Vicki Roder

Vicki Roder is a Wisconsin born and bred author who lives in the middle of the state with her husband, three dogs, two cats and a skink. They have three grown sons.

I first met Vicki when we were on a panel together at the spring Wisconsin Writers Association conference. We got to know each other better when we connected for another magazine I edit for Written World.

Vicki is very creative and can put word puzzles together, as well as articles, children’s stories and novels for adults.

A story about her childhood was included in A Cup of Comfort for Adoptive Families.

About her books, Vicki says:

The Dream House began as a re-occurring dream, so now I keep a notebook, flashlight, and pen beside the bed. You never know when an idea will present itself.  My sister, Tammy told me to write the reoccurring dream down and it became a novel.  Read the story of a kidney donation between my sister and I, featured in Chicken Soup for the Coffee Lover's Soul.   

My second novel, a mystery thriller entitled Bolt Action, Champagne Books, April 2010. Can gun hording, Harley riding Detective Leslie Bolt conquer her past and capture "The State Quarter Killer" before her sister is the next victim?  

  
My mystery for middle grade readers entitled The Curse of King Ramessess II has been contracted by Wild Child Publishing. Rumors of a mummified King, haunting the Bradford Museum surface. Mia and Jody stow away in the museum and a girl version of a Abbott and Costello investigation unfolds in the heart-racing, eventful night.

My inspirational book, It’s Not You – It’s Them is now available from Dancing With Bear Publishing.

 
Vicki has been published in Canadian Kids Magazine, Wisconsin Regional Writers’ (now Wisconsin Writers Association) Journal, Guide Magazine, Pockets Magazine, The Highground, The Little Lutheran, The Little Christian, FarmLife Magazine, and One Way Street.  

Way to go, Vicki!

Find out more at:

www.victoriaroder.com

You can't change the past, but you can choose your future.

Wisconsin Book Festival is upon us

What: The 10th annual Wisconsin Book Festival

When: Wednesday through Sunday, Oct. 23

Where: Various Madison locations

For a full schedule: Visit www.wisconsinbookfestival.org

Read more: http://host.madison.com/entertainment/arts_and_theatre/books/article_161f9228-f682-11e0-803e-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1b35unEU4

Empire in Pine - new novel from the Lumber Baron era

Naomi Musch loves stories rich in American history, but writes in several other genres as well. Her 2010 novella, Heart Not Taken, is a contemporary romance. Her Empire in Pine series is historical women's fiction set in 1800s Wisconsin. Book Two - The Red Fury is her newest release which follows Book One - The Green Veil. Naomi's aim is to surprise and entertain readers while telling stories about imperfect people who are finding hope and faith to overcome their struggles.

For that reason, besides her fiction writing, Naomi serves as a staff writer for the monthly Christian e-newspaper http://www.LivingStonesNews.com where she writes the true stories and personal testimonies of lives changed by Jesus Christ. Also passionate about homeschooling, she's written numerous articles for the homeschool community and mentors young authors through tutorials at http://www.ANovelWritingSite.com . She has previously been a consulting editor for Port Yonder Press.

Naomi and her husband Jeff live on a ramshackle farm in the spectacular Wisconsin north woods. With five young adults living nearby or at home, life is full of peculiarities like courtships, loud music, muddy trucks, and general mayhem. She invites readers to say hello and find out more about her stories, passions, and other writing venues at http://www.naomimusch.com or look her up on Facebook (Naomi Musch - Author) and Twitter (NMusch)

A Little Background to The Red Fury

My dad is a fly-fishing guide. He and my mom built a fly-fishing shop and resort in northern Wisconsin years ago, so my first introduction to the Peshtigo region was through pictures taken of them fishing on the Peshtigo River before I was born. As an adult, I became enthralled by the stories of the Great Peshtigo Fire which occurred the same night as the Chicago Fire but was many times larger and more devastating. Because of its remote location in northeast Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, most Americans still haven't heard of it. Thousands of lives were lost. This was an area full of immigrants, farmers, fire and brimstone preachers, railroaders, and lumberjacks. The fire took place on a night when the town was busting at the seams with the regular weekend carousers having come out of the woods to imbibe.

In my imagination, I wondered what would happen if I used that period and setting, and  introduced a young woman into the mix who was trying to run from the red fury of her own past while being torn by the affections of two brothers haunted by memories of the Civil War.

Here, let me introduce you.

Lainey, my protagonist, is something of a firebrand. In fact, as Jed Clark is breaking their engagement in the opening scene of the book, he tells her, "You're not the easiest girl to get along with. You don't ever listen to anybody." But the fact is Lainey has a pretty tender heart. It's only been scarred by the sudden death of the man she'd first given it to. She's tried moving on in the two years since, but Jed's the second man to scorn her since Bobby died.

So Lainey plans to bury her wounds by living life for the next thrill. If she's really the shrew she's been labeled to be, she figures she might as well stop caring what people think. She intends to go ahead and break the rules society holds dear. Still, that's hard to do in her home town where painful memories lie close at hand. So Lainey embarks on a journey of independence that eventually lands her in the brawling woods town of Peshtigo where she forges an adventurous companionship with Zane and Kelly Beaumont whose nightmares since the civil war have never let them return home. But living life on the edge causes a confusion of flames to spark inside the heart she once thought shattered beyond repair.

Purchase Links:

EMPIRE IN PINE (SERIES) - Book One: THE GREEN VEIL, and Book Two: THE RED FURY -- inspirational romance from Desert Breeze Publishing

http://stores.desertbreezepublishing.com/-strse-template/NaomiMusch/Page.bok

HEART NOT TAKEN - A contemporary, inspirational novella from Black Lyon Publishing http://www.blacklyonpublishing.com



Books on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/44apdvx

Books on Barnes & Noble: http://tinyurl.com/3gelmzp

Liz Tolsma, Inspirational Romance and Cup of Comfort

Meet Liz Tolsma, whose debut work appears in the holiday anthology, Log Cabin Christmas, from Barbour Publishing. Liz and I will be the the holiday craft fair and flea market in Batavia, WI, N1360 State Rd 28, on Saturday November 12, from 8 AM to 3 PM and on Saturday November 19 at 1:30 PM at Fireside Books and Gifts in West Bend. Come join us, and we'll sign our books.

Log Cabin Christmas is now available on Kindle too.

Liz Tolsma has lived in Wisconsin most of her life, and she now resides next to a farm field with her husband, their son, and their two daughters. Add a dog and a cat to that mix and there’s always something going on at their house. She’s spent time teaching second grade, writing advertising for a real estate company, and working as a church secretary, but she always dreamed of becoming an author. When not busy putting words to paper, she enjoys reading, walking, working in her large perennial garden, kayaking, and camping with her family. She’d love to have you visit her at www.liztolsma.com or at www.liztolsma.blogspot.com.

Soli Deo Gloria

My novella, Under His Wings, is scheduled to be released in the anthology A Log Cabin Christmas in September 2011. I'm thrilled to be in this collection with so many talented and well-known authors!

I'm proud to have two short stories featured in A Cup of Comfort for Adoptive Families. I hope you enjoy reading "Simply His Mother" and "As American As They Come."

The Bird Sisters, Enchanting...

Rebecca Rasmussen began her campaign to sell her book, The Bird Sisters, early and often. I ran into her on She Writes, and was enchanted enough to put her book on pre-order for several months ahead last fall. I received it when it released in April and only just now had the time to read it.

Once I found the author's rhythm, I was enchanted by her story-telling technique. Making liberal use of flashbacks, one day in the life of these mid-seventies spinster sisters never painted a more poignant tale.

Milly and Twiss grew up essentially on their own and ended up that way out of a devotion that takes my breath away. Rasmussen shows what famial love and hatred looks like when allowed to fully bloom. The story that recounts the summer the girls' lives changed forever is ignited by a comment from a visitor who responded to Milly's accidental declaration to her young daughter that Santa Claus is a myth. The harsh return comment sends both women back to the fateful summer that is the reason they are spinsters and alone in the present.

The Bird Sisters is not pop fiction, and uses beautiful language and technique to tell a story lacquered over frail color. Once revealed to the open air, the magic of a wanna-be spoiled man and his bitter wife unable to get past themselves to parent their teenage daughters and neice, bubbles and falls away fleck by fleck until only the plain surface is revealed.

Meet James P Roberts of White Hawk Press

I met James when he submitted an article to Creative Wisconsin Magasine, and then sat behind him at the SouthEast Festival of Books in Waukesha earlier this month. I'm pleased to introduce him!

JAMES P. ROBERTS is the author of twelve published books of science fiction and fantasy, poetry, literary biography and baseball history. He sold his first short story in 1982 to Eerie Country, a companion magazine to the venerable Weirdbook. His first novel, a dark fantasy titled Bourland was published in 1999. James has long been involved in the science fiction and fantasy community as well as within the Madison and Wisconsin literary scene.

James founded White Hawk Press in 1993 in part to publish a series of manuscripts about August Derleth that he had discovered while going through the archives of the August Derleth Society.

These became the books Return to Derleth: Selected Essays and Return To Derleth: Selected Essays, Volume 2.

Some of his other White Hawk Press books are Dark Iowa, Bright Iowa, an anthology of science fiction/fantasy/horror stories all set in Iowa; Haunted Voices: Selected Poetry & Art from Lituanus, an anthology of poetry and art from the Baltic countries of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania; Here At Ogallala State U: The Collected Effusions (With Commentary) Of Our 'Milt' Elliott, a satirical novel by Jerry Klinkowitz and Howlin' Wolf!: A Fan's History of the Highs And Lows During Five Stormy Years With The Madison Black Wolf, a non-fiction baseball book.

In recent years White Hawk Press has been inactive while James P. Roberts, sole proprietor and ranking curmudgeon, concentrates on his own writing.

White Hawk Press books can be ordered online via amazon.com or (partly) through badgerbooks.com.
 

While White Hawk Press does have a current website, it is not able to take orders online at this time.

Book Review: Fabulous in Flats by Mary T Wagner

Fabulous in Flats

By Mary T Wagner

iUniverse

c. May 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1531-3 (pbk) 14.95

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1532-0 (ebk) 6.00

Mary’s right, there’s nothing like the sound of heels clicking down a polished floor; not even flip-flops across campus , but I honestly fell in love with Mary’s take on life…I wanted to be Mary, or at least go to the Renaissance faire with her and join the sisterhood of selective memory after reading this book. But probably not use power tools with her, though.

Fabulous in Flats, I believe, is Mary’s third collection of essays that began as web site posts. May’s been through a lot of living that includes myriads of work experiences from journalism to waitress to wife and mom to a legal practice to divorce and re-entry to the relationship game and writing.

The essays in Fabulous in Flats flutter around the clean-up after divorce and are liberally themed on cleaning out her garage. “(This was) a good time to sit in the shade, sip a glass of lemonade over ice, and watch the goldfinches alight at the thistle feeders. Instead, I was dismantling pieces of my past on a beastly hot day in an effort to make more sense and order of my present. In other words, I was cleaning out the garage.”

Memories surface as she rediscovers pieces of her life and reinvents herself as an accomplished saw artist, tiger mother, pet owner, gardener, and dessert maker after my own heart. Going through Mary’s garage with her was like ripping off bandages that had lost the ability to hurt. Reading this book was a delightful evening relaxing in somebody else’s angst for a change. I knew she was a sister at heart when I got to “I’ve quit trying to plan anything out in life anymore, opting for the ‘carpe diem’ school of thought on a day-to-day basis.”

After I’d long passed the point of being able to review, I continued to read this entire collection and highly recommend Fabulous in Flats to every empty-nest mom. All women of a certain age will get a kick out of the YouTube dancing queen who poignantly observes that, “at this age, maybe we don’t have to do everything the hard way.”

Available on pring Amazon, eBook and Barnes and Noble and the iUniverse store

Reviewed by Lisa Lickel, LisaLickel.com

The author provided a reader copy for review.