Sci fi fantasy from Karl Krueger

 

Gates of Avalon

Karl Krueger

Sci-fi/fantasy, time travel

Kindle $7.99

Also available in hardcover

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About the Book

It had been more than a thousand centuries since the Old Ones disappeared. Who they were and where they went was a matter of heated debate amongst the scholars of Avalon. The old ones had left behind five great artifacts. Gates that opened pathways to the many worlds spread across all the plains of existence.

For many centuries the ageless gates stood as monuments to the Old Ones. No one guessed or understood the danger until it was to late. The mighty warriors of Asgaard fell in a single night of blood and flames, Shangri La only lasted an hour. Even the Empire of the Four Realms could not stand against this new enemy.

Now the darkness that enveloped Avalon was coming here and it was up to Theodore Schmidt, an old man, crippled and weary to stop it. This is the chronicle of that struggle.

My review:

Krueger’s fantastical novel, Gates of Avalon, is a sort of campfire-ghost-story, cowboys and Indians-v.-aliens type of story for the “mature” set.

The stories of Teddy Schmidt’s boy scout days, told by his father, really do come true some fifty years later when Wyoming is attacked by unearthly aliens. A legacy left by Ted and his brother Michael’s father in the form of a special book and dairies hold the clue to the horrifying events unfolding on planet Earth. The race is on for Teddy, Michael, and the specialists from the University of Wyoming to decipher the novel and reach out to the mysterious friend Buck, the mysterious ageless man the Schmidt boys’ father knew way back when. When they learn the plan has been in the works for millennia, and the world of the Kron is in danger, they decide whether or not to travel to the hidden realm Avalon to resume their father’s mission.

Self-published by the author through Palmetto Publishing Group, 2018/2020. Reviewed for Strategic Vision Group. Minor grammatical errors in the narrative, lengthy past and present-day scenes of war and the 1860s western US. Graphic language, but not continual. Told from alternating viewpoints; the “I” character of Teddy. and omniscient voice narrative in other parts of the story Part time travel, part current events, including some pretty graphic violence, the Gates of Avalon is an intriguing adventure for those who love historical ghost stories, cowboys and Indians, and aliens come to life. Beautifully designed and illustrated.

 

About the Author

Karl L. Kruger grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. Graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he worked in Agri-Business and eventually became a Deputy Sheriff. His long career in law enforcement included training in accident reconstruction and a lengthy stint in TRT-EOD (Tactical Response Team - Explosive Ordinance Disposal). After retiring from police work, Karl began to manufacture historical gaming figures (toys). He has also written rule sets for historical gaming. The author still lives in rural Wisconsin, with his wife, a grandson and a few dozen chickens. 

Annual WWA Conference Craft Talk Agent Talk Oct 3

 

Fall Conference 2020

TINY PRICE - BIG RETURN

REGISTER

2020 may not lend itself to in person gatherings, but that isn't going to stop us from hosting our Fall Conference. And this year it will be even easier to attend because you can do it from the comfort of your own living room. So come join us for some great panels and workshops with amazing writers from all over the state. 

 

Virtual Conference at a glance: 

 

8:45AM - Welcome from WWA President Barry Wightman

9:00AM - Why We Write - Dasha Kelly Hamilton

9:50AM - Break

10:00AM - First Five Pages - Jennifer Lee Goloboy

10:50AM - Break

11:00AM - Writing Scenes that Work - Erin Celello & Ann Garvin

12:00PM - Lunch

1:00PM - Jade Ring Winners Announced 

1:15PM - Panel Discussion - Dasha Kelly Hamilton, Jennifer Lee Goloboy, Erin Celello & Ann Garvin.                     

Moderated by Barry Wightman

Jade Ring online gala

 Wisconsin Writers Association Upcoming EVENT

The COVID-19 is still a risk to our community. All WWA events and meetings will be held online for a while.

The coveted JADE RING competition for 2020 is over, and winners announced. Come celebrate with us and learn what it's all about. Maybe next year you'll be the proud winner of your very own Jade Ring!

Jade Ring Virtual Gala When Thu, September 24, 2020 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM Location Zoom REGISTRATION Since we can't join in person to celebrate our  Jade Ring winners, let's gather online!  Join us for our first ever virtual Jade Ring Gala.  We'll hear from past Jade Ring Winners,  honor  our 2020 winners and student winners.  Plus, don't miss a chance to win your own anthology! Formal attire is strongly encouraged!  Let's have some fun in this crazy time.

This is How We Leave memoir by Joanne Nelson

 This is How We Leave

by Joanne Nelson

Memoir, 180 pages

Published August 11, 2020, Vine Leaves Press

Reviewed by Bill Mathis, http://www.billmathiswriteretc.com

$2.99 ebook

$14.99 Print

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About the Book

Against a background of family runaways, award-winning memoirist Joanne Nelson explores what it takes to stay when the going begins to dazzle and the staying seems way too ordinary. With a great grandfather who disappears, a grandfather who strays, and a father who walks away, she’s lived a life liable to give way at any time. In unflinching prose that is by turns intimate and humorous, she dives deep into her own role (and even culpability) in a childhood marked by disruption, emotional abuse, and parental alcoholism.

Nelson’s working-class roots and catholic schoolgirl upbringing, experimentation with all things negative, and hopeful creation of a new family life all serve a passionate story that examines the many ways we leave our communities, our families, and even ourselves. It will surprise no one that she became a psychotherapist—working with families, children, and in schools to help others on a similar journey. Her innovative observations and careful attention to detail create an engaging narrative of just how quickly our pasts become the now—and just what we’re going to do about it!

 Bill's Review:

Throwing out her mother’s empty booze bottles found in the breezeway attic, eating a sandwich at her deathbed, and recalling how well her mother danced only hint at the gamut of emotions and truth so elegantly expressed by Joanne Nelson in her memoir This is How We Leave.

There are many ways to leave relationships: leave a note and walk out; meander away and never return; drink enough that one’s children don’t want to be around them; drink oneself to an early death; or experiment with risky practices trying to kill the pain. The bottom line, however, is that you can never truly leave family. In one manner or another, family is always with you. The times you leave and come back, how you cope with the loss—those missed opportunities—and how you make sense of the leaving is what I gained from this excellent book.

Beautifully written, Joanne Nelson explores her family and herself in scenes written from her life of growing up with an alcoholic mother who, even when physically present wasn’t there; a father who left the family and connected with Joanne through the window of his car parked along the street as she walked to school; and her knowledge of a great-grandfather who abandoned his family.

She contrasts the uncertainty and pain of her homelife with being able to visit her grandparents. Her snuff-dipping and spitting grandfather took her kite flying and played games with her. Her grandmother created a homey, cooking, crafting environment in their modest trailer home. It was a space of peace and certainty.

The book begins with Nelson in her home office describing a photo of her family taken when she was young at her brother’s birthday party. “We stand close together and take our cues from those on the other side of the table, the adults waiting for just one decent shot without all that goofing around so they can eat before the coffee gets cold or the candles burn down the house.”

How long do we take our cues from those on the other side of the table? At what age do we stop?

Joanne ends this scene by writing, “Those bookshelves hold the answers to why I’m down here: the manuscripts recounting stories of escape or return and the mementos that tell their own suspended, yet scripted tales. It’s the dual perspective of the little girl held close by her brothers in a corner of the kitchen, safe behind glowing candles of the woman at her desk in a basement office—the soft hum of the dryer in the background, pictures of her family surrounding her—who just wants to tell about it.”

After reading This is How We Leave, I’m not sure we ever quit taking our cues from those on the other side of the table. But how we leave, why we leave, how we come back to say goodbye—even while eating a sandwich—is critically important. Joanne Nelson goes deep in the gut to reveal truth and honesty like few other authors I’ve read.

I highly recommend this book. 5 Stars.

About the Author

 

Joanne Nelson’s writing appears in literary journals such as Brevity, Midwestern Gothic, the museum of americana, Consequence, and Redivider. In addition, she is a contributor to Lake Effect on 89.7 WUWM, her NPR affiliate based in Wisconsin. Nelson lives in Hartland, Wisconsin, where she develops and leads community programs, maintains a psychotherapy practice, and adjuncts. More information is at wakeupthewriterwithin.com

Photo credit: Jia Oak Baker

Great Lakes cultural history

The Cadottes, a fur trade family on Lake Superior

Robert Silbernagel

Wisconsin Historical Society Press May 29, 2020

ISBN: 9780870209406

304 pp

Ebook: $10.99

Hardcover: $28.95

Buy on Amazon 

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About the Book:

The Great Lakes fur trade spanned two centuries and thousands of miles, but the story of one particular family, the Cadottes, illuminates the history of trade and trapping while exploring under-researched stories of French-Ojibwe political, social, and economic relations. Multiple generations of Cadottes were involved in the trade, usually working as interpreters and peacemakers, as the region passed from French to British to American control. Focusing on the years 1760 to 1840—the heyday of the Great Lakes fur trade—Robert Silbernagel delves into the lives of the Cadottes, with particular emphasis on the Ojibwe–French Canadian Michel Cadotte and his Ojibwe wife, Equaysayway, who were traders and regional leaders on Madeline Island for nearly forty years. In The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior, Silbernagel deepens our understanding of this era with stories of resilient, remarkable people.

 

My Review:

After having visiting Madeline Island not long ago, taking the Lake Superior Circle Tour, and living in Wisconsin, Silbernagel’s story brings the era of Great Lakes fur trading and the voyageurs’ rich history to life. His book makes me want to go back to the Island now and consider anew the events unfolding there 200 years ago.

The history of fur trade in the Americas is a jumble of nationalities, exploration, high competition, and rich in folk legend. Despite the fashion of beaver fur felted hats worn since the fourteenth century in Europe, the American trade came in relatively late, during the last hundred years of the fashion. Men like John Jacob Astor quickly and under nascent US government sanction took control of the fur industry and reaped the staggering benefits while its agents mostly had a subsistence living.

But the fur trade is only part of the story of the Cadottes. Delving into the complexities of Ashinaabe, British, French, and developing US territorial trade, treaty agreements, battle, customs, religion, language, education, and law, Silbernagel creates an amalgamation of Great Lakes culture in one easy-to read volume. Following the several generations of the Cadotte family from emigration to today, the author explains how the French came to explore the new world not to conquer but to take part in the people they met, which is how Michael, part Ojibwe, and his Ojibwe wife, whose English name was Madeline, met and married. In the late 1700s they married in a traditional Objibwe custom, but forty years later, formalized their union in a legal Catholic ceremony. Silbernagel explores their reasons in the chapter “A Method to their Marriage,” one of 24 chapters devoted to helping readers understand the unique history of a developing nation of which little written documentation exists, or survives.

Recognizing the end of the fur trade era was near, the Cadottes and descendants shifted to more general trade, an attempt at lumber trade and commercial fishing, and interpreting between the Ojibwe and US government representatives during this period of upheaval.

Filled with photographs and illustrations, maps and abundant references, the history lover is sure to find The Cadottes an excellent addition to one’s expanding knowledge.

About the Author

Robert Silbernagel studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin and spent his newspaper career in Colorado. He retired as the editorial page editor of The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colorado, and currently writes a history column for the newspaper. He is an avid horseman and enjoys outdoor activities in the West, as well as reading and writing about history, publishing books since 1975 on such subjects as Aldo Leopold and Colorado history.

 

new childrens book on COVID19

Our Bodies Stay Home, Our Imaginations Run Free 

by Lora L. Hyler
A Coronavirus COVID-19 Story for Children
Children’s book, 50 pages
Published by: HenschelHAUS Publishing, June 15, 2020
Reviewed by: Kathleen Fletemeyer
$5.99 Ebook
$8.99 Print
Paperback; 978159598-775-4

Buy from the Publisher
Smashwords

About the Book:

Our Bodies Stay Home, Our Imaginations Run Free helps children ages 6-10+ navigate their scary new world due to the coronavirus. Seven-year-old Maya is struggling with her feelings as she misses her classmates and teacher, her friends, her grandparents, and visits to her favorite places. And even worse, her 8th birthday is coming up during quarantine. How can she possibly have a party? With her family’s help, Maya understands she needs to do her part to help her family and community. 

Practicing proper handwashing, wearing a mask, and social distancing is needed. She finds joy in making masks, watching nature and creative play from afar. Maya is amazed when she has the best 8th birthday party ever.

Kate Fletemeyer’s Review

Lora Hyler packs a public health wallop into this short, sweet book. She meshes her background as a news reporter with her skill in writing children’s adventure books to produce this timely tale of a family coping with today’s real-life adventure—COVID-19.

Seven-year-old Maya washes her hands extra-long, singing the Happy Birthday song not twice, but three times, in hopes it will make the coronavirus go away sooner so life can get back to normal. With her eighth birthday around the corner, she worries what kind of party she’ll have since everyone needs to stay at home. 

Parents will recognize their own challenges as the Thomas family eats ice cream with grandparents via video call, walks through their unusually quiet neighborhood, and stretches their imagination to put on a birthday party for Maya in these days of social distancing.

The entirely credible interactions of Maya and her older brother, Bryan, bring to life the disruption of virtual schooling, missing friends, and wearing masks. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas model supportive parenting as they respond to their children’s questions about the virus with equal measures of reassurance and age-appropriate medical information. The inclusive set of characters from school and neighborhood is an added reminder that we are all in this together. 

Our Bodies Stay Home, Our Imaginations Run Free never minimizes children’s bumpy emotions, nor their need to understand a changed world. The unchanging values of family and caring for one another underpin this story without becoming sentimental. For parents seeking a young-reader book that provides a can-do attitude when new phrases like “flatten the curve” fill the airwaves, they need look no further. 

About the Author, Lora Hyler:

My sense of adventure began when I discovered the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Who doesn’t want to win a golden ticket and spend the rest of their life running a chocolate factory? My adventure-writing often began with real life travel adventures to children museums and distant lands.

I carried my love of reading and writing into a radio news career as a reporter for NPR affiliate, WUWM and ABC affiliate, WISN, both in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I also worked for a media and an energy company managing writing, editing and strategic communications. In 2001, I started my public relations and marketing company, Hyler Communications, and worked with companies in many industries. Among them: Northwestern Mutual and Marquette University. I also worked in television, as a live guest commentator for two years on Today’s TMJ4 television station.

I’ve written hundreds of articles, several screenplays, short stories, and a novel. Now, I’m excited to write children books. I joined the 22,000 member international organization, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and have a mutually supportive relationship with my fellow authors. The Stupendous Adventures of Mighty Marty Hayes is the first in a planned three-part series.

My screenplays have not yet become movies, but I’ve had a lot of fun so far on the journey. I’ve met Hollywood producers and attended the Emmy awards!

About the Reviewer: Kathleen Fletemeyer managed outreach programs in healthcare for more than a dozen years. Her poetry appears in Midwest Review and the Creative Wisconsin Literary Journal. She is currently at work on her first novel. When the COVID-19 crisis passes, she looks forward to traveling again with her husband.

new Alaskan romance from Barb Britton

Until June

By Barbara Britton

June 2020

Pelican Book Group

266 pp

Historical Romantic Fiction, Americana

Alaska

$5.99 Ebook

$15.99

Buy the book

Amazon 

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Pelican Book store

About the book

When seventeen-year-old seamstress, Josephine Nimetz, agrees to take care of a WWI amputee in a remote Alaskan lodge, there's enough friction to melt the Mendenhall Glacier. Her position is only until June, and it pays well enough to overlook the hardship of managing a rustic home and a shell-shocked veteran.

Geoff Chambers makes it clear that he isn't too fond of the “runt” sent to take care of his needs, nor of her painful mistakes. Dealing with a depressed and addicted veteran, pushes Josephine to the brink of leaving, if not for the money her salary brings.

But Josephine is a perfectionist, determined to get Geoff back on his feet—figuratively...Although, sending a rich, handsome veteran back into society may cost Josephine the man she has grown to love.

My review

When a proper young Alaskan miss and a wounded and bitter WWI veteran are bound together by need, romance isn’t the first order of business.

Too determined to get Geoff on his feet, albeit wooden, once Jo finds the amputee’s wooden legs hidden in a closet, Jo forgoes dignity and gossip as they spend time together at an island lodge off the cost of Juneau, Alaska in 1918 and 1919. Birthdays and holidays pass over the course of nine months as Josephine turns to nurse and helpmeet from her work as a seamstress to help provide for her family after her stepfather is brutally murdered. The murder case remains open, and anxiety over the potential perpetrator keeps the sense of suspense present under the main theme of the story.

When most girls are completing high school, Josephine is stuck on a deserted island with a grumpy young man addicted to drugs. Worse yet, he’s trigger-happy, calls her a runt, and forces her to sin—by playing card games with him. When he calls her out on romantic stories she reads in a women’s magazine and dares her to enter a writing contest, Jo slowly amends her initial impressions of the soulful Geoff.

Scarcely older than Jo, Geoff had enlisted in army only to be wounded dreadfully early on. With his bad attitude, his prognosis is grim, and he’s sent away to recover or die in a secluded place where he won’t bother his stepmother and younger half-brother. But Geoff surprises everyone, including himself, when he realizes his life is far from over.

Told through our young heroine’s eyes, Britton has created an earthy and heartwarming romance filled with down-to-earth characters. Frankness and realism pepper this journey of healing from the inside out. Britton’s fans won’t find much of a leap from Biblical Israel to historical territorial America as her latest tale unfolds with her usual storytelling aplomb.

About the Author

Barbara M. Britton lives in Wisconsin and loves the snow--when it accumulates under three inches. Barb writes romantic adventures from Ancient Israel to Modern Day USA and especially enjoys bringing little-known Bible characters to light. She has a nutrition degree from Baylor University but loves to dip healthy strawberries in chocolate. Barb is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Wisconsin Romance Writers of America, Romance Writers of America and American Christian Fiction Writers. You can visit Barb online at www.barbarambritton.com or follow her on Facebook and Twitter.