Tag: Literary fiction

Carol Anne Strange Announces New Release

Light WeaverAuthor Carol Anne Strange is pleased to announce the release of her new contemporary fiction book, Light Weaver.

What if your world was no longer what it seemed?

Strange and inexplicable things are happening in the Lakeland fells… light orbs dance over mossy crags, symbols miraculously appear in grassy lowlands, and Cali Silverthorn keeps disappearing into other worlds.

Mobile librarian, Tom Philips, is captivated by free-spirited Cali, but is struggling to make sense of her remarkable abilities and the escalating strangeness impacting ordinary rural life.

As beliefs are challenged, Tom and Cali’s love becomes the only constant in a questionable reality as they face the heart-breaking realisation that Cali may soon disappear for good.

Light Weaver was published by Red Arc Media in April 2012. It is available from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

H.C. Turk Announces New Release

Make The Modern WorldAuthor H.C. Turk is pleased to announce the release of Make The Modern World.

Connie Weston is 17, overweight, and wants to go home: America. She lives with her family in Balapasar, a nation near Indonesia filled with ancient customs. When nationalist forces begin killing foreigners, Connie and her family flee, traveling through the deadly rainforest. But Connie is kidnapped by murderous clansmen who consider her the reincarnation of a woman who ended the first war by killing herself. Connie is expected to follow history. Utilizing her modern sensibilities in a primitive land, Connie survives dynamite and spear attacks as she faces the nation’s conflicts of deadly history and future peace. If Connie cannot learn how to make the modern world, her world will end.

Make The Modern World was self-published by H.C. Turk in May 2012. It is available from Amazon.

Featured Author: Cynthia Collins

Author Cynthia Collins

Cynthia Collins is from Jefferson City, Missouri. She began taking piano lessons at the age of five and had every intention of pursuing a career in music. After graduating from Drury University in Springfield, Missouri with a degree in music theory, her studies continued with a summer in Salzburg, Austria and graduate work in New York.

While working in the performance and administrative sides of the music industry, she realized she was spending much of her spare time watching the ships in New York Harbor. In 2004, she signed up to volunteer at the South Street Seaport Museum and was soon hired to work in the office. She was asked to write about the museum’s ships, and took sail training lessons aboard a nineteenth-century schooner. Her interest in maritime history and historic houses grew along with her responsibilities of writing grants, giving tours, and working with related public programs. She was one of the dockside volunteers for the New York portion of the 2006 Godspeed Sail to commemorate America’s 400th Anniversary, and wrote a five-part series about the schooner Ernestina located in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Continue reading “Featured Author: Cynthia Collins”

The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent

“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.” © The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1966

I’ve discovered a potentially fatal flaw in my personality. I mean, outside the more obvious ones (no need to point them out in the comments section, folks). Put simply, I like genre and I like literary. In musical terms, I like teen pop and modern classical, Spears and Stockhausen, Avril and Arvo. But this post is neither a demonstration of my “amazing” pop cultural eclecticism nor a reflection of my mental health anxieties; we like what we like, after all. No, this post is an attempt to reconcile two apparently opposing impulses in the world of writing; the aforementioned (alleged) impasse between genre and literary fiction.

For anyone who has attended a university-level creative writing course, even a single workshop, this dichotomy might already have raised its slightly distorted head. I majored in English literature and I’ve also attended a one-year certificate course in creative writing at a local university, and I don’t regret either of them. My purpose here is certainly not to trash the rarefied air of academia. Far from it. Because I genuinely learned a great deal about writing—about what works and what doesn’t work, about the inner alchemy and the outer pragmatism of this eccentric world—from those two experiences. Not to mention the confidence boost of sharing your work among motivated and engaged peers as deeply in love with the written word as you, alongside the equally essential practice of reading in front of an audience so you don’t forget that word’s spoken nature either. Continue reading “The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent”