Tomorrow is launch day of loveahappyending.com! Check out this link http://loveahappyending.com/were-all-excited-come-and-see-why/and see what all the fuss is about. And do drop by tomorrow for the official launch.
Category Archives: Novels
Book Review – 1923: A Memoir
Heartbreaking & Uplifting 
***** (5-stars)
Having never read a memoir, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But from the moment I got involved with loveahappyending.com and selected my authors, I knew I would be a fan of the genre – at least this particular author’s account of his early years.
Just from the brief blurbs on the loveahappyending.com/harry-leslie-smith/ author page, there was a parallel resonance between Harry’s life and my father’s, although comparing the two, my father’s life wasn’t nearly so tragic and poverty-stricken. In their later years, they both fought in Europe during WWII.
It must have been extremely painful for Harry to be able to put his childhood on paper for all to see yet cathartic at the same time.
It’s hard to imagine the type of childhood Harry experienced in 1920s and 1930s England. In that period, people did what that had to in order to survive, including digging through trash and stealing from others to obtain something to eat. His account of his father’s years of working in the mines until he could no longer work below ground to being pensioned off and shamed out of the family home because of the actions of his mother, who only did what she had to in order to ensure their survival (such as it was).
Even Harry’s mates and later his RAF comrades had no idea what he had been through as a child, ***spoiler here*** although I suspected it would tumble out when he pulled his rifle on a fellow serviceman. ***end spoiler***. Harry had invented a happy reasonaby normal family life for himself.
Harry is quick to credit his older sister, Mary, for his survival. When she finally leaves home, he’s devastated. They remain close but it’s not the same. When he talks about corresponding with Mary after he’s enlisted with the RAF, you can feel the hurt in his words as he knows they’ve drifted apart.
Harry’s keen wit and way with words make for an spell-binding rollercoaster ride of emotions from the lowest of low to the highest of high. He doesn’t pull any punches and is brutally honest when reliving his experiences.
1923: A Memoir is available in Hardcover for $19.22 CDN and Paperback for $15.30 CDN from amazon.ca – in Hardcover for $24.28 US, Paperback for $16.46 US and for the Kindle for $1.19 US from amazon.com and through amazon.co.uk in Hardcover for £20.94, Paperback for £13.66 and for the Kindle for £0.83.
There are two more chapters forthcoming in this series. 1947: A Place For The Heart To Kip and the final book, tentatively entitled 1953: Empress of Australia.
After reading his first, I’ll definitely be purchasing the next two.
Finished reading 1923: A Memoir
I finished reading this fantastic story last night. I have to admit I’ve never read a memoir before so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I was enchanted from the first word. I’ll write my review and get it sent off to our Review Chair, Janice Horton at loveahappyending.com hopefully before the weekend is over.
Best of all, reading Harry’s touching memoir, I’ve made a new friend! Harry is a wonderful man and I feel like I’ve known him many years, not just since first getting involved with http://loveahappyending.com/
Welcome my latest loveahappyending.com author
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m now supporting Scottish author and my friend, Chris Longmuir, on http://loveahappyending.com/
Chris’s first crime novel, Dead Wood, won the prestigious Dundee Book Prize in 2009. Her second, Night Watcher, was self-published on Amazon and Smashwords earlier this year.
Since then, her saga A Salt Splashed Cradle has also been self-published. Both of these books flirted in the top 100 best sellers on Amazon and hopefully, with the support and buzz created through this exciting project, they’ll both be back there and higher than ever before!
You can visit Chris’s website at http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/ and her blog at http://chrislongmuir.blogspot.com/
Excellent Post on loveahappyending.com
Today, Stephen Penner, one of the loveahappyending.com featured authors, put an excellent post on his blog about happy endings and the wonderful interactive website http://loveahappyending.com/
Happy Endings… they come in many genres (and some where you might not expect to find them)
They might not always be “happily ever after” but even the premise of a couple beginning their life together can be a happy ending.
What of the ending of a crime novel? The criminal is caught, the police have done their job. Not a happy ending in the strictest sense but a good resolution. And if you love reading crime fiction then that could be considered YOUR happy ending.
And the most unsuspecting place I think you can find a happy ending is in the horror genre. Good triumphs over evil… how much happier can you get than that?
Okay, I confess, I have some strange ideas when it comes to places to find happy endings.
And as long as you feel good, satisfied at the outcome, and put a book away and not feel cheated… doesn’t that make a happy ending?
So before I alienate my romance writer friends and readers, I still love to pick up a good romance novel. And more importantly, I write in that genre – although I still remain pre-published, I remain hopeful that one day I’ll be a featured on an interactive website as fantastic as http://loveahappyending.com/
Yesterday’s Brian Henry Workshop
Brian’s How to Write a Bestseller workshop was fantastic! Like all his workshops I’ve attended, it was intense but presented in such a way that I wasn’t overloaded with information. I learned lots of tricks and tidbits that I can’t wait to try in my own writing.
After the lunch break, Kelley Armstrong gave an interesting presentation from an author’s perspective and experiences. Again lots of good stuff, I can’t wait to try.
All in all a good day.
How to Write a Bestseller – Brian Henry Workshop Saturday, June 18, Mississauga
Here’s the scoop on the workshop I’m attending on Saturday in Mississauga. I’ve attended a number of Brian’s workshops in the past and have thoroughly enjoyed them and come home from them energized, inspired and ready to write.
With book editor Brian Henry & New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong
Saturday, June 18
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Chartwell Baptist Church
1880 Lakeshore Road West, Mississauga (Map here.)
This workshop will give you the inside scoop on what gives a novel best-selling potential. You’ll learn how to get readers emotionally involved in your story, how to raise tension, control your pacing and keep your readers turning the pages. But you won’t just hear about some of the best secrets of the trade; you’ll learn how to apply them to give your own writing a sharp new edge.
Workshop leader Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing teacher for more than 25 years. He has helped many of his students get published, including guest speaker Kelley Armstrong…
Kelley Armstrong lives in Aylmer, south of London, Ontario, with her husband and three children. She used to program computers and attend Brian Henry workshops. Now she writes international bestsellers. Kelley has hit the New York Time’s bestseller list with both her supernatural thrillers for adults and her urban fantasy for teens.
Kelley’s principal publishers are Random House Canada, Bantam U.S., and Warner in Britain. To date, she’s published two dozen books, most recently Tales of the Otherworld (all proceeds for which go to Literacy Canada) and Waking the Witch. By June, she’ll have two more out: Counterfeit Magic and The Gathering.
Check out Kelley’s website here.
Fee: $38.94 + 13% hst = $44 paid in advance
or $42.48 + 13% hst = $48 if you wait to pay at the door
To reserve a spot now, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca
For information about all of Brian Henry’s writing workshops and creative writing courses, see here.
Night Watcher by Chris Longmuir featured on June 15th on Sinclair Books
Chris is being featured on this month’s Book of the Month in Alex Sinclair’s blog, Sinclair Books. Alex features one of the books each day and her slot is on the 15th.
In addition to being featured tomorrow on the blog, you can vote for her book to be the “book of the month”. To vote you need to click on the book title Night Watcher, which is about the middle of the list of books that go down the right hand side, then click on vote button at the bottom. Here is the link that will take you there. http://sinclairbooks.blogspot.com/?zx=405fec9b25c68a1d
Although Chris’s book is featured tomorrow, you can vote at any time during the month. At last update she had 15 votes and is trying to get that increased as there are other book on his site with lots more.
Come on folks, lets make Night Watcher Alex Sinclair’s book of the month for June 2011.
House of Silence by Linda Gillard
I finished reading this earlier today. I first saw this title on the Festival of Romance Online. The cover immediately drew me in. Dark, gloomy sky and English manor house. The fact that it was set in Norfolk was an added bonus for me having travelled through there in 2005.
House of Silence
by Linda Gillard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Interesting read. Plenty of plot twists kept me wondering exactly what currently was happening behind the closed doors of Creake Hall and what had happened there in the past.