Literarily Speaking

Friday, August 28, 2020

Review Corner: FIVE MINUTES, MR. BYNER! by John Byner with Douglas Wellman #review #memoir #entertainment

thewriterslife August 28, 2020 0 Comments

Title: FIVE MINUTES, MR. BYNER! A LIFETIME OF LAUGHTER
Author: John Byner with Douglas Wellman
Publisher: WriteLife Publishing
Pages: 244
Genre: Celebrity Memoir

Veteran entertainer John Byner, a man of many voices and characters, from impersonating the slow, rolling gait and speech of John Wayne, to lending his voice to The Ant and the Aardvark cartoons has penned (with Douglas Wellman) his biography FIVE MINUTES, MR. BYNER! published by Boutique of Quality Books. His dead-on impersonations, as well as his unique talents as a character actor, have put him on the small screen in peoples' homes, the big screen in theaters, and no screen on Broadway.

“. . . John has had a remarkable career spanning decades, from doing comedy in small clubs in Greenwich Village to The Ed Sullivan Show. . . Ed loved him. . . to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, to Steve Allen, who basically invented the talk show, to The Carol Burnett Show, to just about every major variety show or situation comedy there was on the air, to hosting his own variety show and introducing Bob Einstein as Super Dave Osborne, and on and on. . . . And he’s still going strong, as funny and as kind as ever.” – Nathan Lane

Growing up in a big family on Long Island, John discovered his uncanny ability to mimic voices as a child when he returned home from a Bing Crosby movie and repeated Bing’s performance for his family in their living room. He discovered his talent made him the focus of everyone’s attention, and allowed him to make friends wherever he went, from elementary school to the U.S. Navy. John started his career in nightclubs in New York, but soon found himself getting national acclaim on The Ed Sullivan Show. With that he was on his way. This memoir is the best and funniest moments of his life, career, and relationships with some of the biggest names in entertainment, both on and
off the screen. “I thought of doing a memoir a year before I began writing it. My friend (co-author), Doug Wellman, suggested years before that if I wanted to write a book he would assist me,” remarked Mr.Byner.

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I was so excited to get my copy of FIVE MINUTES, MR. BYNER! A LIFETIME OF LAUGHTER and it did not disappoint. I remember Mr. Byner's infectious charisma on big time stages like The Ed Sullivan Show and his 37 appearances on The Tonight Show. What I remember the most about Mr. Byner are his impersonations - John Wayne and Ed Sullivan (I bet it was this impersonation that made the cut for his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show) to name a few.

Reading his background - family life - was so interesting and was glad he included it in the book. I love reading about how TV personalities got their start, but their background, their childhood, is where they give you a taste of their character - even if it's not so pretty. But, John is quick to point out he came from a normal loving family. He was the fifth of six children growing up in New York. His father died the same year he was born but he talks fondly of his immigrant father from Germany who sought America for fame and fortune. Mr. Byner calls his childhood 'a Tom Sawyer childhood.'

A very entertaining read from a very talented entertainer!

Try Before You Buy – Read the first Chapter SLOW DOWN by Lee Matthew Goldberg

thewriterslife August 28, 2020 0 Comments

We are honored to have Lee Matthew Goldberg here at Literarily Speaking for his last stop on his SLOW DOWN Virtual Book Tour! If you would like to read the first chapter from his book, check it out below!

SLOW DOWN
By Lee Matthew Goldberg
Thriller/Noir

How far would you go to make your dreams come true? For budding writer and filmmaker Noah Spaeth, being a Production Assistant in director Dominick’s Bambach’s new avant-garde film isn’t enough. Neither is watching Dominick have an affair with the lead actress, the gorgeous but troubled Nevie Wyeth. For Noah’s dream is to get both the film and Nevie in the end, whatever the cost. And this obsession may soon become a reality once Dominick’s spurned wife Isadora reveals her femme fatale nature with a seductive plot to get rid of her husband for good.

Slow Down, a cross between the noir styling of James M. Cain and the dark satire of Bret Easton Ellis, is a thrilling page-turner that holds a mirror up to a media-saturated society that is constantly searching for the fastest way to get ahead, regardless of consequences.

Here’s what readers are saying about Slow Down!

“Slow Down is a frenetic first novel…full of unedifying characters scrambling for the elusive, perhaps imaginary, brass ring.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Lee Matthew Goldberg writes like a young Bret Easton Ellis doing a line of uncut Denis Johnson off the back of a public urinal. Memorable in the best possible way, also mostly illegal, Goldberg’s Slow Down is a mad man’s tour of Manhattan’s vices, follies, and ultimate betrayals.”
–Urban Waite, author of The Terror of Living and Sometimes the Wolf

“What would happen if one of Raymond Chandler’s 1940’s femme fatales were to join forces with one of Jay McInerney’s enfant terribles? Lee Matthew Goldberg wrings every delectable trope imaginable out of this mashup while still managing a fresh spin. A writer to watch out for.”
–David Kukoff, author of Children of the Canyon

“Slow Down starts fast and gets faster quick, gunning through yellow streetlights on its way to a full collision with your shattered soul. Lee Matthew Goldberg takes on the American Zeitgeist in this stunning debut.”
–Stephen Jay Schwartz, LA Times bestselling author of Boulevard and Beat

“Slow Down is a brilliant rush of a work charting the rise and fall of Noah and other pretentious losers. Savor this book.”
—Foreword Reviews

“Dark and hard-boiled writing that grabs you by the throat. Slow Down is one of those rare novels that’s so good you want it to go on forever!”
–Nick Pengelley, author of Ryder: An Ayesha Ryder Novel

“The plot takes off…there’s no denying it’s fun to watch rich snots destroy themselves.”
—Booklist

“Goldberg’s portrayal of the New York demimonde is one of the book’s strengths and brings to mind Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero. He also succeeds in marshalling a complicated plot.”
—CrimeFictionLover.com

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CHAPTER ONE

THE STEPS THAT LEAD ME TO MY CATACLYSMIC ENCOUNTER WITH DOMINICK BAMBACH WERE PUT IN MOTION TWO DAYS EARLIER WHEN I GOT THE NEWS ABOUT BEING DOUBLE-FIRED FROM MY SOULSUCKING JOB. Ah, Classic Screw-Up Noah. I’d come home a little buzzed from a Yankees game to hear my parents’ cook, Consuela, shouting from room to room trying to find me. Since my parents’ place was big enough to get legitimately lost in, I had no clue where she was, but I did run into my brother Dex ripping bong hits on our wraparound terrace.

“That mad Guatemalan woman has been huffing and puffing around the apartment for over half an hour,” Dex said.

“Is she okay?”

“Importante!” Dex mimicked, rather poorly, sounding more stereotypically Asian than stereotypically Spanish. “Más importante, señor Noah. Su jefe llamando! Your boss called!”

I caught up with Consuela in what my parents dubbed their “Conservatory,” named with pretension like we all lived inside the game of Clue. Actually, it was a shoebox of a room that had wedged in a piano, a piano bench, and a rather spectacular view of Central Park. I found Consuela perched on the window seat, hands folded in her apron like she was praying, breaths heavy and sad. She was a whale and I had made her sweat.

“Señor Noah. Oh, señor Noah,” Consuela heaved, the life drained out of her, ready for her deathbed. “Message for you.”

She had written the message in Spanglish on a post-it stuck Slow Down

to her large left breast. She displayed it to me like it was a medal of honor. It also had a blob of her famous Diablo sauce and basically said that my jefe sounded muy angry and would call my cell at nine tomorrow morning.

My father had adopted Consuela fifteen years ago, a rotund woman who fancied spiced rum and sour looks. My parents had met her during one of their “slumming vacations”—meaning a stay anywhere in the Third World, even if they shelled out for five-star hotels. This time it had been in Guatemala, where she was an overworked cook who made delectable tamales at the breakfast buffet. After one bite of her tasty creations, they whisked her back to the States as their latest charity case. But my father, all red nosed and with a jarring demeanor, had stated the real reason one night at a dinner party:

“You should see some of these people, just ghastly…” my father, a swirling glass of port in his hand, spouted to an audience of wondering blinks. I couldn’t stop looking at his blinding white teeth, which made him look demented. “That is where Consuela would still be if Janet and I hadn’t opened up our home to her. But my God, can that good woman make a tamale!”

I had passed out from a couple of late-night bong hits and woke up the next morning thinking about the note Consuela had given me. The sheets had been pulled up to my neck, the open window letting in cool hums of early spring air. I ran one cold big toe over the other as some morbid indie band played from my iPod alarm, soft and sweet as if they were singing me back to sleep. I had to download some new songs soon.

It was odd that my boss Irene had called, since the company only had few days left before it shut down completely. So calling me on a Sunday night, a time better spent basking in her wonderful glow, meant that something huge had gone down.

I’d been recently fired. No big deal, most of the company had been “downsized” or “let go,” or any other nice way of describing permanent termination. An economy in the toilet meant a whole lot of trouble for an independent media production company with only one client. Recently, all my co-workers had been summoned one-by-one into her office situated away from the rest of the peons.

The day I got the ax, I’d been ignoring the red light blinking on my office phone, which always meant that the Queen wanted something. E-mail this, call so-and-so, walk my dog while I get my hair done for an upcoming interview on CNN (that would probably never air). I finally picked up the receiver.

“Noah, come into my office.”

Click.

I wanted to be “let go.” Really I was aching to do nothing but come up with an idea for a novel and then adapt it into a film, my guaranteed tickets to fame. Back in college, a story I wrote for a fellowship won me five-hundred bucks and a trip to a Writer’s Colony in Wyoming, so I knew I had chops, but since then I’d written zilch. I had only one year left before I turned twenty-three and became older than F. Scott Fitzgerald when he wrote his timeless classic, This Side of Paradise. And, if I wanted to direct an adaptation of this yet-to-be-written novel, I had to hurry up before I turned twenty-five and became older than Orson Wells when he directed Citizen Kane. I longed to give an interview that would bring up both these bits of trivia and anoint me into the history books, but time was running out fast.

So this bullshit job where I booked authors for an interview series that aired on a Big Bookselling Chain’s website was really just holding me back. I pitched the project to the author’s publicists, set it all up, and sent them an embarrassing questionnaire that my boss created with questions like:

If someone described you as an animal, what animal would you resemble on the outside, and what animal would you identify with on the inside?

Unfortunately, this whole venture was happening right around the time that Big Bookselling Chain was going bankrupt. Anyone who didn’t anticipate a downsizing was in serious denial or too stupid to breathe.

When I stepped inside the Queen’s office that afternoon, it felt like walking smack into Calcutta. She had cranked up the heat on a day that didn’t require it. Her panting dog greeted me by doing an interpretive dance on the rug. The thing was about a hundred and sixty-five in dog years and begging to be put down.

“Have a seat, Noah.”

She gave me a smile that was completely devoid of any emotion. I could tell that it had taken so much out of her to produce, and it still managed to only be the smile of a stroke victim, one end being pulled up by a puppeteer’s string and the other end long forgotten.

“How are things?” she said, grimacing.

“Super.” I nodded.

Her half-smile had already vanished.

“I’m sure you know that the Big Bookselling Chain is in dire straits right now.”

Yes, I did already know this. I had figured it out one month ago when all of the authors the company filmed were mysteriously pulled from the B.B.C’s website without any explanation, and then The New York Times reported that one third of the B.B.C’s staff had been terminated.

“So, Noah, along with that, I don’t think that we can keep you on any longer as a Talent Booker,” she said, with a sigh to show how traumatized she was by having to fire me, a sigh to convey her plight. Forget the fact that she had just closed on a two-million dollar property in the Village a couple of weeks ago.

“As of today?”

“No, I am giving you two weeks notice. Any interviews you want to go on are fine by me, but this is the way it has to be.”

Her little rhyme made her sound like an Alice and Wonderland character, the caterpillar atop the mushroom blowing plumes of smoke in my face. I choked on a fake cough to keep from laughing since I’d been waiting for a day like this for the last few months. At least now I wouldn’t have to quit and go through the process of telling her off, something I honestly did to people in power too often and was a trait I needed to rectify.

My cell rang at exactly 9:00 am. The moody music had lulled me back to sleep for the past hour, but the phone was relentless. I found it under a pair of balled-up khakis and a Fight Club poster that had floated down from my wall.

“Hello,” I said, out of breath.

“Can I speak with Noah Spaeth?”

The voice was curt and cold. This couldn’t be good.

I am Noah’s complete lack of surprise, I thought, as I pictured Edward Norton’s sad-sack character from Fight Club.

“This is Irene, your boss. I don’t want you coming in today or any of your last days.”

“Uh, why…?”

“Well, Noah, over the weekend I decided to go through some of the e-mails that you wrote on your office account…”

She said it as if it was the most normal thing to do, as if he should be proud of her shadiness.

“Since I was allowing you to use me as a reference, I needed to make sure you had been spending your days here productively, but I realized with some of the things you wrote about me and the company itself that you never took this job seriously and that you’re just some immature twenty-two-year-old child. This means that you’re fired.”

“I was already fired.”

“No, you were let go; now you are fired.”

“I’m not understanding the difference.”

“Meaning you will not be able to use me as a reference anymore, so good luck finding other employment.”

I blew a raspberry into the receiver.

“Excuse me? Is that all you have to say?” I blew another raspberry.

“You little shit.”

Click.

I stayed on the line, the dial tone pulsating in my ear. I had trashed her as a person and a boss, e-mailing to friends that she was a trust fund baby who got the company as a type of hush money from parents who just wanted to get rid of her, but worst of all (well maybe not worst of all because, at least, it was making me laugh at the time), I had e-mailed to a friend about her big ass, how it was über long and flat in the white mini skirts she’d always wedge herself into and made her look like a pulled tooth when she bent over due to that sizable rear and bowling pin legs. All of this had now been read and dissected by her; she probably fled to the bathroom afterwards and planted herself in front of a long mirror that only proved those accusations right. Her frequent mentions of a personal trainer weren’t fooling anyone.

My cell rang again to the sound of breathing at the other end.

“Hello,” I said, ready for her. Her breathing sounded winded, as if she was trying to blow up a balloon from across the room.

“I…” she began, but I was too fast.

“Have a big ass. I know.”

I threw my cell to the floor without hanging up and could hear her muffled shouts, but I was laughing so hard that I could care less. I held my stomach and rocked in a fit, wanting her to hear.

My laughter echoed down the hallway as my teenage sister Cassie passed by, yakking on the phone. She was dressed in the skimpiest amount of clothing that the Baron School for Girls allowed. Just a few years ago she was wearing leotards and tumbling through the house with her hair in pigtails.

“No, Maddy, we’re totally gonna make her cry at school tomorrow…I know, I’m so psyched. All the Untouchables deserve to cry.”

I stepped out of my room in front of her so she couldn’t get past. She twisted a finger around her bra strap and let it snap against her skin. Her expression looked as if someone was using her face to juice a lemon.

“Move out of my way, Noah.”

“Why does everything you say need to have its own lingo?” I made a grab for her cell. “What the hell is an Untouchable?”

I could hear cackling coming from her cell. Cassie rolled her eyes as if I wasn’t worthy of sharing her air.

“It’s someone at Baron that’s poor. Just like you’ll be one day.”

She snapped her gum and continued past me with her middle finger in the air. The finger had become yellow from her new smoking habit; the nail caked with white powder. As if her bloodshot eyes weren’t enough evidence that she’d snorted her breakfast.

When she was born, I thought she’d been stolen from another family in the hospital because her hair was so blonde. My parents had let me hold her, and I whispered “my baby” into the tiniest ear I’d ever seen.

That seemed like many lifetimes ago.

Heading to Consuela’s kitchen for breakfast was always the best part of my day. I could already smell her Hollandaise sauce, which meant that I’d be eating Eggs Benedict soon. A perfect cure for my newly fired self. Good ol’ Consuela, with a work ethic like an Alaskan race dog in the Yukon, knew what I needed. The fact that it was Monday and her “Noie” (as she sometimes called me) wasn’t already at work had indicated that something was up. A wise shaman had once told her during a trip to the jungles of El Petén that “food cured all,” so she lived with that mantra and preached it unabashedly.

But as my nose followed the Hollandaise aroma through the hallways, I began to feel unsettled. Five minutes ago the whole boss-reading-my-e-mails thing had been ridiculously funny, but now reality was starting to sink in. My girlfriend at the time, Margaret, was bound to dump me because she had a firm plan of a career path and life for us both. Being attached to an unemployed artiste and wasting her glory twenties, as she called it (which always made it sound perverse) was not part of The Plan. So if I wanted to keep her around, I knew I’d have to scour the job sites, go on interviews, and pretend to be interested in whatever lame experience some company offered.

I entered the kitchen to find Dex and Consuela whispering to one another.

“Why aren’t you at work already?” Dex asked, studying me through his thick glasses without any lenses. His hair was a brown ball of chaos, and he wore a lopsided sweater over pajama bottoms that he’d probably live in for the rest of the day.

“Why aren’t you in school?” I shot back, knowing Dex had dropped out of Franklin & Marshall College last spring because he couldn’t take the Amish people in the town anymore, obviously an excuse that sounded better than his likely suspension.

“Touché, brother. Consuela, chop-chop with the Eggs Bene. I’m about as hungry as an Ethiopian at a Smorgasbord, or a newly-fired boy desperate for another job.”

He gave me a condescending squint while pushing the bangs out of his eyes only to have them fall into place again. I knew that he kept those bangs to give his fingers something to do: at parties, talking to girls, it was his thing. He could hide behind his hair if he wasn’t interested, or flip it away, show you his eyes, and pretend to care.

“Maybe you wouldn’t be so hungry, Dex, if you didn’t have two joints for breakfast already.”

“Haha, double touché, brother Noah.”

For the past year, Cassie, Dex and I lived in our childhood apartment parent-free with Consuela as the only authoritative figure; primarily there to make sure we ate. Our parents occasionally traipsed back home with stories of the South of France, or the wonders of Vanuatu before clearing out the gin and Scotch and slipping under the cracks in the door to board any type of transportation away from us all. Our grandfather, Hubert, my mother’s father, had finally choked on his own vomit in his sleep from an overdose of morphine medication that a hired specialist insisted was necessary for his emphysema. Hubert had paid for our pre-war, Classic Eight masterpiece on 79 th and Central Park West, but mostly kept his “little princess Janet on a tight leash” (his phlegmy words) with a monthly allowance that included weekly spa indulges and daily lunches at Le Cirque and the like. He let my dad foster his career as an art dealer and insisted on private schooling and a maid for his three grandchildren whose names he always mixed up.

Since I could remember, my parents had been planning their ultimate kids-free journey once the old geezer stopped breathing, complaining about a “youth idolized” New York. So when Hubert upchucked his last breath, they packed up their suitcases and vowed to live out of them. After air-kissing us, they left some vague numbers in case they needed to be reached (but only for an emergency!), along with some martini-soaked advice about the real world before slamming the front door and returning mostly through postcards.

I always imagined what I’d say to them and the rest of my family if I ever made it big:

“Mom and Dad, I’m a famous author-slash-filmmaker and you two did nothing for that. Cassie, you’ve become a hideous lost cause, but Dex, you can stick around. You may not be a good friend, but you’ll always be my brother. I know you’ll keep circling back into my life each time your antics stop being amusing to everyone else, and I will be all you have left.”

An overpowering smell of weed pummeled my nostrils as I opened Dex’s door to find him inhaling a massive hit and drumming on his knees in a lotus position. Dex held out a smoking bong as an offering.

“So what happened with your job, bitch?”

I shook my head and gazed around Dex’s room, a study in dementia. Retro Playboy magazines created a non-existent carpet, a mob of tits and eyes scrutinizing me. Chynna, the mannish wrestler from back in the day, seemed to be the most inquisitive, spreading her legs and giving me a “yeah, why’d you get canned?” glare.

“My boss read some nasty e-mails I wrote about her.”

“Haha, you fucked up big time.”

“I was already let go, it just means I can’t use her as a reference. It doesn’t really matter–”

“Tell that to the judge, or rather, tell it to Margaret and see if she’ll ever let your irresponsible ass touch her coot again.”

I’d been dating Margaret for almost a year. We met as seniors at Connecticut College, a tiny enough school where we knew everything about each other before ever really having a conversation. The first time we actually spoke, I was bombed out of my mind and found myself in some ethical debate with her, which sounded life changing at the time. We left some party, the Connecticut sky pure and smelling of the surrounding woods, dizzy with one another. Throughout the rest of the year, she became more of a convenience than anything. The type of girl who joined every amnesty-animal-feminist rights organization to compensate for her bland personality and championed her pre-law studies as being more important than whatever anyone else was doing. I kept her around because a few months before I met her I had tried to kiss Nevie, who then cut me out of her life for good.

“You should come to a party tonight,” Dex said.

“I should write tonight.”

I thought of Nina, the only character I’d created so far. I pictured her at a bar, twisting away on a stool, smiling wide from all the drugs she’d consumed. People would be naturally crowding around her because she had that magnetic effect. She longed to be in movies, using her skinny, but still rocking body, to work her way into chic clubs and get close to anyone with connections, but she wound up vomiting a cocktail of pills by dawn. She had peaked too early and knew her biggest accomplishment was bound to be a tragic headline. She’d need the hero of the novel, a guy just like me, to remind her of the Nina that she used to be, someone who’d stop her from rushing toward an early death and let her find solace in his arms. I could be that hero.

“Dude, come to the party. You can even bring…Margaret.”

“No, I should stay home and get serious about my writing.”

“You are such a pretentious loser. You’ll lock yourself in your room and write some dumb story with me as this screw-up who’s going nowhere and you’ll be the protagonist who gets him to go back to school or some shit like that. Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely?”

“Are you done?”

“I heard your whacko girlfriend going off on me the other day. Evidently, I gave her some look that she misinterpreted when she was here with her nose on the ceiling.”

“Yeah, she can’t stand you, what’s your point?”

“My point is that you can still bring her to this party because I can see you need a night of fucking fun after getting canned. You can always write tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after. In case you didn’t realize it, we’re basically living a charmed life here without any expenses and can do whatever the hell we want to do.”

“You’re right, man,” I said, shoving Dex and making sure, as always, to play the role of Older Brother. “You are so right. Why should I agonize over getting another job and dealing with another possible Queen? And Margaret can kiss my ass if she has anything to say. I’m about to create something that’ll blow people away and no one can stop me.”

I imagined my character Nina again, home from college at her country house in South Hampton, deliriously stoned after a round of golf at her parents’ club. I envisioned myself beside her as we danced around a bonfire on her private beach.

But I knew she wasn’t actually a creation, just a substitution. That night on the beach in South Hampton was based on one of the last times I saw Nevie. I can remember she was leaning in too close to the fire while high on something, and that I caught her before she burned herself.

“Are you okay?” I had asked.

“My hero,” I longed for her to say, but she only wriggled out of my arms, staring at the fire as if she wanted to fall in.

“I’m never okay,” she said, and stumbled up toward her house where she locked her bedroom door and didn’t even come out to wish me good-bye in the morning before I had to board my train.

That weekend had also been one of the last times I was able to write anything.

I told myself not to stress about that now. Tonight I’d be Nevie free. And maybe if I’d be able to keep forgetting about her, a bevy of dazzling ideas would flow once again.

“The Spaeth boys will be out for blood tonight,” Dex cheered, taking a final bong hit. “Brother Noah, I think I know how to get you started on the fast track to living.”

A cloud of smoke obscured Dex’s face as he continued preaching.

“Zoom. Zoom. Zooooooooom!”

About Lee Matthew Goldberg

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE DESIRE CARD, THE MENTOR, and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. The second book in the Desire Card series, PREY NO MORE, is forthcoming, along with his Alaskan Gold Rush novel THE ANCESTOR. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, Cagibi, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press, Monologging and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: http://www.leematthewgoldberg.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/LeeMatthewG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leemgol
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/leematthewgoldberg

# First Chapter Reveal

MAGNOLIA by James S. Kelly #bookspotlight

thewriterslife August 28, 2020 0 Comments

Title: MAGNOLIA
Author: James S. Kelly
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Pages: 432
Genre: Historical Fiction/Civil War Love Story

BOOK BLURB:

Two young men grow up in the south, become great friends and love the same woman. One moves north as the civil war nears and becomes Administrative Asst to Abraham Lincoln The one who remained in the south vacates his office of US Senator to become the south’s chief spy. Both men are pitted against each other during the war. As the war ends, they try to renew their friendship but will the presence of the one they both love be an impediment.

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon → https://amzn.to/2ZulevO

Book Excerpt:

As soon as the seven southern states seceded from the union, their sons and relatives in the Union Army and Navy resigned their commissions and became the elite officers of the Confederacy. They were euphoric; they threw parties and prided themselves on their great fortune. They didn’t’[t stop there; they became aggressive. The state of South Carolina, one of the first to secede, claimed that Forts Moultrie and Sumter in the Charleston Harbor belonged to the Confederacy; therefore, the Union Soldiers in the fort must vacate. General PGT Beauregard, the former Superintendent of Cadets at West Point, who immediately switched sides, was in charge of that state’s militia, but was taking his orders from Jefferson Davis in Montgomery, the interim Capitol of the Confederacy. Whether Jefferson Davis’ request to Lincoln to turn over the forts was rejected because it lacked merit or Lincoln took too long to respond, is mute in the long run.

The firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 began a war that had no reason to happen. It was as though a disagreement between father and son had escalated way beyond what either wanted. At some point, each realized that they had gone beyond the normal barrier of good behavior and tried to step back and assess their actions. The father made every effort to try to explain to his son why his actions were unacceptable, but a sense of freedom to do as he wished, made that view almost impossible for the son to accept. He and his friends were caught up in a wave of excitement, which escalated into a cause. The normal civility between father and son was met with obstinacy and imprudence. Consequently, neither could see how to rectify a situation that continued to fester and finally got out of control. There seemed to be no common ground, no mediation and no chance for reconciliation. Just like a family, a nation was splitting apart.

So too, did the distance between two childhood friends from Charleston, South Carolina, widen even though in the early stages, they tried to maintain a sense of decorum and respect, ignoring all outside influences. But it was not to be. The tension had grown from anxiety to acceptance, on both sides; their views were incompatible.

On that fateful day, James Stephen Harris and his wife Claire were sitting at the dining room table in their rented Georgetown Residence in Washington DC. The lights on the black wrought iron lamps on their porch illuminated their entrance steps and their beautiful white slump stone exterior.. They were hosting four of their closest friends to celebrate Claire’s thirtieth birthday. Her mother and step-father planned to attend, but the situation was such that they wanted to see what would happen next before they crossed the Atlantic to be with the one they raised.

James had spent the busiest two weeks of his life getting acclimated to his new position as Special Advisor to the newly elected President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. All six friends looked solemn; the neighborhood outside was quiet; it was as though an honored member of their family had died. No one spoke of the situation; no one wanted to. They talked of trivial things until ten that evening and then the guests left.

Several hundred miles to the south in their home outside Charleston, South Carolina, John William Beauregard, with his wife Louisa and their two children were celebrating the same occasion with champagne at their magnificent plantation, called Magnolia. He’d resigned from the US Senate, as soon as the State of South Carolina seceded from the union. Interim President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, with an endorsement from John’s cousin, General PGT Beauregard, asked him to lead the Confederate Signal Corp. He was that new nation’s chief spy.

They were embarking on an adventure and everyone was excited. John looked over at his wife and said, “We won’t be told what to do or how to run our lives anymore by some Union Bureaucrat in Washington.”

“Be careful what you wish for, John.” She responded.

“I just don’t understand the provocation. Why start something that can’t be reversed. The forts weren’t being supplied, so why not wait. The defenders would eventually have no recourse but to leave. Firing on the forts seemed to force the issue.” James Beauregard, their son, who was scheduled to attend West Point in the fall asked.

“I wouldn’t have done it that way, but the die is cast. I believe many in our new administration wanted to make the break as sharp and as quick as possible, so there’d be no recourse.” His father responded

Over the next four years, the two childhood friends, James Harris and John Beauregard, would be rivals, as antagonistic and would use every conscious moment during that period to assist their side in this ridiculous loss of life, property and dignity..

About the Author

James S. (Jim) Kelly is a retired United States Air Force Colonel with over 100 combat missions in Vietnam. Prior to his retirement, Jim was Program Director for a Communication’s Program in Iran, working directly under the Shah. Jim and his wife, Patricia own and operate High Meadow’s Horse Ranch outside Solvang, California. All of his novels use Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley as a setting. Over the past 15 years, Jim and his wife have been active in a charity supporting our troops in forward operating locations, in hostile territory, overseas. To contact Jim, email him at jkelly2020@outlook,com

Website: www.kellywritings.com

# Book Spotlights

Friday, August 21, 2020

First Chapter Review: SOMEONE'S STORY by B.A. Bellec @b_bellec #firstchapterreview

thewriterslife August 21, 2020 0 Comments

Thanks for visiting Literarily Speaking! Today's post is a first chapter review for SOMEONE'S STORY, B.A. Bellec's latest YA Coming-of-age novel. First, a little about the book....

In his debut endearing coming-of-age book, B.A. Bellec writes about a group of weirdos that find and save each other from the dark depths of their minds. Someone’s Story is literally Someone’s story, as in a first-person narrative of a teenager that calls himself Someone. As he struggles to ﬁnd a new footing in a new space, we encounter the many ups and downs of modern teenage life, the diﬃculties that adjusting to adult feelings bring, and a few tear-jerking surprises along the way.

Littered with music, mental health, friendship, loss, meditation, advice, pop culture, and even inspiring an EP, there is so much nostalgia, inspiration, and depth here it is hard to absorb it all. Cozy up somewhere warm and enjoy!

“B. A. Bellec has crafted a masterpiece of emotive and well-rounded young adult ﬁction.”
K.C. Finn – Author

“The variety of personages, situations, and mental illnesses represented allows all readers to relate to this book and take something away from reading! This novel is on our list of all-time favourites!”
International Girls and Books

“Someone’s Story is a beautiful novel, written in great prose, very descriptive, and filled with insights about life. The author does an incredible job with themes of family, friendship, bullying, and personal development. It felt like I was reading a portion of my emotions and myself in Someone’s Story.”
Gobi Jane – Professional Critic @ Readers’ Favourite

FAVORITE QUOTE FROM FIRST CHAPTER:

The snow is crunching under the force of his electric yellow shoes, and the pace is like a metronome, always on point and never missing a beat.

BOOK COVER:

Beautiful cover...menacing in away...lone person at night - just him and his thoughts.

FIRST CHAPTER REVIEW:

Why I like doing these first chapter reviews is that it helps the next person decide whether to even start reading a book. Where I rarely have time for full reviews, I rather like to express my feelings on my first reaction to a book. After you read a book, that first reaction usually gets muffled with all the rest of the things that go into a book. Someone's Story does not have chapters per say, but it is divided into individual sections with titles. The first section titled Determination is very short, but if you let your mind wander it can be very deep. A man is walking in the snow. What the author think was doing was creating a preview of a man we know nothing about at this point. Kind of mysterious. What the author did accomplish with this was expressing quite a deep understanding of words - electric yellow shoes for example. Who would have thought to describe shoes as electric yellow? But of course there's more. Who is this guy with the electric yellow shoes and armband and why does he have an 88 pinned to the front of his shirt? Well that's where the first part has us.

KEEP READING?

I just had to keep going. The second part titled Small Town has a kid walking to school. In the snow. I rather like Someone, this kid who is walking in the snow. Bless his heart...he gets all the way to school and they tell him go home that school is canceled. He gets home and his father tells him he's been offered a better job in another town and they have to move. Someone doesn't want to move. Someone reminds me of myself - always moving, making new friends if you're lucky enough to be able to do that and survive. I think Someone is going to be a survivor. To answer my own question up there, yes, I would love to know what happens to this kid. The author provides me with great descriptions and I was able to pick up on what makes Someone work. Or he could surprise me.

Pick up your copy!

Amazon → https://www.amazon.ca/Someones-Story-B-Bellec-ebook/dp/B086Q2Y41W#reader_B086Q2Y41W

Author of Someone’s Story and co-collaborator on the music it inspired, B.A. was born in Richmond, BC and raised in Langley, BC, before settling in Winnipeg, MB. His first adventure was a career in

Finance, where he spent 15 years developing his business skills. His highest achievement was the Certified Payroll Manager designation. He currently still consults with businesses on their systems and processes. Over that period of time, he also attended film school where he started to nurture his early creative abilities.

A self-starter always interested in research, he taught himself many of the aspects of storytelling through reading books, screenplays and material online. Whenever he found an inspirational piece of art, he quickly went to the source to find the story behind the artist who created the work. It took many years after attending film school for him to finally combine his creative skills with his life experience and tell that story he had been holding back. Some of his favorite creative people: Lukas Rossi, Justin Furstenfeld, Peter Jackson, Stephen Chbosky, John Green, J.K. Rowling.

Currently he is pounding away on the keyboard writing his second novel, Pulse. This project is a change of pace and more details will come in a few months!

B.A. is also an avid jogger and walker, frequently using them as a way to work on those tough spots in life and his manuscripts. If you found it this far into his material, reach out to him on Twitter and make sure to like and subscribe to get updates on all his future endeavors.