, but clamor none the less), so that is spurring me on to completion.

As far as 2009 is concerned, right now, I am not making any new goals until I finish the ones I have, except I do know that I will be starting another writing project once the sequel has been completed.  Since I have several waiting in the wings, I just don’t know which one that will be as yet.  It’ll depend on which one grabs my attention when I am ready to move on it.
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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Gardner-Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

Bob the Dragon Slayer
by Harry E. Gilleland, Jr.

Copyright © 2005

$ 9.98 Paperback
$ 3.33 E-book
106 pages
ISBN: 9781411633155

 It’s time to let out your inner child and delight it with a fairy tale.  Fairy tales were something that as a child I couldn’t get enough of.  A trip into the land of fantasy where there were kings and queens, witches and wizards, beautiful damsels and handsome knights, and where trouble lurked around every corner.  Fairy tales were wonderful because good prevailed and evil always lost in the end, so you could be deliciously scared about what was happening, secure in the knowledge that the hero would prevail in the end.  Bob the Dragon Slayer brings this storybook format back to us, and this time, the fairy tale is for the adult.  Harry E. Gilleland, Jr. brings his unique sense of humor to us in this fairy tale, and it is a tale that will have you chuckling, chortling, and laughing out loud.  Mr. Gilleland begins the tale in classic style.

    Long, long ago, in a place far, far away there was an age of chivalry, a time of royalty, of gallant knights and fair ladies who were always getting themselves into distress and needing to be saved (seems like a clever dating technique to me, but whatever), of wizards and magic, and of course, of dragons needing to be slain.  It was a land of castles, fine clothing and jewels, great feasts, and live dinner entertainment with much dancing and music making. . .but not for Bob.

Bob, a peasant lad, is traveling the land just trying to keep himself fed through odd jobs and handouts.  He had no hope of glory, and luxury is something he can not even imagine.   Until he arrives in a valley where a dragon is terrorizing the people, and the king has declared that whichever knight slays the dragon will have his daughters hand in marriage.  Bob, being curious, decides to scope out the problem of the dragon, never dreaming of fighting the dragon himself.  But then he meets Stephen, self-proclaimed wizard extraordinaire, who has just graduated from wizarding school.  Stephen tells Bob that he will help him slay the dragon and gives him the brother sword to Excalibur, whom Bob had never heard of.  Since he is the first to wield the sword it is his duty to name the sword, so Bob names the sword Bruce, because he has always liked that name.  Armed with Bruce, Bob goes into battle against the dragon and slays the dragon.  When Princess Wendie realizes that she will have to marry the peasant, Bob, she whines to her father that she can not do it.  Lawyers get involved and it is determined that Bob is not eligible to win the hand of the princess in marriage, because the terms of the proclamation state “whatever gallant knight slew the dragon”, and Bob is merely a peasant.

   Bob turned to Stephen and implored, “Do something!  Use some magic!  They are robbing me of my future!”
   Stephen sadly shook his head.  “Even wizards are powerless against lawyers and their fine print.  I can be of no aid to you.”

Bob decides at that point that he will have to become a knight and goes off in search of a damsel in distress to save.  When none of the damsels in distress will let him save them because he is not a knight, Bob changes his plan to earning wealth by slaying dragons.  In his travels seeking out dragons to slay, Bob meets Lord Wilfred, whom he quickly dubs Willie.  Lord Wilfred is so relieved that Bob slew the dragon so he didn’t have to make the attempt that he brought Bob back to his castle and teaches him to be a knight.  After Bob leaves Willie, he rescues Lady Katherine, who is Willie’s fiancée and travels with her back to her father’s castle.  Katherine’s father turns out to be Edward, the Duke of Westmorland who has sworn to avenge the death of his best friend, the Duke of Westbury and rightful heir to the throne.  A few more twists in the plot has Bob leading the army put together by the Duke of Westmorland into battle against the King, brandishing Bruce astride his faithful steed, Spot.  This story has all of the fairy tale elements present and is delivered in a delectable tongue in cheek manner. 

The only modification that I would make to the book would be to remove the prologue.  In it Mr. Gilleland has the McClair family begging the patriarch to tell them a tale and he obliges with the tale of Bob. It is not necessary to the book and doesn’t add any value to the work.  Let the book start in the classic style of “Long, long ago. . . ” and carry on from there.   Bob the Dragon Slayer is a very quick read that will leave you smiling at the end.  Though written as a fairy tale, this is definitely not a story for children as there are references to Kate’s ample cleavage as well as other more adult themed comments which are scattered throughout the text.  So, talk to your inner child and let it experience Bob the Dragon Slayer.

Originally reviewed for the Lulu Book Review
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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Gardner-Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

Will and the Soaring Seed
by Devin Boone
Copyright © 2008
$ 13.99 Paperback
$  5.99 E-book
38 pages, full color interior

I first ran across Will and the Soaring Seed while reading some posts on the Lulu Promote Your Book Forum.  I was not actually looking for books to review, but doing some research prior to drafting a post promoting the Where in the World is Misfit McCabe? project, which is featured here on the Lulu Book Review under the WITW is MMC tab.  As I was reading through the multitude of posts plugging authors’ work, I read a post by author and illustrator Devin Boone and his description captured me enough to click the link to take a look at the children’s book he was promoting.  I was glad that I did.

The cover alone made me smile because it is bright and happy.  It draws the reader in and makes them want to dive inside and start turning pages.  Will and the Soaring Seed starts off with the magical seed busily soaring around the world, enjoying the sights and sounds and moving on.  Then the seed notices the town of Spirit and is attracted to it because it feels special to the seed.  As the seed moves through the town of Spirit, it sees several of the townspeople carrying out their jobs that make Spirit a better place to live.  Ultimately, the seed spies Will and knows that there is something special about Will because of his enthusiasm and love of school.  The following is the description of when will finally meets the seed.

     Will could not believe his eyes.  He had never seen such brilliant colors.  The soaring seed was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen.

Being a former pre-school teacher, I feel that Will and the Soaring Seed is perfect for this age group.  I know that is one that we would have read again and again in some of the classes that I taught.  The illustrations are bright and colorful and friendly-looking.  Having a mother who is an artist, I was interested in how Mr. Boone achieved the effects in his illustrations.  To me, they had the look and feel of torn paper art collage, called Chigiri-e in Japanese style artwork, but with something a little different to them.  Torn paper art collage is an art form that has been used in several children’s books.  An example is author/artist Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a very popular book among the pre-school set. 

I asked Mr. Boone how he achieved the effects and his answer was enlightening.  Being self-published, and having the story already conceived and written, Mr. Boone needed illustrations.  Not having the budget to hire a professional illustrator and having some artistic talent, he decided to illustrate the work himself.  He also utilized a software program so that once the artwork was scanned to his computer, he manipulated some of the colors and then applied a cubism filter which gives the artwork that consistent, slightly blurry aspect.  This was done in his own words, “. . .to cover up any of my errors or deficiencies as a make-shift illustrator.“  Some adults might find the artwork to be a little fuzzy, which is caused by the cubism filter that has been applied.  Pre-schoolers, on the other hand, will more often than not, view the fuzziness as softer and friendlier.

Will and the Soaring Seed is definitely a work of love on the part of the author who dedicates the book to his son and wife.  I believe this is a first time effort by this author and we can look for more stories to come in the future from him.  If you have a pre-schooler on your Christmas list, Will and the Soaring Seed would make a great present.

Originally reviewed for the Lulu Book Review
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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Gardner-Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

Size 12 Is Not Fat
A Heather Wells Mystery
by Meg Cabot

Copyright © 2006
$ 12.95 Paperback
$   8.40 Kindle Edition
$ 23.35 Library Binding

368 pages
ISBN: 978-0060525118

I have been trying to get an opportunity to read some of Meg Cabot’s work.  She is a prolific writer and I have always heard good things about her books, but haven’t been able to find the time to read any of them, while trying to get Misfit McCabe launched, write the sequel, read material and write reviews for the Lulu Book Review, and oh, there’s that little thing called the full time day job (which usually ends up being full time and a half).  With a title like Size 12 Is Not Fat, I decided that I had to start there because the title just grabbed me.  For someone who struggles daily battling the weight issue, I was looking forward to reading a book with a heroine who was not built along the lines of a toothpick.  Not that toothpicks are bad, but they are much more prevalent between the covers of our favorite books than they are walking the streets.  Also, I figured that with only 3 books in the series so far, I could catch up much more quickly than with The Princess Diaries series, which is getting ready to launch book number 10.  Plus, I like mysteries and the bulk of my “for pleasure” reading is light weight mysteries. 

On page one, Ms. Cabot had me.  The story opens with Heather Wells in a dressing room struggling into a new pair of jeans she wants to purchase.  In another dressing room, a girl with a voice like a chipmunk inquires as to whether there is a size smaller than zero.  Heather immediately dubs chipmunk voice “Less than Zero” and continues to refer to her by that name.  I could feel the giggle starting from my toes on that one.  To come up with a character named Less Than Zero and take a dig at vanity sizing at the same time was brilliant.  For that reason alone, I was ready to dive into the life of Heather Wells and see where I ended up. 

The character of Heather Wells is modeled after Britney Spears in a what if fashion.  What if a pop sensation lost her recording contract, her boyfriend, gained a dress size or two, and her mother ran off with her manager to another country stealing all of her money, while her father was in jail?  Oh, and because she was performing for much of her teenage years, she didn’t have any formal education to fall back on when everything blew up.  Heather somehow wangles a job working in a primarily freshman residence hall for New York College, and lives a couple blocks away with her ex-boyfriend’s brother, Cooper Cartwright.  She helps organize and keep track of Cooper’s expenses and does his billing, for which he lets her live in his 3 story pink stucco brownstone in the Village.  The back drop of the residence hall is filled with realistic detail which comes from Ms. Cabot having worked in a New York freshman residence hall after graduating with an art degree, and finding no jobs that would pay the bills.  Like Heather Wells, one of the main draws to the job was the offer of free tuition, so she could get a degree in something that would enable her to earn a living.

The character Heather Wells is portrayed as a 28 year old of arrested development and self-esteem issues due to the circumstances surrounding her formative years.  Her maturity level is much younger than her years, and is closer to the level of the freshman residents of Fischer Hall.  As we have seen through the eyes of the media and all of the attention on Britney Spears, that Britney certainly does not operate at the maturity level her years would lead you to expect.  Neither does Heather Wells.  She has a major, adolescent crush on her landlord, boss, and ex-boyfriend’s brother, Cooper and fantasizes about him throughout the book, but is unable to communicate her feelings for him in adult manner.  She also doesn’t seem to know how to handle the attentions of Jordan Cartwright, the ex-boyfriend, who keeps coming around trying to reconcile with her, which confuses Heather because he just announced his engagement to someone else.

Against this background, the female students of Fischer Hall seem to be dying off at the rate of one a week, doing something so unfeminine as elevator surfing.  Heather is especially suspicious because it would appear that the girls were elevator surfing alone, which never happens, and the girls in question would seem to be the least likely people on the planet to take up elevator surfing.  And of paramount importance to Heather, one of the girls liked Ziggy, and no one who liked Ziggy, the uncoolest cartoon character of all, would EVER elevator surf.  Of course, when no one else thought that there was anything to investigate, Heather decides to investigate events on her own.  Move over Nancy Drew, Heather’s on the case now and she doesn’t like anyone killing her girls.

Size 12 Is Not Fat is an easy and fun read.  Meg Cabot draws colorful characters which surround Heather and provide her with a sense of family, albeit an odd one.  Through the dint of not being able to let go of the mystery surrounding the deaths of the freshman women of Fischer Hall, Heather ultimately prevails in solving the mystery, and in the process nearly gets Jordan Cartwright killed as well as herself, but learns something about herself along the way.

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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Gardner-Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

More Than Dust in the Wind
by Donald James Parker
Copyright © 2008
$12.95 Paperback
$ 5.00 E-book
208 pages
ISBN: 9780615214375

As a band member in high school every year I would attend band camp.  While there are several memories that stand out in my mind from that time, the one thing that I could count on, aside from the inter-school rivalries that flourished, was that at least one night during the week long camp an argument would errupt over which religious denomination was better, Catholic or Protestant.  Of course, at band camp the discussion usually included a third denomination of Mormonism thrown in just to keep the discussion lively.  When I started reading More Than Dust in the Wind, these discussions came flooding back to me in full force, to the point where I could almost smell the camp fire as it slowly burned down to embers.  These heated discussions would invariably take place at night and were usually ended abruptly by the playing of taps, which signaled it was time to go to our cabins.

Lance (Bambi) Masterson is the captain of his college basketball team, Dakota State University, and the story opens in the last few seconds of the game that could send his team back to the locker room for the season, or on to the national championships for Division III colleges in Kansas City, MO.  Bambi is able to execute a risky play as the ball leaves his hands just prior to the buzzer and the shot is good.  In the aftermath of such an emotional win, Bambi’s first action is to rush to his cheerleader girlfriend, Lisa and propose marriage.  Since the cheerleaders are traveling with the team and they have a four hour bus ride home after the game, Bambi and Lisa start to discuss their future together.  Things between them begin to disintegrate when Bambi brings up the question of whether he will leave his Catholic church or whether Lisa will leave her Protestant church once they are married.  By the end of the bus ride, the two are no longer talking to each other and Lisa gets a ride with one of her friends, refusing to even say good-bye to Bambi or let him know of the change in plans.

During the week as they are getting ready to play in the national championships, Lisa continues to freeze out Bambi and makes herself completely unavailable to him.  He figures that he will be able to make her talk to him once they are at the national championships because there won’t be anywhere else for her to go.  The cheerleaders will have to stay with the team.  What Bambi doesn’t count on is a woman’s capacity for shopping at malls, especially malls that they have never been to before.  Of course, that would be some and not all women, as I am a confirmed point and click shopper and can actually break out in a rash if you keep me at a mall for an extended period of time.  Bambi’s friend Donnie invites Bambi to attend a Protestant church service since they won their game against the number one team and will be in Kansas City on Sunday.  Bambi starts off by negatively comparing the church to his home church and is critical of the way the service is being handled.  As the service continues, he experiences a change of heart and feels that the minister is speaking directly to him.  By the end of the service, Bambi views the differences between the religions in a very different light as he realizes that the important issue is to put God first and everything else will fall into line.

In his next game, playing some close town rivals for the opportunity to play in the finals, Bambi is injured and the team loses.  This is something that earlier would have been a bitter pill for Bambi to swallow and he would have been severely depressed and angry about the outcome.  He is oddly calm and can only think about getting the opportunity to talk to Lisa so he can straighten out the argument that has led to this estrangement.  Lisa is trying to get to him through the throng of people so that she can help shore him up because of the loss as she has done so many times in the past.  She is delighted to learn that he has determined that the Catholic doctrine is not important enough to keep them apart and that he will willingly attend her church with her. 

The second book in a series of five, More Than Dust in the Wind takes the reader through 30 years of life with Bambi & Lisa Masterson, through the good times, as well as the bad.  Donald James Parker includes those milestones in life that many people go through.  The agony of searching for a job and hoping that you find the right one, the loss of a child, the birth of another, career changes, dealing with cancer, and through it all keeping your faith strong.  In fact, on many levels, I find parallels in my own life.  My husband is in the midst of a career change after having served 20 years in the US Coast Guard, and is currently searching for a job, we lost a child during pregnancy, I lost my father to cancer, and yes, have faced all of these trials daily working to keep my faith strong.  Perhaps it is because of these parallels that I felt that Mr. Parker tried to put too much into one book for the length.  Thirty years is a lot of time to cover within 208 pages, and because of that there is a feeling of skimming the surface rather than getting into the depth of the characters and situations.

There are a few weaknesses in More Than Dust in the Windthat are challenging to read through.  Mr. Parker, in his passion for trying to get his message across, at times becomes a little didactic with his writing in a way that I feel harms the flow of the story.  For example, when Lisa and Bambi are debating the Catholicism vs. Protestantism question, there is a five page section of almost pure unadulterated dialog.  At this point in the story, the two of them are on a bus filled with exuberant basketball players who just won a very tight game at the last second to put them through to the round of national championship games, and yet there is no discussion of noise, running up and down the aisles, no creaking of the bus, and having been on team buses myself, no description of the smells that can be present.  No one’s sock or jock strap went sailing through the air to interrupt the conversation.  The dialog was taking place in a vacuum, which causes it to come across as preachy or sermonizing, and the entire conversation felt forced.  As a reader, I want to see the confusion on Bambi’s face as he is trying to sort through what Lisa is telling him.  I want to feel the cracked vinyl of the bus seat as an uncomfortable silence is forming as neither will back down from their position.  I believe that the message that Mr. Parker is trying to convey would come across much better by slowing down the pace and using more description interspersed with action.   I also feel that those times throughout the course of the story where the characters were experiencing grief were a little glossed over.  My impression was that Mr. Parker did not want to allow his characters to show too much grief as it might come across as lacking in faith.  Unfortunately, that caused the situations to come across as not realistic and painted the characters as being lacking in feeling, which I am sure was not the author’s intent.  An illustration of this is that when Lisa was hospitalized from being in a car accident, and had just learned that she lost the baby she was carrying, as soon as their tears were dried, Bambi is returning to work so that he can work with his team to get them ready for the game, and is doing so because Lisa insists that she doesn’t need a babysitter. 

Being the second book in the series, there are some references to situations which occurred in the first book, which is always the case when dealing with books in a series.  There is a need to provide some back story with the subsequent books in the series so that readers who pick up the series in the middle are not out to sea.  While Mr. Parker does provide some back story details that give insight to the character of Bambi and some of the situations that have caused him to be the man he is at the start of book 2, some items remain in question.  Why does Lance go by the name of Bambi?  I understand that it is a nickname, but it is sufficiently outside the normal realm for nicknames, that there should be some explanation as to why the character chooses to be called such an unusual name for a man.  Several times during the course of the story, Bambi refers to the Bulldogs of Victory and the Dogs of Victory compact.  It is obvious that this is something that is fully explained in the first book of the series, but with the number of references to the compact, there should be a modicum of explanation in the second book as well.  There is even a scene where Bambi determines that it is time to explain the compact to his daughter Maria, but does so outside the presence of the reader.  Other than those two exceptions, Mr. Parker does a nice job of dropping bits of information into the story which provide the back story information from the first book rather than giving it to us in summary style.

Despite some of the issues with More Than Dust in the Wind, Donald James Parker is a good solid writer.  The relating of the basketball games pulls the reader straight into story and the writing flows easily.  I especially enjoy his characterization of the relationship between Bambi and his daughter Maria.  Their interactions with one another, even down to the corny phrases that can irritate a young teen-age daughter, rings true.  One of the things that Mr. Parker does the best is painting the picture of Bambi as a man facing his own mortality, unwilling to give up, but fighting to the bitter end.  My own father carried that same attitude toward life and death, and it took cancer 33 years and five iterations to finally bring him down.  Even then, he played tennis the week before he died as he simply refused to let the illness get the better of him.  Parker builds a nemesis, Angela Hawkins, for Maria to give the counterpoint to her father’s fight against illness.  Maria and Angela are considered the best two runners in the state, but Maria loses to Angela year after year, which just strengthens Maria’s resolve to beat her the next time out.  The culmination of this rivalry comes at a time when Bambi is so ill, he is no longer able to walk, but continues to support his daughter at the track meets in a wheel chair.  The following passage brings tears to my eyes.

     The voice over the loudspeaker said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I now direct your attention to the head of the track where Maria Masterson, winner of the 3200-meter and the 1600-meter race in a state record of four minutes and fifty-nine seconds is taking her victory lap.  Due to the number of events that we have to run through here in the state meet, we normally do not permit victory laps, but this is a special case. Maria’s father, Lance Masterson, a former all-stater in basketball, an NAIA all-region team selection at Dakota State, and a former high school coach is engaged in a struggle with pancreatic cancer.”
     A hush fell over the crowd.
     “Maria has the privilege of sharing this victory lap with her father, the man who taught her to run and taught her how to live life to its fullest.  Would you please stand and give it up for this dynamic duo?”  The crowd stood and roared its approval as Maria pushed her father across the finish line, breaking the tape that the officials had ordered stretched across it.  Bambi looked up and saw Angela Hawkins looking on with a scowl on her face. He winked at her.  When Maria got past the finish line, she veered off to the right and pushed Bambi off the track and back onto the sidewalk.

Reviewed for the Lulu Book Review.

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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Gardner-Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

I have a new activity that will be occupying part of my time, which is writing book reviews for the Lulu Book Review.  I always enjoy reading and this will give me an opportunity to read more and different types of work.  Another good thing is that I will be helping to promote self-published writing and will be able to give encouragement to my fellow authors.

How did this come about?  Well, as you know I submitted by book, Misfit McCabe for review and Shannon Yarbrough, Lulu Book Review owner and author of Stealing Wishes, gave it a very nice review.  Through that process, Shannon and I had several communications back and forth, both to do with the review itself plus winning the marketing book give away that the Lulu Book Review sponsored.  Shannon gave me a copy of Stealing Wishes along with the marketing book, so I wrote and posted a review here, as well as on Amazon.com and Lulu.com of Stealing Wishes, which prompted more correspondence back and forth.

I admire what Mr. Yarbrough has set out to do and has accomplished with the Lulu Book Review because I feel it is important to encourage my fellow authors and to help promote self-publishing as another means to getting your work published, while retaining control of your work.  Publishing is changing and there is definitely a place for the self-published within the publishing world.  So during the course of our correspondence, I offered to assist in writing some of the reviews for the Lulu Book Review and Mr. Yarbrough graciously accepted.  I think it will be an arrangement that will work out for both of us because I will have the opportunity to read and critique other work, which ultimately will serve to help me improve my own work, and the Lulu Book Review will benefit from having an additional “voice” for the reviews.

And so, I am now a part time book reviewer, in addition to all of the other projects I am working on.  So, stop on by the Lulu Book Review to check out the reviews, and if you are a fellow self-published author through Lulu, ask for a review.  I’d love to see your work.
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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.

Mortal Ghost
by L. Lee Lowe
Copyright: © 2007
$12.11 Paperback
Free E-Book
379 Pages

Let’s go back in time to the hey-day of radio when stories were read on  a weekly basis and the family gathered around the radio to wait for the next installment.  Or when newspapers or magazines published novels a chapter at a time.  The speculation of what would happen next would be discussed with the anticipation mounting as you waited for the story to continue.  Author L. Lee Lowe has brought this concept back with her young adult fantasy novel, Mortal Ghost, by publishing it one chapter at a time via blog.  She then published the book in installments via podcast and as an e-book, and then finally as a POD with Lulu.

L. Lee Lowe believes that work should be made accessible to all, and therefore, there is no charge for the e-Book downloads, or reading from the blog, and the book published is priced at cost of printing.  Mortal Ghost is one that would not have been broadcast during family hour due to subject matter, and on the blog site Lowe advises it is not recommended for readers under 16, but is an excellent story for the intended readership.

I love the concept of the serialized novel.  The thought of being able to publish one chapter and have the opportunity of instantaneous feedback from your target readers is very attractive.  The only problem with that concept is that I tend to write - rewrite - rewrite - rewrite and have to force myself to stop and call it finished.  If I had feedback from all quarters saying what they liked, didn’t like, I would continue the tweaking process and never finish the book.  And let’s face it, not everyone is always going to agree, so there would always be a comment indicating something that might need to be tweaked.

I was also relieved to learn that Lowe had completed the book before starting to publish it online.  Think of the pressure if you didn’t have a completed novel to start with?  Would the next chapter be done in time to publish on the designated date?  Would your characters behave nicely and let you in on the secret of what happens next or turn ugly and refuse to speak to you until the deadline passed?  Would your readers get fed up with your incalculable schedule and never return to finish the book?  Speaking for myself, I find that I am unable to write under that kind of pressure.

The cover of Mortal Ghost is extremely eye-catching and provides a hint of what is to come inside.  The dramatic cover art is the work of Australian artist L.M. Noonan.  It is definitely better viewed in large size so that you get the full effect of the details which are on the torso behind the reflected light of the fire.  This cover is the essence of the book, distilled into an image, beautifully done.

Where is the line between imagination and reality?  Can you be swallowed by a memory?  Are the memories that you hold, yours or do they belong to someone else?  Is it possible for a healer to kill?

Mortal Ghost is a magnificently descriptive novel which poses all of the above questions and more.  At the heart of the novel is a modern day teen-age love story, full of hesitancy, misunderstandings, and tenderness.  One might call it typical, except the love story is only one layer of a many-layered book.  Meet Jesse.  A sixteen year old runaway, who is living on the street and earns money doing odd jobs, like washing windows or mowing lawns, in order to buy food.  Jesse is far from your typical teen-ager.  In addition to being extremely well read, especially since he has been in and out of foster care from the age of 9 and on the street otherwise, Jesse has the power to heal wounded animals and is a fire-starter.  Jesse lost his entire family in a fire at the age of 9 and carries around the guilt of not being able to save his mother and younger sister from the fire.

Meet Sarah.  A self-assured, independent, ballet dancer, with a fiery temper who brings Jesse home to meet her family.  Her mother, Meg, a psychiatrist who works with troubled teens and “sees” things that haven’t happened yet or she hasn’t been told.  And her father, Finn, an international photographer, who uses that as a cover for another profession which his family knows nothing about.  Against Jesse’s inclinations, he ends up staying with the Andersen family and is learning to trust someone other than himself.  The Andersen’s see Jesse as the opportunity to redeem themselves for where they failed their own son, Peter, who left home and was not heard from until he died in suspicious circumstances.

The very core of the story revolves around Jesse - who is he and how did he come to have these powers?  No one seems to know, least of all Jesse himself.  He is shaken to his foundation by a discovery that Finn has made and reveals to him after taking him to a secret laboratory so that Jesse’s powers can be studied.

    ‘Tell him,’ Ayen said.
    ‘Tell me what?’ Jesse asked.
     Finn looked at him for a long while before answering. Finally he sighed. ‘You’ve told me about the fire that killed your family.’
     ‘And?’ Jesse’s voice was loud and angry.
     ‘And that no one survived the fire.’
     ‘How can you possibly think I need reminding? Get to the point.’
     ‘Jesse, no one survived the fire. We’ve checked the records. Not a single member of the household. Not even the boy.’
     Jesse stared at Finn, the colour draining from his face as he took in the import of Finn’s words.
     ‘That’s impossible. There must be some mistake,’ Jesse said.
     ‘Not unless you gave us false information.’
     ‘I’m no liar!’
      Ayen interposed in a tranquil tone. ‘There’s no error. We’ve seen copies of the coroner’s report, the police records, the death certificates. All records of Jesse Wright end with the fire-school, health, even church. Nor has social services ever heard of you.’

Now Jesse is struggling with the question of who he is and how he has memories of everything that has happened in addition to the other strange occurrences that continue to plague him.  While at the laboratory, he spends some time with something that is known as the prototype, a computer which has baffled the scientists working with it by creating things on its own.  The connection with the prototype haunts Jesse as it invades his thoughts, taunts him and tries to manipulate his actions.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mortal Ghost and L. Lee Lowe’s love of words and the craft of writing comes shining through the descriptions that are beautiful to the point of poetic.  Her use of symbolism seeks to underscore the underlying theme of life and death.  My only criticism of the work is that with the continual shifts of point of view and changing between present and past tense, there are some transitions which are a little awkward, and caused me to have to reread in order to ensure that I understood what was happening.  Mortal Ghost has more twists and turns than an old-fashioned mountain road.  This book contains a love story, enemies, rape, dysfunctional families, glances at the drug culture, as well as paranormal abilities and a computer trying to gain control.  If you are someone who likes all of the questions answered and all of the story lines tied up in a nice bow by the end of the book, then Mortal Ghost is not for you.

However, if you are willing to open your mind to the possibilities where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred, where a boy exists, but has died, where objects appear and disappear, and where at the end you have more questions than answers, then Mortal Ghost is well worth reading.  I look forward to L. Lee Lowe’s next novel, which is currently in progress, for the pure joy of the language as well as where the wings of fantasy will take the storyline.

Reviewed by LK Gardner-Griffie for the Lulu Book Review

Author of Misfit McCabe

Read the full review at The Lulu Book Review!

Most of us have things in our lives that we can obsess on. In fact, ask any teenage girl and she’ll immediately tell you that her nose it too big or too small, she has too many freckles or not enough, that her eyebrows are too thin or too bushy; the possible list is endless. We can spend hours agonizing and obsessing over features that the rest of the world doesn’t even notice.

In Stealing Wishes, Shannon Yarbrough takes us inside the mind of 32 year old, self-diagnosed, obsessive-compulsive, Blaine, who is a picture taking coffee barista. This light romantic comedy is told in an introspective, narrative style and the reader is drawn into Blaine’s world as he wakes up each morning at 5:32, sets his alarm for 16 minutes later to allow time for a shower and shave, and then sets the alarm for the next 16 minute increment to allow time for eating breakfast. As you might have guessed, one of Blaine’s obsessions surrounds the number 32, the number of his apartment, his current age, as well as multiples of 32, and how he relates everything possible to this number.

Blaine loves his job as a coffee barista, because it allows him to control his environment by organizing all of the items and to set up routines for each type of drink ordered. The off work hours are spent with his camera, taking pictures of people he doesn’t know and putting them in photo albums. They are his memories of moments in his life. His best friend, Sallie, is also his boss, and since they are both single, they frequently go out bar or restaurant hopping together. This all changes when Sallie meets Charlie, they become a couple and then set Blaine up on a blind date with Charlie’s friend Edward.

One of the few things that Blaine and Edward have in common is their enjoyment of the writings of Christopher Isherwood. Will that be enough to sustain the relationship? The park that Blaine frequents on a regular, almost daily basis, is Bachardy park which is exactly 32 blocks from the coffee shop where Blaine works. Since author Christopher Isherwoood had a high-profile, openly gay relationship with Don Bachardy from early 1953 through Isherwood’s death in 1986, it is just one more way in which the life and writings of Christopher Isherwood influence this book.

While not being my usual genre, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Stealing Wishes as it provides a glimpse of a lifestyle outside of my own. It shows modern day relationships as you only learn the first name of any of the characters. The theme of the book is universal as we all contemplate at one time or other what love is, and struggle with the intricacies of relationships, whether gay, hetero, or both.

At the beginning of the book, Blaine tells the readers, “I am a camera (too).” Stealing Wishes represents the word snapshot of the moments of Blaine’s life.

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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.

With today being part of a holiday weekend, I really didn’t get to accomplish much today in the way of writing, marketing, etc. I’ve mulled over some ideas, but that has been about the extent of things.

The review from The Lulu Book Review has been posted to Amazon.com, so I was very happy to note that it was there. I was also happy to note that the review posted against both the paperback and Kindle versions of the book. Now all I have to do is post the review to Barnes & Noble.

All for now - tomorrow I’ll get back on the horse and get something (anything) accomplished.

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LK Gardner-Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com