Corbin Bernsen's novel Rust

Rust

Corbin Bernsen

Based on the movie, Rust

Pelican Boo Group, 2015

208 pp.

ebook $3.99

print $15.99

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About the Book:

This absorbing fiction adaptation of Corbin Bernsen's film Rust, which featured him in the starring role and director, is currently available for purchase and streaming online at Netflix and other online sites. 

In the midst of a crisis of faith, a man finds hope where he least expects it—his hometown. James Moore is a former pastor who returns home to discover his childhood friend is implicated in the arson of a farmhouse and the murder of an entire family. Convinced of his friend's innocence, James sets out to find the truth. In the process he reclaims a relationship with his father, restores hope to a floundering congregation, and rediscovers his own lost faith. Rust is an uplifting tale about faith, family and the powerful ties that bind a community.

My review:

Everyone’s hero, Jimmy Moore, comes home to lick his wounds when God stops laying golden eggs for him. Leaving home after his mother’s death while he was finishing high school, Jim built an emotional wall which he blames on his father and sister. Jim left town, went to college and took a call as a pastor in another community. Years later, Jim, who remains a personal mystery to the reader, skulks home and sets to restoring his familial relationships.

When he’s willing to open his eyes, Jim realizes he disappointed a lot of folks, some righteously, and most unwittingly. We’re never sure about the pure reasons this young man held such a positive influence on his small hometown, and it takes some time for Jimmy to reach past the surface tension such fame held. As he reintegrates with old friends and new ones, he begins to understand the town is holding its collective breath over a secret so soul-wrenching it has affected the very fabric of hope for this current generation. Yes, things have changed in the twenty-plus years Jimmy was a football star. This group of young people doesn’t have the same drive and ambition and it hurts the soul of Jimmy’s best friend, Travis, who has taken up the role of town champion despite his mental quirks. Uncomfortable with Travis’s antics, when he is found at the aftermath of a dreadful tragedy, the town rusts in peace when he admits to the crime.

Jim Moore, reluctant hero, isn’t willing to sit on his laurels and sets about gathering proof that will not only save his friend but restore the faith he’d come to take for granted.

A lovely and haunting tale about a man coming to terms with his soul after running for decades. He finds that he was the one running from God, and when he finally stops to remove the plank from his eye, he can face the uncomfortable issues and claim peace.

About the Author:

Corbin Bernsen comes from an entertainment family and has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in television, theater and film. He holds a bachelor’s degree in theater and a master’s degree in playwriting from UCLA, and was nominated for both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for his performance as Arnie Becker in the hit NBC TV series LA Law.  He most recently starred as Henry Spencer on USA Network’s hit original series Psych. His work includes roles in Disorganized Crime, Wolfgang Peterson’s Shattered, The Great White Hype, and as the Cleveland Indians’ third baseman-turned-owner Roger Dorn in the Major League films. Other film credits include Lay the Favorite with Bruce Willis and The Big Year with Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson. He also appeared with Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Rust is his first novel, and he also wrote, directed, and stars in the feature film of the same name. Bernsen’s latest film, Christian Mingle, was released in January, 2015 by Capitol. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife of 26 years, actress Amanda Pays, and their four sons.

Life in Germany for Expat GIs

Patriotic Expats

Former GIs Describe their Lives in Germany

By Robert Potter

April, 2019

Nonfiction

Ebook $2.99

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About the Book:

Would his late Cold War bride have been happier—and better able to fight the cancer that took her in the prime of life—if the couple had chosen to live in Germany, rather than the U.S., after his military service in the 1960s? Decades after his wife’s death, the author remained haunted by that question. In a search for answers, he returned to Germany in 2017 and sought out former G.I.s who married their German sweethearts and elected to reside there. The result of that quest is this series of sixteen interviews with American expats and women who married G.I.s. The men we meet in these pages came from very different backgrounds, but they all experienced the challenges common to immigrants everywhere: learning a new language, adjusting to cultural differences, overcoming bureaucratic hurdles, and earning a living. Each story, recounted with honesty, courage, and humor, provides a unique, fascinating response to those challenges—as well as a detached lens through which to view American society today.

My review:

Robert Potter, a former GI, brought his German bride back to the US when his service concluded. Life here was very different, including laws that would not accept (and still don’t) German education and work experience in many professions like teaching and medicine. Robert and his wife had two children. Gerdi was unhappy in general, couldn’t procure work as a requirement of her visa, and eventually succumbed to cancer. Although Bob eventually remarried happily, he remained aware of men who chose to remain in or return to Germany after they had relationships or married German women. Eventually, Bob, with the help of his tech college writing students, put together an interview format for a project to record stories from ex-patriots to learn more about their situations. Bob found a group of expats who met regularly to discuss their lives and support each other. Several of these men and one wife agreed to meet Bob and be interviewed for this book.

I appreciated learning about what it’s like to move and try to adapt to a different culture and language. The stories included mostly those of servicemen who had done their time. The unbelievable issues with obtaining work permits and regulations, how much language to learn for what skillset, what kind of certificates to obtain for professional work or even unskilled labor was fascinating. Medical care seemed to be a big issue among the expats, as far as where to go for care and who pays. Most thought German medical care was superior. Some men had wives willing to live in the US for a time, and a few cases worked out quite well when the spouse was able and willing to retrain for a profession and get a US license to work. Getting visas and residency requirements were quite different though both countries seem regulation bound. Driving licenses and gun control were stricter in Germany. Voter apathy didn’t seem much different, nor did political opinions. The book was interesting and every person interviewed unique. Bob’s original quest regarding whether he should have chosen to live in Germany instead of having his wife emigrate to the US was determined to remain an open theory, though Bob finally found peace through reaching out to other veterans who may have learned something through sharing their own stories. 

The Consequence of Stars review and interview with memoirist David Berner

The Consequence of Stars: A Memoir of Home

Spring 2019 from Adelaide Books, New York/Lisbon

Paperback now available.
$19.60
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Read my Review below.

About the Book

THE CONSEQUENCE OF STARS is a unique and thoughtful memoir on our eternal search for home. Told in a series of essays on love, loss, travel, music, spirituality, and the joys of solitude, memoirist David W. Berner, reaches deep to discover where he belongs and ultimately where all of us belong.

A brief interview with the Author

David, what do you love about this book?

The book is so universal, I believe, to the human condition. We are all seeking "home"—some place of our own, of peace and solace, and great spirit. THE CONSEQUENCE OF STARS is a memoir in essays, each piece is about finding home, whatever that may mean to all of us. It's part travelogue, part memoir, part diary. 

Share a couple of things you learned while researching this story.

I learned, in a writerly sense, how to link essays, how that is best done. But I also learned about myself, what's truly important to me. Joan Didion once said, "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking." This very much was my experience. I have written several memoirs prior to this book, and this has been true for all of them, but this one particularly opened me up. I am so complicated. Aren't we all, really?  

What do you hope readers will tell others when they’ve finished the book?

I hope readers will see the connection between all of us in the words of this book. We are more alike than we are different. That's an old cliché, but clichés come from truth. And connectivity is a universal truth.  

What are you reading now?

I'm re-reading a Jim Harrison novel, THE ENGLISH MAJOR. Love this book. I'm also reading a book on Zen meditation, re-reading Kerouac's THE DARHMA BUMS, and looking for a new book of essays to jump into. 

What’s next?

I have a completed memoir manuscript about a season of walking. It's done. But I'm so focused on THE CONSEQUENCE OF STARS release and the work involved there, that I haven't really shopped it around yet. I'm also working on a work of fiction. 

About the Author

David W. Berner is a memoirist whose personal stories tell all of our stories. His memoirs reflect on our collective relationships and how those experiences link us to the world we share. From stories of fathers and sons, to road trips, travel memoir, pets, and music, David's books are mirrors of our common human experience.

www.davidwberner.com 

http://www.adelaidebooks.org/

Lisa's Review

David W. Berner, author of Any Road Will Take You There and There’s a Hamster in my Dashboard, offers in his newest memoir a series of nineteen linked essays traversing his childhood in Pennsylvania through early adulthood to contemporary life. In this book, Berner tackles the idea of “home” through a series of defining moments. The opening chapter is a revelation of what home means, launching life from the safety and wonder of the front porch with sleepovers, board games and plotting explorations of the neighborhood.  “This is how one built a life in my hometown. It’s what people did. They grew up in unexceptional little neighborhoods, went to the same Sunday church services, attended the same elementary, middle, and high schools, got jobs at the mills or the local banks, bought homes near their parents, drank at the corner bar with their old high school friends on Friday nights, and raised kids who would grow up and do it all over again. For a time, I was moving straight down that path, doing what you’re supposed to do.”

Berner’s first inkling of the meaning of home came at age seven when he determined to run away. “Leaving home was supposed to evoke sadness in the person being left behind”; a part his mother refused to play as she cheerily waved him onward. A short trek through the safety of his concerned neighborhood soon routed him back.

Exploring home takes Berner back to study the lives of his parents, who never ventured far from their natal community. War time duty and a stay in a tuberculosis sanatorium may have been enough adventure for the couple who married and raised children near their extended family.

The essays feature themes of growing up, the gradual realization that life is an ever-expanding bubble rapidly enveloping the mysteries of “outside”; “things we don’t talk about,” such as the effects of the Vietnam War to memories of the way we want to believe events unfolded instead of how they truly happened. A look backward shows Berner the truths of friends and family that no one can see in the moment.

“Life is a series of comings and goings,” Berner writes as he prepares to leave for (not very far away) college. He was the “oddball” thinker in a family of blue collar workers, destined for higher education. By the time he was eighteen years old, he “understood that we must abandon our homes to find our new ones, and leave our hearts behind in hopes that our souls will be endlessly restored.”

Abandoning home eventually meant settling in the Chicago area, 500 miles away where he lived in several different places in the second reiteration of his life, that of a radio host. “I was the first in my family in nearly a hundred years to leave” Pittsburgh, Berner says, evoking the first tears he’d seen his father shed. Raising his family is a serial repeat of watching lessons Berner learned as a child play out in his own children. Exotic travel and instilling the sense that no matter how temporary the space, Berner notes that a piece of self stays behind. “Leaving” is always undertaken with the sense of “returning.”

Through a lifetime of experiences calling different places home, from a writer’s retreat in Florida to visiting Europe to meeting a new life partner and molding out a space of his own, Berner concludes, “It is by leaving home we can heal best in order to return.”

“Home is what you carry with you. And in that spirit, I have been transporting my home with me wherever I go.”

Lyrically written with earthy language, Berner shares intimate details of a life seeking and understanding his own place “to be”; a place of love and acceptance, a place to practice and grow and share himself. The Consequence of Stars is a call for all of us to revisit our lives and reach for the elusive elements of what we call home.

For my readers: drug use and coarse language.

Structure and Spend Quality Time with Your Kids

New from Julie Morgenstern

In Time to Parent, the bestselling organizational guru takes on the ultimate time-management challenge―parenting, from toddlers to teens―with concrete ways to structure and spend true quality time with your kids.

Would you ever take a job without a job description, let alone one that requires a lifetime contract? Parents do this every day, and yet there is no instruction manual that offers achievable methods for containing and organizing the seemingly endless job of parenting. Finding a healthy balance between raising a human and being a human often feels impossible, but Julie Morgenstern shows you how to harness your own strengths and weaknesses to make the job your own. This revolutionary roadmap includes:

A unique framework with eight quadrants that separates parenting responsibilities into actionable, manageable tasks―for the whole bumpy ride from cradle to college.

• Simple strategies to stay truly present and focused, whether you’re playing with your kids, enjoying a meal with your significant other, or getting ahead on that big proposal for work.
• Clever tips to make the most of in-between time―Just 5-15 minutes of your undivided attention has a huge impact on kids.
• Permission to take personal time without feeling guilty, and the science and case studies that show how important self-care is and how to make time for it.

Released September, 2018

Ebook: $9.99

Paperback: $18.00

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In her most recent book, Time To Parent: Organizing Your Life To Bring Out The Best In Your Child And You (Holt Paperbacks, available now), Julie extends her organizational skills to time management for parents, designed to help them organize their time by bringing more balance and productivity to family life, work time and self-care. Based on her years of field work and nearly a decade of research on the science of human development, Time To Parent presents a framework that frees parents to savor time with their kids and on their own, from birth through college. While organizing our material possessions is important, Julie recognizes that it is how we spend time that often brings the most joy to our lives and provides timely solutions and actionable guidance so critical now with more women and men than ever juggling family, career, and other obligations.

Organization and productivity expert and New York Times best-selling author Julie Morgenstern has spent more than 30 years helping individuals and major corporations (American Express, Hearst, HARPO, Deloitte, Microsoft, FedEx, and more) overcome disorganization to achieve their goals by designing “Inside Out” systems of time and space that feel natural and easy to maintain.Julie’s previous books on organization include the New York Times bestsellers Organizing from the Inside Out and Time Management From The Inside Out, both of which were developed into specials for PBS. Her on-camera interviews have included Today, Rachael Ray, Good Morning America and CNN and she has been featured in print publications including The New York Times, Time Magazine and USA Today, among others.

Kim Suhr shares short stories

Wisconsin author and director of Red Oak Writing Studios announces her new release, Nothing to Lose, a collection of short stories that take place around Wisconsin. Welcome, Kim Suhr. 

                       

Cornerstone Press, Dec. 2018
ISBN 9780984673971
Paperback: $14.95
E-book coming soon
Buy on
Indie Bound
Amazon

About the book:
Drawing on the rich complexity of the American Midwest, Kim Suhr peoples her debut book of fiction with characters that we know, carved out of the Wisconsin landscape and caught between expectation and desire. An Iraq war veteran stalks the streets of Madison. Four drunk friends hunt deer outside of Antigo. A mother tries to save her son. A transplanted New Yorker plots revenge against her husband. A man sobers up and opens a paintball range for Jesus. A woman with nothing to lose waits for her first kiss.

Personal and powerful, Kim Suhr’s Nothing to Lose shows us a region filled with real people: less than perfect, plagued with doubts, always reaching.

A brief interview with the author:

Introduce us to your most difficult character.
That’s a tough one because I love all my protagonists—even the unlovable ones—for their complexity and brokenness. Perhaps the most difficult for me to get inside of was Anna, aka Ellen Wilkinson, from the story titled “Brush Strokes.” I wanted to help readers identify with her even as they become increasingly uncomfortable with her. Who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy?” I like to keep the reader guessing.

Can you share two things you learned from your research during the writing and publication process?
I learned that there are artists who actually paint with human blood. (I don’t even want to think about what my Google search history looked like on the day I learned that!)

As for a publishing tidbit, I learned the truth of the adage: “I’m a great believer in luck. The harder I work the luckier I get.”

What do you hope readers will tell others when they’ve finished the book?
This book made me see something in a different way; it made me compassionate for someone who is different from me.

What’s next for you?
I am working on the audiobook version of Nothing to Lose, then probably an e-book as well. I have a couple of short stories in process and a few chapters of something that wants to be a novel. (Ssshhhh! Don’t tell anyone.)

What are you reading now?
I just finished Besotted by Melissa Duclos (which I loved) and have cracked the spine on Saving the Scot by Wisconsin author Jennifer (Rupp) Trethewey, the fourth book in her House of Balforss series.

Lisa---I'm a big Rupp fan, too, but shhhh! Don't tell anyone.

Thanks for sharing, Kim.

About the Author:
Kim Suhr lives and writes in southeastern Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in Midwest Review, Stonecoast Review, Rosebud and others. She holds an MFA from Pine Manor College, where she was the 2013 Dennis Lehane Fellow in Fiction. She is director of Red Oak Writing and a member of the Wisconsin Writers Association Board of Directors. You can follow her at:

Facebook
Twitter (@kimsuhr)
Instagram

Robin Fuson and her new Romantic Fiction

The Encounter

Robin Densmore Fuson

Romantic Contemporary Inspirational Novella

March 23, 2019

Forget Me Not Romances

Buy on Amazon 

Paperback $6.74

Ebook $2.99

About the Book

At first blush, fifty-two-year-old Renee Harris appears to be a confident sophisticated woman. Hidden are the scars of deep pain and fear. A meeting in an ordinary elevator will not only take Renee to the designated floor but also on a journey of discovery. Chaplain Lance Freeman’s only thought is to help a family in their hour of need though unknown to him, the woman in the elevator needs him more than the family down the hall. Elevators can be strange things. Full of ups and downs, they may be used as a vehicle to change the course of someone’s life. Renee and Lance are about to find out just how much a chance meeting can alter a person’s direction. Can real love be a part of their new beginnings? Will they allow God to lead and interrupt their lives so they can eventually find peace, joy, and love?

My Review

After I got over the shock of Renee and Lance’s first meeting and the unusual reaction Renee had to her husband’s passing, I was entranced with how Renee picked up the pieces of her life. As she slowly reveals her history, she forges a new direction and takes control of her destiny as a challenge to the childhood that had been stolen from her. Lance is one of those wonderful, fantastic people who deserve a break, and as a bonus, has Renee’s daughter firmly on his side. He finds new love in Renee, but realizes they have a lot of work to do to mend from their recent traumas. After healing, they revisit a potential relationship. Renee learns that Lance has kept important information from her, a blow to her delicate recovery. Together they explore whether they are truly meant to be together or better as friends.

About the Author

Robin recently moved to Tennessee with her husband Jimmy. Together, they celebrate with seventeen grandchildren. An award winner for romance and flash fiction. Robin is multi-published and writes stories on her blog for children. Robin is a member of ACFW, Vice President of ACFW Colorado Western Slope, and member of John316 Marketing Network. She enjoys leading a Bible study group and singing in two community choirs. Robin loves company and challenging her young guests to discover the many giraffes in the obvious and hidden nooks and crannies of their home.

Terri Wangard WWII Fiction

No Neutral Ground 

Book 2 of Promise For Tomorrow

Terri Wangard

WWII Historical Fiction

2016 Hope Springs Books

Connect with the author about purchases. 

About the Book

After his father divorces his mother because of her Jewish ancestry, Rafe and the rest of his family flee Germany. As a B-17 navigator, he returns to Europe. On the ocean voyage, he meets Jennie, an artist journeying to Sweden to work with the OSS. Flying missions against his former homeland arouses emotions that surprise Rafe. Despite being rejected, he is troubled by the destruction of Germany and his heart still cries for his father’s love. Sweden may be neutral, but it’s full of intrigue. Jennie assists the OSS at the American legation in Sweden. She thought she’d be doing passive, behind-the-scenes work. Instead, she’s pushed into an active role to gain intelligence and frustrate the Germans. How can Rafe and Jennie succeed in their dangerous roles when they are so conflicted?

My Review    

After a year and a half delay, I finally got back to Terri Wangard’s very nice and beautifully researched World War II historical romances. This second story is set for the most part in Sweden, a country that attempted to remain neutral during World War II. Our romantic couple meet on the Queen Mary as they are on their way to England from the States at the early stages of the war. Rafe is a German ex-patriate whose Jewish-ancestry mother fled with Rafe and his siblings to the US just before the outbreak of war. Rafe grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his mother, divorced, remarried. Rafe then joined the US Air Force as a flight navigator, still fighting his demons of abandonment and love for his homeland, friends and family still there, against whom he now is at war.

Jenny is thoroughly American, and follows her father, a lieutenant in the military intelligence, to Sweden, where he and her mother live in Stockholm. Her father’s work is with military personnel who are interred in Sweden, and Jenny’s job is she uses her artistic talent to do whatever it takes to harass the German military, whether to create false rumors or anti-propaganda posters. When Rafe’s damaged plane seeks asylum in Sweden, he and Jenny reunite.

Their developing relationship is never a secret nor in doubt, nor even conflicted. It’s Rafe who must overcome the wounds of both childhood and what the war is doing to his family and his beloved homeland. While he works through fighting Nazis, not Germans, with the support of Jenny, the war grinds on, eventually to a close, allowing the healing to begin.

About the Author

Terri Wangard's first Girl Scout badge was the Writer. These days she is writing historical fiction, and won the 2013 Writers on the Storm contest and 2013 First Impressions of the American Christian Fiction Writers, as well as being a 2012 Genesis finalist. Holder of a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in library science, she lives in Wisconsin. Her research included going for a ride in a WWII B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.