NEW RELEASE! Carl Watson’s historical, mid-grade/YA novel, Kid Clay, a tale of the old West set in the late 1800s.

  

Based on the real memoirs of Mr. Watson’s grandfather, this story follows Kid Clay through the Old West in search of a cowboy adventure. During his escapades, Kid Clay leaves his comfortable Kentucky home at the age of fifteen and sets out to discover what it’s like to be a real cowboy. During this time, he encounters many colorful characters such as Indians, Buffalo Bill, and members of the Dalton Gang.

Along the wagon trail, he encounters typhoid, cattle rustlers, stampedes, bank robbers, and a beautiful Indian maiden. Kid Clay has the determination and bravery he needs to survive, but as he makes his way along the trail, he discovers that the West is beginning to change. That’s when he makes a momentous decision that will affect the rest of his life.

Was the West more than Kid Clay bargained for?


A former educator, Carl Watson has taught Language Art classes in both elementary and junior high environments. He is a graduate of North Texas State University and Texas Wesleyan University (ME). Instrumental in writing a Boy Scouts of America Leadership Training Manual, he went on to assist in creating a syllabus for Social Studies in the Fort Worth Public School System. Then, the Fort Worth National Bank awarded him a fellowship to continue his studies in creative writing. A published author, his work has appeared in both adult and children’s magazines, as well as church school stories for the Methodist Publishing House, Child Life, and in True West Magazine. Kid Clay – A Cowboy’s Life on the Range is an article Watson wrote about his great-grandfather. Open, you can see the real Kid Clay. The quotes were taken from Kid’s journal. www.carlwatsontx.com Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency  Published by Argus Publishing

 

NEWLY RELEASED! Bracha Goetz’s memoir Searching for God in the Garbage!

Searching for God in the Garbage is an extremely candid memoir of how Bracha Goetz became an observant Jew and overcame anorexia. It is told through actual diary entries and letters, spanning through the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.

This groundbreaking book will not only help those with eating disorders, but anyone with an addiction or doubt about their faith – no matter the culture, race, or religion. The reader will also get to share in this Harvard grad’s growing appreciation of the vital role of mothers. Welcome to a transformative experience that speaks to our souls, nurturing the beauty in each of us.

Bracha Goetz is a Harvard-educated author of over thirty-five children’s books. Amazon Author Page – Bracha Goetz Her first published piece was a poem that appeared in McCall’s magazine when she won a “Junior McCall’s” contest as a twelve-year-old. Years later, she helped coordinate and contributed an essay to the anthology, Women Look at Biology Looking at Women, while at Harvard, which became a text for many women’s studies courses nationwide. In addition, she writes articles for many newspapers and magazines and has had essays published in Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies and Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood. She also coordinates a Big Brother, Big Sister Program for Jewish Community Services in Baltimore, Maryland.

Author of 36 books to help children’s souls shine: 

Goetz is represented by Loiacono Literary Agency and published by Argus Publishing.

 

 

 

Newly released!! Terror at G-20 the fourth novel in the Kate Dawson series by John Flynn!

From what begins as the assumed simple murder of a sex worker, Kate Dawson follows the clues to human trafficking and ultimately the Asian sex trade. Set against the back-drop of the G-20 Summit in San Francisco, Dawson struggles to stop a North Korean General’s master plan of bringing about economic chaos in the West by preventing five Asian women, each implanted with a deadly toxin, from destroying the world’s leaders and economists.

Dr. John L. Flynn is an author, psychologist, and college dean. Born in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from the University of South Florida and a PhD from Southern California University. He is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and has been a regular contributor and columnist to dozens of science fiction magazines.

In 1997, John switched gears from writing and literature to study psychology, and earned a degree as a clinical psychologist. His study, “The Etiology of Sexual Addiction: Childhood Trauma as a Primary Determinant,” has broken new ground in the diagnosis and treatment of sexual addiction.

In 1977, he received the M. Carolyn Parker award for outstanding journalism for his freelance work on several Florida daily newspapers. He sold his first book, Future Threads, in 1985, and has subsequently had twenty-one other books published, including Cinematic Vampires: The Living Dead on Film, The Films of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dissecting Aliens, Visions in Light and Shadow, War of the Worlds: From Wells to Spielberg, 75 Years of Universal Monsters, 50 Years of Hammer Horror, 101 Superheroes of the Silver Screen, 2001: Beyond the Infinite, The Jovian Dilemma, Phantoms of the Opera: Behind the Mask, and Everything I Know About Life I Learned From James Bond and Future Prime: Top Ten Science Fiction Films (published by Library tales Publishing and co-authored with Bob Blackwood). There are planned sequels for both. He has also written the Introduction to Signet’s new edition of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera, and the Afterword to Signet’s new printing of The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells.

From 2002 to 2004, Dr. Flynn was nominated for three Hugo Awards for his science fiction writing. John also received an honorable mention for his unproduced screenplay for The Jovian Dilemma in the 2003 Screenplay Festival writing competition. His first novel, Intimate Bondage was published by BelleBooks. The other three in the series, Architects of Armageddon, Murder on Air Force One, and Terror at G-20 are published by Argus Publishing. The fifth, Merchants of Death, is in production.

    

Flynn is currently working on the biography of Angelique Pettyjohn, a Las Vegas showgirl, and Star Trek siren…and also mother to Elvis Presley, Jr. She also kept a sex diary, slept with many Hollywood actors like Warren Beatty, Jack Nicolson, Ryan O’Neal, etc. and starred in a lot of movies and television shows. Having given Flynn permission to write her life story, he kept notes and in 2005 began researching her life in depth.  www.imdb.com/name/nm0678821/bio  John L. Flynn Flynn Events Flynn Media Argus Publishing Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency 

 

TouchPoint Press takes on Ed Protzel’s new novel, The Antiquities Dealer, a story of deception and intrigue.

When Miriam Solomon, the love of David Greenberg’s life, phones him at his antiquities gallery in St. Louis, the black hole at the center of his heart shudders. Twenty years earlier, Miriam had inexplicably run off to Israel with his best friend, Solly, a brilliant but nerdy young scientist. Now she tells David that Solly has committed suicide and she needs his aid on a secret research project Solly left unfinished: to acquire the one remaining nail from the crucifixion of Jesus. Is she telling the truth? And why does that nail have such significance?

Everyone has their own agenda…each with its own mortal consequences.

Ed Protzel is the author of The Lies That Bind (2015), Honor Among Outcasts (2017), and Something in Madness (2018) published by TouchPoint Press. He has written five original screenplays for feature film and worked developing film scripts/projects for 20th Century Fox. He has a Master’s in English Literature/Creative Writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a B.A. in English, with a minor in history, from the University of Hawaii. His CV is available upon request. Represented by Jeanie Loiacono, Loiacono Literary Agency Published by TouchPoint Press

 

 

James Garrison’s poem, “Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry,” has been nominated for a 2017 Pushcart prize! 

James Garrison’s poem, “Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry,” has been nominated for a 2017 Pushcart prize! https://sheilanagigblog.com/2017/11/25/sheila-na-gig-online-2017-pushcart-prize-nominations/

“Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry” depicts a soldier’s despair at discovering what he’s lost while he was away at war. The drastic change from war-torn Vietnam and to seemingly untouched New York City and the hope of having a steadfast love waiting for you only to find it gone gives rise to the profoundly moving imagery in the poem.

Garrison notes that one of the risks for soldiers (and others) who are separated from spouses and close friends, especially for long tours, is that each person changes due to the experience of separation, and their own experiences in the interim (“Separation makes the heart grow fonder — of someone else” as the cynics say.) Also, many soldiers return from war zones much changed. As one reader told him: “The man who came back from Vietnam was not the man I married.” The “Dear John” letter is also a classic, and it appears in QL 4 as a motivator for Hodge’s going off the rails. That was based in part on Garrison’s lasting image from basic training of a soldier who tried to slit his wrists with a P-38 can opener after he received such a letter when they were in the field.

Many of our men and women who served and are still serving this country/the world will connect with these heart-wrenching words of pain, sorrow, and loss.

God bless them all and God bless America!

 “Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry”

There, on an old worn seat, clean and cold,

I left it behind on the Staten Island Ferry—

after a walk on Wall Street,

a Saturday with darkness falling at four o’clock,

a wind chill of zero degrees,

a polar contrast to the heat, mosquitoes, and fear

I had known only days before.

The cold, cold wind I remember,

but I can’t remember

what she said,

staring past me

at dusk settling over the water

or perhaps at her reflection in the window.

She wore a bright red coat with gray fur at her neck

and at her throat;

I wore padded gabardine,

smooth and faded with age and use.

Did she wear a scarf, a hat? Did I?

 

It ended there, on the ferry sliding

through the black water of the harbor.

I can’t remember what she said.

But what she said was true,

truer than most words between lovers;

honest, confessional, expiatory,

perhaps even pleading.

What she wanted, I do not know—

to clear something away like the banked snow,

icy and dirty on Broadway.

 

To this city I was a stranger, an explorer,

on the Staten Island Ferry,

going nowhere and back.

Whatever it was she said,

I looked out the window

at the dusk turning night over the black water,

the lights, the statue and the lights not sparkling

but dully glowing in the dusk.

I can’t remember what she said.

 

The ferry entered the slip,

and we exited through the gate

(the only passengers coming back to the city,

maybe a worker or two,

the only fools wandering

through ice-cold canyons at Saturday dusk                                                    because I wanted to ride the Staten Island Ferry,

no other goal than to ride the ferry,

a frigid hour before sunset,

under a sunless milk sky

that turned to soot

then faded to black)

and I ate the apple that she gave me.

 

Who knew the City could be so empty,

so solitary?

Sitting there on the ancient wooden benches,

worn, scarred,

new, newer now,

not seeing the statue or the skyline as she spoke,

only hearing her tell me

and feeling the frisson of despair

that wouldn’t go away.

Only gray skies and no sunset to watch,

and the black night when we walked the icy streets

to the subway,

Battery Park or somewhere near.

I was a stranger, I didn’t know my way;

and what she said changed everything,

the wages of blunt honesty,

two strangers on the Staten Island Ferry

going their separate ways.

James Garrison is the author of QL 4, a story set in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, 1969 – 1970…

PFC Bell, ex-grad student and newly-minted U.S. Army MP, knows there’s more than a war going on along QL 4, the main road from Saigon into the Mekong Delta. It’s old-fashioned crime and vice, and he does not want to get involved. But life for an American MP in 1970 Vietnam doesn’t work that way. QL 4 leads deep into a quagmire of deception, corruption, and death not only in the towns and military posts along the route but also in the old French villa where Bell and his fellow MPs live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J.R. Collins novel, The Boy Who Danced with Rabbits is now in the running for the Short List in the 2017 Goethe Book Awards!

J.R. Collins novel, The Boy Who Danced with Rabbits is now in the running for the Short List in the 2017 Goethe Book Awards!

Chanticleer Book Reviews

Chanticleer Book Reviews
Reviews, Book Awards, & Editorial Services

The following titles and their authors have made it past the initial “Slush-Pile Rounds” and will compete in the next rounds to see which titles will  be Short Listed for the 2017  Goethe Book Awards.

J.R. Collins – The Boy Who Danced with Rabbits

  

A peace was felt for many years in the Southern Appalachian Mountains following the American Revolution and the creation of America; a time when settlers and native Cherokee lived somewhat of a peaceful and enjoyable life amongst one another. Families married into families; a community of sorts was building throughout the mountains of what is now North Georgia. Friendships and dependencies were formed on one another to maintain a civilized society. The Creek moved on and the Indian wars ceased. The native Cherokee became the principal nation and desired peace. It was a time when boys, both immigrant and native, could be boys, exploring the adventures the mountains had for them. This is the story of Jeb Collins of the Choestoe Valley, and Wolf, a native Cherokee Indian of purebred descent who also called the valley home, and their adventures on the ridges, hollers, and streams of a land time was holding still.