JUST WHO IS GLENN PARKHURST ANYWAY?

Glenn Parkhurst

Glenn Parkhurst surprised himself when he started to write. Glenn was more of an outdoor enthusiast, fisherman, hunter, father of two boys who looked at life through the eyes of Ward Cleaver. But life took him to places he didn’t expect. Divorce, death, and sobriety all impacted his outlook on life. Travel, volunteerism, grandchildren and new friends rearranged his outlook. A fear of wasting life drives this man.  He has a belief that you can either focus on one thing and become very good at it or you can dive into many things and enjoy a little of all of them. So, in addition to writing Thrillers, Glenn writes humor, does photography, travels, works a full time job, takes care of his house, and dips his fingers into any opportunity. Glenn pulls from the well of his past to fill his novel Bled Out with visual clarity. See the Amazon and his website reviews.

Website - Laughathorror.com

Facebook Writing  - https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000487534705

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/#!/glenn.parkhurst   

Blog - http://graytale.blogspot.com/

Bled Out The Book Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/#!/BledOutTheBook

Bled Out - http://www.amazon.com/Bled-Out-Glenn-Oliver-Parkhurst/dp/0984639225/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318768846&sr=8-1

All Things That Matter Press - http://www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com/ 

JUST WHO IS ROBERT RUBENSTEIN ANYWAY?

ROBERT RUBENSTEIN

I am the author of Ghost Runners, and The White Bridge, soon to be published by All Things That Matter Press—but not for everyone. A trilogy, finishing next year with a treatise on Howdy Doody and the nuclear bomb is sure to raise eyebrows, but not book sales, unless you are also compelled to make sense of the time that had the greatest influence on our lives. In The White Bridge, my flapper gal reporter, Ginger Lee Smythe, concludes that truth is nothing, and nothing is truth. My uncle, Jack Ruby, is given a play as a street tough in old Chicago. Buy my books because he was my uncle and I, his nephew? I don’t think so. Maybe I am lying about that, you say. Well, maybe I am.

 Most of my life anyway I was told to hide that truth—that’s why you will not see my middle name, Jack, on my books. But Uncle Jack did have a point. My first reaction when I heard Lee Oswald was shot dead was,”thank you, uncle jack, it’s good for the bastard.”

I grew up with television and learned to write history from Crusader Rabbit, Rocky and his Friends, and Fractured Fairy Tales. I believed in Dudley Do Right and Mighty Mouse. When I was three years old, I crawled onto the tenement fire escape and spread my arms to the heavens. “I want to fly like Superman,” I told my mother.

You see, now you are getting closer to why you should buy my books. I believed in fairy tales. I hid under my mother’s skirts when I saw the infamous “Bambi,” in the movie theater. I was shot dead with three – D. Hondo’s rocks that came hurdling out of the celluloid screen to put a dent in my head. I was attacked by King Kong and Godzilla. I am in therapy to this day because they shot John Lennon.

I grew dizzy in the fifties, and I have seen Nazis ever since. Every man should be required to say his prayers about what he has witnessed and what was the cost of the history he bears. I am fortunate to be entering the twilight years, a little wiser and not yet suffering from Alzheimer.

I know I was lied to, and was traumatized by the country I never left, and fought to change, though I heard voices during the hearing test and was deferred from serving our nation. I said, “boo hoo,” that I did not kill or maim anyone in Viet Nam. But I sure wish I could wear a cool hat to say I was a war protestor.

The Olympics are coming—seventy-five years since an outrage occurred. Ghost Runners is about American anti-Semitism and sports. It is about the heart that can conquer hate. It is the same thing with The White Bridge. Why should you buy me?

I am, as old as I am, representative of a new breed of writers that sell our wares by way of a small independent family of authors who are quite good and avante -garde. I have seen that the rest of our little group can pack a mean, competitive pen.

I believe my parodies are vital to the understanding of racism and history; they are, though fractured, but vital about knowing who we are, and where we are going. There is no living room conversation with smart – sets about the Olympics without Ghost Runners. There is not a complete understanding about racist America without The White Bridge. Taken together, you will be inoculated forever.

Buy me because it took me a lifetime to get to this declaration. There is sometimes a great notion as Ken Kesey said. If its warped history you seek—horror, hysterical and uproarious—I think I may be worth the price of admission. If you don’t like my books, I’ll pay you back … someday.

Can’t wait to begin the last book of the series with your support … “in a red – bricked classroom, a little five year old boy crawls under a desk filled with inkwells, trying to protect his little head from the shards of glass of the window that he was told not to view. If I were a good boy, and kissed my dog tag that would survive me, I would go to heaven, the teacher cried, when the nuclear bomb came. This is a drill now, she said, but you willbe dead very soon, anyway.”

The Boy Who Looked Through  A Crack In The Window ends my trilogy. Why should you buy my book? Because you are the future, and I would like to scare you a little—you see, I still see clearly because I have studied the past through Howdy Doody’s eyes.

Robert Rubenstein

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Runners-Robert-Rubenstein/dp/0984621652/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317343885&sr=1-1

http://scribblercom.blogspot.com/

JUST WHO IS KENNETH WEENE ANYWAY?

KENNETH WEENE

                                           JUST WHO IS KENNETH WEENE ANYWAY?

Life itches and torments Kenneth Weene like pesky flies. Annoyed, he picks up a pile of paper to slap at the buzzing and often whacks himself on the head. Each whack is another story. At least having half-blinded himself, he has learned not to wave the pencil about. Ken will, however, write on until the last gray cell has retreated and there are no longer these strange ideas demanding his feeble efforts. So many poems, stories, novels; and more to come.

So far, Ken has two novels published by All Things That Matter Press and a third will be out soon.

The first is Widow’s Walk, the story of a woman restarting her life and her two adult children. Widow’s Walk is a tale of love, sexuality, religion, and spirit. A box of Kleenex is an essential accessory when reading this emotional and meaningful novel.

Memoirs From the Asylum is set in a state psychiatric hospital. Full of tragedy, humor, and pathos, Memoirs reminds us that there are many forms of asylums and that it is all to easy to give up the most essential human freedom, the freedom to choose who we are. More than anything, Memoirs From the Asylum is a book for people who love words; it is a book that asks to be read aloud.

Coming soon is Tales From the Dew Drop Inne: Because there’s one in every town. The folks who hang out at this neighborhood bar are struggling to know that they too belong. This is a book of intersecting stories that illustrate the humanity of us all and our search for a place in which to belong.

Trained as a psychologist and an ordained minister, Ken knows that the human heart is the most elemental place to begin any story. Having also written a good amount of poetry, he strives to make the language of his books unique. Ken also brings the clear-eyed realism of a born and bred New Englander to his writing. The overall results are books that are especially moving and well-written.

You can learn more about Ken athttp://www.authorkenweene.com

A good link for more about Widow’s Walk is:

http://vidego.multicastmedia.com/player.php?p=wbgzb2yk

For Memoirs From the Asylum visit 

http://vidego.multicastmedia.com/player.php?p=nqm74a8k

Both Widow’s Walk and Memoirs From the Asylum are available in print as well as Kindle and Nook.

OANA NICULAE

Healing through laughter is not a dream, but a recipe for survival.

If you were to read a book about Oana's life, you might easily decide it was a work of fiction. 

Born in Bucharest, Romania, Oana lived twenty years under the grotesque dictatorial regime of Ceausescu. After the fall of communism in 1989 she studied languages at the University in Bucharest, then received her Master’s degree at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. English is her third language. 

She has worn many hats, working as a translator, as a teacher, and eventually caring for animals both domestic and wild.Volunteering in both the U.S. and Canada, she worked for wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centers.

Currently residing in Arizona, Oana continues to dedicate most of her time to her animals and to writing.  

Her first book, The Healings, debuted in November 2010. It is a hard-to-put-down, laugh-out-loud series of adventures of an eccentric duo: a man and his feline partner walking from ‘healer’ to ‘healer’ and hoping to achieve awareness.

Oana’s take on depression is simple and effective: witticism and laughter coupled with the understanding of the frailty of human nature help us heal. An animal companion, real or imaginary, can be very therapeutic as well.

Many a reader – depressed or not -- will recognize the insanity of most of our daily routines and the elusiveness of Truth.

Oana’s current projects include a memoir titled,Romanian Rhapsody, a children’s book, Dr.Schnauzer and Nurse Lhassa, as well as other stories, all written in the same witty humorous style.      

She is also an active member of Central Phoenix Writing Workshop http://www.paloverdepages.com/ and a co-host of Two Unsychronized Souls Radio Show http://www.blogtalkradio.com/monicabrinkmanandoana 

To learn more about Oana, visit her author’s website www.thehealings.net  

To read excerpts from The Healings go to http://www.thehealings.net/excerpts-from-the-healings.html

The Healings is available in paperback on Amazon  http://www.amazon.com/Healings-Oana/dp/0984615482/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289455146&sr=1-1

In Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/The-Healings-ebook/dp/B004BSH0RI/ref=tmm_kin_title_0/192-1862715-7132302?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1289455146&sr=1-1 

and Nook format

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-healings-oana/1029789781?ean=2940012775313&itm=1&usri=oana#

WAKE-UP CALL by Salvatore Buttaci

Once there lived a little boy named Giovanni Romano whose parents came from Italy, a country way across the ocean. They had to book passage on a ship that took more than ten days to arrive in America. Giovanni's parents knelt and kissed the ground at Ellis Island. They raised their arms towards the blue sky and thanked God in Heaven for their good fortune. 

In Italy, a country they loved, it was impossible finding work. The land would not produce healthy crops. Opportunities were nowhere to be found, only frustration, hunger, and even widespread sicknesses. With heavy hearts the newly married Carmela and Francesco Romano emigrated from the land of their ancestors to find new lives in America. 

A son was born shortly after Francesco found a job building city roads with pick and shovel from dawn until nightfall. Yet despite back-breaking labor, he was grateful to be employed, to be earning money for his wife and their new child.

On the job the other workers who were not Italians, and the bosses demanding that he work harder and harder, and the city folk passing by, all of them hurled at Francesco derogatory names like "Dago," "Guinea," and "Greaseball." Still, Francesco raised his pick high over aching shoulders and sank it into the cracking rock, then took the shovel and dug into the deepening dirt. He ignored them, unwilling and unable to jeopardize the few dollars a week he earned by standing up to them. He would take the verbal abuse as long as he could continue working an honest day's work for what even he realized was not nearly enough pay as the others earned for the same labor.

Giovanni grew with the passing years, detesting all things that were not American. He hated the Italian language the three of them spoke. He was ashamed to introduce his friends to his parents because their accents were so heavy Giovanni could not bear it. One day he said to his parents, "Don't call me 'Giovanni' anymore. My name is Johnny." Needless to say, they were hurt by their son's insistence that he was an American and he wanted to fit into American society, not be ridiculed because he was different, and at the same time they understood how difficult it was for their Giov--Johnny. People could be cruel.

Not content with being Johnny Romano, he legally changed his name to Johnny Logan! By then his mother had died of cancer and his father, living alone now in his Brooklyn apartment, hardly saw his son at all. He was too busy. He had no time. Life was short. There was money to be made. When Francesco passed away, Johnny was in the Bahamas. The funeral took place without him.

Then, as it happens, Johnny too grew old and alone. His wife left him. Took his children. Johnny Logan had become a very lonely man. He'd spend his time watching TV late into the night. Shows like "The Sopranos" and later on "The Jersey Shore," though he watched them, made him sad. His parents were nothing like those people. They were honest. They went to church on Sunday. They never used foul language. Never wanted anything that did not belong to them.

Perhaps one can say it bordered on stupidity that Johnny Logan who had fought against his Italian roots all his life would in his final years decide to become Giovanni Romano again. He thought back on the stories his father would tell about what he went through, the name-calling Americani who looked down on him and all his paisani as if they were all gangsters, fools, the very dirt they walked on.

It was a late wake-up call for Giovanni, but better late than never. He joined Italian American groups in their efforts to fight media prejudice against their ethnicity. He finally realized that what his father had suffered, along with the millions of immigrants who came here from Italy, was a gross injustice. A slap in the face to the people who gave the world Columbus, Michelangelo, Fermi, Garibaldi and thousands of others who helped shape the world and our country.

Now when Giovanni lays his head down to sleep, the old nightmares are gone. Sometimes he dreams his mama carries to the kitchen table a hot steaming dish of farfalle topped with her rich red meat sauce. "What does 'farfalle' mean?" he asks her. She smiles as she spoons the macaroni into his plate. "Butterflies," Mama says. "Like a miracle they leave the flowers and come to rest in my delicious sauce!" 

And the two of them--Papa as well--laugh before grace.

#

Salvatore Buttaci is the author of two short-short story collections available at Amazon.com: Flashing My Shorts and 200 Shorts, both published by All Things That Matter Press. He is also in the process of editing his novel Carmelu the Sicilian, about a man who fights back against the biased media and wins.