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.
OK, writers. Here’s a stimulating exercise for you.
The next time you go on a trip, write down interesting street names and community names that you discover. Take those names and create a story or poem using them.
Below are street names I found on a recent trip. Feel free to plunder them. I think they would be good used in a child’s poem or story.
· Goose Market
· Fairystone
· Rock Castle
· Indigo Mountain
· Lemon Tree
· Cloud Break
· Goblintown
· Ironbelt
(Tolkien would have liked the proximity of those last two to each other. Very fitting.)
Ready. Set. Write!!!
Recently a writer I know remarked on his deep disappointment that so few people had shown up for one of his readings. He said he felt “pathetic” and mentioned low book sales.
I advised him to treat three attendees the same as he would have treated 300 and it would still be rewarding.
He agreed that he always mustered genuine enthusiasm for the audience no matter the size, but admitted that he did not feel as gratified when there were fewer attendees.
I would argue that size doesn’t matter. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) I’ve spoken to standing-room only crowds and to an audience of one. Both were satisfying, but in different ways.
When I read to a room full of people, there’s an energy there that rouses the performer in me. It’s fun to read the different expressions on the faces in the crowd. They give me cues as to how to proceed. It’s large-scale interactivity.
On the other hand, when I’ve had only one person show up to a reading, I find myself connecting on a deeper level with that individual. It’s only happened to me twice, but both times I did the same thing. I came out from behind the podium, pulled up a chair to face the visitor, and gave the reading. Afterwards we sat and chatted: small-scale interactivity, but very meaningful.
On one of these occasions the attendee told me that I was very likeable. It tickled her to death that I sat down with her to read and talk.
While literary readings are great opportunities to sell books, I don’t look at them as serving just that purpose. To do so is to diminish the importance of the spoken word.
Yes, I want to sell books. However, I also want to enjoy the shared social literary experience.
The act of reading a book is one of isolation and interpretation. When I’m allowed to read to an audience – even an audience of one – I insert myself into someone else’s world temporarily. And, hopefully, I provide clarity to the story. I give it a voice.
Neva Bryan, author of St. Peter’s Monsters – a novel.
Thanks to Hal Hubener, director of Blue Ridge Regional Library, for inviting me to be on Cover To Cover, the library’s weekly TV program broadcast live on BTW Channel 21 (Comcast Cable), Collinsville. I had a great time and Hal was a wonderful interviewer. He really parsed the book. I was impressed!
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.
Mara mentioned villanelles at Spoken Word last weekend. Here’s a form I like: the pantoum.
It is a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues until the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern.
AUTUMN SACRIFICE
Holy ghost mist
Walks on water
In morning’s sacred hour.
Autumn hovers above,
Walks on water
In reflections of the sky.
Autumn hovers above,
Mild, then meek, in wind.
In reflections of the sky
Leaves deny death.
Mild, then meek, in wind,
Branches scratch testaments.
Leaves deny death,
But frosty breath withers.
Branches scratch testaments.
Sun draws blood,
But frosty breath withers
Holy ghost mist.
Sun draws blood
In morning’s sacred hour.
“Autumn Sacrifice.” Poetry. 2006 Explorations, MECC, Third Place.
