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Without your dedication, loyalty, bravery and service to the USA, we wouldn't have the freedoms that we do ...

WE SALUTE YOU

January 5-6, 2012: No Story To Tell by KJ Steele Virtual Book Tour Events

In association with Pump Up Your Book!, Jersey Girl Book Reviews is pleased to host the following Virtual Book Tour Events: Book Review on Thursday, January 5, 2012 and an Author Guest Post with KJ Steele on Friday, January 6, 2012!

K J Steele's Bio: 


K J Steele is an emerging writer who has learned that the process is not so much about choosing what to write as it is about having the courage to write what chooses to be written. Having spent the first half of her life creating an amazing family with her husband, Victor, she intends to spend the next half of it creating amazing fiction.


No Story To Tell (Book Description):


Have you ever wondered if you can be born into the wrong life? This is a question Victoria Lackey, a once promising dancer, tries hard not to ask herself as she wanders through her days, tending her secrets and burying her past. It is a question that begins to whisper to her after a chance meeting with Elliot, a sensual artist from the city, who recognizes the dancer's spirit within her. A question that presses for an answer after softly seductive anonymous telephone calls encourage her forward into a life of her own. A question that demands an answer when the woman she is explodes inside the the woman she has become. Buried dreams, anonymous calls, and a heart full of secrets. No Story To Tell is a story that demanded to be told.

AUTHOR WEBSITE
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
GOODREADS
AMAZON.COM - NO STORY TO TELL

Kindle on the Cheap Thanksgiving Giveaway!!!

Hey Kindle fans! Kindle on the Cheap is hosting a fantastic Thanksgiving Giveaway! 

They are giving away to one lucky person a $100 Amazon e-gift card and to another lucky person a $50 Amazon e-gift card in their Thanksgiving Thank You Giveaway! 

Head on over to their site and enter to win!

http://kindleonthecheap.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/win-a-100-amazon-e-gift-card-in-our-thanksgiving-thank-you-giveaway/

The Clara Ann Burns Story by Heidi Ann Smith

The Clara Ann Burns Story by Heidi Ann Smith
Published by Monkey Puzzle Press
Paperback Release Date: November 1, 2011
ISBN: 0982664672
Genre: Contemporary Fiction


About The Author:

Heidi Ann Smith grew up in the Chicago area and began publishing poems as a child. At a young age, she won various local and academic awards for her writing; based on her writing abilities, she was awarded a scholarship to a private high school and attended college courses during her high school years. After high school she began raising a family and was taken away from her writing, but soon returned to complete a Bachelor of Arts from Eastern Illinois University. She then earned a Master of Arts in Humanities from California State University and a Master of Creative Writing from Goddard College. Several of her poems recently found homes in various journals, and she published a scholarly thesis on the German artist George Grosz. Heidi is currently a PhD student studying Creative Writing at Middlesex University in London, England. The Clara Ann Burns Story is her first novel.


Book Publisher Website


Disclaimer: At the request of the author and publisher, a paperback ARC edition of this book was sent, at no cost to me, for my honest review. 


Virtual Book Tour Event: On Thursday, November 3, 2011, in association with Pump Up Your Book!, Heidi Ann Smith participated in a virtual book tour event with an Author Guest Post on Jersey Girl Book Reviews. 
http://jerseygirlbookreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/author-guest-post-heidi-ann-smith.html


Amazon.com Book Description: 


The Clara Ann Burns Story is a short novel, in which a woman who suffered child abuse looks back over her turbulent life as she approaches her fifties. It is a story of a young girl, Clara Ann Burns, who was tortured, abused and neglected by her family. When she was old enough to go out on her own, she got herself into situations that were not always the best. But in the end she raises her own family and holds onto the hope of healing and living without fear.


The Clara Ann Burns Story is available for pre-order and will be released in paperback edition on November 1, 2011. Amazon.com - The Clara Ann Burns Story




My Book Review:


The Clara Ann Burns Story is a short fiction novel that is very disturbing yet interesting. The story does not read like a typical novel, rather the author has filled it with prose, poems, one minute plays, scholarly studies, and photographs. The story is written in the first-person narrative by Clara Ann Burns, who provides disturbing snippets of child abuse (emotional, physical and sexual), neglect, and family dysfunction that she endured in her childhood. From a very early age, Clara Ann endured the full range of abuses from her mother, step-father and older brother. The effects from the abuse she endured throughout her childhood led her to make some poor choices as she went into adulthood, namely alcohol abuse, drug abuse and promiscuity. Thankfully, when she was in her early twenties, she met a young man who helped her overcome her habits and showed her that she could live a normal, healthy and happy life, this man became her husband. Through gaining her sobriety, Clara Ann was able to raise five well-adjusted children, and she showed them that in life, everything is connected. This is a story of how a young girl overcame the victimization she endured in her childhood, and became a survivor in her adulthood. 


I found this short novel to be a very disturbing story to read, as it did not read like a normal short story would. The fact that the 95 pages in this novel contained timelined snippets of her story mixed with prose, studies, poems, one minute plays and pictures did not sit well with me. While I will admit that the mixture of contents in this novel was interesting, I would have preferred to read a story that was written in the traditional way, a storyline with normal chapters. As for the story itself, this was a very disturbing and sad story to digest, it is not an easy read. To say the least, this story has a very real feel to it, and sad reality in our society today. Nonetheless, I will say that anyone who maybe in the healthcare or social services industry might find this story intriguing. 


I think the most powerful portion of this story was the author disclaimer statement in the front of the book: "This is an attempt to speak for those who suffered loss and abuse but were deprived the luxury of speaking - it exposes details that might have otherwise been unnoticed, ignored, or forgotten."




RATING: 2 STARS **

Amazon Announces New Feature: Kindle Owners' Lending Library

Amazon introduced a new benefit for Kindle owners with an Amazon Prime membership: the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

Kindle owners (with an Amazon Prime membership) can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for FREE, including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers — as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. No other e-reader or ebook store offers such a service.

What is Amazon Prime?

Amazon Prime is a membership program that gives you unlimited fast shipping, such as FREE Two-Day shipping and One-day shipping for $3.99 per item on all eligible purchases for a membership fee of $79 a year (comes out to $6.58/month if you want to be exact).  Amazon Prime members have access to instant videos: unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows through Amazon Instant Video at no additional cost.  Curious to see what Amazon Prime is all about?  You can start a one month free trial here and if it's not right for you, you can opt out at any time during the trial period.

Author Guest Post: Heidi Ann Smith, Author of The Clara Ann Burns Story

In association with Pump Up Your Book!, Jersey Girl Book Reviews welcomes Heidi Ann Smith, author of The Clara Ann Burns Story!

On Writing The Clara Ann Burns Story

Heidi Ann Smith

The Clara Ann Burns Story is based on my own experiences with prolonged sexual, mental and physical abuse while growing up in the Chicago area during the 1960s and 1970s. The names and the details have been altered so as to not incriminate anyone, but the basic thrust of the story is reflective of my own life. As I began to write the story I decided to stop writing and read the memoirs of holocaust survivors. This was something I had been putting off for a long time. The events that occurred during World War I and World War II were not distant memories in the minds of family friends and relatives. My Great Grandmother told me that my Great Grandfather fought in the trenches during WWI. He went without food for prolonged periods of time, lived in filth and watched many men die. My Great Grandfather would not tell me about his war experiences. He smoked Camel cigarettes, was a skilled poker player and pulled coins out of my ears. One time he lifted up his shirt to show me how his hospital treatments had turned his skin pink and clearly outlined each rib. He died when I was eight years old. My Great Grandmother saved my Great Grandfather's war memorabilia on a shelf in her walk-in pantry. When I stayed overnight at her home, in helping her prepare breakfast, I made the toast. While I waited for the toast to pop-up I traced my fingers over my Great Grandfather's helmet, his medals and his bullet. I wondered what the difference was between WWI and WWII. I heard many stories about WWII and The Great Depression. All of the stories focused on suffering. My maternal grandfather claimed that since his family was German some of my cousins, aunts and uncles were Nazis. During the 1960s I had a reoccurring dream. I was inside of a train with slats like a cattle car. When the doors opened a man in a uniform grabbed me from my mother's arms. I screamed. The scream woke me up. The idea of being taken away from my family after the cattle car doors rumbled open was not something I had read about or had seen on television. Someone probably told me about the trains taking people to the Nazi concentration camps but I cannot recall someone telling me about it. It wasn't until I was a teenage that I realized the relationship between my reoccurring dream and the Nazi concentration camps. I put off exploring the details of what happened in the holocaust for fear of having this dream progress. In high school I read Anne Frank. Anne Frank's story is about a loving Jewish family and group of friends who were in hiding from the Nazis but Anne Frank's story does not detail what happened in the concentration camps. When I read Filip Muller's account of working in the crematoriums I began to understand why I had been so afraid. While I read Muller's account I could not eat for fear of retching. Muller's story informed my writing The Clara Burns Story by reconfirming what I already knew which is that there is no reprieve when one lives in an abusive situation nor is there a fairy-tale 'happy-ever-after ending' after someone is exposed to abuse over a prolonged period of time. After I completed large portions of The Clara Ann Burns Story a professor suggested I should 'lighten the over all mood of the story.' Reading the Muller text and other survivor's accounts galvanized my belief that the overall mood in any abusive situation is 'dread' but, at the same time, radiance emanates even from the most horrific details. One story Muller recounts is that mothers and fathers were crushed at the bottom of the piles of the bodies in an attempt to shield a child while others climb on top of them while trying to open the gas chamber door. My aim in writing The Clara Ann Burns Story was to expose the aesthetic nature that exists even in the most tragic experiences. Life is ephemeral - tragedy is a part of the human experience. Recently another suggested that some people argue that no one can fully believe an Auschwitz survivor's account since in order to survive he or she must have looked out for themselves to the detriment of the lives of others. The purpose of Auschwitz was to kill. There was not enough food, blankets or clean water for everyone. If someone had enough food this meant someone else had to do without. Muller's story, I suggest, is far too detailed for it to be completely fabricated. When I write  allow the details to tell the story. While the protagonist in my book, Clara, was not subjected to the horrors of Auschwitz she did suffer from the abusive acts acted out by her own family members. I am wondering what it means if we choose to disbelieve a story told by a survivor? What did he or she do wrong? Tell their story? Survive?

About Heidi Ann Smith:

Heidi Ann Smith grew up in the Chicago area and began publishing poems as a child. At a young age, she won various local and academic awards for her writing; based on her writing abilities, she was awarded a scholarship to private high school and attended college courses during her high school years. After high school she began raising a family and was taken away from her writing, but soon returned to complete a bachelor of Arts from Eastern Illinois University. She then earned a Master of Arts in Humanities from California State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Several of her poems recently found homes in various journals, and she published a scholarly thesis on the German artist George Grosz. Heidi is currently a PhD student studying Creative Writing at Middlesex University in London, England. The Clara Ann Burns Story is her first novel.

You can visit the website at www.monkeypuzzlepress.com.

About The Clara Ann Burns Story

In Heidi Ann Smith’s short novel THE CLARA ANN BURNS STORY, a woman who suffered child abuse looks back over her turbulent life as she approaches her fifties. Smith describes it as “a story of a young girl, Clara Ann Burns, who was tortured, abused and neglected by her family. When she was old enough to go out on her own, she got herself into situations that were not always the best. But in the end she raises her own family and holds onto the hope of healing and living without fear.”
Smith explains that the story “is based on some of my life experiences,” which included sexual abuse. “I needed to write this book–and I needed to have the right and the freedom to bring together different events.”
Rather than creating a traditional narrative text from start to finish, in THE CLARA ANN BURNS STORY, Smith–who holds one master’s degree in fine arts in creative writing, another in humanities, and is a PhD student in creative writing–chose to express child abuse and loss by experimenting with literary genre. The result is that the protagonist, Clara Ann Burns, tells her story through written memories (short stories, lists, poems, one-minute plays) and memorabilia (hospital records, photographs, personal records). All are presented without explanation: a grandmother cooks breakfast while she speaks to her deceased husband; a mother scalds her child in a bathtub; the funeral processions of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the death of a child’s father; and the rape of a stepdaughter. This multi-genre approach, Smith feels, more accurately conveys “the impossibility of piecing together this story, and reflects the inconsistencies of an abuse victim’s memories that tend to jump from one instance of abuse to the next, rather than flowing through, perhaps, what might be considered the normal ups and downs of life.”
In addition, Smith points out, “These isolated memories of abuse that flash through Clara’s mind are what it means to have post-traumatic stress disorder. I suggest further that these isolated incidents also represent the perplexity of healing from prolonged neglect and abuse, since a constant state of fear is what is most familiar to Clara since she was abused by family members and friends for many years. If a child believes his or her own family is not adverse to his or her own torture, neglect, or rape, the child cannot survive as emotionally or psychologically intact. In Clara’s case, the abuse is pervasive, there is no relief for many years, nor hope of relief until she is an older woman and capable of looking at what happened to her objectively through the instantiation of the events as presented in the text.”
Despite the personal inspiration behind THE CLARA ANN BURNS STORY, Smith’s academic and scholarly understanding of both creative writing and fine art informs the book’s power. She likens writing to fine art: “All the great artists I studied reflected their life; in a great work of art, you cannot extricate the artist’s life from their work. When you look at a work of art by Van Gogh or Caravaggio you see some truth about their life. For me, the truth does not necessarily read like a biography; there are details that are blurred from your view. When I was engaged in the writing process, some things that were hidden from my view came out–which may grab the reader because it hit me as well.”
Smith hopes that readers who can identify with THE CLARA ANN BURNS STORY will find some comfort in it. “When I was a little girl I was very sick and I didn’t have a happy home life. I started reading poetry, and I felt some kind of resonance and a kindred spirit with the other writer’s work. I hope my work will reach someone and that they will also know that they are not alone.” And, she adds, “I also hope the work is received as a work of literature.”

Winner of Celebrate My Birthday Contest Giveaway!

or

~ Thank you to everyone who entered my Birthday Celebration contest and for all the birthday wishes! ~


The winner gets their choice of either a $20.00 Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble Gift Card!


And the winner is:

Nancye (nancyecdavis@bellsouth.net)


Congrats! An email is coming your way to confirm the prize, you have 48 hours to respond to the email! :)

The winner was selected by random draw using Random.org.