Author Archives: authorcamilson
VBT – Did I Ever Thank You Sister?
About the Book
Title: Did I Ever Thank You Sister?
Author: Sal Di Leo
Genre: Nonfiction
Sal Di Leo returns after 30 years to the Catholic orphanage outside Chicago that he and his siblings called home in 1963. This is the beginning of a journey of discovery and remembrance as Sal is forced to reconstruct his life as it really happened, including some of his most difficult years at Boys Town in Nebraska. As an adult, Sal tried to rise above his turbulent past in an aggressive quest for power and money. Successes soon led to failures. Eventually, a wise friend convinces Sal to go back to his roots and look for the good experiences and valuable lessons he learned as a nine-year-old orphan.
Author Bio
An entrepreneur who has successfully tackled many challenges in business and in life, Sal volunteers much of his time serving those in need. With his family, he founded St. Francis Lodge, a free retreat center where nuns, priests and others can reflect and rest to enhance their lives and work. The State Fish Art contest, which he started in Minnesota to help kids learn about conservation through art, is now offered in all 50 states and 12 countries. Sal has been actively involved with Rotary and the Lions Club, and he has spoken to service clubs around the United States about his life and the importance of gratitude. His self-published memoir, Did I Ever Thank You, Sister?, rooted in his childhood experiences in a Catholic orphanage, is available worldwide. The proud father of two adult daughters who have successfully left the nest, Sal has been married to his lovely wife Beth for more than 30 years. A longtime resident of Minneapolis, he is a 1977 graduate of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Links
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7062486-did-i-ever-thank-you-sister
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xPYcPh
Website: http://www.saldileo.com/
VBT – Just off the Path
About the Book
Title: Just Off the Path
Author: Weston Sullivan
Genre: Folklore, Fairytales
Hansel never asked to be a hero. He never wanted to fall in love with Rapunzel, Queen of the East. He didn’t ask to be raised by Gothel the Wretch, and he certainly never wanted to be credited for her arrest. But more than any of that, Hansel never wanted to lie: but he did. He lied about everything. He thought that he was done with it all when he and his sister Gretel retreated into the woods to reclaim their land, but he should have known better.
Years later, Rapunzel’s guards knock at his door, and they say the words he hoped that he would never hear: Gothel has escaped. As he and Gretel take refuge inside Rapunzel’s castle in the eastern capitol of Hildebrand, Hansel is thrust back into everything he never wanted in the first place: his lies, his legend, and his lust. In the wake of it all, he knows that Gothel has escaped to finish what she started. She is out to make sure that the Sleeping Beauty never wakes, and that Grimm suffocates under her blanket of thorn and vine. In order to find Gothel and save the kingdom, Hansel and Gretel must look for fact in a land of fairy-tale by following a trail of grisly murders, a girl in a red cape, and a powerful little man who can’t stand the sound of his own name.
As they search for answers, Hansel finds that he isn’t the only liar in Grimm, and that there may be a traitor among them of royal proportion.
Author Bio
After graduating with a BA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida in 2017, Weston Sullivan moved to New York City to live and write in the heart of the industry. In late 2016, he began working as an intern in the submissions department of BookFish Books. His short story, “On the Hillside” won the Anspaugh Award for Fiction in February of 2017, and his novel, JUST OFF THE PATH, is due for release in early September.
He likes to believe that he is in charge of his own destiny, but at the end of the day, he knows that he was born to serve his two beloved cats.
Links
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33804747-just-off-the-path?from_search=true
VBT – MURDER IN ROCK & ROLL HEAVEN
Murder In Rock & Roll Heaven
by Robin Ray
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Mystery/Sci-Fi
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB
No one ever “re-dies” in Heaven; unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to singer Amy Winehouse. Her death, an unprecedented event in Heaven’s history, has thrown a once docile world into unfortunate chaos. Because of the new uneasy alliance between angels and citizens, a freshly-arrived detective in the rock & roll town has been tasked with investigating the prime suspects, the members of the 27 Club – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. To make matters worse, a powerful angel from one of the upper levels of Heaven will soon arrive to make her ten-year inspection, a task that fills the other angels with dread since she has the power to banish anyone of them to the underworld. So, with time running out, the PI and his newly acquired sidekick, both aided by rock legends such as Eddie Cochran, Mama Cass, Kurt Cobain, Karen Carpenter and others, must quickly uncover the mystery that threatens not only to close Heaven’s doors forever, but promises to send a ripple effect through the entire universe that can rip it apart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Book Excerpt
Plants of varying shapes and sizes sprouted everywhere, some just knee high, some as tall as mango trees. Rows of narrow pipes across the ceiling misted the foliage every minute. A few customers were sampling some of the edible flowers while others were reading manuals or informational tags about the unusual plants. Towards the back, the good PI spotted an employee who was busy pulling off the dead leaves from several botanical specimens. The clerk, he noticed, was very colorful with her psychedelic bamboo slippers, purplish pants, flowery blue and white tunic, rows of bangles on each wrist, several beaded chains around her neck, and a pink strip of cloth enmeshed in her long brown hair. As Gregory neared her, he could hear her humming along to the music playing over the virtual speakers high up in the corners of the center.
“Excuse me,” he introduced himself, “I was told Janis Joplin works back here.”
The employee turned and glanced at him. “You found her, babe.”
“Hi, Janis,” the PI introduced himself. “I’m Gregory Angelicus. And…”
“Oh, Lord,” she moaned, flinging the twigs in her hand down. “Another angel. What’d I do now?”
“Oh, no,” he stated quickly, “I’m not an angel. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?” she asked, eyeing the intruder with suspicion through her circular yellow sunglasses.
Gregory looked around momentarily. “Is there some place we can talk?”
“Sure,” she answered, crossing her arms. “You’re standing in it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links
Robin Ray emigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad & Tobago at the ripe old age of 12. Already steeped in the rich culture and mysteries of his native land, it would only be a matter of time before he, too, became a musician and storyteller. After a short stint at Iowa State University, he became a nurse for practical purposes but never abandoned his musical and literary aspirations. Eventually, he did play guitar in several bands, committing himself to localized tours and album releases. Leaving the music world behind, he delved headfirst back into his second love – writing. To date, he has authored six screenplays, two novels, seven novellas, around fifty short stories and many poems. Thus far, he’s published six books – five fiction and one non-fiction, all available in paperback and e-book formats. His latest novel, Murder In Rock & Roll Heaven, can be purchased from the following Amazon link.
https://seattlewordsmith.wordpress.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1720363.Robin_Ray
The book is on sale for only $0.99.
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RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY
Robin Ray will be awarding a $30 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Enter to win a $30 Amazon/BN GC – a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Guest Post
The genesis for “Murder In Rock & Roll Heaven” took place when I’d initially wanted to write a book of interviews of the dead; specifically, me having casual conversations with artistic, musical and scientific legends like Mozart, Beethoven, Da Vinci, Tesla, Einstein, Tchaikovsky, Turing, Benjamin Franklin, Mahavir, Hendrix, and many others. During my research, I discovered another Seattle author had already published a book of interviews of some of these people, so I nixed my idea. Around that time, I took a gander at Amazon’s Kindle Scout program which accepted only full length novels to be considered for publishing. I thought I’d give that a try since I’d already written a novel (“Commoner the Vagabond”) and authoring a new one should be a little easier. I wasn’t sure what kind of book I was going to commit myself to writing, though. When I noticed there was a mystery bookstore in Seattle, I thought it’d be nice to add one more title to their shelves, hedging my bet they’d carry it especially if the setting for it was Seattle. That was when I came up with the idea of combining my two stories, essentially creating meetings with past legends in the midst of a murder mystery.
“Murder” was a fairly traditional story with non-traditional elements. First, it’s a murder mystery, that means there was a killer or killers on the loose and a detective and his sidekick would be on their trail. The non-traditional elements included the victim and suspects (dead rock stars) as well as the setting (Heaven). Because the story was both supernatural and scientific in nature, it incorporated elements such as the soul, karma and angels, as well as extra-high radio frequency transmissions and interdimensional travel.
Before I wrote the actual story, a lot of research had to be done. First, the setting. What was Heaven going to look like? Would there be roads or just fields of clouds? When I came up with the idea that, because Heaven was so vast it could be intimidating, it’d be simpler if it was broken up into bite-sized chunks, that is, a Heaven for rockers, a Heaven for lawyers, a Heaven for chefs, etc. Also, according to tradition, since Heaven had seven layers, I thought it’d be interesting if the first level would be designed in a way that was familiar to the newly deceased to help in their reorientation to the new world. I began designing a world that appeared normal and would have roads, trees, houses, parks, rivers, etc. During this design, I thought about Woodstock, NY. For all intents and purposes, Woodstock is an artistic community, a village popular with musicians, artists, bohemians and painters. That’s when I decided that Rock & Roll Heaven should look like Woodstock because many musicians were already familiar with it.
Once I had the setting, I needed the population to fill it. Rock & roll, being fairly young, probably has about 4,000 deceased artists related to the genre. It wasn’t just about the musicians, either. There would be record cover designers, studio engineers, record producers, talent managers, and other folks aligned with the industry. Naturally, I had to consult several lists of the deceased. For the artists with speaking parts (Elvis, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Shannon Hoon, Layne Staley, Eddy Cochran, etc) I watched TV interviews they’d conducted as well as listened to their stage banter and read their biographies. For a while, I agonized about what the angels would look like. Since it was all about the new arrivals to heaven not being disoriented, I thought the angels should also look human, albeit very clean and almost stoic since they were the guardians of the afterlife.
To help give some reality to the supernatural elements presented in the book, I had a closer look at those areas in quantum physics which dealt with interdimensional travel, the properties of subatomic particulate matter, and extra high radio frequency waves as being three-dimensional, but immeasurable, elements. Diving head first into this scientific world was an eye opening experience, to say the least. I began to see how the LSD “mind expansion” experiments of the 60’s were related to the cosmos as a whole. The fact that old drugs like the South American ayahuasca allowed their users to “tune in” to frequencies and warped experiences outside of our five senses gave some credence to the fact that we really only use a portion of our brain.
Perhaps one of my favorite bits of research for “Murder” had to do with what people would be eating and wearing. Once I realized there would be no animal products in Heaven, that meant no gasoline engines, no plastics, no electronics, no leather belts, no shrimps on the barbie, and no Kobe beef. I thought it’d be cool to have a plant which had so many uses that it’d be the staple of Heaven, and I found that flax fit the bill. It could be used for linen and clothes, paints, food, soaps and detergents, writing paper, furniture stain, lamp oil, and several other items. I hope people enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
VBT – THE SPECTER OF THE INDIAN
THE SPECTER OF THE INDIAN: RACE, GENDER, AND GHOSTS IN AMERICAN SEANCES, 1848 – 1898
The Specter of the Indian unveils the centrality of Native American spirit guides during the emergent years of American Spiritualism. By pulling together cultural and political history; the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn Troy offers a
new layer of understanding to the prevalence of mystically styled Indians in
American visual and popular culture. The connections between Spiritualist print
and contemporary Indian policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions
of social reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as fading from the world, claims of returned
apparitions, and the social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of
existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed séance accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.
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and Labor in the Spirit World, Mary Shelhamer, the sitting medium for the
primary Spiritualist journal the Banner
of Light, recounted her visit to the ghostly realm. “Beyond [a] rolling
river,” she wrote, “there is a deeply-wooded country. Here you are up high
among the mountains; this is the red man’s home […] it is a refuge for the
poor, hunted and despised Indian, who, fleeing from mortal chains, finds
therein rest and peace.”[1]
Her description of Indians as figures in flight, as members of a dying race,
was by the late nineteenth century a common one. For many white Americans,
Indians were, for the most part, already a thing of the past. They appeared
constantly in popular culture as figures of legend and literature, but real
Indians were primarily perceived as living relics—faint reminders of a vanished
people. But to nineteenth-century Spiritualists, Indians had never completely
gone; the ghosts of Indian dead walked among them. The proclaimed presence of
Indian spirits in American séances challenged the dominant discourse of Indians
as vanished, and had a profound impact not only on the Spiritualist movement,
but also on some of the most important debates of the day—those on race,
gender, civilization and the development of an American national character.
explores the spectral appearances of Indians in late nineteenth-century
American séances in relation to those national debates, and analyzes the
importance of such apparitions on several levels—racial, gendered, religious
and political. It demonstrates the overwhelming pervasiveness of this sorely
understudied phenomenon as a central social element of the Spiritualist
movement. The project establishes how the witnessing of Indian spirits affected
American minds and the reception of federal Indian policy by influencing
concepts of racial difference and socio-political hierarchy.
of my analysis examines the racial elements unique to the spiritual
manifestations of Indians, as well as how American Spiritualists utilized the
Indian spirits they claimed to encounter as sources of political empowerment—as
agents of peace between whites and Indians, as models of sexual difference, and
as guides to spiritual progression for both races. Spiritualists understood
Indian ghosts to appear in séances with a mission to fulfill: to help ensure
the inner illumination of Spiritualists, to support white attempts at social
reform, and to serve as sources of strength to the female mediums they
possessed. They acted as mediators between the material and spiritual realms,
providing essential information about the condition and means of progression
through the several spiritual spheres, and communicating the temperament and
will of the supreme deity commonly referred to as the Great Spirit. Through
Indian spirit appearances, Spiritualists were apprised of the Great Spirit’s
attitude regarding social and political issues, such as the actions to be taken
regarding Indian nations, political equality for women, or the correct position
on congressional policies. The presence, strength, and support of Indian ghosts
were recognized as contributing to the efforts and accomplishments of
Spiritualists to create a “heaven on earth” that reflected the enlightened
position of spirits.
spirits did not manifest predominantly as nostalgic symbols of a vanishing
race. They appeared frequently in the 1860s to 1880s, when the United
States was almost constantly at war with
Indian nations, when debates about what to do with Indians raged, and when the
future of the North American West was anything but certain. They did not simply
appear as Indians who were better off dead in the Happy Hunting Ground,
assuaging white guilt about conquests and an imagined vanishing, as has been
suggested by many historians—such as Alan Trachtenberg in his writing of
fictionalized Indians, Jared Farmer in his discussion of legends representing
Indians as ghostly and most pointedly Molly McGarry in her chapter on Indian
spirits.[2]
Indian spirits were also not categorized on the whole as being from the distant
past and thus safely nonthreatening.[3]
saw Indian ghosts as awakening public outrage and inciting political opposition
against the wars waged by the United States
on Indians, causing Spiritualists to question government objectives in the
West. Spiritualist publications vehemently denounced the Sand Creek Massacre of
1864, George Custer’s invasion of the Black Hills and
the duplicity and corruption of American Indian policy, as exemplified in the
Ponca Affair of the 1870s and multiple reports on dismal reservation
conditions. Spiritualists recognized the support of Indian ghosts for peace
policies and political equality, and the efforts of Spiritualists to restore
what they felt their country, allegedly superior in religion and civilization,
had lost—its sense of honor. They were not simply utilized as servants of the
mediums who conjured them; they were praised as guides and instructors, helping
to ensure the nation’s spiritual future. When Spiritualists closely followed
the development of the Indian Peace Commission in 1867, the rise and decline of
Ulysses S. Grant’s Peace Policy, the success of “civilized” tribes like the
Cherokee, the Carlisle and Hampton Institutes and the implementation of the
Dawes Severalty Act in 1887, they believed they were both heeding ghostly
warnings and working to rebuild the pride of their nation. These major events
in American/Indian relations are linked in this project to the intensity of
Indian spectral appearances and their centrality to the Spiritualist movement’s
contemporary development, serving as the basis for the powerful trop of the
“Indian spirit guide,” which persists today.
analysis than those by previous scholars of the manifestations themselves
reveals the complex and sometimes conflicting nature of such phenomena.
Scrutiny of the methods, acknowledgements, and purposes of Indian
manifestations opens wide a door to a much richer understanding of how the
intellectual and professional classes that comprised the foundation of
Spiritualist Movement constantly redefined and integrated the concept of “Indian”
into a society structured by racial and sexual difference. The notion of
Indianness that emerged from Spiritualist séances advocated a politically
non-racial society, whereby Indians could and should become American citizens,
and incorporated gender models that undermined contemporary definitions of
manliness as positively linked to violence.
such terms as “Indian spirits,” I refer to manifestations witnessed by
Spiritualists in which they claimed to see Indians, including cases of
specifically named Indians, as well as those “Indianness” derived solely from
Spiritualist identification. The ways in which Indian celebrities were
authenticated and nameless “Indians” were recognized both reflected how
“Indianness” as a scientific racial category was understood and constructed in
the Spiritualist arena and, I posit, were reflective of broader American
cultural attitudes. The actual presence of Indian spirits at nineteenth-century
séances is neither accepted nor denied in this book. It is only relevant that
Spiritualists accepted their experiences as truth. To assert at the onset that
all Spiritualists were knowing frauds is risky and counterproductive. Such
evaluations invite statements like those of Lisa Lenker, who in her research
connected her discussion of Spiritualism with Manifest Destiny rhetoric as
supporting the ethnic cleansing of the American continent. Lenker asserted that
all Indian ghosts were simply and happily dead (not undead, as the term “ghost”
suggests).[4]
The ghosts of Indians will often be described throughout this book from the
perspective of the Spiritualists themselves—as distinct historical actors. To
believers, these specters spoke, made claims and issued warnings. Writing about
their alleged activity in such a way allows this book to delve into the
responses and reactions of Spiritualists who believed these apparitions to be
intelligent, active agencies. This approach to describing spectral activity is
offset by the simultaneous focus on specific individuals deeply involved with
Indian apparitions, including the mediums Jennie Lord, Mary Shelhamer, Fannie
Conant, and Cora Tappan.
Spiritualist manifestations at the center of this project, essentially shifting
the focus onto non-entities, is a somewhat unorthodox approach to the study of
history, and has not been the practice employed by other scholars of
Spiritualism. Yet doing so allows the incorporation of a body of literature on
ghostliness and hauntings that is central to this project. Such scholarship has
to this point been absent from Spiritualist studies, strangely so given that
the movement, at its core, was about communicating with the dead. Rather than
referring to these manifestations only as spirits from the celestial realm or
as the products of an American imagination, I abstain from judgment on their
existence. By using the labels that Spiritualists themselves did—ghosts of the
dead returned to life—I employ a lexicon of definitions that are critical to
understanding the full significance of Spiritualist encounters with such
phenomena. “Ghosts” are undead—uncanny, temporal disruptions that appear in
specific ways at specific times to deliver a message. Communication by such
entities conveys information about an obscured past occurrence. To the witness
of such phenomena, the presence of the ghost is made clear through a distinct
sensory experience, its disruption of logical time remedied only by listening
to what the ghost wants and providing it with satisfaction. It is with these
terms in mind, originating predominantly in fictive, psychological and
paranormal studies, that I look upon séance activities of nineteenth-century America.
In his work on literary hauntings of America
during the first half of the century (the period of federally sanctioned Indian
removal), Renee Bergland rightly suggested that representations of Indian
ghosts simultaneously established and questioned an intangible American
nationality, as well as racial and sexual classifications.[5] Examining how the
Indian spirits of séances contributed to changing definitions of race and
gender is the main thrust of this project.
by theme rather than time, the chapters included in this book cover the nature
of Spiritualist hauntings marked as specifically Indian, and the questioning
and redefinition of masculinity, femininity, and morality as linked to national
progress that took place within séance circles beginning in the 1850s and
continuing throughout the 1880s. This timeframe will be repeated in each
chapter as different aspects of Indian hauntings are visited. A majority of
works on Spiritualism have chosen to narrow their scope to the earlier,
formative years of the movement. Studies about the Fox Sisters or Andrew
Jackson Davis, for example, emphasize the Spiritualism of the 1850s as
definitive of the entire movement. Bret Carroll highlighted the 1850s as an
emergent period, as did Howard Kerr.[6] Such an approach is
not appropriate here. The frequency with which Indian manifestations were
recorded was fairly comparable from the 1850s through the 1880s, peaking during
the 1860s and 1870s. The decline that Burton Brown said occurred in the 1870s
is not borne out by the increased frequency of Indian apparitions.[7]
The seemingly consistent presence of Indian ghosts at séances serves in part to
bolster my argument that Indian ghosts were a defining characteristic of
Spiritualist practice from its inception, and makes discussion of the movement
through the course of the century imperative to my efforts. Both Indian policy
and Spiritualism evolved in the twentieth century, and continue to do so, but
analysis of such changes is beyond the scope of this book. My intention is to
demonstrate how spiritual tropes of Indianness developed on the crest of
Spiritualism in tandem with dramatic change in Indian visibility in the public
eye.
recorded instances of Indian specters also determines to a large degree the
emphasis on certain sources at the expense of others. While myriad articles,
pamphlets, treatises and monographs by Spiritualists provide this project with
a contextual foundation for their beliefs, as well as Indian manifestations,
the recording of Indian ghosts emerged predominantly in certain forms of
Spiritualist print—namely, their periodicals. Newspapers played a critical role
in the development and dispersion of representations of Indians that saturated
nineteenth-century American culture and continue to do so.[8]
The majority of writing on such phenomena appeared in the Religio-Philosophical Journal and Banner of Light; these sources are therefore dominant forces in
this project. My use of Banner of Light
in this book works somewhat as a centralizing force in a movement which had
none, and provides a modicum of order to the cacophony of Spiritualist voices. Banner of Light takes on an added
significance in my research because of its extensive coverage of Indian
affairs. The development of the Indian Peace Commission, the Modoc War, the
Ponca Affair, and the violation of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie were all
covered and editorialized in the weekly journal, receiving consistent attention
in a periodical ostensibly dedicated to matters of the spirit. The amount of
space accorded to such news should not continue to be overlooked in the
analysis of Spiritualist print. The longevity of the Banner of Light, enjoying an approximately fifty-year run, speaks
once again to the pervasiveness within Spiritualism of this very specific
racial phenomena.[9]
speaking, this project views Spiritualism as a national movement in a broad sense,
with loci of activity in New York
and Boston. As the sites of some of
the first violent contests with Indian nations, the northeastern states have a
well-developed “penchant for hauntedness,” as Judith Richardson claimed,
“alongside a more enduring popular interest in ghosts and the supernatural.”[10]
Local variations of Spiritualism did not seem to have a significant impact on
Indian spectrality, and so has been omitted from this project. The one
exception to that is the Spiritual culture of New Orleans.
The connection between this city’s history and the spirit of Black Hawk will be
discussed in Chapter Two. Likewise,
while there are many significant connections to be made with contemporary
Spiritualist movements across the globe, this project’s focus is on American
Indian ghosts within American Spiritualism, and the resulting effect on
American society. This intention, juxtaposed with the virtual absence of
similar phenomena in Europe, justifies the exclusion of
such a discussion in this work. The references to Britain’s
literary gothic tradition are brief, and useful only in demonstrating
Spiritualism’s place among the gothic tradition of the western world. European
Spiritualism is beyond the scope of this book. Additionally, this project is
not about Indian spirituality in its own right, as there were no significant
efforts on the part of Spiritualists to understand or incorporate Indian
religions into their own belief system. Their interest in native spirituality
extended to generalized ideas about animism and a natural Romanticism, which
will be addressed in Chapter Four.
remainder of this introduction will serve several functions. It provides a
background on aspects of Spiritualist theology that are essential to
understanding the arguments made in this project, a discussion of Spiritualism
and Indian hauntings in context with changes in federal Indian policy, a brief
summary of the key goals and themes of each chapter, and a few words about the
bodies of scholarship most directly engaged and built upon in this book.
Trachtenberg, Shades of Hiawatha: Staging
Indians, Making Americans 1880-1930 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2004), 19; Jared
Farmer, On Zion’s
Mount: Mormons, Indians and the American Landscape (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 312;
Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past:
Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: California University Press, 2008), 73.
(Chicago: Illinois University Press, 1999), 11.
widespread of Spiritualist periodicals. According to Sally Morita, by 1860 the
periodical had a circulation of approximately 25,000. Ann Taves, Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing
Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1999), 184; Sally Jean Morita, “Modern Spiritualism
and Reform in America” (PhD diss., University of Oregon,
1995), 78.
Valley
(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press 2005), 39.
Kathryn Troy is giving away 2 sets
of spiritual postcards and 2 Ouija design tote bags!
- By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
- Four winners will be chosen via Rafflecopter
- This giveaway ends midnight September 29.
- Winner will be contacted via email on September 30.
- Winners have 48 hours to reply.
ENTER TO WIN!
She contributed to the anthology The Spiritualist Movement published by Prager in August 2013, and teaches at Farmingdale State College and Suffolk County Community College.
into her fiction writing.
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Pre-order Blitz – ONE SUMMER NIGHT
About the Author
Caridad Pineiro is a transplanted Long Island girl who has fallen in love with pork roll and the Jersey Shore, but still can’t get the hang of tomato pies. When Caridad isn’t taking long strolls along the boardwalk to maintain her sanity and burn off that pork roll, she’s also a NY Times and USA Today bestselling author with over a million books sold worldwide. Caridad is passionate about writing and helping others explore and develop their skills as writers. She is a founding member of the Liberty States Fiction Writers and has presented workshops at the RT Book Club Convention, Romance Writers of America National Conference as well as various writing organizations throughout the country.
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About the Book
Title: ONE SUMMER NIGHT
Author: Caridad Pineiro
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Pages: 352
Genre: Contemporary Romance
BOOK BLURB
An offer that’s impossible to accept . . .
Maggie Sinclair has tried everything to save her family’s business, including mortgaging their beloved beach house on the Jersey Shore. But now, she’s out of options.
The Sinclair and Pierce families have been neighbors and enemies for almost thirty years. That hasn’t stopped Owen Pierce from crushing on Maggie, and he’s determined to invest in her success. Now he has to convince her that he’s more than just trouble with a capital T…
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Book Excerpt
Tracy Parker was in love with being in love.
That worried her best friend and maid of honor Maggie Sinclair more than she cared to admit.
In the middle of the temporary dance floor, Tracy waltzed with her new husband in a satin-and-lace designer gown, gleaming with seed pearls and twinkling sequins. But the sparkle dimmed in comparison to the dreamy glow in Tracy’s eyes.
The sounds of wedding music competed with the gentle rustle of seagrasses in the dunes and the crash of the waves down on the beach. The fragrance from centerpiece flowers and bouquets battled with the kiss of fresh sea air.
Connie and Emma, Tracy’s two other best friends and members of the bridal party, were standing beside Maggie on the edge of the dance floor that had been set up on the great lawn of Maggie’s family’s beachfront mansion on the Jersey Shore. Huddled together, Maggie and her friends watched the happy couple do a final whirl.
“She’s got it so bad,” Maggie said, eyeing Connie and Emma with concern past the rim of her rapidly disappearing glass of champagne.
“Do you think that this time he really is The One?” Connie asked.
“Doubt it,” Emma replied without hesitation.
As the DJ requested that other couples join the happy newlyweds, Maggie and her friends returned to the bridal party dais set out on the patio. Grabbing another glass of champagne, Maggie craned her neck around the gigantic centerpiece piled with an almost obscene mound of white roses, ice-blue hydrangea, lisianthus, sheer tulle, and twinkling fairy lights and examined the assorted guests mingling around the great lawn and down by the boardwalk leading to the beach.
She recognized Tracy’s family from their various meetings over the years, as well as some of Tracy’s sorority sisters, like Toni Van Houten, who in the six years since graduation had managed to pop out a trio of boys who now circled her like sharks around a swimmer. Although the wedding invite had indicated No Children, Toni had done as she pleased. Since Tracy had not wanted a scene at her dream beachfront wedding, Emma, who was doing double duty as the wedding planner for the event, had scrambled to find space for the children at the dinner tables.
“Is that Toni ‘I’ll never ruin my body with babies’ Toni?” Connie asked, a perplexed look on her features. At Maggie’s nod, Connie’s eyes widened in surprise, and she said, “She looks…happy.”
A cynical laugh erupted from Emma. “She looks crazed.”
Maggie couldn’t argue with either of their assessments. But as put-upon as their old acquaintance seemed, the indulgent smile she gave her youngest child was positively radiant.
Maggie skipped her gaze across the gathering to take note of all the other married folk. It was easy enough to pick them out from her vantage point on the dais where she and her friends sat on display like days’ old cakes in the bakery. They were the last three unmarried women in an extended circle of business and college acquaintances.
“How many times do you suppose we’ve been bridesmaids now?” Maggie wondered aloud. She finished off her glass and motioned for the waiter to bring another.
“Jointly or severally?” asked Connie, ever the lawyer.
“Way too many,” replied Emma, who, for a wedding planner, was the most ardent disbeliever in the possibility of happily ever afters.
Maggie hadn’t given marriage a first thought, much less a second, in a very long time. She’d had too many things going on in her life. Not that there hadn’t been a few memorable moments, most of which revolved around the absolutely worst man for her: Owen Pierce.
But for years now, she’d been dealing with her family’s business and its money problems, which had spilled over into her personal finances. As she gazed at the beauty of the manicured grounds and then back toward her family’s summer home, it occurred to her that this might be the last time she hosted a celebration like this here. She had mortgaged the property that she had inherited to funnel money into the family’s struggling retail store division.
Unfortunately, thanks to her father’s stubborn refusal to make changes to help the business, she spent way too much time at work, which left little time for romance. Not to mention that none of her casual dates had piqued her interest in that direction. Looking down from her perch, however, and seeing the happiness on so many faces suddenly had her reconsidering the merits of married life.
“Always a bridesmaid and never a bride,” she muttered, surprising herself with the hint of wistfulness in her tone.
“That’s because the three of us are all too busy working to search for Prince Charming,” Connie said, her defense as swift and impassioned as if she were arguing a case in court.
“Who even believes in that fairy-tale crap?” Emma’s gaze grew distracted, and she rose from her chair. “Excuse me for a moment. Carlo needs to see me about something.”
Emma rushed off to the side of the dance floor, where her caterer extraordinaire, Carlo Teixeira, raked a hand through his thick brown hair in clear frustration. He wore a pristine white chef’s jacket and pants that enhanced his dark good looks.
Emma laid a hand on Carlo’s forearm and leaned close to speak to him, apparently trying to resolve a problem.
“She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, but her Prince Charming is standing right in front of her,” Connie said with a sad shake of her head.
Maggie took another sip of her champagne and viewed the interaction between Carlo and Emma. Definitely major sparkage going on, she thought.
“You’re totally right,” she said with an assertive nod.
Connie smiled like the proverbial cat, her exotic green-gold eyes gleaming with mischief. “That’s why you hired me to represent your company as soon as I finished law school. Nothing gets past me.”
“Really? So what else do you think you’ve seen tonight?”
Raising her glass, her friend gestured toward the right of the mansion’s great lawn where some of the fraternity brothers from their alma mater had gathered. One of the men slowly turned to sneak a peek at them.
“Owen has been watching you all night long,” Connie said with a shrewd smile.
“Totally impossible, and you of all people should know it. Owen Pierce has absolutely no interest in me.”
She set her glass on the table to hide the nervous tremble of her hand as her gaze connected with his for the briefest of moments. Even that fleeting link was enough to raise her core temperature a few degrees. But what woman wouldn’t respond like that?
In his designer tuxedo, Owen was the epitome of male perfection—raven-black hair, a sexy gleam in his charcoal-gray eyes, broad shoulders, and not an ounce of fat on him, which made her recall seeing him in much, much less on a hot summer night on Sea Kiss Beach. She had been staying in the quaint seaside town on the Jersey Shore with her grandmother that summer, much as she had all her life. As they also had for so many years, the Pierce boys had been residing next door for the entire season.
The two beachfront mansions had been built side by side decades earlier, before the start of the Pierce and Sinclair rift. The cost of waterfront real estate had escalated so drastically since their construction that neither family was willing to sell their beloved home to put some distance between the warring clans.
Well, make that the warring fathers, because as far as Maggie was concerned, she had no beef with Owen. They had played together down on the beach as kids. She couldn’t count the many sand castles they’d built or the time they’d spent out in the surf.
But after her mother had died, things had changed, and the carefree spirit of those halcyon days had disappeared. The Pierce boys had stopped coming down to the Shore for the next few years, and combined with the loss of her mom, it had created an emptiness inside her that hadn’t really gone away.
By the time the Pierce brothers returned years later, the feud had gotten worse, and Owen and Jonathan had been instructed to stay away. But an ill-timed and half-drunk kiss with Owen on a moonlit summer night had proved that staying away was impossible. It had also helped the emptiness recede for a bit. Since then, fate had seemed to toss them together time and time again in both their business and personal lives, keeping alive her fascination with him. She felt not quite so alone when he was around, not that she should get used to that.
Owen Pierce had left her once before when she’d needed his friendship the most: right after her mother’s death. His on-again, off-again presence in her life proved that she couldn’t count on him.
Owen stood next to his younger brother, Jonathan, who couldn’t be more different. While Owen was clean-cut and corporate, Jonathan had the scruffy hipster look going on. It was appealing in its own way, but not to her.
“Trust me, Maggie. Your families might be at war, but Owen would clearly love to sleep with the enemy,” Connie said.
She blew out a frustrated sigh. “More reason to avoid him. You know I’m not the kind to sleep around.”
Emma returned, color riding high on her cheeks, but not in a good way.
“Something wrong?” Maggie asked.
Emma kneeled between the two of them and whispered, “It seems the groom had a bit too much to drink and Tracy caught him being hands-on with an old flame.”
“Not Amy? Tracy always lost it if she spotted him with Amy,” Maggie whispered.
“Definitely Amy. Now Tracy is refusing to come out and cut the cake. I have to say, this takes the cake, literally. Married a few hours, and already there’s trouble.”
“Ever the hopeful romantic, Em,” she kidded.
“If you think you can do better, why don’t the two of you come help me talk Tracy off the ledge?”
Caridad Pineiro is giving away a $25 Amazon Gift Card!
Terms & Conditions:
- By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
- One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive $25 Amazon Gift Card
- This giveaway ends midnight September 29.
- Winner will be contacted via email on September 30.
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Good luck everyone!
ENTER TO WIN!
Day Moon Blog Tour
DAY MOON (Tomorrow’s Edge Book 1)
In A.D. 2039, a prodigious seventeen year old, Elliott, is assigned to work
on a global software initiative his deceased grandfather helped found. Project Alexandria
is intended to provide the entire world secure and equal access to all
accumulated human knowledge. All forms of print are destroyed in good faith, to
ensure everyone has equal footing, and Elliott knows he must soon part with his
final treasure: a book of Shakespeare’s complete works gifted him by his
grandfather. Before it is destroyed, Elliott notices something is amiss with
the book, or rather Project Alexandria. The two do not match, including an
extra sonnet titled “Day Moon”. When Elliott investigates, he
uncovers far more than he bargained for. There are sinister forces backing
Project Alexandria who have no intention of using it for its public purpose.
Elliott soon finds himself on the run from federal authorities and facing
betrayals and deceit from those closest to him. Following clues left by his
grandfather, with agents close at hand, Elliott desperately hopes to find a way
to stop Project Alexandria. All of history past and yet to be depend on it.
ORDER YOUR COPY:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble
soon began, its great droplets gently touching the mourners with icy
insistence. None of it seemed real to Elliott. He looked at the mounded soil,
the great wound in the earth where the coffin was positioned, ready to be
lowered at any time. Rain was sliding off its slick grey surface, as though
nature wished to wash all of this away.
Arranged in a semi-circle around the casket were all those who cared enough
about Elliott’s grandfather to make the trip out to this relatively obscure
plot of land. No one gave it much attention throughout the year. Buried deep in
the woods atop a steep, Appalachian hill, the cemetery had no road. Even the
paths were overgrown. Every one of the attendees had been forced to make the
trek in their uncomfortable finery. Like shadows dancing from a flame, they had
made the journey, full of complaints.
Elliott glanced at those gathered: aunts and uncles, cousins, and a variety
of other relatives whom he couldn’t identify. His parents were somewhere,
speaking with the attendees, trying to hold the family together in light of the
sudden affair. No one had expected the accident. There wasn’t even an
opportunity to look at the body; so charred and mangled had his grandfather’s
body become as his vehicle careened off the road.
Everything about the accident felt so impossible. Nothing more so than this
moment. With the rain’s persistence, they were already beginning to lower his
grandfather into the gaping, muddy maw.
Soon the arguments over who got what would begin. His grandfather had a
will, but no one cared what it said, so long as they got their fair share.
Elliott had already overheard grumbles that he was getting a rare item, one of
the few enduring volumes of Shakespeare’s works. It had been a favorite of his
grandfather. Even for its rarity, it wasn’t worth anything. The global
initiative his grandfather had been working on, Project Alexandria, required
all print materials to be recycled as soon as their contents were added to the
system. A single repository of human knowledge, from the beginning of recorded history
to the present. Whoever had the book would simply have to part with it sooner
or later. It didn’t matter.
A tear tried to fight its way through Elliott’s rigid guard. Clenching his
hands into fists, he took a shallow breath, and blinked it back. There was only
one other person who could have felt close to what he did. Shortly, all of the
others wandered away, seeking cover. In their absence, Elliott could clearly
see his cousin stood by the hole, planted like the many stone fixtures around
them. John was twenty-seven, almost ten years older than Elliott, and had
already lost his father, Elliott’s uncle, some years earlier. John’s attention
was fully on the descending form of their grandfather’s casket. The thought of
this forced Elliott’s head round, briefly, to look in the direction of his
uncle’s tombstone. It was in danger of being overtaken by honeysuckle vines.
Even in the strengthening shower, the scent of the buttery hued blooms filled
the air.
Elliott was tempted to walk over to the small granite block and push away
the encroaching plant. Try as he might, he couldn’t bring his legs to move in
that direction. If no one acted soon, the messages on the stone would be
obscured:
“ALVERSON MCINTYRE.”
“Pursued Greatness.”
“Born: September 30, 1982.”
“Died: June 18, 2035.”
Uncle Al had died four years ago, to the day, of some exotic respiratory
disease that had spread from central or southeast Asia; a mini-pandemic. If he
hadn’t been overseas on business, he might never have contracted it. Now, all
that would be remembered of him was that in his fifty-two years of life, he
pursued greatness, to say nothing of ever laying hold of it.
Rubbing his arms, to bring warmth to them, Elliott turned back around and
finished his journey to John’s side. The brawny man was still looking down into
the hole to where the casket had finished its descent. John’s blue eyes never
wavered from their hold on the burial pit. Slowly, John reached out his large,
work-worn hand, gripped a handful of the dirt in the mound beside him, and
stared at it a few seconds, before gently lofting it into the grave.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/n8RdGQ6jQiE?rel=0
Brett Armstrong, author of the award-winning novel, Destitutio Quod
Remissio, started writing stories at age nine, penning a tale of revenge
and ambition set in the last days of the Aztec Empire. Twenty years
later, he is still telling stories though admittedly his philosophy has
deepened with his Christian faith and a master’s degree in creative
writing. His goal with every work is to be like a brush in the Master
artist’s hand and his hope is the finished composition always reflects the
design God had in mind. He feels writing should be engaging, immersive,
entertaining, and always purposeful. Continually busy at work with one or
more new novels to come, he also enjoys drawing, gardening, and playing with
his beautiful wife and son.
His latest book is Day Moon (Tomorrow’s Edge Book 1).
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
VBT – Accidental Lawyer
About the Book
Title: Accidental Lawyer
Author: Kim Hamilton
Genre: Crime Fiction
Set in the brilliant and diverse city of Baltimore, Accidental Lawyer, is a humorous, often irreverent portrayal of the dubious practice of personal injury law. Jessica Snow has a crisp new law degree, a grinding ambition, and a pesky moral compass that is often at odds with her new job as an ambulance chaser. Her face and name appear on billboards and buses throughout the city, and if that isn t enough to embarrass her mother, there s a television commercial in the works. Her elevated status has her wrangling with a local mob boss, duping a drug dealer, and confronting phony clients. With the help of her bold and brassy sidekick, Kari, Jess develops a remarkable proclivity for this ignoble profession by wrapping up difficult cases and finding new business in unexpected places. When trumped-up murder charges are brought against her boss, she faces her biggest challenge yet tracking down a killer. Along the way, Jess builds a new kind of family for herself, her own tribe, made up of friends, colleagues and clients, many of whom are sure to raise eyebrows at her mother s dinner table.
Author Bio
KIM HAMILTON was born in the D.C. suburbs and currently resides outside of Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, where they raised their two daughters. After beginning a legal career in real estate, an unusual set of circumstances thrust her into the family’s personal injury law firm. She spent ten inglorious years there as an ambulance chaser—an experience from which she has almost fully recovered. Accidental Lawyer is her first novel.
Links
Literary Agency: https://www.metamorphosisliteraryagency.com/
Book Blast – DARK GENIUS
Dark Genius
by H. Peter Alesso
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Fiction
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Buy link for Dark Genius:
BLURB:
To the insatiably curious—science is the greatest adventure. So, when scientists at CERN announced the discovery of the ‘God’ particle in 2012, all the world wondered, “How did they find it?”
A decade later, despite his past academic failures and egregious family circumstance, Andrew Lawrence embarked on a journey of discovery, competing against rival scientists to be the first to solve the greatest unsolved mystery of the universe—dark matter—and win the ultimate prize; the Nobel.
Emma Franklin, a PhD candidate at Harvard, developed software for detecting particle reactions using a quantum computer. To the amazement and excitement of the scientific community, her work revealed two possible bumps in the energy curve that were not predicted by any established theory.
At MIT, Lawrence created a model that predicted the scattering processes of a dark matter supersymmetry particle. Though his early work was disparaged, he improved his theory and found that it predicted the data Emma had discovered. Their professional collaboration deepened into a personal relationship, but when critical data was stolen, Emma found evidence that incriminated Lawrence. Though she withheld the impeaching material from the authorities, she felt she could no longer trust him.
Despite their troubled partnership, and notwithstanding the complexities of nature, Lawrence and Emma persevered against the egos, jealousy, and envy of rivals, on their exhilarating quest to find the ‘Holy Grail’ of physics
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Book Excerpt
I thought all was lost—now I have a second chance.
With a profound sense of relief, Andrew Lawrence slide his tablet into his shoulder holster and walked briskly along the Boston sidewalk. His past academic failures and egregious family circumstances were behind him. He was ready for a fresh start.
Tall, slender, and dark-haired, he listened to the clicking and clacking of shuffling shoes on the pavement as students jostled alongside him. The hint of autumn from the cool morning air brought a frenzy of activity to the sprawling campuses of both MIT and Harvard which nurtured a flourishing rivalry among their ambitious students. He could feel the undercurrent of tension for the start of the fall term.
By the time he crossed Longfellow Bridge, his adrenaline was pumping. He noticed several eight-man sculls already rowing down the Charles River, their school colors plainly visible. Squinting his eyes against the glare, he could make out the MIT and Harvard boats vying for the lead, stroke by stroke.
Striding across the rambling campus, his lips concealed a secret smile as he contemplated a revolutionary solution to a problem he had been daydreaming about. When he swung around a corner, he ran smack-dab into a young woman. Her armload of books, papers, and assorted technology flew into the air and scattered across the walkway.
“Sor . . . sorry.”
“You should be,” the woman said, her face screwed into a tight scowl. “Your head was in the clouds.”
Lawrence opened his mouth, but before he could speak, she pointed down and said, “See what you’ve done?”
She stooped and frantically tried to corral her absconding belongings.
“Let me help,” said Lawrence, grasping some loose papers about to blow away.
Spying her tablet on the grass, she exclaimed, “Oh no! All my work.”
Carefully, she picked up the device and turned it on, tapping her fingers impatiently until the screen lit up. She heaved a sigh and looked Lawrence directly in the eyes. “You’re lucky. Sooo . . . lucky.”
Lawrence mumbled another apology and helped her pick up the last few books.
As she struggled to reorganize her treasures, Lawrence brushed a strand of hair away from his eyes and for the first time cast an appraising glance at the young woman.
She was attractive.
It wasn’t that she was a striking beauty—though her smooth white skin, olive green eyes, and classic profile complemented the hazelnut hair that cascaded over her shoulders. Nor was her carriage especially eye-catching, though she displayed an appealing youthful vitality. No, what seemed most appealing was her confident determined poise, as if she possessed a special hidden talent.
“You really should use a backpack.”
“The lining ripped,” she retorted.
Seeing the logos on her tablet’s screen, Lawrence asked, “Harvard? Math?”
“I can tell by your tone that you’re MIT,” she said, her eyes flashing.
Lawrence grinned, “Physics.” As an afterthought, he asked, “What are you doing on this campus?”
“Well, Mr. Physics, that’s none of your concern.”
Something in the way she said it, caused him to laugh.
They faced each other in a stand-off for a long moment—saying nothing.
Then the young woman heaved a sigh, gathered her possessions to her chest, and brushed past him.
Lawrence watched her figure disappear into the crowd.
Damn. I didn’t get her name.
As he turned to leave, something shiny on the ground caught his eye. It was a flash drive.
Picking it up, he spun around and called, “Wait!”
But she was gone.
He looked at the memory stick, thinking . . .
I’ll have to crack her password, if I’m going to see her again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links
As a scientist and author specializing in technology innovation, H. Peter Alesso has over twenty years research experience at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). As Engineering Group Leader at LLNL he led a team of scientists and engineers in innovative applications across a wide range of supercomputers, workstations, and networks. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a B.S. and served in the U.S. Navy on nuclear submarines before completing an M.S. and an advanced Engineering Degree at M.I.T. He has published several software titles and numerous scientific journal and conference articles, and he is the author/co-author of ten books.
http://www.hpeteralesso.com/images/pete2.jpg
Email: h.alessocomcast.net
Website: http://www.hpeteralesso.com/Default.aspx
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/413852.H_Peter_Alesso
https://twitter.com/hpeteralesso
https://www.amazon.com/H.-Peter-Alesso/e/B001HCY45M/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3?qid=1482982330&sr=1-3
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RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY
The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
