The EDC Creations Virtual Book Tours features authors who are sharing their new books with the world. The authors will travel from blog to blog, radio show to radio show meeting their fans. Each stop on our virutal tours should increase the readership of an author, but more importantly open readers for new adventures!
Explore the pages of this website often to keep up with the authors on tour. Please leave your comments, questions, and observation at each post. The authors really want to hear from you and so do I.
Children of the Waters: A Novel by Carleen Brice
The author of the #1 Denver Post bestseller and Essence Book Club Pick Orange Mint and Honey explores the connection between love and race, and what it really means to be a family. AUTHOR BIO Carleen Brice’s debut novel, Orange Mint and Honey (One World/Ballantine), was an Essence “Recommended Read” and a Target “Bookmarked Breakout Book.” For this book, she won the 2009 First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the 2008 Break Out Author Award at the African American Literary Awards Show. Her second novel, Children of the Waters (One World/Ballantine), a book about race, love and family, is available now where ever books are sold. If you don’t see it at your local retailer, please go to the representive and request it. You can read an excerpt at her website www.carleenbrice.com.
She also edited and contributed to the anthology Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife, which was published in the U.S. (Beacon Press) and the U.K. (Souvenir Press). She is author of Lead Me Home: An African American’s Guide Through the Grief Journey (Avon/HarperCollins). Her book Walk Tall: Affirmations for People of Color, an Essence bestseller, was in print with traditional publishers for 10 years and sold 100,000 copies. It is currently available through iUniverse and Louis Gossett Jr.’s Eracism Foundation. Carleen and her husband live in Colorado.
Book Intro
Trish Taylor’s white ancestry never got in the way of her love for her black ex-husband, or their mixed race son, Will. But when Trish’s marriage ends, she returns to her family’s Denver, Colorado home to find a sense of identity and connect to her past. What she finds there shocks her to the very core: her mother and newborn sister were not killed in a car crash as she was told. In fact, her baby sister, Billie Cousins, is now a grown woman; her grandparents had put her up for adoption, unwilling to raise the child of a black man. Billie, who had no idea she was adopted, wants nothing to do with Trish until a tragedy in Billie’s own family forces her to lean on her surprisingly supportive and sympathetic sister. Together they unravel age-old layers of secrets and resentments and navigate a path toward love, healing, and true reconciliation.
Children of the Waters: A Novel by Carleen Brice
One World/Ballantine; Price $14.00
Pub date: June 23, 2009 ISBN: 978-0345499073
EXCERPT: PROLOGUE
Time was short. Maxine Kuepper was starting to say things she didn’t mean. Yesterday, she told her granddaughter to Move my dish, when she wanted to ask her to bend her leg. Trish stared, stumped and afraid, yet all Maxine could do was yell the word “dish” over and over knowing that she wasn’t making any sense. Cell by cell, bone by bone, Maxine was floating away. She didn’t know if it was the cancer or the medication that made her say such things. She was wearing a patch that released heavy doses of relief into her bloodstream, and still the littlest weight on her, like a sheet or the cotton nightgowns they dressed her in, hurt. The nurse promised that when the time came Maxine wouldn’t have any pain. “We’ll snow you out,” the nurse assured her. “Don’t worry.” Maxine would die the way her daughter did: like a mermaid swimming at the bottom of an ocean of drugs. It was small comfort after all these years to believe that Jocelyn hadn’t been in any pain when she died. Jocelyn. Such a cultivated name for a daughter who would not be tamed.
They were coming for her, Jocelyn and John, her husband, both dead. She dreamed of them so much now that sometimes she could swear they were really here in this room, whispering their secrets to her. They were coming for her. If they weren’t already here, she knew they were just over the other side waiting. And even though she was only sixty years old and her granddaughter Trish was only seventeen, she was ready to join them. But she had one last thing she had to do. She had secrets of her own to tell. She looked at the Polaroid picture she’d kept hidden for thirteen years.
Not even John knew she had proof of this moment. There was Jocelyn, blond and movie-star gorgeous even after just giving birth, holding the baby, only hours old with a cap of thick dark hair. And Trish, smiling wide, skin, teeth and hair white as cream, on the hospital bed next to them. Both girls marked with a stain that couldn’t be washed away. Maxine wished she had done things differently. But wishes are for the living. She sighed and pain rippled through her as her lungs pushed up against the battlefield of her ribs and the space where her left breast used to be. She raised the pen with the same amount of exertion that it used to take to lift a gallon of milk and began to write. The nurse said don’t worry. But how could she not?
What would they think of her? Would they hate her or would they be glad to know the truth? Probably both. But she would do this one last thing for them. She would make things right. As soon as Trish came home, Maxine would give her the letter. I should have told you this a long time ago, she wrote to her granddaughter, putting everything that was in her battered heart onto the page so that when the time came cowardice wouldn’t seal her lips. Each word, a lifetime. Just as she finished, she heard the front door open and close. Or she thought she did. Lately it was hard to tell what sounds were real and what sounds were memories sweeping over her like ocean waves.
But if it was Trish coming in, Maxine knew she did not have the strength to see the look on her granddaughter’s face after she read this letter. She didn’t have the strength to answer the question she knew would come no matter how hard she tried to explain: How could you? She opened the box, put the letter and photo inside, and replaced the lid. After she was gone, Trish would find everything she needed to know. When Maxine was buried, her lies would be unearthed. It wouldn’t be long now. She was sipping life from a glass that was neither half empty, nor half full, a glass emptying so rapidly she could see it in the eyes of the hospice nurses and the few friends who came to visit her at home.
The bedroom door opened, and Trish poked her head in. “Nana, you awake?” Maxine nodded, thinking For now, and, Please God let them forgive me.
——————
Carleen Brice, Author of Children of the Waters, June 2009 www.carleenbrice.com
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Children-Waters-Novel-Carleen-Brice/dp/0345499077
Borders
http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0345499077
Barnes and Noble
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Children-of-the-Waters/Carleen-Brice/e/9780345499073
IndieBound
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780345499073
Lynne Forde author of Lies of Blue
Website: www.liesofblue.com
Email: saffyre222@yahoo.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/saffyreentertainmentinc
Lynne Forde is a smart, stylish and sexy new author from the NY Tri-State area. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Lynne has always had dreams of writing and persuing a career in the entertainment world. As a teen she wrote her first screenplay. She is talented with the abilities to write not only novels and screenplays, but can play 4 instruments and writes music.
As an adult Lynne graduated from CUNY with a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice. While in college she furthered her interest in the Arts acting and writing in her classes. Since leaving school she has been managed by Saffyre Entertainment, Inc. This has allowed her to travel across the country with other musical artists as well as meet other writers, film producers, music producers and executives. Since creating her debut novel Lies of Blue, her focus has been promoting her book and she has successfully stirred alot of interest from the film industry.
Lies of Blue by author Lynne Forde
What is the price for fulfilling your dream?
Lies of Blue is the story about Lynne Forde, a young woman who tries to reach her dream by making sacrifices. Somewhere along the line, the wrong sacrifices get made. It’s Training Day meets OZ with a twist of Set It Off.
When Forde gets tired of her dead end job in the City Courts, she embarks on a career in the belly of the beast. With a degree in hand and a little bit of street sense, she decides to try her hand working in River’s Edge Jail Complex. From day one at the Academy to her last day at Prison, Forde evolves from your average “rookie” into something other than just a woman. To make matters worse, if you put a sexual being in the midst of some of the city’s most conniving men and women, you are bound to come up with something a little kinky and very destructive. The more dangerous the game became, the more erotic the encounters became. She goes from Officer, to Hustler, to Vic, to CEO in a matter of 8 years.
Lies of Blue is an expose of what goes on in the belly of the beast, through the eyes of one woman. Lies of Blue teaches you that there are so many people you may come across in life, you never know who is real and who is fake, but that the journey can become a battle of life or death. Choose wisely. What is the price for fulfilling your dream?
Reflections of a Quiet Storm by Patricia A. Bridewell
ISBN 10-0977939863
ISBN 13-9780977939862
As CEO and owner of a new nursing registry, Pauline Bridges is striving to reach the height of success, and then unexpectedly tragedy strikes. After a near fatal automobile accident, she climbs from the wreckage unscathed, but shortly thereafter, God begins to reveal her past. Pain, once buried deep within, rises to the surface through memories that are revived as dreams and flashbacks. Chronicled in a series of stories, her life unfolds through a long journey; a pathway that unveils many secrets that not even her children had been told.
Visions of the past invade her days and nights as constant reminders of events from childhood through her adult life replay in her mind. Memories of her mother’s abuse at the hands of her stepfather, a rape during adolescence, her brother’s stormy lifestyle, and the agony of a marriage that was destroyed by her ex-husband, Naman’s infidelity and substance abuse, all drift through her mind. And then there is the shattering memory of the unsolved murder of her former boss, a vice president for a major recording company. All memories that Pauline had chose to forget, but now they’re back.
Pauline’s faith is challenged with not only ravaging dreams and flashbacks, but also with supporting her two adult children through their hardships. The ditch grows much deeper when she learns her friend, Vangie, is having an affair with her best friend, Bethany’s husband, Darryl. Pauline temporarily escapes from revolving chaos by wallowing in her corporate world, with the aim of building a high caliber business, and helping friends and family get through their crises.
Her prayers are answered when Keith Maris steps into her life and opens her heart to feelings and emotions that she didn’t know still existed. As their relationship flourishes, he becomes a main support system through the turmoil, and her dreams and flashbacks begin to diminish. When her friend, Bethany, has a mental breakdown after learning of Darryl’s affair; she sets out with the intent to confront them.
While brandishing a gun, it accidentally fires, striking Darryl’s shoulder. Pauline intervenes to prevent what could have become a tragedy. Bethany and Darryl stay married after he ends his relationship with Vangie, Pauline supports her son through his father’s terminal illness and subsequent death, and also finally discovers the reasons for her daughter’s turbulent past relationship with her father.
“A novel that is based on a true life story.”Visit www.patriciabridewell.com for book chapter reading and preorder information.
Patricia A. Bridewell author of Reflections of a Quiet Storm
Website: www.patriciabridewell.com
Email: bridern@verizon.net
What is a Virtual Book Tour?
A EDC Creations Virtual Book Tour consists of an author or poet “stopping” at a pre-determined number of websites, blogs, chatrooms, and radio shows in a given about of time, the same as they would do at bookstores during a real world author’s tour. At these promotional stops, the author may be interviewed, may become the guest blogger of the day, may answer questions from readers and reviewers, get their book reviewed by the readers or share audio presentations created by EDC Creations.
Our EDC Creations Virtual Book Tours empowers authors to connect their books with avid readers through viral marketing, article writing, interactive reader’s discussions and so much more. On the tours we display: excerpts from the new book, exclusive author interviews, reviews, bibliographies, photos of events, book blurbs, links to related sites or videos, material that didn’t make it into the book, blogs in regards to today’s current affairs, discussion group chatter, audio and video, and even live event footage.
What We Ask of the Readers
We ask the readers to meet and greet the authors. Welcome them to our family and this huge literary world. As a reader you often times see more within a book than the author! You often times have questions that weren’t answered in the book—ask the hard questions, give your opinions! Listed below are some of the areas we need your comments and help making the authors welcome.
Media Interviews. The authors and our tour sponsors are appearing on radio, television, and print platrforms. The updates will be posted here, visit often. Check out their tour schedule and visit the authors on their stops. It makes them feel loved! They will be interviewd by journalists and radio show hosts about their books and ideas.
Audio Presentations. EDC Creations is the founder of the Sankofa Literary Society audio bookclub. Sign up for our newsletter for a weekly audio presentation in your email.
Email and Websites. Our authors post their email addresses so that readers can correspond with them one on one. Reach out to them and share your thoughts; stop by their websites and read all their news too!
Thank you for joining us, now let’s go have some fun!
Ella Curry,
President/CEO EDC Creations
Black Author Network Radio-Founder
Sankofa Literary Society-Founder
www.edc-creations.com/banhome.html
