Archive for July, 2009

another must read recommendation!

Posted in Info, My Blog on 07/24/2009 01:05 pm by Melissa Senate

What must-read novel is next on my bedside table? It just so happens to be this week's Girlfriends Cyber Circuit's touring book, a novel I've been dying to read since I first heard about it from the author herself:

CHILDREN OF THE WATERS by Carleen Brice

Still reeling from divorce and feeling estranged from her teenage son, Trish Taylor is in the midst of salvaging the remnants of her life when she uncovers a shocking secret: her sister is alive.

For years Trish believed that her mother and infant sister had died in a car accident. But the truth is that her mother fatally overdosed and that Trish’s grandparents put the baby girl up for adoption because her father was black.After years of drawing on the strength of her black ancestors, Billie Cousins is shocked to discover that she was adopted. Just as surprising, after finally overcoming a series of health struggles, she is pregnant–a dream come true for Billie but a nightmare for her sweetie, Nick, and for her mother, both determined to protect Billie from anything that may disrupt her well-being.
 
PRAISE FOR CHILDREN OF THE WATERS:
 
“I was exhausted and singing the blues the hour I began Carleen Brice's new novel, Children of the Waters. Five hours later, I'd finished this fresh, free-rein novel about mothers’ secrets and children's sorrows and was shouting 'Hurray!'” – Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

“In Children of the Waters, Carleen Brice deftly explores issues of family, identity, and race with a wonderful abundance of humor, forgiveness, and grace. This moving story of two sisters separated by prejudice will open minds and touch hearts." —Meg Waite Clayton, author of The Wednesday Sisters

Oooh, I cannot wait to read this! Now it's waiting for me this rainy weekend. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Carleen Brice is author of the novels Orange Mint and Honey (which was optioned by the Lifetime Movie Network)- a #1 Denver Post best-seller and Essence Magazine Recommended Read - and Children of the Waters, which One World/​Ballantine will release in June 2009.

You can read more about Carleen's work and an interview with on her website (click on her name above). 

Enjoy!

 

the girlfriends cyber circuit presents!

Posted in Info, My Blog on 07/22/2009 03:18 pm by Melissa Senate

Three things about this book jumped out at me: first, the title, which I LOVE. Second that little baby in that basket! And third: ELINOR LIPMAN said wonderful things it about (I am crazy about Elinor Lipman's novels). 

Samantha Wilde makes her literary debut with THIS LITTLE MOMMY STAYED HOME, a fresh and funny novel about a new mother who discovers the wonders and terrors of motherhood—one hilarious crisis at a time.

The novel introduces Joy McGuire who has gone from being skinny and able to speak in complete sentences to someone who hasn’t changed her sweatpants in weeks. But now with a new baby to care for, she feels like a woman on the brink and as she scrambles to recapture the person she used to be she takes another look at the woman she is: a stay-at-home mom in love with her son, if a bit addled about everything else.

As a new mom herself, Wilde, a graduate of Yale Divinity School, wrote THIS LITTLE MOMMY STAYED HOME after the birth of her son when she was experiencing the ups and downs of new motherhood. According to Wilde, “I wrote the book because I couldn’t not write it. I took my lap top to my bed during my son’s naps and wrote and wrote. I wrote the book I wanted to read. The book takes a hard look at the effects of new motherhood on a woman and on a marriage through the eyes of one stressed but insightful woman. It’s a story that will keep mothers going when they think they can’t go any further.” With THIS LITTLE MOMMY STAYED HOME, Samantha Wilde brings a candid and hilarious light to the universal story of new motherhood.

What Elinor Lipman said: “Here’s a talent: when a narrator’s doldrums make a reader laugh out loud. Samantha Wilde’s inkwell must be filled with truth-serum because this brave and funny book gets the postpartum peaks and valleys so very, winningly right.”
—Elinor Lipman, author of Then She Found Me

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Samantha Wilde is the mother of two born in under two years. A graduate of Concord Academy, Smith College, Yale Divinity School and The New Seminary, she lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and children. She is the daughter of novelist Nancy Thayer. When she’s not mothering her toddler and baby, she writes, teaches yoga, and moonlights as a minister. Although she never sleeps, she’s never once been tempted to give her children away to the highest bidder (well, almost never). She’s currently using nap times to write her second novel for Bantam Dell. You can visit her at wildemama.blogspot.com (clickable link on her name at top of post)>

So many good books to read this summer!

 

Happy July 4th!

Posted in Info, My Blog on 07/04/2009 12:31 pm by Melissa Senate

Happy 4th of July! My dear boy is away for the long weekend at his grandparents' house, so it's just me and the manuscript–the new one, which I'm both loving and being tortured by (which is how writing is, it seems).

This is a particularly wonderful time, when the publication date (November) of my upcoming novel, The Secret of Joy, is still far enough away that I don't have to obsess over it, and I'm in the beginning stages of a NEW novel, which has gotten the green light from both agent and editor! This one is called The Love Goddess's Cooking School and involves an Italian cooking class, the tiniest bit of magic, lots of romance, a needy eleven-year-old, a not-touristy island off the coast of Maine, and a main character hoping to make a few dreams come true, including her own. 

I'm having my own mini 4th of July indoor bar-b-q (I never know how to spell that), complete with hot dogs and potato salad, after I finish this scene. I'm trying to actually write an entire first draft without revising as I go, which is my usual process. The thought of having THAT much work to do on revision seems overwhelming, but it is freeing to just write and not worry so much. And today, freedom is the name of the game. 

HAPPY 4th!