Author Spotlight: Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks

I know a lot of people say that his books don't have substance, but I LOVE him.  And met him when he came to my area last year!

Biography:

Sparks lives in North Carolina with his family. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually. Along with his wife, he founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina. As a former full scholarship athlete (he still holds a track and field record at the University of Notre Dame) he also spent four years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. In 2009, the team he coached at New Bern High School set a World Junior Indoor Record in the 4 x400 meter, in New York. The record still stands. (excerpt from nicholassparks.com).

Favorite Book:

The Rescue 

Summary:

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: he can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over and the relationship starts to become truly intimate. 

When a raging storm hits his small Southern town, single mother Denise Holton’s car skids off the road. The young mom is with her four-year-old son Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities and for whom she has sacrificed everything. Taylor McAden finds her unconscious and bleeding, but does not find Kyle. When Denise wakes, the chilling truth becomes clear to both of them: Kyle is gone. During the search for Kyle, the connection between Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that this rescue will be different from all the others, demanding far more than raw physical courage. It will lead him to the possibility of his own rescue from a life lived without love and will require him to open doors to his past that were slammed shut by pain. 

This rescue will dare him to live life to the fullest by daring to love.

I hope this book is NEVER made into a movie (I think it would ruin it for me).

Author Spotlight: Jennifer Comstock

Jennifer Comstock

Website: 

http://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-Comstock/e/B00T5EWAL4/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Biography:

Jennifer Comstock is a short story author and novelist.  Her early work appeared in Medaille College's literary magazine, Prelude.  She is a graduate of Medaille College with a B.A. in Psychology that included a minor in Writing.  She was born in Presque Isle, Maine and has lived in several different areas such as Fort Kent and Dexter, Maine, Toronto, Bolton and Elmira, Ontario, Buffalo, New York and Fort Myers, Florida.  She now resides in Buffalo, New York with her son, Jerrison and their cat, Ender.  When Jennifer isn't taking everyday situations and twisting them into terrifyingly warped short stories, she is most likely to be found running around in one of the many haunted locations in Western New York.

Published Works:

Jennifer has published one collection of short stories so far, and they are fantastic.

Twelve:  Twelve horrifying tales from an old asylum. Twelve minds scraped apart to reveal the unthinkable...

Buy here.

Author Spotlight: Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult

Website:  http://www.jodipicoult.com/

Biography:

Jodi Picoult is the author of twenty-two novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Storyteller, Lone Wolf, Between the Lines, Sing You Home, House Rules, Handle with Care, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, and My Sister’s Keeper. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.

In 2003 she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction. She has also been the recipient an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association, sponsored by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust and Booklist, one of ten books written for adults that have special appeal for young adults; the Book Browse Diamond Award for novel of the year; a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America; Cosmopolitan magazine’s ‘Fearless Fiction’ Award 2007; Waterstone’s Author of the Year in the UK, a Vermont Green Mountain Book Award, a NH Granite State Book Award, a Virginia Reader’s Choice Award, the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, and a Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award. She’s the 2013-14 recipient of the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit.

Some Favorite Books:

Vanishing Acts:  Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiance, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And then a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret that changes the world as she knows it.

In shock and confusion, Delia must sift through the truth - even when it jeopardizes her life and the lives of those she loves. What happens when you learn you are not who you thought you were? When the people you've loved and trusted suddenly change before your eyes? When getting your deepest wish means giving up what you've always taken for granted? Vanishing Acts explores how life - as we know it - might not turn out the way we imagined; how doing the right thing could mean doing the wrong thing; how the memory we thought had vanished could return as a threat.

My Sister's Keeper:  Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never challenged... until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister—and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

Nineteen Minutes:  Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes--or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families. 

Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.

Author Spotlight: Karen Kingsbury

Karen Kingsbury

Website:  http://karenkingsbury.com/

Biography: 

USA Today and New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury is America’s #1 inspirational novelist. There are more than 15 million copies of her award-winning books in print, including several million copies sold in the past year. Karen has written more than 40 novels, ten of which have hit #1 on national lists. 

Karen has a true love for her readers, and she has nearly 100,000 friends on Facebook along with more than 7,500 followers on Twitter. The popular social networking sites have allowed Karen daily interaction with her reader friends.

Karen is best known for her Life-Changing Fiction (TM) and for creating unforgettable characters. When speaking before women's groups - some with more than 10,000 in attendance - Karen makes audiences laugh and cry with her compelling story-telling. She likes to tell attendees they have, "One chance to write the story of their lives," and her talk focuses on reminding women to live every day loving well, laughing often, and finding true life in Jesus Christ. Karen routinely speaks before more than 100,000 women each year.

Karen is also a public speaker, reaching more than 100,000 women annually through various national events. Karen and her husband, Don, live in the Pacific Northwest with their six children, three of whom are adopted from Haiti. (from goodreads.com)

Some Favorite Books:

A Thousand Tomorrows - Cody Gunner has no use for real love. Abandoned as a child by the person he needed the most, he swears he will never allow himself to love again. Ali Daniels denies love as well. Carrying a terrible secret, she lives life to the fullest, taking risks and refusing relationships. When Cody and Ali meet, their first instincts are to hide behind their emotional walls, seemingly doomed to repeat the patterns they have established for most of their lives. But their attraction is too strong, and soon they're doomed in another way, for neither can avoid falling in love, regardless of the consequences. Only after three years--a thousand tomorrows later--do they realize at what cost their relationship comes. In the end, they must decide if love is worth the ultimate price.

Just Beyond the Clouds - Still aching over his wife's death, Cody Gunner can't bear the thought of also letting go of his Down's Syndrome brother, Carl Joseph. Cody wants his brother home, where he will be safe and cared for, not out on his own in a world that Cody knows all too well can be heartless and insecure. So when Carl Joseph's teacher, Elle, begins championing his independence, she finds herself at odds with Cody. But even as these two battle it out, they can't deny the instinctive connection they share, and Cody faces a crisis of the heart. What if Elle is the one woman who can teach Cody that love is still possible? If Cody can let go of his lingering anger, he might just see that sometimes the brightest hope of all lies just beyond the clouds.

Like Dandelion Dust - Kingsbury delivers a powerful new novel about two parents' love for their child and the surprising lengths they will go to keep their family together when a judge rules that their adopted son must be returned to his biological father.

Follower her on twitter:

https://twitter.com/KarenKingsbury

Top Ten Tuesday [3]

This Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

This week I'm stepping out of the strict realm of fiction to present you with (and these do not include poetry-structured-fiction-book-writers) :

Top Ten Favorite Poets

1. Emily Dickinson

• We've all heard of her, but how many of us have read beyond her few most famous poems, or beyond the poems you had to read for high school English class?  I have loved her writing for a long time because it's not clear.  You have to decipher what you think she was talking about and I feel like she is a master of analogies and metaphors.

2. Adrienne Rich

• In my travels for something I can tolerate reading during the semester I found one of her books in an undergraduate library.  She's very profound and very visual.  Her emotions and opinions shine through her narratives of people's lives, and in descriptions of cities.

3. Mattie J.T. Stepaneck

• A truly special young man who died well before his time.  He was a self-proclaimed "peacemaker" and his poems spoke of hope and the good in people.  It seems that he truly believed man could be good to their fellow man and the world would right itself.  In the age of profoundly deep depressing poetry, his books are a breath of fresh air.

4. Aimee Nezhukumatathil

• I can't say much more than: Unique.  Read her book, Lucy Fish.

5. Sylvia Plath

• I have a strange love of Sylvia Plath that I can't explain.  Maybe it's her tragedy, maybe it's the fact that she never became a great master no matter how powerful her poems are.

6. Lord Alfred Tennyson

• I love him only for "Charge of the Light Brigade".  If you haven't read it, go read it now.  Seriously, right now, you can read the rest of this list later.

7. Lewis Carroll

• The author of Alice in Wonderland, and let's face it, everything he writes feels like a poem, even an epic.

8. Whoever wrote "Beowulf"

• Unlike the other's listed here I'm not a fan of the author per-say because no one knows who that is, but I'm a fan of the work.  Beowulf is an amazing epic poem of a quest, but within the quest are questions and challenges people still face today.

9. Shel Silverstein

• Come look me in the eye and say you don't love his poems, even as an adult.  Bet you can't do it.

10. William Carlos Williams

• Not truly a favorite, but he is a classic master.

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 10 + Author Profile: Nicholas Sparks

Day 10!

How do you choose what book to read next?

Mmm, unless there's one that I want to read desperately, it's whatever has to be returned to the library next.  I do tend to go in streaks of what I like to read though, so I'll read like three or four books of the same genre and then switch genres for another three or four books.

There's really no science to it for me.  I just read what I want (and what is due next because I get almost all my reading from the library).


Since this answer was really short, I shall add an author profile:

Nicholas Sparks

I know a lot of people say that his books don't have substance, but I LOVE him.  And met him when he came to my area last year!

Biography:

Sparks lives in North Carolina with his family. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually. Along with his wife, he founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina. As a former full scholarship athlete (he still holds a track and field record at the University of Notre Dame) he also spent four years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. In 2009, the team he coached at New Bern High School set a World Junior Indoor Record in the 4 x400 meter, in New York. The record still stands. (excerpt from nicholassparks.com).

Favorite Book:

The Rescue 

Summary:

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: he can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over and the relationship starts to become truly intimate. 

When a raging storm hits his small Southern town, single mother Denise Holton’s car skids off the road. The young mom is with her four-year-old son Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities and for whom she has sacrificed everything. Taylor McAden finds her unconscious and bleeding, but does not find Kyle. When Denise wakes, the chilling truth becomes clear to both of them: Kyle is gone. During the search for Kyle, the connection between Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that this rescue will be different from all the others, demanding far more than raw physical courage. It will lead him to the possibility of his own rescue from a life lived without love and will require him to open doors to his past that were slammed shut by pain. 

This rescue will dare him to live life to the fullest by daring to love.

I hope this book is NEVER made into a movie (I think it would ruin it for me).

Author Spotlight: Susan Shaw

Susan Shaw

Website:  http://www.susanshaw.org

Biography:

I was born in a log cabin in Illinois - no that wasn't me!

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, grew up outside of Philadelphia with two parents, along with a wild assortment of brothers and sisters and cats and dogs. I did things like take music lessons and play relievo or baseball in the sideyard with the neighborhood kids. Went to school, which I really hated, but somehow managed to get through anyway. I was smart, but, boy, you couldn't tell it by my grades.

Well, maybe I didn't do my homework, but I read. If it didn't move, I read it. Chances are, I wrote about it, too, in the diary I kept all through my childhood. I've heard that that's called taking notes.

Eventually, despite engaging in various activities called play that periodically involved knocking myself out, I grew up. This much amazed my grandmother who said I lived a charmed life.

After graduating from Radnor High School, I attended Temple University, graduating with a music education degree. During my college years, I met my husband, a young man named John with a cute smile and a wonderful sense of humor. I married him quick before he had a chance to get away. Ah, young love! Since that time, we've had one adventure after another together, raising children, one daughter and two sons, and our love is still young. Despite John's gray hair, he still looks twenty years old to me.

What do I do when I'm not writing? Visit friends, ride my bike, sometimes with John, sometimes not. Hiking. I love to attend plays, too. Some of my recent favorites: Doubt, The Drowsy Chaperone, Eggs.  (from Goodreads.com)

Books:

Black Eyed Suzie

Twelve-year-old Suzie needs to feel safe and worthy of love. Suzie's stay in a mental hospital helps her tear down the walls of a devastating psychological prison she calls "the box."  (from Goodreads.com)

Safe

Safe. To Tracy, safe means having Mama close by. Years after her mother's death, Tracy still feels her presence. But the moment Tracy is forced into a car as she is walking home from school one day, safe is ripped away. In the aftermath of an unspeakable crime, thirteen-year-old Tracy must fight her way back to safety and find comfort in her mother's memory once again.  (from Goodreads.com)

The Boy From the Basement

For Charlie, the cold, dark basement is home. Father has kept him locked in there as punishment. Charlie doesn't intend to leave, but when he is accidentally thrust outside, he awakens to the alien surroundings of a world to which he’s never before been exposed. Though haunted by hallucinations, fear of the basement, and his father’s rage, Charlie must find a way to survive in his new world. He has escaped his past, but his journey has just begun.  (from Goodreads.com)

One of the Survivors

Joey Campbell experiences them all, even though he knows what he should really feel is lucky. Lucky to have survived the fire that burned Village Park High School to the ground. Lucky that his best friend, Maureen, also survived, when no one else in his freshman history class managed to make it out alive.

Writing in a journal provides some solace, but Joey knows that redemption lies with the living. If only the living students and parents didn't blame him for the fire...

Startling, relevant, and honest, Joey's story is simply unforgettable.  (from Goodreads.com)

Tunnel Vision

On her way home one evening, Liza has to force her way through a group of men in a train underpass. She doesn't think anything of it, but when her mom is shot dead moments later, Liza’s world turns upside down. Even worse, Liza was really the target. Only hours after her mother’s death, Liza is nearly killed again and she and her dad are placed in the witness protection program. Leaving everything she's ever known behind, Liza and her dad pick up and move, never staying in one place for long. It's too big of a risk--and Liza's worst fear is realized when she gets recognized. The would-be killer is still on their trail, so all Liza ad her dad can do is keep running. Unsure whom to trust and where to go, they're just trying to stay alive.  (from Goodreads.com)

I've read all of Susan Shaw's books, except for "Tunnel Vision".  She has a distinct writing style that takes the impossible subjects she writes about and makes them easy to relate to.  You are transported into the main character's head, and the main character is normally the "victim".  It is powerful and heartbreaking.

Author Spotlight: Lurlene McDaniel

Lurlene McDaniel

Website:  http://www.lurlenemcdaniel.net/

Biography:

Lurlene McDaniel (born c. 1948) is an author who has written over 50 young adult books. She is well known for writing about characters struggling with chronic and terminal illnesses, such as cancer, diabetes, and organ failure.  (From Goodreads.com)

Life Philosophy:  "No one gets to choose what life gives them.  You do get to choose how you deal with it."  (From lurlenemcdaniel.net)

Books:

She has many series, sequels, and independent novels to offer young readers.  All her books center around tragedy, and the love that comes before and after.  It is often that you will read her book and cry at the end (I have done this many times in public places).

Some of my personal favorites by her:

Favorite Authors

Five of my favorite authors, and my top two favorite books they have written (certainly not a dis-positive list).

5.  Julie Anne Peters

By The Time You Read This I'll Be Dead










Rage:  A Love Story


4. Susan Shaw

Black-eyed Suzie

Safe



3. Lulene McDaniel

I'll Be Seeing You

Till Death Do Us Part



2. Jodi Picoult

Nineteen Minutes

My Sister's Keeper



1. Nicholas Sparks

The Rescue

Safe Haven