A BEGGAR’S BARGAIN

 

The Bargainer Series, Book One

 

by

 

Jan Sikes

 

Historical Fiction / Literary Fiction

Publisher: Fresh Ink Group

Date of Publication: March 12, 2024

Number of Pages: 324 pages

 

 

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A shocking proposal that changes everything

Desperate to honor his father’s dying wish, Layken Martin vows to do whatever it takes to save the family farm.

Once the Army discharges him following World War II, Layken returns to Missouri to find his legacy in shambles and in jeopardy. A foreclosure notice from the bank doubles the threat. He appeals to the local banker for more time—a chance to rebuild, plant, and harvest crops and for time to heal far away from the noise of bombs and gunfire.

But the banker firmly denies his request. Now what?

Then, the banker makes an alternative proposition—marry his unwanted daughter, Sara Beth, in exchange for a two-year extension. Out of options, money, and time, Layken agrees to the bargain.

Now, he has two years to make a living off the land while he shares his life with a stranger.

If he fails at either, he’ll lose it all.

 

 

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Sara Beth’s Top Ten Weird or Different List

Sara Beth is the female protagonist in this story. She has some unusual quirks I thought would be fun to share.

1. She has a pet rabbit named Cuddles, and she takes the bunny everywhere she goes.
2. She plays a thumb piano. Ever seen one of those?

3. Sara Beth learned to read Tarot cards from her deceased mother.

4. Sara Beth has gypsy blood in her from her mother’s bloodline.

5. She’s always suspected Homer Williams isn’t her real father. How could such a hateful, arrogant man sire her?

6. She loves music. When she arrives at Layken’s farmhouse, one of the first things she spots is a cabinet radio typical for the 1940s. She’s never listened to a radio.

7. Sara Beth has never taken a drink of liquor, but when a man offers her and Layken some apple pie moonshine at a street fair, she gets her first taste.

8. Sara Beth has soft, gentle ways, and this helps when she finds a terrified little boy living in a treehouse in the woods behind the farmhouse.

9. Sara Beth had never tasted a Coca Cola until a shopping trip into town with Layken.

10. Sara Beth has a loyal guardian, Uncle Seymour, who had promised her dying mother he would always look out for Sara Beth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jan Sikes writes compelling and creative stories from the heart.

She openly admits that she never set out in life to be an author, although she’s been an avid reader all her life. But she had a story to tell. Not just any story, but a true story that rivals any fiction creation. She brought the entertaining true story to life through fictitious characters in an intricately woven tale that encompasses four books, accompanying music CDs, and a book of poetry and art.

And now, this author can’t put down the pen. She continues to write fiction in a variety of genres and has published many award-winning short stories and novels.

Jan is an active blogger, a member of Story Empire, a devoted fan of Texas music, and a grandmother of five. She resides in North Texas.

 

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FOUR WINNERS:

 

Two winners receive $20 Amazon gift cards;

 

Two winners receive eBook copies of A Beggar’s Bargain

 

(US only; ends midnight, CDT, 4/19/24)

 

 

 

 

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Visit the Lone Star Literary Life Tour Page

 

For direct links to each post on this tour, updated daily,

 

or visit the blogs directly:

 

 

04/09/24	Forgotten Winds	Guest Post
04/09/24	Hall Ways Blog	Book Trailer
04/10/24	The Clueless Gent	Review
04/10/24	LSBBT Blog	Excerpt
04/11/24	The Book’s Delight	Review
04/12/24	The Page Unbound	Author Interview
04/13/24	Bibliotica	Review
04/14/24	StoreyBook Reviews	Top Ten List
04/15/24	It’s Not All Gravy	Review
04/16/24	The Real World According to Sam	Excerpt
04/17/24	Rox Burkey Blog	Review
04/18/24	The Plain-Spoken Pen	Review

 

 

 

 

 

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Synopsis

 

Perestroika overthrows communist regimes in Europe.

In the People’s Republic of Slavia, the former leaders are trying to survive the new times while their victims seek revenge.

Former President Alfred Ionescu is placed in an asylum he himself built. Zut Zdanov, the head of culture, is confronted with his child abuse. Helena Yava, responsible for education, wants to avenge her lover’s death. Igor Olin, responsible for the economy, fights for his disabled son to have a dignified life. Art historian Silvia Lenka wants to know who her parents are. Lia Kirchner, the daughter of a painter who died in a re-education camp, wants to know the truth.

Having as a binding element Pilate’s question to Jesus, “What is truth?” Perestroika is a novel of revenge, redemption, and catharsis inspired by recent European history.

 

Winner of the 2023 Historical Fiction Company Book of the Year
Bronze Medal in the 2023 Latino Book Awards
Finalist in the 2021 Eyland Awards
Finalist in the 2021 Fiction Factory
Excerpt nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2023

 

 

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Excerpt

 

Introduction

 

Slavia is a country with an area of 40,000 square kilometres, situated between Poland, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. Its capital is Tiers. It has four million inhabitants, and its main resources are natural gas, copper, and timber. Founded in the thirteenth century, it was ruled by a succession of monarchs until 1940, when the Nazis invaded it. After its liberation in 1945, Slavia became part of the Eastern Bloc dominated by the Soviet Union.

Since 1950, on the death of the former president, Alfred Ionescu has governed Slavia. His most important cabinet ministers are Pietr Schwartz, the Chief of the Secret Police, Igor Olin, the People’s Commissar for the Economy, Zut Zdanhov, the People’s Commissar for Culture and Propaganda, and Helena Yava, the People’s Commissar for Education.

The regime controls the economy, the courts, and the forces of law and order. It uses social media, cinema, theatre, art, and sport as propaganda tools for its citizens’ indoctrination. The regime banned religion and closed the churches. Elections are not free, and neither freedom of expression nor any individual initiative is permitted, nor even the publication of books and newspapers unless a committee of censors has approved them. Citizens receive ration cards with which they can purchase goods in the shops, and they need a visa for permission to leave the country. Dissidents are persecuted and sent to labour camps for re-education, turning them into enslaved people.

 

 

About the Author

 

João Cerqueira holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Porto.

He is the author of nine books, which have been published in eight countries: Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, England, the United States, Brazil, and Argentina.

He won the 2020 Indie Reader Awards, the 2014 Global ebook Awards, and the 2013 USA Best Book Awards.

 

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Synopsis

 

If the fate of unrequited love survives fifty-one years, nine months, and four days in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, it leads the way for HER: The Flame Tree, a spare, remorseless love triptych that sweeps through the rich panorama of two generations of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. The hopeless love of a young eunuch for a high-ranking concubine is one of this novel’s three stories that illuminate the oriental mystery of Vietnam, as epic as it is persevering,

Despite a rich trove of documentary films, Western readers know little of the spiritual face of Vietnam. Framed between 1915 and 1993, HER: The Flame Tree begins in Huế, the former imperial capital Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.

The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.

Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.

Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her.

HER: The Flame Tree does not have the flavor of historical fiction, plot-heavy and sexually graphic. Rather, it is atmospheric and impressionistic, in the style of Snow Falling on Cedars. The magnificent poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance. Its symbolic image befits Phượng for her magnanimous nature and grace, and the scarlet blossoming flowers when Jonathan Edward bids Phượng farewell is beauty without sadness—Wait and Hope.

 

 

 

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Praise

 

“In this almost folkloric saga of a royal eunuch, his adopted daughter and the tragedies and triumphs of love in their lives from the days of the emperor’s court to the war with America, Khanh Ha takes us deeply into the heart of traditional Vietnam in a tale told in such lushly poetic, descriptive language that it immerses the reader deeply and sensually into the gorgeousness of the land, the texture and taste of food, and the complex humanity of the characters. Her: The Flame Tree is an intricately woven, seductively fascinating story of family, sacrifice, loyalty and redeeming love in the face of heart-breaking loss that breathtakingly weaves the lives of individuals we come to know and care about into the saga of Vietnamese—and American—history.” —Wayne Karlin, author of Memorial Days

“Ha evokes a visceral image of Vietnam . . .  A vivid study of a country’s fraught history and how its people struggled to make sense of it.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Her: The Flame Tree is a beautiful novel, rich with evocations of natural setting in coastal Vietnam; remembered action going back more than a hundred years; and characters both extraordinary and poignantly ordinary, developed by layer upon layer of stories.”—Elizabeth Harris, judge and author of Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman

“Early in Khanh Ha’s latest novel Her: The Flame Tree, the author describes a book made of delicate leaves of gold. Such a volume would be ideal to record this shimmering and often tender tale of love, loss, and memory.” —Steve Evans, author of The Marriage of True Minds

 

 

Excerpt

 

Miss Phượng met the last concubine of Emperor Tự-Ðức when the woman was very old, in the final year of her long life. When the emperor died in 1883, she was only fifteen. She told Miss Phượng she was one hundred and twenty-three now. Small, birdlike, white hair parted in the middle, braided in two small plaits on the sides of her head.

She took Miss Phượng by the hand and led her into the cottage, which sat behind a bamboo hedge in the back of the mausoleum. She served tea from a tiny blue-flowered pot the size of her hand. The nougats she offered were made of egg whites and brown sugar and chopped nuts. Brittle, they melted quickly in the mouth.

“I used to make them for the emperor,” she told Miss Phượng. “A long time ago.” Then regarding Miss Phượng, she nodded, “See the banyan out there?”

It dwarfed the cottage with its shade, like an immense pavilion. Miss Phượng traced its tortuous roots to the steps of the concubine’s home.

“It was a little tree when I came,” the old woman muttered.

“Yes,” Miss Phượng said, “trees outlive us. My father had a magnolia planted outside the Trinh Minh Palace during his service as the grand eunuch for the imperial family. He would be three years older than you, Madam, if he still lived.”

In the deceased emperor’s personal room the old concubine sat down on the carved rosewood bed. Hunched between the parted panels of the yellow mosquito net, she sat amidst her husband’s belongings—the bed, its embroidered mat, the porcelain pillow, the tea, the rice liquor, the areca-nuts and betel leaves and a tiny pot of lime. They were here for him when he returned in spirit.

For one hundred and eight years she replenished them every morning so that when he arrived nothing was missing, nothing was stale. He could read his favorite books. He could write, as was his passion, in his annals, each page of which was a thin leaf of gold. He would find again his gold swords, jade shrubs, his chess men in green and white jade, chopsticks made of kim-giao white wood that turned black against any sort of poison. They were arranged there under glass.

Miss Phượng took the old woman’s hand and led her out of her haunt, passing candle-lit nooks and corners and the eternally mildewed air of the sunless chambers.

 

©Khanh Ha

 

 

Guest Review by Nora

 

A spellbinding novel from one of the greatest authors of our time– ‘Her: The Flame Tree,’ by Khanh Ha, is a one-of-a-kind story that allows the reader to travel deep into the heart of Vietnamese history.

Minh is a Vietnamese man now living in America who returns to his home country to seek out one very special woman and learn her story. Phuong is the adopted daughter of a former court eunuch who spent much of her life caring for her elderly father. Of both Vietnamese and French descent, Phuong knows nothing of her birth parents and has only ever known the love of her adopted father, Canh. But Canh has a storied history as well, and the novel unveils these three different timelines as it goes along.

From the halls of the palace of the Imperial Emperor to the packed streets of the marketplace, ‘Her: he Flame Tree’ takes you on a journey that you won’t soon forget.

I’m a huge fan of Khanh Ha’s writing and have enjoyed several of his books in the past, which is why I had a feeling I would enjoy this one. As an author, he has an undeniable way of crafting an atmosphere that makes the reader feel immersed in the story.

Between that creative blend of Vietnamese and American culture that Ha is so great at illustrating, and the strength and power of the characters, this book was a strong five star read for me!

I can’t imagine a better way to spend a winter evening than enjoying a book by this stellar author. This, being one of my first books of the year, was such a treat for both the heart and mind. I simply cannot wait to read whatever Ha comes out with next! I’m sure it will be extraordinary!

 

 

About the Author

 

Award winning author Khanh Ha is a nine-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for The Ohio State University Fiction Collection Prize, Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, Prize Americana, and The Santa Fe Writers Project. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, and The Red Hen Press Fiction Award.

 

 

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Giveaway

 

This giveaway is for 3 print or ebook copies and is open to the U.S. only.

This giveaway ends on Feb 22, 2024, at midnight pacific time.

Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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Synopsis

 

Long Island, New York, just after World War II, when the country was great for some and not so great for others, home to the Smith family: Philip, a racist Nassau County detective with a secret; his mentally ill wife, Eunice, speeding around the house looking for her coffee can of prescription pills; their oldest son, Philip Jr., aspiring pastor and budding monster; daughter Joyce, with a serious artistic talent that, in the great mall culture, she doesn’t know what to do with; and Oscar, an obese child who wants nothing more than to be a fireman when he grows up.

After surviving her own dysfunctional childhood, Joyce marries Roger, a beeraholic Customs Inspector with whom she would have two Griff, an enterprising lad fully comfortable on the other side of a line, and Stacy, a girl attuned to a dark frequency few can perceive. Decades go by, marriages fall apart, children long to escape, and Joyce struggles to find happiness in her art and life in the only place she would ever know.

 

 

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About the Author

 

Richard Daub grew up on Long Island, New York, where he pilfered milk crates, loitered in bowling alleys, rumbled in shopping mall parking lots, stocked supermarket frozen foods aisles, played guitar, cruised nightclub parking lots for girls, wrote crappy song lyrics, and longed for the day he’d forever leave “Strong Island”.

He fled the Atlantic Northeast for the Pacific Northwest and, in the late 1990s, worked for a company named after a piranha-filled river that sold books on the World Wide Web, where he met his wife.

In the 2000s, he became an inexperienced journalist and quickly rose to international prominence covering the animal pharmaceutical industry.

After toiling in journalism for a number of years and reminding himself that he was but an artist, the author began a career in real estate, selling condos in Harlem until the financial disaster of 2008.

The real estate market having collapsed, he took a factory job and moved with wife and child to Westchester County, New York. After several years of labor, husbanding, and childrearing, he began writing again, waking at 3:00 am until it was time to take the kids to school and go to work, eventually completing The Adventures of Hyperkid, a young adult novel written with his son. He then completed two adult novels, History of von Schatt (1913-1960) and The Island Country, as well as a collection of short stories, The Greater Massapequas—the kind of thing agents and publishers love most, short story collections from unknown writers. Take that to your fiction workshop and smoke it.

History of von Schatt is a novel inspired by a creepy painting hung on in his author’s grandmother’s Long Island home, a portrait of the ship captain grandfather he’d never met, a man so frightening that the author, as a boy, could see fear in the eyes of the grownups whenever they spoke of “The Captain”, who, by then, had been dead two decades, harrowing tales of land and sea they probably never imagined the boy would recall later in life as a toasted journalist.

The Island Country and The Greater Massapequas are drawn from the author’s experience growing up on the desolate, amber-lit streets and mall culture of the Long Island suburbs he longed to get as far from as possible without leaving the country.

He submitted these works to “literary agents”, leeches of a swine publishing industry just as bad, if not worse, than the music industry, the filmmaking industry, and the car rental industry. After recalling that definition of insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, he decided to heed the advice of other successful artists, to make it happen yourself.

The author would eventually realize that he could have written the greatest novel ever and he still would have gotten the same nonresponse. In his exhaustive research, he learned that there are precious few slots for titles from unknown literary writers, especially for those who didn’t hail from one of America’s leading “academic institutions”, or some “workshop” in the middle of a cornfield, or some academia that places undue relevance to the “The” before its name and has fraternities with secret handshakes and professors on the take.

The author, with several completed works in the can and crossing the threshold of fifty, old enough to have written on electric typewriters and word processors and computers with sensitive floppy disks, realized he did not need some promise of commercial success from the leeches and swine, and, that, as an artist, he needed to put his work out there and let the world decide, not some Manhattan socialite.

“It took me fifty years, but now it’s time to do it my way,” said the author recently at a sub-gala affair in south central Westchester County. “I’m not going to live long enough for the publishing industry and its gatekeepers to get their heads out of their ass. It is time to let the world decide.”

 

 

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Synopsis

 

Nominated for The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Book Award, Alle C. Hall’s debut literary novel, As Far As You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back, is a-girl-and-her-backpack story with a #MeToo influence:

Carlie is not merely traveling. A child sexual abuse survivor, as a teen, she steals ten thousand dollars from her parents and runs away to Asia. There, the Lonely Planet path of hookups, heat, alcohol, and drugs takes on a terrifying reality. Landing in Tokyo in the late 1980s, Carlie falls in with an international crew of tai chi-practicing backpackers. With their help, Carlie has the chance at a journey she didn’t plan for: one to find the self-respect ripped from her as a child and the healthy sexuality she desires.

 

 

 

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Guest Post

 

Coping: addiction & obsessive-compulsive behavior, depression & anxiety

 

I feel honored that Leslie has entrusted me to write about this difficult topic. The great news is that once a person understands that her, his, or their coping skills are a result of unresolved trauma, the concept of healing becomes truly possible.

First, a somewhat clinical and probably depressing explanation:

Providing someone survives the initial trauma, which is not a given, the immediate (often long-lasting) consequences are: depression and/or anxiety, physical pain, and addiction/compulsive and obsessive behaviors. These sequela (states of disease that result from an initial incident or disorder) can rotate as if on a Lazy Susan: clear the physical pain, and your sex addiction goes through the roof. Get some recovery in AA, and a largely unresolvable depression or anxiety floods you.

Point of fact: if I hadn’t gotten treatment for childhood trauma, I would have been tagged with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and spent my life pursuing medication that wouldn’t work for me because I am not bipolar. I am a trauma survivor.

The long-term consequences of untreated trauma—and therefore, untreated addiction, depression and/or anxiety, and physical pain—are straightforward and terrifying: death, incarceration, or hospitalization.

When people learn that I survived sexual trauma and that this trauma that defined my childhood, they usually ask, “How did you get through it?”

They mean the trauma.

I hear, “All those years following it.”

There is a reason the diagnosis is post-traumatic stress disorder. Until the healing begins, every element of your life is defined not only by what happened but also by what didn’t: no one taught you how to love or be loved. No one even taught you how to like, as in “friends.” Your best friends always seem to be better friends with someone else. How can you be a good friend—a good lover, partner, parent—when you have no idea how to share healthfully of yourself, how to trust, how to be dependable or self-effacing or straightforward or sometimes, just silent?

I found the “normal” human abilities that I was never taught in much the way that my main character does in my debut novel, As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back.

• Carlie bumbles through as many addictions as I could throw at her: alcoholism, smoking, sex and love, and food. Ö
• Kind people introduce her to Tai Chi. Ö
• Thing improve. Ö

In my experience, spirituality is a critical element when addressing the sequela of abuse. Certainly, we often need psychiatric medication. We definitely need therapy and support groups. However, that element that makes recovery last, Joy, traces directly to my spiritual growth.

Tai chi became the bedrock of my spirituality.

Tai chi offers me a spirituality with legs. I don’t think about my spiritual growth; I do it. I set up a practice that brings me to face myself every day. Tai chi is a Taoist practice. In Taoism, there is no difference between the body and the mind. Damage one, damage the other. Luckily, as you heal one, you heal the other.

 

Thank you, Alle, for writing a beautiful entry to share with us today. I hope it strikes a chord with many.

 

 

About the Author

 

Nominated for The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Book Award and—tis just in—winner of The PenCraft Book Award for Fiction – Adventure, Alle C. Hall’s debut literary novel, As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back was winning prizes before its publication, including the National League of American Pen Women’s Mary Kennedy Eastham Prize. Her short stories and essays appear in journals, including Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review, Tupelo Quarterly, New World Writing, Litro, Creative Nonfiction, and Another Chicago. She has written for The Seattle Times and Seattle Weekly and was a contributing writer at The Stranger. She is the former senior nonfiction editor at jmww journal and the former associate editor of Vestal Review. Hall lived in Asia, traveled there extensively, speaks what she calls “clunky” Japanese, and has a tai chi practice of 35 years running.

 

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Synopsis

 

Stanhope Ellis finds himself absorbing the stories of quirky characters who have one thing in common: closeness to death. As he struggles with whether he’s Death Man or a cosmic witness, he meets a wise nurse, Gayathri Das, who helps him navigate the emotional minefield. But will she die, like the others? The unforgettable characters, including several dogs, will captivate you from the first page.

 

 

 

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Guest Post

 

When I was learning animal communication around 2017, a young man asked for help with Sherloc, his old prize-winning hunting dog. The kid was new to the area, looking for work, and didn’t have time to properly care for the animal. Sherloc was 14 — a total sweetheart. But his hips were shot, and he really couldn’t walk anymore. He scooted here and there, happy and slobbery as a dog could be.

Finally, a neighborhood acquaintance modified an old thrift-shop baby buggy, and this transformed Sherloc’s life. We covered lots of territory around the neighborhood, sometimes at high rates of speed. The old guy loved it, even when dropping off to sleep. It occurred to me that this activity might make a good meet cute, as the act of helping an animal reveals character and attracts those who are similarly inclined. So Sherloc inspired Juniper, an old sighthound in MORTAL WEATHER who sports around similarly, facilitating the love and eventual marriage of Gemma and her Tom.

Juniper loved to go fast, her feathers flying. She had beautiful feathers. And things picked up for Tom and me, too. We talked about everything on those walks. Tom told me that Juniper never liked other women coming around. She’d always pretend to be sick when a woman talked to him. But she liked me right away. We were girlfriends.

I guess it all works because we live for moments like that — zooming along, even when we can’t do it entirely on our own anymore, taking everything in, bringing others together. The caring elevates all:

Tom was never once embarrassed about nursing that dog out in public. Everything Tom and I did had to do with Juniper. She was the everyday something we shared.

 

 

About the Author

 

Among other things, Kevin Patrick McCarthy has been a geothermal geologist, a technical writer, a critic, and a screenwriter. His humor, essays, poetry, and fiction have been widely recognized. “Enough Sky,” the epigraph for Mortal Weather, was Commended by The Poetry Society (UK) in 2014. He is a fourth-generation Coloradoan who now lives in the Pacific with his wife Tricia, and their dog, Nani.

 

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Giveaway

 

Win signed hard-copy of K.P. McCarthy’s MORTAL WEATHER, plus a MORTAL WEATHER mug!

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Synopsis

 

Art, math, obsession, and greed. An artist who confesses to murders through her drawings and a marginalized drifter involved in computer crime have their paths collide in Montana while both are struggling to make amends for past failures in love. Part Montana wilderness, part techno, and part misdirected love, Paper Targets is a story of confessed secrets. But more than crime, Paper Targets is infused with nature and solitude and unpacks questions about why people sometimes do bad things. Based on the actual fringe events of two of the world’s largest criminal frauds: the collapse of WorldCom and Enron.

Enzi, a drop-out and drifting runaway, becomes a criminal computer hacker who then falls in love with Kaori, an artist. When Kaori later confesses through her paintings to murder, Enzi starts questioning everything he has ever done. But as Enzi tries to extricate himself from the violent men he has become indebted to, he is pressured to keep “pounding code.” While Enzi plans his escape, he is forced to look inside for answers about his motivations.

 

 

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Review

 

This is a literary fiction novel that centers around Enzi.

The book starts off with his formative years, his home life, and the fact that he is dyslexic. We learn later in the book that he never learned to write and spells things phonetically. So it is somewhat surprising that he is now a computer programmer. He does love math and has learned how to look for patterns. Perhaps, his dyslexia is words only.

The story is told in first person, and the first few chapters (and they are long chapters) center around his life before this job as a programmer. However, when the transition occurs, we have no idea how he landed in this field until even later in the book. I felt disconnected from the character and had a hard time understanding what was happening. The story does start to flow when we meet Kaori, an artist that tells stories through her paintings. She is from Tokyo and has a different outlook on life and relationships. I don’t think Enzi had any idea what he was getting himself into when he bailed her out of jail. I don’t think any of us knew what was going to happen!

There are many fascinating supporting characters. Tsai is a fast-talking individual from Texas who wants Enzi to exploit the software he wrote for Tsai’s gain. There is also the bail bondsman, Pascal, that decides to take a step outside of his normal pattern when it comes to dealing with criminals. And, of course, Kaori. She has an outlook on life that doesn’t gel with what most people think, and is she capable of normalcy or not?

This book moves at a slow pace, and it is more about the human character than anything else. I noticed that there is a thriller label on this book. I wouldn’t count this as a mystery, suspense, or thriller. It has psychological aspects in understanding all of the characters and how they fit together.

This was an interesting read, and we give it 3 1/2 paws up.

 

 

 

 

About the Author

 

Steve Saroff was a 14-year-old runaway who started and sold several software companies to public companies. He is the host of the popular podcast ‘Montana Voice,’ and the author of numerous traditionally published short stories, first printed in Redbook, as well as several books.

 

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DREAMS OF ARCADIA

 

by

 

Brian Porter

 

 

Contemporary Fiction

Publisher: Legacy Book Press

Date of Publication: June 27, 2023

Number of Pages: 222 pages

 

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Veterinarian Nate Holub takes a job in his father’s Texas hometown, wondering if a city boy has what it takes to be a country vet. As he struggles to adapt, Nate reconnects with his family and discovers that his father’s accidental death thirty years earlier was much more complicated than he realized.

Nate delves into the past, afraid of what he might find. He encounters a resentful cousin, a wary town patriarch, a reclusive uncle, a beguiling hidden garden, and a mysterious illness. Nate is drawn to the Holub family farm, where he seeks refuge in nature and tries desperately to reach Viola, his inscrutable grandmother. The farm is a place that haunts his memory, a place where dark secrets dwell.

Dreams of Arcadia is a touching portrait of an American family. It explores the enduring ties that hold us together and bind us to the land.

 

 

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These two paragraphs were deleted from Chapter 1 because I thought I had too many of Everett’s stories in the chapter.  – Brian Porter

 

“I do about 60% cattle, 30% dogs and cats, and the other 10% is horses, goats, pigs…you name it. I’ll look at anything. A few months ago, a woman called up and asked if she could bring in a snake. It was some type of exotic rat snake…named Curly, of all things. She told me Curly had stopped eating and didn’t move around much anymore. Before she got to the clinic, I searched the Internet for anything I could find on snake diseases. Hell, I wasn’t even sure how to examine a snake, so I was kind of nervous about it. So she brought it in, and when I opened the box, it stunk to high heaven. I reached down and touched it real carefully, and then I turned to her and said, ‘Ma’am, I think I have an answer for you.’ She looked surprised. I could tell she was amazed by my finely honed reptile diagnostic skills. And then I said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but Curly’s dead.’”

 

Everett looked at Nate and shook his head. “It must have been dead for at least a couple of days. That’s my first and only experience with snake medicine. There’s not much of a demand for it around here. If someone sees a snake, they usually run for a hoe or shotgun.”

 

 

 

 

Brian Porter lives in College Station, Texas, where he works as a veterinary pathologist. He previously worked in private veterinary practice and once taught high school chemistry. Dreams of Arcadia is his first novel.

 

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THREE WINNERS:

 

Signed copy of Dreams of Arcadia.

 

(US only; ends midnight, CDT, 7/7/23)

 

 

 

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Visit the Lone Star Literary Life Tour Page

For direct links to each post on this tour, updated daily,

or visit the blogs directly:

 

06/27/23	Shelf Life Blog	Excerpt
06/27/23	Hall Ways Blog	BONUS Stop
06/28/23	Reading by Moonlight	Review
06/28/23	LSBBT Blog	BONUS Stop
06/29/23	Chapter Break Book Blog	Notable Quotables
06/30/23	Bibliotica	Review
07/01/23	Jennie Reads	Review
07/02/23	Forgotten Winds	Author Interview
07/03/23	The Plain-Spoken Pen	Review
07/04/23	StoreyBook Reviews	Deleted Scene
07/05/23	The Book’s Delight	Review
07/06/23	Rox Burkey Blog	Review

 

 

 

 

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Synopsis

 

Spanning over three generations, Incandescence is a book about a fallen aristocratic family set in 1970, Bangladesh. In a nuanced tale of love and betrayal, the protagonist is on an introspective journey of the self, space, and time. Mila Chowdhury, growing up in this somewhat odd and dysfunctional family, discovers life’s intrinsic value. That there is a huge gap between what is and what should be. How does one overcome such limitations and shortcomings? Paradoxically, the answer lay right here, within her own odd family.

 

 

 

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Excerpt

 

Long into the night, Prema had a dream. She dreamt of Waheed Murad. In strange classical Urdu, Waheed spoke to her—a reality juxtaposed against a surreal, ancient land of the dead. He came up to her. They looked at each other. He kissed her on the lips. Waheed’s handsome face was lost in the masses of her dark hair. He bent down and locked his lips onto hers until the lips moistened and looked glossy and dark. She pulled away from him. Each pair of lips was deadly dark, showing saliva of shining juices. Then, Waheed was gone. Just like that! A glass-screen fell between them. She saw him through it. Waheed danced in the luminous rainbow colors amongst the dead. He was cajoling her to give him her body—her vessel if she fancied him so much. Prema felt trepidation in the dream. That the dead actor wished to return to her body. She saw greed in those beautiful eyes of his—give it up for him. How astonishing that she should dream of him like that? Her favorite, she wished him well. She wished he lived forever but in own vessel.

The stuff of life; life rejuvenated, and reincarnated. Even the dead had life. Like love and other abstract elements, life lived on in some form or the other. A blade of grass or a sprightly butterfly, a complex morphological process took place before it changed into something new: the caterpillar into a butterfly—Waheed Murad, what did he transform into? She woke up in the darkness. She saw a face adrift through space. She opened her eyes and tried to see it for real. A bearded face of a stranger moved quickly across the space of the dim room, with his eyes cast downwards as it vanished completely. Oh! What was that? Her baby slept as peacefully as did her husband. Only, she saw, what she saw in wakefulness as well as in her dream—something ethereal…

 

 

 

Review

 

This novel looks at a multigenerational family, their expectations, and the reality of life.

The story starts with poetic descriptions of Mila and her love for Rahim. We watch her struggle with loving him but not being able to have him in her life due to his imposed relationship with Papri. This is a time of arranged marriages and family expectations that transcend love.

The story is set in Bangladesh, a part of the world I only know a little about, so I was engrossed in the family dynamics, politics of these towns, and the acceptance of situations that others might find immoral. I appreciated that not everyone in this one family agreed with the Matriarch’s decision to disown one of her children, supported him and his wife, and helped them along in life.

Times were not easy for anyone in this family, and they had to battle strife in their village and impending doom from the political side of their life.

It did take some time to get into the groove of the story, but once I did, it flowed seamlessly, and I enjoyed delving into the lives of these characters and the dilemmas that they faced.

We give this book 4 paws up.

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

 

Multiple contests winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction, The Pacifist, is an audible bestseller. Included in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction Anthology, her works have also been acclaimed by Midwest Book Review and DD Magazine, to name a few. She is a featured writer on Flash Fiction North and Connotation Press, a reader for The Welkin Prize, Five Minutes, and a juror for KM Anthru International Prize. Her works have been translated into German, Greek, and Bangla, reprinted, anthologized, and have made it to the top 10 read on Impspired Magazine multiple times.

 

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Synopsis

 

Benny Basilworth makes connections. A rare intellect, he sees things that others don’t see and draws conclusions that others completely fail to grasp. He has the kind of mind that can make a person a national sensation on the television gameshow “The Connection Game”– and the kind of mind that can be the target of predators.

Despite his brilliance, Benny and his family find themselves destitute, living in a basement apartment with one tiny window that affords them only the view of the feet of passersby on the street above. It is from this vantagepoint that Benny once again starts making connections. Mad, inconceivable connections. Connections that can change lives . . . and turn the entire world upside down.

​Humorous, surprising, wise, and remarkably perceptive, The Connection Game is a novel unlike any other and one that you are unlikely to forget.

 

 

 

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Guest Post

 

4 thoughts running through an author’s mind during book launch

 

 

As my second novel The Connection Game launches, there are thoughts running through my mind, thoughts some authors may be able to relate to, maybe some readers too…

Of course, there’s the big one: will anyone read my book? After investing a year and a half of my life in The Connection Game, the story is close to my heart. Like most artists, all those hundreds of hours were invested for the love of writing the story rather than to make money. However, as the commercial world looms large for my precious creation, I now need to think like a business person rather than an artist. It’s a fascinating transition authors must navigate if they’re to succeed commercially. So hello book world, I’m an authorpreneur ready to sell copies of my suspenseful novel, The Connection Game.

Another thought which sometimes pops up is: did we catch all the spelling and grammar mistakes in the book? You wouldn’t believe how many edits happen before a book is launched. I edited The Connection Game around thirty times, then it went through five rounds of developmental editing, and another couple of rounds of line editing. So you’d think I could rest easy about the novel’s grammar and spelling. However, the more I edit my own work, the more I learn there’s no such thing as a perfect text. In an 80,000-word manuscript, there’s always going to be something which slips through the net, regardless of how many edits were done. Sorry in advance to any readers out there who find an editing mistake in the book.

The next thought seems to be universal for all writers: what will readers think of my book? I’d be lying if I said this question doesn’t run through my mind on occasion. The Connection Game recently received its first critic’s review from the Chrysalis Brew Project. The review was so positive it brought tears to my eyes. That positive reaction provided proof that I care as much as the next author about what critics and readers make of my writing. So please be kind, reviewers and readers of the world.

The final thought running through my mind as launch day approaches may surprise non-writers: will anyone ever speak to me again once they’ve read my novel? Neil Gaiman once famously said that you know when you’re writing well when you feel like you’re walking down the street naked. It’s such an apt description of being a writer. So as The Connection Game becomes a published novel, I feel like I’m preparing myself for a naked run along a street lined with strangers from all around the world. I just hope these particular strangers don’t have tomatoes ready to throw at me.

As you can tell, being a published author is a challenging and humbling experience. I’ve been counting down to the launch of The Connection Game with joyful trepidation and look forward to its journey in the market.

 

 

About the Author

 

S.S. Turner has been an avid reader, writer, and explorer of the natural world throughout his life, which has been spent in England, Scotland, and Australia. He worked in the global fund management sector for many years but realized it didn’t align with his values. In recent years, he’s been focused on inspiring positive change through his writing as well as trying not to laugh in unfortunate situations. He now lives in Australia with his wife, daughter, two dogs, two cats, and ten chickens. He is the author of one previous novel, Secrets of a River Swimmer.

 

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Giveaway

 

Win ebook copy of THE CONNECTION GAME (one winner) (ends April 18)

 

THE CONNECTION GAME Book Tour Giveaway