The Shores of Our Souls, by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger, has been acquired by TouchPoint Press! 

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Hollins University, earning a B.A. in English, and a graduate degree from George Washington University, Kathryn Brown Ramsperger worked as a journalist both nationally and internationally for such publications as the National Geographic Society, Kiplinger, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent. She’s lived and worked in Europe and Africa, traveling throughout the Middle East.

In 2000, she formed her own communications company, Ramsperger Communications, focusing on global relief and development, multicultural communication, women’s and children’s issues, and peace building. Her most recent short story “A Rug, A Piano, A Quilt, A Voice,” appeared in Forge literary journal. In 2015, The Penmen Review featured an excerpt from her novel The Shores of Our Souls. A winner of the Hollins University fiction award, Kathryn’s work focuses on peace and the connections we all share. The Shores of Our Souls has placed as a semi-finalist in the 2016 Faulkner-Wisdom literary novel competition. www.shoresofoursouls.com

The Shores of Our Souls

Dianna, fresh out of college and the Bible Belt South, meets forty-year-old Qasim, a Lebanese Muslim UN official, in a New York City bar in 1981. Their meeting forges an immediate, unexpected bond, kindled by mutual physical and intellectual fires. Both running from estranged families, striving for independence, the couple’s budding romance blinds them to the inevitability of two worlds colliding.

The Shores of Our Souls transports the reader from gritty, bustling Manhattan and a South struggling with reform to Beirut’s exotic shores, as Dianna and Qasim search for solace in an entanglement of passion, politics, and religion.

As relevant today as it was in the eighties, this timeless story of star-crossed lovers wraps the reader in an achingly moving romance rarely seen in today’s fiction, as physical desire ignites a world of paradox.

Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency

Published by TouchPoint Press (2017)

With my daughter, Elena, and her husband, Brandon, living on St. Simons, the reality of Hurricane Matthew hits home hard. I lived there for eight years and never experienced anything more than a bad thunderstorm and a twin set of water spouts.

When I found out about Matthew, it was a text from my husband who monitors all the weather. My first thought was, This is just like EYEWALL by Buzz Bernard. With Buzz’s books, it is not if, but when. I can only pray the devastation is not as bad as what he wrote about. In my mind’s eye, I see the trees bracing themselves; my beautiful live oaks with all that flowing moss at Epworth, and the palms bending nearly to the ground in The Village. I can hear the wind, the creaking and slashing, and things flying all over. Just imagine the animals; the deer out at Ft. Frederica, the gators, snakes, squirrels, birds of all kinds, armadillos, and possums, much less those pets that had to be left behind. Think of all the elderly at Magnolia Manor and the patients in the Brunswick Hospital; the EMTs, Fire Fighters, and Police who volunteered to stay behind. Think of those trapped on the highway having run out of gas; those at airports who will be there for who knows how long; those who are ill, with small children, and little money.

All those along the Eastern Seaboard need our prayers for a very long time, as well as any donations—food, bottled water, diapers and wipes, clothing, medical supplies, gas for their cars, sanitation supplies, and even a place to stay that is cost-free. How many people can afford a hotel room for a few days, much less weeks or months while their lives are being sorted among the debris? Like Katrina, we must pull together and be the hands and feet of Jesus, regardless whether or not we think we have enough. There is always enough. Forget race, religious preference, or social status, think ‘human’.

Dear God, please watch over all those affected by Hurricane Matthew all over the world. This is not just here but has touched the lives of millions. Let Your loving arms wrap around them all and Your words and promises comfort them. Amen.

• Jeanie Loiacono

Johnnie Bernhard, author of A Good Girl, will be doing Economy of Words (17^th) & Developmental Editing and Content Editing (18^th) sessions for the Hill Country Writing Symposium sponsored by Texas Authors Institute of History and the Texas Association of Authors March 17 – 18, 2017.  Go to this website for more information about the presenters, schedule, and registration fees: http://writing.texasauthors.institute

Friday, March 17, 2017 – Sessions

10 AM      Five Forms to Use to Awaken the Poet in You

11 AM      Writing for Non-Fiction

1 PM        How Many Ways Can You Say ____?

2 PM        Writing for Young Audiences

3 PM        The Economy of Words

4 PM        Journaling

5 PM        Write Like a Comedian and Tell An Awesome Story!

Saturday, March 18, 2017 – Sessions

10 AM      Writing for Different Media

11 AM      Developmental Editing and Content Editing

1 PM        Beyond The Pen – What To Do After Your Book Is Published

2 PM        Cover Design 101

3 PM        IRS: Record Keeping 101

A must-read historical novel that’s both brilliant and disturbing by S.C. Potter

From Silt and Ashes: Sequel to Please Say Kaddish For Me by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Artwork by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

All power to Rochelle Wisoff-Field’s brilliant writing, this sequel to Please Say Kaddish For Me left me even more emotionally drained than its predecessor. Even though Havah, plus some of her family and friends have managed to escape persecution, if not certain death in Czarist Russia at the hands of thugs who profess to be Christians, they still have family and friends back home who haven’t the money or means to escape.

Although most of the story is set in the US, which is far from perfect re openly expressed discrimination towards the Russian-Jewish immigrants, an excursion back to Russia reminds the reader of the horrors that befell those left behind.

For once, I’m left a little speechless as to what to say in a review because this novel makes me feel so angry that humanity was and still is capable of such stupidity and sheer evil. But it also fills me with hope that when faced with such evil, love can bind the sufferers together in a bond that transcends life.

Read this book, if you are feeling strong. It’s a part of history that is seldom talked about, but it resonates across time. To quote the chorus of Pete Seger’s well-known 1960’s song “Where have all the Flowers Gone?”, it makes me ask the question “when will they (people) ever learn?”

“TAKING FLIGHT” — Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, author of Please Say Kaddish For Me, From Silt and Ashes, and As One Must, One Can, heads to LA to be interviewed on Writer’s Block! https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/2016/09/27/taking-flight/

Johnnie Bernhard has received “Equal runner-Up” in the 2016 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, Essay Category.  Her essay, “Ignorance or Innocence” was judged by bestselling, non-fiction writer and poet Rodger Kamenetz. The international literary competition is part of the annual Words & Music Literary Feast held in New Orleans, www.wordsandmusic.org

Bernhard’s novel, A Good Girl, received finalist recognition in the 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, novel category. It is set for publication, spring 2017, by Texas Review Press,www.texasreviewpress.org

For more information about A Good Girl, visit the author’s web site at www.johnniebernhardauthor.com .

Hammer of God, the sequel to Promise of the Black Monks by Robert Hirsch, is now available!

Ordained as a Black Monk, Tristan de Saint-Germain is initiated into the conspiratorial, violent world of Medieval Europe’s most secretive organization, the Benedictine Underground. But winds of change are stirring across the continent, and Tristan finds himself cast into raging currents of time and circumstance far outweighing his capacity to repel; challenging the very glue of his unshakeable faith; sweeping him toward the precipice of personal and spiritual perdition.

Thus caught in the ever merciless web of Church-sanctified intrigue, political manipulation, and assassination, a yet greater trial suddenly emerges from his past… the shadow of Mala the Romani, beautiful gypsy girl of his youth. Finding himself lost in her ethereal thrall, Tristan struggles to honor his loyalty too Cardinal Odo de Lagery and the Church, while also unearthing within his own heart the limits of an all-consuming, encompassing love rooted so deeply as to invite spiritual collapse and eternal damnation.

Hirsch received his undergraduate degree from Cameron University and began teaching history and French, then earned his Master’s Degree at the University of Southern Mississippi and Doctoral Degree from Nova Southeastern University of Miami/Ft. Lauderdale,

He has experienced his own adversities concerning racial stigmas and Catholic doctrine, writes with distinct accuracy of the walled façade individuals construct to insulate themselves against others and the terrors of life no less formidable than those constructed by powerful and established institutions. Contrition, his first novel (JournalStone, 2012) explores the dark underside of the conscience; that infected and decaying region of our past existence that draws each of us back to the pillories of punishment time and time again.

Promise of the Black Monks sequels—Hammer of God, Horde of Fools (2017), God’s Scarlet Fury (2017) and the final is yet to be announced—are all being published by Argus Publishing. Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency   Amazon   Also to be found on other online sites and in local and chain bookstores.

Loiacono Literary Agency takes on Ginny Fite’s novel, No End of Bad!

Washington, D.C. housewife Margaret Turnbull’s world literally blows up after her husband, FBI agent Clay Turnbull, is falsely arrested and killed by agents working for an international drug cartel.

Unbeknownst to Margaret, her enemy’s tentacles reach all the way to the White House and control senior personnel. Their powerful enterprise in jeopardy, the assassins will stop at nothing to cover their tracks. With cutting-edge surveillance—CIA, FBI, and NSA technology— there is nowhere to hide, no one to trust, no one is safe…anywhere.

“No End of Bad is another page-turner that kept me up late and made me get up early until I read the last word. Fite is a pro at weaving an intricate plot that makes you gasp time and again.”

— Jeanie Loiacono

Ginny Fite is an award-winning journalist who has covered crime, politics, government, healthcare, art, and all things human. She has been a spokesperson for a governor, member of Congress, a few colleges and universities, and a robotics R&D company. She has degrees from Rutgers University and Johns Hopkins University and studied at the School for Women Healers and the Maryland Poetry Therapy Institute.

Fite is the author of I Should Be Dead by Now (Lulu, 2010); a collection of humorous lamentations about aging; three books of poetry: The Last Thousand Years (Charles Street Press, 1980 under Ginny Friedlander), The Pearl Fisher (Lulu, 2011), Throwing Caution (Lulu, 2013); a short story collection, What Goes Around (Lulu, 2014); Cromwell’s Folly (Black Opal Books, 2015), and recently released, No Good Deed Left Undone (Black Opal Books, 2016). She resides in Harpers Ferry, WV.  Ginny Fite Loiacono Literary Agency

The Mobile Writers’ Guild and the Mobile Public Library present the Mobile Literary Festival on October 15, 2016, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. at the Ben May Main Library, 701 Government Street, Mobile, Alabama. The festival will offer readers and writers a day packed with literary entertainment including a local author showcase and book sale, creative writing and publishing workshops, and a panel discussion on the publishing industry lead by award-winning author Jodie Cain Smith. Thom Gossom, Jr., the first black athlete to graduate from Auburn University, will offer the keynote address, which is sponsored by AT&T. Award-winning author Watt Key, local publishers Deer Hawk Publications, Negative Capability Press, and Excalibur Press, and many local and regional authors are scheduled to appear. Patrons are encouraged to bring a sack lunch for the Brown Bag Poetry Lunch & Listen. Free & open to the public. No registration necessary. For more details, including a complete schedule, visit mlf.mobilewritersguild.com.