Thursday, July 27, 2017

You Got This! Book Blast



Title: YOU GOT THIS! A MOTIVATIONAL GUIDE FOR ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS
Author: James Kademan
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 256
Genre: Self-help / Motivational




You Got This! A motivational guide for achieving your goals. Written by renowned business coach James Kademan of Draw In Customers Business Coaching. This is a quick read that will drive you to achieve what you have been working on. Sometimes you just need a kick in the rear to get you moving, this is that kick.

For a preview, check out this video:


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James Kademan hails from a distinct past that includes a number of experiences that brought him to the point of feeling it was necessary to write a few things down. Like most writers he started with chunks of paper that were strewn all over his desk, house, garage and under more than a few car seats.

After realizing a bit of organization was needed he resolved to grab those notes, combine them, type them, edit them, polish them and ask the world for some honest feedback. That led to a couple books being written. James' first real book, You Got This! A motivational guide for achieving your goals was a small slap in the face of typical motivational books. Not through intention, just in its simplistic content.
James Kademan's upcoming soon-to-be bestseller, The BOLD Business Book will hit the shelves in couple short months.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK





James Kademan is giving away three individual 1 on 1 business coaching 1 hour phone sessions and 3 YOU GOT THIS books!!

Terms & Conditions:
  • By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
  • Winners will be chosen via Rafflecopter.
  • This giveaway ends midnight July 28.
  • Winner will be contacted via email on July 29.
  • Winner has 48 hours to reply.
Good luck everyone!

ENTER TO WIN!



a Rafflecopter giveaway




MEDIA CONTACT:
Dorothy Thompson
 CEO/Founder PUMP UP YOUR BOOK
Winner of P&E Readers Poll 2016 for Best Publicity Firm
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Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Book Feature: Hope by Rima Jbara







Publication Date: May 22, 2017
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Formats: Ebook, Paperback
Pages: 164
Genre: Poetry
Tour Dates: July 24th-August 4th

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Hope is about a woman who lives in a drowned world and is going through a silent ruin, and finds comfort in believing that her own self exists as another being, and confides her inner most secrets to her. It all started with a dream, advancing to a nightmare that then became a reality. Hope plays a lonely game in silence until her dreams turn to dust. She lives her life through an illusion that ends with capturing her own light, making that moment an unforgettable day. This novel reveals in detail how a woman suffers from depression, and how it rules and guides her life through her journey in finding solace.

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Rima Jbara was born on 20th August 1979, in Damas, and spent most of her childhood writing short stories and eventually novels. At the age of 14, she published her first novel and by the time she turned 15, she gave readers her first bestseller. Rima’s zest for writing continued as she released Road To Hell, The Mystique of Asmahan and Shams. It took Rima three years to write Hope, which was called “a masterpiece” by many critics and readers. Through her writing, Rima has fought tradition and reality, and has always chosen daring topics to shock conventional people.


Book Feature: Mary Lives: A story of Anorexia Nervosa & Bipolar Disorder








Publication Date: March 5, 2014
Publisher: XlibrisAU
Formats: Ebook
Pages: 396
Genre: Mental Health
Tour Dates: July 24th-August 4th

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In this chaotic, desperate storm the brain tries hard to gather its fragmented parts, and anchor down the guy lines. To weather out this hopelessness, this turmoil and this pain, -prevent disintegration until the calm returns and clear skies come again.In this chaotic, desperate storm the brain tries hard to gather its fragmented parts, and anchor down the guy lines. To weather out this hopelessness, this turmoil and this pain, -prevent disintegration until the calm returns and clear skies come again.






Mary is a General Practitioner, a Family Doctor, and became anorexic and depressed at age 12. She writes of the chaos and pain of her life, through her abnormal adolescence and adult years, to the equilibrium of the current day. It is an enlightening and inspiring story of Anorexia Nervosa and Bipolar Affective Disorder or Manic Depression.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Surgeon's Story by Mark Oristano with Kristine Guleserian, MD



Title: SURGEON’S STORY
Author: Mark Oristano
Publisher: Authority Publishing
Pages: 190
Genre: Nonfiction Medical

What is it like to hold the beating heart of a two-day old child in your hand?  What is it like to counsel distraught parents as they make some of the most difficult decisions of their lives?

Noted pediatric heart surgeon Dr. Kristine Guleserian has opened up her OR, and her career, to author Mark Oristano to create Surgeon’s Story - Inside OR-6 With a top Pediatric Heart Surgeon. 

Dr. Guleserian’s life, training and work are discussed in detail, framed around the incredibly dramatic story of a heart transplant operation for a two-year old girl whose own heart was rapidly dying.  Author Mark Oristano takes readers inside the operating room to get a first-hand look at pediatric heart surgeries most doctors in America would never attempt.

That’s because Dr. Guleserian is recognized as one of the top pediatric heart surgeons in America, one of a very few who have performed a transplant on a one-week old baby. Dr. Guleserian (Goo-liss-AIR-ee-yan) provided her expertise, and Oristano furnished his writing skills, to produce A Surgeon’s Story.

As preparation to write this stirring book, Oristano spent hours inside the operating room at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas watching Guleserian perform actual surgeries that each day were life or death experiences. Readers will be with Dr. Guleserian on her rounds, meeting with parents, or in the Operating Room for a heart transplant.

Oristano is successful sportscaster and photographer and has made several appearances on stage as an actor. He wrote his first book A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America’s Favorite Game, and continues to volunteer at Children’s Medical Center.

“We hear a lot about malpractice and failures in medical care,” says Oristanto, “but I want my readers to know that parts of the American health care system work brilliantly. And our health care system will work even better if more young women would enter science and medicine and experience the type of success Dr. Guleserian has attained.”
Readers will find all the drama, intensity, humor and compassion that they enjoy in their favorite fictionalized medical TV drama, but the actual accounts in Surgeon’s Story are even more compelling. One of the key characters in the book is 2-year-old Rylynn who was born with an often fatal disorder called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and was successfully treated by Dr. Guleserian.

Watch the Book Trailer at YouTube.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble


Book Excerpt:

The first task is to examine the heart to see if the preoperative diagnosis is correct. Dr. G uses delicate instruments to retract portions of the tricuspid valve and examine the extent of the defect of the ventricular septum, the wall between the two ventricles. She determines the exact size and shape of the VSD and trims the segment of pericardium she saved earlier in preservative. She cuts miniscule pieces of the pericardial tissue and sutures them along the walls of the VSD, creating anchor points for the actual covering. Each suturing is an intricate dance of fingers and forceps, needle and thread. Dr. G works with a small, hooked needle, grasping it with forceps, inserting the needle through the tissue, releasing and re-gripping with the forceps, pulling the hair-thin suture through, using a forceps in her other hand to re-grip the needle again and repeat. The pericardial tissue being sewn over the VSD has to be secure, and it has to stand up to the pressure of blood pumping through Claudia’s heart at the end of the operation. This isn’t like repairing knee ligaments, which can rest without use and heal slowly. Claudia’s heart is going to restart at the end of this operation, and whatever has been sewn into it has to hold, and work, the first time. The VSD repair involves cautious work around the tricuspid valve, and their proximity is a concern because the valve opens and closes along the ventricular septum with each beat. Dr. G and her team find that it’s preferable to actually divide the cords of the tricuspid valve to better expose the VSD. After the patch is fully secured, the tricuspid valve is repaired.
        Things don’t go as smoothly during the attempt to repair the pulmonary valve. When Dr. G looks inside Claudia’s heart she discovers that the pulmonary valve is not nearly large enough, and it’s malformed. It only has two flaps where there should be three. She repairs it by what she later says is “just putting in a little transannular patch.”
        Here’s what it’s like to “just” put a transannular patch on the pulmonary artery of a child as small as Claudia:
        First, take a piece of well-cooked elbow macaroni. Tuck it away in a bowl of pasta that has a bit of residual marinara sauce still floating around in it. Take several different sized knitting needles. Slowly, without damaging the macaroni, insert one of the knitting needles into it to see if you can gauge the width of the macaroni on which you’re operating. Then using a delicate, incredibly sharp blade, cut a small hole in the piece of elbow macaroni, maybe a little larger than the height of one of the letters on the page in front of you. Now use pliers to pick up a small needle with thread as fine as human hair in it. Use another pliers to pick up a tiny piece of skin that looks like it was cut from an olive, so thin that light shines through it. Take the needle and sew the olive skin on to the hole you’ve cut in the piece of macaroni. When you’re finished sewing, hook up the piece of macaroni to a comparable size tube coming from the faucet on the kitchen sink, and see if you can run some water through the macaroni without the patch leaking.
        That’s the food analogy. Those are the dimensions Dr. G worked with as she patched Claudia’s pulmonary artery. She made it a little wider to give it a chance to work more efficiently, to transport more blood with less blockage, requiring less work for the right ventricle so that the built-up heart muscle could return to a more normal size. It wasn’t the repair she’d planned to make, but it was the most suitable under the circumstances, and it gave Claudia her best chance.
        Before restoring Claudia’s natural circulation, the team makes certain that no air is in the heart or the tubes from the pump, because it could be pumped up to the brain. Air in the brain is not a safe thing. When all the repairs are completed, Claudia is rewarmed and weaned from the bypass machine. She was on pump for 114 minutes and her aorta was clamped for 77 minutes, not an extraordinary length of time in either case.
        Claudia’s heart starts up on its own, with a strong rhythm. With her heart beating again the beeps, and the peaks and valleys on her monitor return. All is well. An echo technician wheels a portable machine into the OR and puts a sensor down Claudia’s throat where it lodges behind her heart to perform a transesophageal echo —a more detailed view than the normal, external echo. Everything looks good. Chest drains are put in to handle post-operative drainage, and wires are placed for external pacemakers, should anything go wrong with Claudia’s heart rhythm during her recovery from surgery. Dr. G draws Claudia’s ribcage back together with stainless steel wires, perfectly fastened and tightly tucked down.
        Claudia and the surgical team return to the CVICU, and Dr. G monitors her reentry to the unit, making sure the nurses understand Claudia’s condition and the proper procedures to be followed for the next 24 hours. From there, Dr. G enters a small room tucked away from the noise of the unit to meet with the family. Claudia’s mother, father, and aunt are waiting. Dr. G sees Mom wiping tears away.
        “Are you crying? Oh, no, no need to be crying, everything is fine.” Her wide smile reassured Mom, who  put away her tissues.


About the Author

Mark Oristano has been a professional writer/journalist since the age of 16.

After growing up in suburban New York, Oristano moved to Texas in 1970 to attend Texas Christian University.  A major in Mass Communications, Mark was hired by WFAA-TV in 1973 as a sports reporter, the start of a 30-year career covering the NFL and professional sports.

Mark has worked with notable broadcasters including Verne Lundquist, Oprah Winfrey and as a sportscaster for the Dallas Cowboys Radio Network and Houston Oilers Radio Network.  He has covered Super Bowls and other major sports events throughout his career.  He was part of Ron Chapman’s legendary morning show on KVIL-FM in Dallas for nearly 20 years.

In 2002 Oristano left broadcasting to pursue his creative interests, starting a portrait photography business and becoming involved in theater including summer productions with Shakespeare Dallas. He follows his daughter Stacey’s film career who has appeared in such shows as Friday Night Lights and Bunheads.

A veteran stage actor in Dallas, Mark Oristano was writer and performer for the acclaimed one-man show “And Crown Thy Good: A True Story of 9/11.”

Oristano authored his first book, A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America’s Favorite Game. A Sportcaster’s Guide offers inside tips about how to watch football, including stories from Oristano’s 30-year NFL career, a look at offense, defense and special teams, and cool things to say during the game to sound like a real fan.

In 2016 Oristano finished his second book, Surgeon’s Story, a true story about a surgeon that takes readers inside the operating room during open heart surgery. His second book is described as a story of dedication, talent, training, caring, resilience, guts and love.

In 1997, Mark began volunteering at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, working in the day surgery recovery room. It was at Children’s that Mark got to know Kristine Guleserian, MD, first to discuss baseball, and later, to learn about the physiology, biology, and mystery of the human heart. That friendship led to a joint book project, Surgeon’s Story, about Kristine’s life and career.

Mark is married and has two adult children and two grandchildren.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK




Mark Oristano is giving away a $25 Amazon Gift Card!

Terms & Conditions:
  • By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
  • One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card.
  • This giveaway ends midnight July 28.
  • Winner will be contacted via email on July 29.
  • Winner has 48 hours to reply.
Good luck everyone!

ENTER TO WIN!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Interview with Ed Lin, author of This is a Bust







Set in New York’s Chinatown in 1976, this sharp and gritty novel is a mystery set against the backdrop of a city in turmoil
Robert Chow is a Vietnam vet and an alcoholic. He’s also the only Chinese American cop on the Chinatown beat, and the only police officer who can speak Cantonese. But he’s basically treated like a token, trotted out for ribbon cuttings and community events.
So he shouldn’t be surprised when his superiors are indifferent to his suspicions that an old Chinese woman’s death may have actually been a murder. But he sure is angry. With little more than his own demons to fuel him, Chow must take matters into his own hands.
Rich with the details of its time and place, this homage to noir will appeal to fans of S.J. Rozan and Michael Connelly.





January 20, 1976. The Hong Kong-biased newspaper ran an editorial about how the Chinese who had just come over were lucky to get jobs washing dishes and waiting tables in Chinatown. Their protest was making all Chinese people look bad. If the waiters didn’t like their wages, they should go ask the communists for jobs and see what happens.

Here in America, democracy was going to turn 200 years old in July. But the Chinese waiters who wanted to organize a union were going directly against the principles of freedom that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln had fought for.

Those waiters were also disrespecting the previous generations of Chinese who had come over and worked so hard for so little. If it weren’t for our elders, the editorial said, today we would be lumped in with the lazy blacks and Spanish people on welfare.

I folded the newspaper, sank lower in my chair, and crossed my arms. I banged my heels against the floor.

“Just a minute, you’re next! Don’t be so impatient!” grunted Law, one of the barbers. A cigarette wiggled in his mouth as he snipped away on a somber-looking Chinese guy’s head. When he had one hand free, he took his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray built into the arm cushion of his customer’s chair.

He reached into the skyline of bottles against the mirror for some baby powder. Law sprinkled it onto his hand and worked it into the back of the somber guy’s neck while pulling the sheet off from inside his collar. Clumps of black hair scampered to the floor as he shook off the sheet.

The customer paid. Law pulled his drawer out as far as it would go and tucked the bills into the back. Then he came over to me.

Law had been cutting my hair since I was old enough to want it cut. He was in his early 60s and had a head topped with neatly sculpted snow. His face was still soft and supple, but he had a big mole on the lower side of his left cheek.

You couldn’t help but stare at it when he had his back turned because it stood out in profile, wiggling in sync with his cigarette.

He looked at the newspaper on my lap.

“We should give all those pro-union waiters guns and send them to Vietnam!” Law grunted. “They’ll be begging to come back and bus tables.”

“They wouldn’t be able to take the humidity,” I said.

“That’s right, they’re not tough like you! You were a brave soldier! OK, come over here. I’m ready for you now,” Law said, wiping off the seat. I saw hair stuck in the foam under the ripped vinyl cover, but I sat down anyway. Hair could only make the seat softer.

“I don’t mean to bring it up, but you know it’s a real shame what happened. The Americans shouldn’t have bothered to send in soldiers, they should have just dropped the big one on them. You know, the A-bomb.”

“Then China would have dropped an A-bomb on the United States,” I said.

“Just let them! Commie weapons probably don’t even work!” Law shouted into my right ear as he tied a sheet around my neck.

“They work good enough,” I said.

When Chou En Lai had died two weeks before, the Greater China Association had celebrated with a ton of firecrackers in the street in front of its Mulberry Street offices and handed out candy to the obligatory crowd. The association had also displayed a barrel of fireworks they were going to set off when Mao kicked, which was going to be soon, they promised. Apparently, the old boy was senile and bedridden. 

“Short on the sides, short on top,” I said.

“That’s how you have to have it, right? Short all around, right?” Law asked.

“That’s the only way it’s ever been cut.”

If you didn’t tell Law how you wanted your hair, even if you were a regular, he’d give you a Beefsteak Charlie’s haircut, with a part right down the center combed out with a Chinese version of VO5. I was going to see my mother in a few days, and I didn’t want to look that bad.

“Scissors only, right? You don’t like the electric clipper, right?”

“That’s right,” I said. When I hear buzzing by my ears, I want to swat everything within reach. Law’s old scissors creaked through my hair. Sometimes I had to stick my jaw out and blow clippings out of my eyes. The barbershop’s two huge plate glass windows cut into each other at an acute angle in the same shape as the street. Out one window was the sunny half of Doyers Street. The other was in the shade. How many times had I heard that this street was the site of tong battles at the turn of the century? How many times had I heard tour guides say that the barbershop was built on the “Bloody Angle”?

The barbershop windows were probably the original ones, old enough so they were thicker at the bottom than at the top. They distorted images of people from the outside, shrinking heads and bloating asses. In the winters, steam from the hot shampoo sink covered the top halves of the windows like lacy curtains in an abandoned house.

In back of me, a bulky overhead hair dryer whined like a dentist’s drill on top of a frowning woman with thick glasses getting a perm.

The barbers had to shout to hear each other. The news station on the radio was nearly drowned out. The only time you could hear it was when they played the xylophone between segments or made the dripping-sink sounds.

If you knew how to listen for it, you could sometimes hear the little bell tied to the broken arm of the pneumatic pump on the door. The bell hung from a frayed loop of red plastic tie from a bakery box. When the bell went off, one or two barbers would yell out in recognition of an old head.

The bell went off, and Law yelled right by my ear.

“Hey!” he yelled. Two delayed “Hey”s went off to my left and right. The chilly January air swept through the barbershop. A thin man in a worn wool coat heaved the door closed behind him and twisted off his felt hat. His hands were brown, gnarled, and incredibly tiny, like walnut shells. He fingered the brim of his hat and shifted uneasily from foot to foot, but made no motion to take off his coat or drop into one of the four empty folding chairs by the shadow side of Doyers. He swept his white hair back, revealing a forehead that looked like a mango gone bad.

“My wife just died,” he said. If his lungs hadn’t been beat up and dusty like old vacuum-cleaner bags, it would have been a shout. “My wife died,” he said again, as if he had to hear it to believe it. The hairdryer shut down. “Oh,” said Law. “I’m sorry.” He went on with my hair. No one else said anything. Someone coughed. Law gave a half-grin grimace and kept his head down, the typical stance for a Chinese man stuck in an awkward situation. The radio babbled on.

The barbers just wanted to cut hair and have some light conversation about old classmates and blackjack. Why come here to announce that your wife had died? The guy might as well have gone to the Off Track Betting joint on Bowery around the corner. No one was giving him any sympathy here.

Death was bad luck. Talking about death was bad luck. Listening to someone talk about death was bad luck. Who in Chinatown needed more bad luck?

“What should I do?” the thin man asked. He wasn’t crying, but his legs were shaking. I could see his pant cuffs sweep the laces of his polished wing tips. “What should I do?” he asked again. The xylophone on the radio went off.

I stood up and swept the clippings out of my hair. The bangs were longer on one side of my head. I slipped the sheet off from around my neck and coiled it onto the warmth of the now-vacant seat. Law opened a drawer, dropped in his scissors, and shut it with his knee. He leaned against his desk and fumbled for a cigarette in his shirt pocket.

I blew off the hair from my shield and brushed my legs off. I pushed my hat onto my head.

“Let’s go,” I told the thin man.


Q: Please tell us about This Is a Bust, and what inspired you to write it. 

A: This Is a Bust is the first book in a series set in Manhattan's Chinatown in 1976. I was inspired by my own outsider status (as a suburban Asian American) to write about another outsider (a Chinese American cop). The year was also special as America was turning 200 but also grappling with self-doubt in terms of the Vietnam War, while the old rival leaders in the Chinese Civil War were dead and dying. Everything was changing for the U.S. and China, and Chinatown was a bit of a meeting place of it all. 

Q: What themes do you explore in This Is a Bust? 

A: I like to explore the little guy's story. Every man is an island, at times. It's easy to get caught up in our own struggles without seeing the bigger picture. One way we can figure out our own problems is to help others. Also, Asian Americans are not a model minority. I know plenty of unmotivated idiots who do dumb things, and my character is a bit of that end. 

Q: Why do you write? 

A: I am compelled to write. Even if I weren't being published, I'd be writing. If I feel a story coming on, I have to write it or I can't sleep. 

Q: How picky are you with language? 

A: I am sorta picky. Have you ever eaten a loaded burger that has one condiment or topping you don't like? If the burger is super great, I wouldn't bother scooping out the mayonnaise. But if it was just okay, I'd reach for a spoon and break that puppy open. I feel the same way about a story and I generally allow dialog to be as messy as a burger that a disgruntled teen would assemble, because it's real. 

Q: When you write, do you sometimes feel as though you were being manipulated from afar? 

A: No, I'm being worked over by the power of caffeine and the voice in my head that says, "You suck!" 

Q: What is your worst time as a writer? A: When I'm actually writing! I feel like I'm plugging away, not getting anything done and everything is terrible. Well, after about several months of getting nothing done, there's enough writing to whip up a first draft. 

Q: Your best? 

A: Getting that first draft done and being able to lift my head in wonder at the sunlight and the skies again. 

Q: Is there anything that would stop you from writing? 

A: Never. I will always write. Even if I were laid out in a hospital bed, if I can tap my nose to a touchscreen, I will do it! The Diving Bell and the Butterfly! 

Q: What’s the happiest moment you’ve lived as an author? 

A: So far, maybe getting a physical copy of that first book. It was amazing to hold that thing in my hands, words that had been spinning in my hard drive. 

Q: Is writing an obsession to you? 

A: YES. Q: Are the stories you create connected with you in some way? A: Anything I can think of has been built from my experience with the world, so in that sense, my stories are collaboratively produced between me and all the people I've ever interacted with. 

Q: Ray Bradbury once said, “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” Do you agree? 

A: Here's a dirty secret about me: I rarely drink. But if I did, I'm pretty sure that I would feel that reality is a process of destroying ourselves. Not only physically, but our old ideas dry up and flake off, as well. It's a creative destruction, really. If we resisted change and letting things go, we'd all be hoarders and die horrible, lonely deaths under collapsed towers of stuff. 

Q: Where is your book available? 

A: At all reputable outlets. 

Q: Do you have a website or blog where readers can find out more about you and your work? 

A: This is me: www.edlinforpresident.com.






Ed Lin, a native New Yorker of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards and is an all-around standup kinda guy. His books include Waylaid, and a trilogy set in New York’s Chinatown in the 70s: This Is a Bust, Snakes Can’t Run and One Red Bastard. Ghost Month, published by Soho Crime in July 2014, is a Taipei-based mystery, and Incensed, published October 2016, continues that series. Lin lives in Brooklyn with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung, and son.


Connect with Ed at http://www.edlinforpresident.com or on social media at:





Monday, July 17
Book featured at Cheryl's Book Nook
Book featured at Chill and Read
Guest blogging at Mythical Books

Tuesday, July 18
Interviewed at I'm Shelf-ish
Book featured at Elise's Audiobook Digest
Book featured at Books, Dreams, Life

Wednesday, July 19
Book featured at Must Read Faster
Book featured at Diana's Book Reviews
Interviewed at Harmonious Publicity

Thursday, July 20
Book featured at The Writers' Life
Book featured at Stormy Nights Reviewing
Interviewed at As the Page Turns

Friday, July 21
Book featured at Lynn's Romance Enthusiasm
Guest blogging at Thoughts in Progress

Sunday, July 23
Book featured at T's Stuff
Interviewed at The Literary Nook

Monday, July 24
Book featured at A Title Wave
Book featured at Stuck in YA Books

Tuesday, July 25
Book featured at The Angel's Pearl
Book featured at Write and Take Flight
Book featured at The Bookworm Lodge

Wednesday, July 26
Book featured at Don't Judge, Read
Book featured at The Toibox of Words
Book featured at Comfy Chair Books

Thursday, July 27
Book featured at The Dark Phantom

Friday, July 28
Book featured at A Book Lover
Book featured at Mello and June

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Interview with Bob Smith and Sara Rhodes, authors of Iniquities of Gulch Fork








In the worn and tired town of Gulch Fork, Arkansas, certified nursing assistant Samantha Caminos heads to her patient Rob Dean's home and wonders how she can find common ground with the aloof, disabled Vietnam veteran who suffers from not only PTSD but also severe neuropathy caused by Agent Orange. As Samantha approaches the house, she has no idea that very soon their lives will take a new turn. Gulch Fork, a town once filled with Ozark tranquility, takes on an aura of evil when bizarre events begin to affect Rob and two other war-scarred veterans, Peter Ness and Ron Woods-Samantha's father. But when Samantha learns that two elderly couples without living relatives in the area have fallen prey to fraud and embezzlement by a man who claims to be a pastor, she sets out on a quest to piece together a complex mystery fueled by those hell-bent on taking advantage of citizens too fragile to defend themselves. In this compelling novel based on true events, three veterans seeking peace and serenity from PTSD fall victim to injustice, prompting a young health care worker to investigate the evil that has infiltrated their once peaceful Arkansas town.

THE INTERVIEW

Can you tell us what your latest book is all about? 

This is a book about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from two viewpoints. A) From a Vietnam veteran who spent one year in a war zone. B) From the daughter of a veteran with PTSD who’d grown up as the victim of one who suffered from PTSD. 

How did you come up with the idea? 

Our personal experiences with PTSD, alcoholism, being taken advantage of by red-necked miscreants. 

What kind of research did you do before and during the writing of your book? 

None necessary, due to our personal first-hand experiences. 

Can you give us a short excerpt? 

 After living in Spain for a number of years, Rob had decided to return to the United States. Spain became too expensive, and Islamic terrorists had blown up a hotel only two blocks from where he lived. Rob chose to come to the northwest corner of Arkansas, seeking peace and tranquility. He thought it was the safest part of the entire country. As a child living in Oklahoma, he had immensely enjoyed coming to Arkansas for a weekend visit with relatives. But that was before his parents divorced and his mother remarried. As things were going now, Rob started to wonder if coming to the Boston Mountains wasn’t such a good idea after all. 

In your own experience, is it hard to get a nonfiction book published today? How did you do it? 

It is difficult, because you need an expert on the subject to authenticate the contents. Ours is not considered nonfiction.




Bob Smith is a naval officer who had Agent Orange spilled on him in Vietnam and suffers from severe PTSD in addition to disabling neuropathy. After living in Spain, he returned to America and settled in the Ozarks, where he is happily pursuing his dream of writing. Sara Rhodes is a wife, mother, and certified nursing assistant who originally lived in Alaska before moving to the Ozarks with her family. Bob is her former patient whose teachings about PTSD helped her recognize her own father's battle with it. Both Bob and Sara find animals to be a great source of comfort.