A Book and a Chat with John Paul Jaramillo

John Paul Jaramillo is my guest on today’s “A Book and a Chat”. He grew up being told stories by a crazy grandfather, something he has always tried to keep up with. A failed poetry writer in his early years he went on to creating as he says “failed stories” before he found his writing style and voice.

Writing in a writing more minimalist style he began to create stories about his younger days in Colorado.

Thus “House of Order” was created, John Paul began getting down stories about the neighborhoods he grew up around in southern Colorado. 

He found his inspiration in the old house he’d grown up in and in the old folks of his family. 

John Paul has been trying to capture their stories and re-imagine old family stories and myths since then. These have now come together in his debut book “House of Order”

About “House of Order” : (Taken from Amazon)

The House of Order, the first collection of composite stories by John Paul Jaramillo, presents a stark vision of American childhood and family, set in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Manito Ortiz sorts family truth from legend as broken as the steel industry and the rusting vehicles that line Spruce Street. The only access to his lost family's story is his uncle, the unreliable Neto Ortiz.

The book has already received many great reviews

“Jaramillo creates vivid and engaging characters you can't help but either outright dislike or feel for as their story unfolds before your eyes. I found the dynamic between the father and uncle the most interesting; one trying to teach his children the value of working hard, while the other teaches them how to gamble at the track. Despite the father's (or, the Jefe, as they call him) faults, he does have that good quality about him. He wants his children to do the right things and work hard for what they get in life.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes character-driven stories and are not  put off by bad language and mild adult situations.

The more you read “House of Order” the more you get drawn into the characters and their situations. With another book underway we will I’m sure hear a lot more of John Paul Jaramillo

 

So listen now and share an interesting, and entertaining show as I chat with my special guest today on A Book and a Chat with John Paul Jaramillo

Barry

Direct link to the show
A Book and a Chat with John Paul Jaramillo

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"John Paul Jaramillo"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
">"John Paul Jaramillo - House of Order"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Susan Petersen Avitzour

Susan Petersen Avitzour comes from a bookworm family, starting to read at the tender age of four, and she hasn’t stop since. Even before then her mother would read her stories just about every day.

Susan was today’s guest on “A Book and a Chat” sharing with us about her book and the meaning behind it, as well as some very moving poetry, all the way from Israel, where she had this very day had become a grandmother for the third time.

She has loved writing from as early as she can remember, though she is the only member of her family who writes seriously. The first story she can remember writing was in her second grade; it was called “Susan the Clown,” and was inspired by her experience of being the odd child out among my peers. She’s been doing creative writing ever since.

In 2001 her then eighteen year old daughter Timora lost the battle she had been fighting for years with leukemia. For many years Susan had been sharing on almost daily reports the ups and downs of the emotional roller coaster that her daughter Timora and her family had gone through.

Unable to touch these reports for years after the sad death of Timora, Susan eventually decided to produce the shared blogs, as well as her feelings, and some of Timor’a and her family’s poetry. These blogs eventually became her novel “And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones” a line taking from a moving poem written by her husband in Timora’s memory.

The book rather than one of bereavement, far from it there is so much more in this book, from laughter to tears and every emotion in between. As one reviewer put it…
“It is a heartfelt, honest, illuminating and ultimately uplifting book, as one follows a family’s steadfast refusal to give up, even in light of crushing odds.

Rather than write a synopsis of “And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones” I will use what Susan wrote about her book.

And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones

In my memoir, I grapple with many of the profound personal, philosophical, and spiritual questions with which bereaved parents struggle for years – if not for the rest of their lives.

Through narrative, poetry, and a personal and philosophical journal, I aim to draw my readers into my family’s world during the long, wrong years of my daughter’s illness, and into my own emotional, intellectual, and spiritual journey in their aftermath.

I address topics that range from food to fun to forgiveness, from pain to purpose to prayer – and ultimately to the challenge of affirming faith and love
in an unpredictable, and often cruel, universe.

I hope very much that this book will provide assistance and support not only to bereaved families, but to anyone facing life’s inevitable challenges and trials.Susan finished the show with the last poem Timora wrote, something that I felt no show end music or final farewell could beat. So please listen now and share the words of this wonderful book during an interesting and hugely entertaining show as I spend thirty minutes sharing "A Book and a Chat with Susan Petersen Avitzour".

Barry

Direct link to the show
"A Book and a Chat with Susan Petersen Avitzour"

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Susan Petersen Avitzour"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Susan Petersen Avitzour - And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Jane Rowan

The old story is that when asked why people climb mountains the answer is “because they are there”. When Jane Rowan, my guest on today’s “A Book and a Chat” was asked why she wrote her book, her answer was…

What is writing for? Is it about your ambition to sell a million books for money or fame? Is it about reaching certain readers and changing something in their hearts and lives? Is it to express something inside you that is important but unformed, demanding work and attention to bring it to the surface? Is it an expression of spontaneous need like the impulse to splash red paint across a wall when you’re angry?

I came face-to-face with these questions when I started to write The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse. Did I want to write a bestseller, sensationalizing the details to lure publishers and readers? Was I writing for revenge or to display how victimized I was?

Strangely enough, I began writing from sheer gratitude for the healing that therapy had brought me, for my therapist’s skill and care, and for the new sense of life and creativity that I had discovered. That was the bright impulse and the continuing thread, but the work of writing was something else.

Strangely perhaps to some her book is actually a celebration, a celebration of the many people who carry out heroic work every week in therapists’ offices all over the globe - uncovering painful pasts and integrating and learning to open their hearts and move on.

Jane’s story is one of many showing the paths of the process that lead you through despair to that of hope and joy, how difficult it is to really trust a therapist and allow them to literally walk through your soul.

About “The River of Forgetting”

The River of Forgetting covers a particular five-year period in Jane’s life, from the first creepy memory that surfaced and hinted at childhood abuse to the moment when she decided to write the book. It was a very turbulent time as she tried to understand whether her loving, eccentric family was also an abusive family.

While she encountered each new wave of doubt, mistrust, grief, and revulsion, Jane also had to live her regular life, teach, and care for her elderly mother.
Creative writing and artwork came to be essential outlets – the expressions just poured out of her, including the self-help booklet Caring for the Child Within—A Manual for Grownups.

Later, she went back to craft a story about this passage and create The River of Forgetting.

This deeply personal memoir invites the reader behind the closed doors of the therapist’s office and into the author’s journal and her very body. Jane’s tender story shows how we can use the challenges of painful childhood traumas to transform our lives.

So listen to an interesting and hugely entertaining show as I spend thirty minutes sharing "A Book and a Chat with Jane Rowan"

Barry

Direct link to the show
"A Book and a Chat with Jane Rowan".

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Jane Rowan"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Jane Rowan - The River of Forgetting"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Carla Malden

My guest today Carla Malden grow up in a life somewhat surrounded by TV and films, with her Dad being Karl Malden famous character actor and of course Streets of San Francisco. Yet for Carla as she shared with us, he was just anormal Dad who happened to go away every now and then to work.

With a background like that it was obvious that English in the form of a Bachelor of Arts at U.C.L.A then working in the film business would be a path she would tread.

This led to her meeting, working with and then marrying filmmaker Laurence Starkman. They worked together on twelve feature screenplays; also serving as rewrite guns-for-hire. The team of Malden & Starkman wrote and produced the short romantic comedy Whit & Charm, which screened at eight major film festivals, including The Hamptons, and won several awards. They also wrote and created a series of Cine Golden Eagle Award-winning Art History films produced in association with The Detroit Institute of Art and The National Gallery.

Carla's wonderful book "AfterImage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of a Charmed Life" delivers a fiercely personal account of her battling the before and surviving the after of losing her husband to cancer.

As Carla shared, it’s not a case of getting over what happened more about being able to live with it… “You don’t know what you’ve got tell it’s gone…”

The book in Carla words ….

Is a book is about my transition to widowhood. It is about a last year and a first year: the last year of my husband's life and my entire life up to that point and the first year after he died and the rest of my life. I have found that different moments and themes resonate with different readers according to their personal experiences with relationships, marriage, and loss. I hope that everyone will think about valuing their loved ones in the moment - which is all we really ever have. Put simply, the take-away is "carpe diem."

The book is not only a shared love letter, but intermixed with snapshots of their lives together can actually bring a smile to ones face while knowing that there are tears behind some of the words.

AfterImage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of a Charmed Life delivers a fiercely personal account of her battling the before and surviving the after of losing her husband to cancer. It offers an alert for an entire generation: this is not your mother’s widowhood.

With a novel just finished and a possible children book next, Carla I’m sure will continue to share her talent as with “After Image” she has shared her life and her love.

So listen to an interesting and hugely entertaining show as I spend thirty minutes sharing "A Book and a Chat with Carla Malden"

Barry

Direct link to the show
"A Book and a Chat with Carla Malden".

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Carla Malden"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Carla Malden - AfterImage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of a Charmed Life"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry