Book Spotlight with Missy Salick

 


Claiming Jeremiah by Missy B. Salick
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
Author's Website | Twitter | Facebook
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Description:

On the same night that twenty four-year-old Jordyn Sims has a miscarriage, her sister-in-law Tori Sims conceives a child. Nine months later, Tori, a long term heroin addict, abandons her two-hour-old drug addicted newborn Jeremiah, in a hospital stairwell. Jordyn receives the news and pursues foster adoption. However, Oscar, Tori's possessive drug-addicted boyfriend, is not about to give Jeremiah up so easily. While in confrontation with Tori and Oscar, Jordyn seeks help from the Administration of Children Services (ACS), only to discover she is faced with a maze of departments, regulations, legalities and overworked social workers. Jordyn, however, remains strong and continues to push through the uphill battle, even after she discovers she's pregnant.

With all odds against her adoption of Jeremiah, and her pregnancy at high risk from increasing stress, will Jordyn win this tough battle, or will her world crumble before her?

About the Author:

Missy B. Salick is a new author who has written her first novel, Claiming Jeremiah. Her fictional memoir on foster adoption is drawing a hefty buzz, with an online release date not until April 7, 2013 ( May 4 in paperback). The novel is small in size, but contains a powerful message. "Children in foster care need a place to call home." Salick, a foster care advocate, wrote this book based on her personal journey of foster adopting her four-year-old son.

Before self-publishing, Claiming Jeremiah, Salick spent several years as a freelance business writer for Fortune 500 companies such as: Shearman & Sterling, KPMG, Deloitte and many more. She also had a stint with song ghost writing. Salick's experience in the entertainment industry stems from working with entertainment companies and media including Violator, MBK, Village Voice and more. As the founder of J.J. Autumn Publishing, her publishing company is geared towards highlighting urban fiction dedicated to special causes and community awareness projects.

 Questions and Answers with Missy:

Character Interview: Danielle Shumaker by Stephanie Nicole Norris

This is the first time I've had a character interview over on Reflections of a Bookaholic and I'm a quite a bit excited to introduce you to Danielle Shumaker.

Thank you for joining us today at Reflections of Book-a-holic Danielle, how are you today?

I’m good I’ve got things to do so this better be quick.

If you need to reschedule by all means (she interrupts me)

I’m already here now so just ask your questions.

Ok, tell us a little bit about yourself Danielle.

What do you want to know, I’m in my early thirties don’t have any kids running around that’s about it.

What about work?

I was working for the newpaper in Memphis Tennessee but was let go.

What happened?

I got into some trouble in Chicago.

I’ve got a newspaper here that says there was some sort of accident in Chicago in Paradise condominiums and it has your name written all over it, why don’t you tell us about that?

I actually can’t talk about it right now.

Why not?

My attorney gave strict instructions (she smirks)

That’s ok, we’ll find out later. So what’s going on with you, Victoria, and Joshua?

You sure do ask a lot of questions.

I’m trying to get your side of the story. I’m here to help you give insight to how you feel in all of this after all you are the one causing the trouble.

You want to know my side of the story? Well let’s see, Joshua and I had still been sexually involved all the way up to about a year and a half ago when he decides to just drop me like a bad habit and move to Chicago with Victoria. I mean who does he think he is and who is she?

I see, but why be mad at Victoria? 

 She knew we were a couple before they started seeing each other and she continued to see him, took him right away from up under my nose like most of these unloyal skanks do.

By unloyal skanks do you men or women in general?

Yeah, whatever.

Did Victoria owe you any loyalty I didn’t know you were friends.

We’ve never been friends, but it should be the code of every woman not to mess with another woman’s man.

How do you know she knew this? I’ve talked to Victoria several times and she’s never said anything that shows she knew about you and him.

Do you really expect her too?

So now what, you plan to continue to destroy your life to destroy theirs?

(The chair scoots back and she stands up) Sometimes you’ve got to do, what you’ve got to do.

(She leaves)

Well that’s the end of the interview ladies and gents Danielle Shumaker has left the building.

I must admit that Danielle had a point about a few things even though I'm not sure I cared for her attitude.  There are two sides of the story, I guess I'll have to wait to read the entire story and hold my judgments till I find out the gossip facts.



Vengeful Intentions

Part II of Trouble In Paradise Blurb

After serving eight long months in jail and becoming obsessed with the woman who put her there Danielle Shumaker is released when the evidence held against her comes up missing. With Victoria clouding her mind with thoughts of revenge Danielle is caught off guard when someone else wants to make her pay for her past transgressions.

Not needing the added drama Victoria is still torn between her feelings toward Greg and her undying love for Joshua. With new knowledge that Danielle has been released from jail; Victoria is stunned into disbelief knowing that Joshua has not been honest with her.

Things heat up when Joshua catches wind of Victoria’s affair and Caroline wants her husband back by any means necessary. Will this love story end in tragedy or will these couples learn to forgive and forget? Find out in part II of Trouble In Paradise.

~Love Is A Drug Ink~ Releases July 16, 2012
Available in all Ebook formats ~ Available in Paperback at www.stephanienorris.net

Find Stephanie Norris on Facebook www.facebook.com/authorstephanienorris

Follow Stephanie Norris on Twitter at @stephanienrrs1 and @dramaticromance

Follow Stephanie Norris' blog for a chance to win part II! http://stephaniennorris.blogspot.com/

Book Spotlight: Don't Call Me Angel

DON'T CALL ME ANGEL by Alicia Wright Brewster After crawling her way out of Hell, Six is ready to cast aside her angel wings and all the responsibilities that come with them. But Earth is not as peaceful as she imagined it. Demons, dark angels, and other hell-beasties escaped before her, and they're not as content as she is to live a quiet life on Earth. A fellow angel who escaped Hell with her commits a series of soul-murders, destroying human souls so they can't go to the afterlife. Although Six has conflicting feelings about humans, she goes after the other angel to keep their escape a secret from the one she fears most.

Available on Paperback, Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords. Read and excerpt now!

The Author Alicia Wright Brewster is a mild-mannered lady of average height and above average paranormal obsession. By day, she works in an office. At night, she's an author, an electronics junkie, and a secret superhero. (Please don't ask what her superpower is. That's not very polite.) In her virtually non-existent free time, she loves to read, watch movies, and eat food. She is particularly fond of the food-eating and makes a point to perform this task at least three times per day, usually more. Visit her at: www.aliciawb.com, Goodreads, Twitter

CHECK OUT THE BOOK TRAILER

Book Spotlight: Barefoot Girls

Barefoot Girls by Tara McTiernan
Author's Website

When her hometown newspaper reviews Hannah O’Brien’s newly released novel, the nature of her book is called into question when the reviewer suggests it is a memoir depicting her neglectful alcoholic mother – Keeley O’Brien Cohen, the most beloved of the Barefoot Girls - a little too accurately for fiction, citing rumors rather than sources.

Deeply hurt and betrayed, Keeley cuts Hannah out of her life. Desperate, Hannah does everything she can to apologize and explain, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the rest of Hannah’s life starts to unravel, pushing her to risk her engagement to Daniel, the one man who had been able to scale the high walls around her heart. At the eleventh hour, the Barefoot Girls are able to convince Keeley to send Hannah the keys to the Barefooter house, the home and heart of their friendship. Barred from their clubhouse since she was twelve, Hannah grabs the chance to visit the little shack filled with memories and perched at the tip of Captain’s Island in the Great South Bay on Long Island, New York.

As Hannah battles to come to terms with her equally blessed and troubled childhood and understand her mother and her sister-close friends, she’s confronted with the power of forgiveness and the dangers of holding on to the past.

About the Author

A voracious reader known to complete a book in a single sitting, Tara McTiernan grew up in Riverside, Connecticut where the librarians learned that she had a terrible addiction to certain books - re-reading them and continually checking them out until her parents had to be called in and limits set to the number of times she was allowed to take out a book. "Other children would like to have a chance to read this book, too," she was told to her great consternation. To this day, there are certain books Tara will not lend out to others as she has to have them on hand at all times.

Around the same time as the library-lending--debacle, Tara started writing and found her true calling. The only problem was that she was told that, unless she was ridiculously lucky along the lines of a lottery winner, she would never make a living as a writer. So, she dabbled in various careers, never finding her way back until her forties, when she became obstreperous about her writing, refusing to back down again. The result is her novel, Barefoot Girls, as well as several published short stories in literary magazines. She currently resides in North Carolina with her husband, Ash, and their collection of dog-eared books. For more on Tara and her writing, visit her blog at http://taramctiernanfiction.blogspot.com/

Excerpt:

Book Spotlight: The Car Thief

The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner

It’s 1959. Sixteen year-old Alex Housman has just stolen his fourteenth car and frankly doesn’t know why. His divorced, working class father grinds out the night shift at the local Chevy Plant in Detroit, kept afloat by the flask in his glove compartment and the open bottles of booze in his Flint, Michigan home.

Abandoned and alone, father and son struggle to express a deep love for each other, even as Alex fills his day juggling cheap thrills and a crushing depression. He cruises and steals, running from, and to, the police, compelled by reasons he frustratingly can’t put into words. And then there’s Irene Shaeffer, the pretty girl in school whose admiration Alex needs like a drug in order to get by. Broke and fighting to survive, Alex and his father face the realities of estrangement, incarceration, and even violence as their lives hurtle toward the climactic episode that a New York Times reviewer called “one of the most profoundly powerful in American fiction.”

In this rich, beautifully crafted story, Weesner accomplishes a rare feat: He’s written a transcendent piece of literature in deceptively plain language, painting a gripping portrait of a father and a son, otherwise invisible among the mundane, everyday details of life in blue collar America.

A true and enduring American classic.

“Theodore Weesner has written a story so modestly precise and so movingly inevitable that before I knew what was happening to me I felt in the grip of some kind of thriller.”

—Joseph McElroy, New York Times

“The Car Thief is a poignant and beautifully-written novel, so true and so excruciatingly painful that one can’t read it without feeling the knife’s cruel blade in the heart.”

—Margaret Manning, The Boston Globe

“A simply marvelous novel.  Alex (the protagonist) emerges from it as a kind of blue-collar Holden Caulfield.”

—Kansas City Star

About the Author:

Theodore Weesner, born in Flint, Michigan, is aptly described as a “Writers’ Writer” by the larger literary community. His short works have been published in the New Yorker, Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Atlantic Monthly and Best American Short Stories. His novels, including The True Detective, Winning the City and Harbor Light, have been published to great critical acclaim in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s, The Boston Globe, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, Boston Magazine and The Los Angeles Times to name a few. Weesner is currently writing his memoir, two new novels, and an adaptation of his widely praised novel—retitled Winning the City Redux—also to be published by Astor + Blue Editions. He lives and works in Portsmouth, NH.