Independent Publisher Online has made St. Peter’s Monsters a highlighted title.
This means IPO recognizes it as one of the best of the books received and reviewed by its editorial staff.
These books are honored each month for exhibiting superior levels of creativity, originality, and high standards of design and production quality.
“The book is wonderful!!! I started it Saturday night when I got home and was hooked. I should have been packing on Sunday but kept picking up the book instead!” – J.R.
“I have been reading non-stop (as much as possible with work and stuff to do.) I loved the story and was taken on a great ride trying to see if the characters were going to end up where I wanted them. . . The first pages just jumped at me mostly because you have not used the usual adjectives, the well worn metaphors! I found the poet in you. I fell in love with the words themselves …..NOT simply the great twisted story! I am in love with words. I love the way phrases sing and move, roll over and can turn belly up showing a fresh and new image. “By October, oaks and maples had erupted into gaudy harvest colors.” p.10 Ahhhhhhhh, nice, very nice. Using “gaudy” allows me to go further with the suggestion…..most would just tell the colors trapping me into a fixed color position. So, write on good woman! Now I shall start looking for your poetry. Thank you for such a wonderful story in which you so carefully created deeper individuals who had a chance to find Grace.” – L.S.
Hal Hubener is an excellent interviewer. He actually read the book and asked in-depth questions. I was pleasantly surprised.
Cover to Cover 108:Neva Bryan
episode_url
Here’s the link: <http://www.channels.com/episodes/show/6345442/Cover-to-Cover-108-Neva-Bryan>
Visit Channels.com <http://www.channels.com> to subscribe to video feeds from all over the Web.
Enter my contest and win a basket of my favorite things:
A necklace hand-beaded and donated by Leah Lawson: natural stone, quartz, swaro crystals, and sterling clasp.
A Clinch River Farmers Market T-Shirt donated by Lou Wallace.
A music CD donated and signed by the artist, Charlie Engle: Out of the Groove.
A book of poetry donated and signed by the author, Rita Quillen: Her Secret Dream.
Scented soap, hand made by Chastity Jenkins, Scents & Virtues.
A book donated by Frank Kilgore and Stacy Fowler Horton called The Clinch River: A World-Class Treasure.
A Lord of the Rings movie glass goblet.
A $5 gift certificate for cupcakes donated by Babycakes Cupcakery in Abingdon, VA.
A sunflower and bee address book.
A gingerbread-scented candle in a tin.
A signed copy of St. Peter’s Monsters donated by yours truly.
How to Enter
I have hidden ten lines from my book on the pages of my web site (www.nevabryan.com).
2 are located on the Buy the Book page. 2 are located on the What Readers Say page. 1 is located on the Video Trailer page. 1 is located on the Author’s Bio page. 2 are located on the Appearances page. 1 is located on the Publications page. 1 is located on the Contacts page.
Copy and paste all ten lines in the body of an e-mail and send it to me at the following email address:
neva@nevabryan.com
Be sure to paste your answer in the body of the email and do not include it as an attachment. Entitle your message Neva’s Favorite Things Contest.
Include your name, working phone number, mailing address, and working e-mail address in the body of the message.
One entry per person per e-mail address, please.
One winner’s name will be drawn from correct entries.
I will accept entries through noon, September 30, 2009. Detailed contest rules are below.
Contest Guidelines
No Purchase Necessary.
The answers to Neva’s contest can be found on www.nevabryan.com.
Must be at least 18 years old to enter contest.
You must include ALL pieces of information requested, or your entry is incomplete. Winners will be chosen at random from all correct and complete entries. International entries are NOT accepted.
Only entries received through nevabryan.com will be considered eligible. Odds of winning are dependent upon number of eligible entries received. Drawing governed by laws of the state of Virginia.
Contest accepts only one entry per person and only one entry per e-mail account. Duplicate entries will be voided. In the event of a dispute over the identity of an online entrant, entry will be deemed submitted by the holder of the e-mail account.
Use of automated devices is not valid for entry.
Electronic entries must be received by deadline noted on specific contest page.
Winner[s] will be notified by e-mail within 30 days of the drawing and names may or may not get posted to this website. All winner name listings will be name and city of residence only so as to protect the privacy of the winner.
Neva Bryan will not share entrant information with any third parties, except as required by law. Entry constitutes permission (except where prohibited by law) to use the winner’s name, hometown, and any text submitted for purposes of Neva’s advertising and promotion without further compensation. Neva Bryan may contact entrants in the future with information she feels may be of interest.
Any prize or prize notification returned to the sponsor as undeliverable will result in the awarding of that prize to an alternate winner. Substitution for any prize may be necessary due to unavailability, in which case a comparable prize of equal or greater value will be awarded. Sorry, no cash equivalent.
Please note that while Neva does read all your entries, she is unable to respond personally to them.
Neva Bryan, nevabryan.com, Brighid Editions, or the web host shall NOT be held responsible for technical failures in entry transmission, or for any damage to participant’s computer occasioned by participation in this contest/promotion or downloading any information necessary to participate in the promotion.
Not eligible to enter contest: Employees and contractors of any of Neva Bryan’s/Brighid Editions’/nevabryan.com’s contracted publishers, agents, and/or hired contractors (web design, publicists, printers, distributors, etc.) and affiliated companies and members of those employees’/contractors’ immediate families; individuals and companies that donated items for the prize.
Neva Bryan reserves the right to cancel the contest/sweepstakes if it becomes technically corrupted.
Winner will be notified by mail, e-mail or telephone within 30 days of the drawing.
All prize winners will be announced on nevabryan.com within 90 days of the close of the contest. All winner name listings will be first name and last initial and city of residence only so as to protect the privacy of the winner. Winner[s] is responsible for all applicable taxes.
All entries comply with the following: in no way, straightforward or implied, does any written submission constitute or indicate any collaboration between entrant and Neva Bryan, present or future. All submissions become the sole property of Neva Bryan.
Southwest Virginia Museum, Big Stone Gap, VA, August 8, 1:00 PM
YWCA, Bristol, TN, September 17, Noon
Coffee Depot, Christiansburg, VA, September 19, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Java J’s Downtown, Bristol, VA, October 1, 7:00 PM
Sundial Books, Chincoteague, VA (signing only), October 10, 6:00 PM
Wise Public Library, Wise, VA, October 15, 6:30 PM
Homecraft Days, Big Stone Gap, VA, October 17-18, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
J. Fred Matthews Memorial Library, St. Paul, VA, November 7, 10:00 AM – Memoir Writing Workshop
Tales of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore, Big Stone Gap, VA, November 13, 7:00 PM – Memoir Writing Workshop
Hearthside Books, Bluefield, WV, December 19, Time TBA
St. Peter’s Monsters is available at these fine booksellers and retail stores: Joseph Beth, Lexington, KY; Family Drug, Lebanon, VA; Coffee Buy the Book, Pulaski, VA; Wise County Historical Society, Wise, VA; Zazzy’Z, Abingdon, VA; Coffee Depot, Christiansburg, VA; Binding Time Cafe, Martinsville, VA; Kraftin’ Korner, Lebanon, VA; Appalachian Arts Center, Wardell, VA; and Tales of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore, Big Stone Gap, VA.
It is available on-line at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, Powell’s Books, and Target, as well as in some stores in the chains. It is available through nevabryan.com.
You may order a signed copy via snailmail. Send $14.00 (plus .70 tax if in VA) plus $3.99 for shipping and handling to: Brighid Editions, PO Box 1428, Saint Paul, VA 24283.
Books are always available during the author’s appearances. See her calendar for an event near you.
Publication Date: February 2009
Price: $14.00
Length: 294 pages
Cover Style: 6″X9″ Color Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-615-26391-5
LCCN: 2008910946
St. Peter’s Monsters is the story of Peter Sullivan, a homesick college student teetering on the edge of alcoholism. He discovers bigger monsters than the bottle when a mysterious young woman enters his life. Wren has fled Peter’s beloved Appalachian hills and now he must find out why she is keeping secrets about her past.
As they turn to each other for comfort, they are linked together in a chain of love, tragedy, and murder . . . a chain that binds them when they find themselves back in the haunted shadows of the Virginia coalfields.
When author Alice Hoffman read Roberta Silman’s review of her novel The Story Sisters, the author was not pleased. The review wasn’t stellar but certainly it wasn’t crushing. Hoffman, however, chose to respond in less than gracious fashion.
She tweeted nasty comments about Silman and the Boston Globe, and published Silman’s e-mail and phone number. Apparently that last action was meant as a call to arms: Hoffman fans of the world, unite! Tell off this critic!
Having been a Hoffman fan for many years, I do not feel a sense of unity with any other fan who might have chosen to answer that call before the author withdrew the tweets and issued a tepid apologetic statement.
I’m more inclined to be less inclined to read any future Hoffman books. Had she played the proverbial wet duck, she would be a much more sympathetic figure. Instead, she comes off as a hothouse flower.
There’s a danger in using technology as reprisal. Sometimes it backfires. Anyone who’s ever made a drunken phone call to an ex in the middle of the night knows how it works. Technology used in the heat of the moment equals regret, regret, regret.
Saturday, July 4, 11 AM – 2 PM:
I’ll be signing books at Coffee Buy the Book in Pulaski, Virginia.
Excerpt from “Sawmill Boys.” Appalachian Heritage, vol. 34, no. 4 (Fall 2006).
For more information about Appalachian Heritage, Berea College’s literary journal, and to order back issues, visit http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/
by Neva Bryan
“Where there’s loggers, there’s bound to be sawmill boys.”
Sawmill boys. I liken them to trees because they possess two kinds of beauty. The first kind is in their natural freedom, the beauty of a tree standing tall with its brothers. But when the sawmill gets a hold on them, they develop a second kind of beauty, the kind that comes from being cut down, sawed up, and spit out. Rough cut, splintered, shaped for utility.
A sawmill boy can take a 4X4 between the eyes that’ll lay him out flat on his ass and then get back up to finish his workday. They all wear a strange cologne of diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, and cigarette smoke. Sawdust trails them like breadcrumbs for the lost. They’re lean, with knotty arms and hard faces, but their eyes are dreamy.
Wendell, my ex-husband, was a sawmill boy. I remember the first time I saw him, more than five years ago. He was coming out of the ABC store with a bottle of Jack Daniels tucked under his arm. He had that sawmill boy look – lean and hard – but he was dressed to party: Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt, faded jeans, black and silver biker boots.
His fair skin was ruddy from working outside all day. When I got close I saw that his knuckles were skinned, scabbed, and scarred . . . a perpetual state for sawmill boys, I learned later. At least he had all his fingers.
When he cocked his head at me and grinned, I saw a slight gap between his two front teeth. As he smiled, his eyes darkened from coffee-and-cream to pure black liquid. His hair was the color of my Granny’s apple butter; I thought how sweet it would be to free it from its tight ponytail and watch it tumble down around me. Just looking at him made me hungry.
Before I knew it, Wendell and I sat on the bank of the Clinch River sharing Jack and naming stars. By turns he was raunchy and sweet, sad and funny, goofy and sexy. I gave up to him with an immediacy – an urgency – that was quite foreign to me. It seems I had taken a 4X4 right between the eyes. Wendell Kennedy was a splinter who had worked his way straight into my heart.
