Favorite authors

It seems there is no better way to meet and read new authors than to be an author oneself. We find each other through book events, blogs, and our mutual love of great books. I feel blessed to have met Janet Riehl and many other accomplished writers via the organization called Women Writing the West. I am honored that Janet has invited me to join her blog (www.riehlife.com) as guest blogger. On her blog, I will be discussing typical writer reponses to rejections and bad reviews.

Another book I read and loved is a historical novel, A Clearing in the Wild, by Jane Kirkpatrick, based on a true story written by Jane Kirkpatrick. You may be interested in the comments, mine included, posted for this novel on www.powells.com.

Mary Cunningham is another children's author I can recommend. What she writes is a little different from my true fiction, in that the two young girls in her books have discovered, or more accurately, fallen into a different time period in her Cynthia's Attic series. It is both a fun and educational article. I hope to have Mary as my guest blogger, or at least an interviewee, sometime in the near future.

There is no end to good books, both classics and contemporary with new authors and their fascinating creations emerging all the time. You'll find as I discuss books I love, that I enjoy a large range of genre. Though I normally read fiction for recreation, occasionally I'll read an especially good memoir or biography when it's recommended to me. I recently finished a haunting book by Barbara Richards, called Dancing on His Grave. Normally I find it hard to read books about abuse, even though I think they are very important for opening the eyes of the public to what is a very real and prevalent problem. It's easy for perpetrators of all kinds of abuse to get away with their crimes because people really don't want to have their world rocked with bad news. However, we as a society need to know, so abuse isn't so easily hidden. When I first opened Dancing on His Grave, I didn't think I could handle reading it, but once I got started I was hooked. Ms. Richards is a captivating storyteller, and the chilling accounts she so expertly relays are all the more gripping because we know they really happened. I found it hard to put the book down. I was in suspense to know if and how the wife and daughters of a violent man could survive to adulthood.

Let me know what you are reading, and I'll share some more of my favorites from time to time.