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MacKalvey House by Carol Ann Kauffman

Dear Gentle Readers,

MacKalvey House is the story of a young American woman who goes to England and falls in love with Kenneth MacKalvey, an older British author and art critic with a dark past. 

She also brought along her own emotional luggage.

Further complicating the matter is a young, blond, Italian lawyer who is inexplicably drawn to Michelle, and thinks Kenneth MacKalvey is not good enough for her.

This novel, although not sexually explicit or graphically violent, is not for the easily offended. 

Amazon Buy Link:
http://tinyurl.com/jkdsnyd

The Shift by Genevieve Scholl

Nothing about me is normal… 

…but what exactly is ‘normal’? Just because I have two dads and no mom, my name is Elliot Marcus Smith even though I’m a girl, and I was born from a test tube… 
Does that mean I’m ‘abnormal’? 

I say no. 

But the sudden abilities that have been appearing since I turned eighteen sure do. Wounds are healing quickly, my vision has changed, as has my strength, and my sensitivities to other people’s emotions have become severely heightened. Add all that to the fact that I have been forgetting moments of my day as if they never happened, and it’s obvious that something strange is happening to me. 

But what? What am I becoming?

Buy Links: 

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-shift-genevieve-scholl/1123677632?ean=2940152980929

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Shift-Genevieve-Scholl-ebook/dp/B01DOO823U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465310506&sr=8-1&keywords=Genevieve+Scholl

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/630973

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/the-shift-13

Also available on iBooks, Baker & Taylor, Scribd, and more!

And there is a LARGE PRINT edition.

My bio: I'm just a small town girl with a heart for the country life. I'm very shy and pretty much a loner, but my writing helps me be more outgoing and talk to various people that I would otherwise have a hard time approaching. I don't write for the money or the fame, but rather to tell a story that needs to be told; whether that is my story or a character's story. As a lot of people know, from my various interviews, I started writing to express my anger and hurt over the bullying that I experienced in High School, but eventually I just realized that I loved to tell stories. I was born in Texas, grew up and still live in Upstate New York, and want to retire in Ireland.

If you care to contact me for any reason, my email address is gswriter1215@gmail.com

Photo Credit: Jill Cadena David (author photo is attached)

Social media links: https://www.facebook.com/genevieve.scholl.3 , https://www.facebook.com/groups/701088989922814/ , https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3459410.Genevieve_Scholl , http://genevievescholl.wix.com/genevievescholl

BIO:  I'm just a small town girl with a heart for the country life. I'm very shy and pretty much a loner, but my writing helps me be more outgoing and talk to various people that I would otherwise have a hard time approaching. I don't write for the money or the fame, but rather to tell a story that needs to be told; whether that is my story or a character's story. As a lot of people know, from my various interviews, I started writing to express my anger and hurt over the bullying that I experienced in High School, but eventually I just realized that I loved to tell stories. I was born in Texas, grew up and still live in Upstate New York, and want to retire in Ireland.

Echo of Heartbreak, A Recipe for Life by Carol Ann Kauffman

Dear Gentle Readers,

This short story/recipe book written in the form of a letter, or more accurately journal entries, from a very ill mother to her unborn daughter began as a character profile for my full length novel, MacKalvey House. 

The main character is MacKalvey House is a young American woman, Michelle Rosemont, who graduated college with a degree in early childhood education, goes on a trip to England with her best friend, likes it, and decides to stay. 

Michelle, though young, smart, and pretty, has issues from her past that plague her relationships. Her mother died during childbirth. Her father, ill-equipped to handle a newborn baby or adulthood, handed over custody to her maternal grandparents and never saw her again.

Her relationship with an older British author and art critic is plagued with problems. The appearance of a handsome blond Italian who seems to mirror her in so many ways further complicated the story.

Echo is the story of Melina Valentina Rossetti Rosemont, a thirty-three year old geneticist at Harbortown University Hospital, who married an English Literature professor from England.

Melina wants a baby.

Her husband wants a Corgi.  


Amazon Buy Link:
http://tinyurl.com/n2eblyu 

Interview with Author Crit Kincaid

Crit Kincaid

Chandler, Arizona  USA

Good morning and welcome to Vision and Verse, the place for Art and Authors. Tell us a little about yourself and what you've written.

Crit Kincaid, actually I was born Christopher Evan Kincaid. Believe it or not I was actually named after Christopher Marlow. But family wisdom (my older brother couldn’t pronounce Christopher) shortened my name to Crit. So I’m Crit Kincaid. And, as there are so many other Christophers and Chris’ in the world, I stuck with Crit.

My novel is called A Wounded World (Available at Amazon for Kindle and Softbound). It’s a story about an emotionally wounded boy who is hiding from the world that hurt him, and the girl who must learn about love in order to help him realize that there is life after death.

What is your favorite genre to write?

I have gone through many phases over the years; children’s (when my niece and nephews were born), mystery, scifi and fantasy. But I could never really gain traction. Then the main character in A Wounded World took root in my consciousness, and his story became basically a Young-Adult Literary Paranormal Romance. So the shorter answer is I really don’t have a favorite. I trust that the story and characters will tell me what genre they belong to.

Favorite food.

Guacamole (mana from Mexico) and anything Carne Asada.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee! No milk, no sugar!

Pizza or ice cream?

I do like pizza. But if you have caramel sauce, then it’s ice cream.

Wine or beer?

What? No Jack and Soda?

How old were you when you started writing?

I’ve a memory of a small boy sitting in front of an old Royal typewriter, literally pounding on the keys, trying to write a story about a teddy bear and the family dog. The machine had to weigh more than I did!

Where would you like to visit?

Scotland, maybe Rome someday.

Ahh, both are fabulous. Go now. Don't put it off. Rome in September is magical. It's less crowded and the weather is still warm, but the mornings are slightly crisp, great for a walking tour of the city.  Scotland, anytime. Bring a raincoat. Okay, back to business. Favorite musical artist.  Do you listen to music when you write?

I prefer songs to artists, and mostly early rock like Aerosmith or Foreigner. Anything with good guitar riffs. I wrote A Wounded World to Foreigner’s I Want to Know What Love is. I also listen to movie soundtracks and symphonic classical music. If I had to pick one particular piece as a favorite, it would be The Doors version of Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor.

What makes you laugh?

Almost anything. The way the world is these days either you laugh or cry. The only humor I dislike is any that requires a victim, especially a specific victim. And that seems to be all the rage these days.

 

Favorite work of art or sculpture.

I love art and wish I could draw a straight line. In galleries I seems to be drawn more to sculpture and if there was one piece in particular I would love to see in person it would be Michelangelo’s Pieta.

Describe your perfect evening.

Probably one where I’m playing and laughing with my family.  We rarely all get together these days.

Where do you get your inspiration?

I try to keep my eyes and ears open to all the possibilities.  But it’s also important to keep your inner eye open. Your subconscious eye sometimes sees possibilities that your conscience eye fails to register. Imagination and dreams are the links to those possibilities. At least that’s what I told all those teachers who caught me daydreaming in class. I don’t think they believed me.

What do you do when you get a writer's block?

Suffer…whine…complain!  Then just work through it.  Sometimes it helps to kill someone off.

Who is your favorite author?

Hard one! There are so many; Tolkien, Eddings, Herbert, Rowling, Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, Dick…It depends on my mood and emotional need.

Best book you ever read.

Again, so hard, so many. Easier to tell about the one and only book I actually threw across the room. This was a novel called Venus on the Half Shell by Kilgore Trout. Good and bad is so subjective. I may have been so pissed off at the ending this story that I threw the book across the room, but I still remember that book to this day.

Last book you read.

“The Cat Who Walked through Walls” I’ve been re-reading Heinlein lately. By the way, I love re-reading books, especially books that take place in strange and wonderful worlds and/or have vivid characters that dare to take life off the page.

What would you do for a living if you weren’t a writer?

If I could go back in time and change my major…again…I might study Anthropology, Archeology or maybe Paleontology. I’d always write, but study writing as duel major or minor.   

Yes! I can see you as Indiana Kincaid. Who is the one person who has influenced your personal life the most and why?

My family is the making of me and each one of them, in their own way, has influenced who I am right now and who I will continue to become. But I walk a path of my own choosing. And I’ve encountered angels and demons along the way that have mentored or distracted me, but it’s always the voices of my family I turn to when I feel lost and alone.

If you could sit down and have a conversation with ONE person, living or dead, real or fictional, who would it be and why?

Lazarus Long, Heinlein’s favorite character. Because, more than any other character he has written about, talking to him would be like talking to Heinlein’s inner mind.

What advice would you give someone who aspired to be a writer?

I had a writing teacher who, during his fiction workshops, would very patiently wait until all the other students had shared their opinions about your story and then ask; “Now tell me why I should care about your main character, why should I care about what happens to him or her?” Then he would sit back and watch you sputter, rationalize and justify. Very few could answer the question. It took me almost 25 years to find my answer. The reader will only care when you care, truly care, what happens to your main characters!

For a reader to care about a fictional character an empathic connection needs to be made. When the character hurts, the reader needs to feel the pain. And yet how can I, the writer, expect the reader to cry if I don’t cry, laugh if I don’t laugh, or be afraid if I don’t feel the fear first? For the last twenty-five years, with all my various attempts at writing, all the start and stops, I finally came to a conclusion that whenever I came up to an emotion I froze, or worse turned away from it. With A Wounded World my goal, from word one, was to “turn into the emotion,” take the emotion to its limit. A Wounded World is that emotional journey. This made those characters real to me, so real that I still call them my children.

My advice is to find that empathic connection, don’t be afraid to feel what your character’s feel. If you aren’t seeing what your characters sees, feels what they feel, fear what they fear, then did deeper. Dig deeper within yourself and find that vision, that feeling, that fear. Once you do that, then your reader will see, feel and fear it all.

Thanks for being with us this morning. We at Vision and Verse wish you continued success in all your writing endeavors. Come back and see us anytime.  Before you leave, do you have some links for us to follow you?

Book US Link: https://amzn.com/B00IJB8RIE

Book UK Link:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IJB8RIE

Facebook.com/critkincaid

Facebook.com/AWoundedWorld

Twitter.com/critkincaid

Instagram.com/critk

critkincaid.com

The Kubota Collection, Japanese Kubota Art

The Kubota Collection 

Dear Gentle Readers,
    Six years ago, William and I had the distinct
pleasure of viewing this fabulous textile art exhibition in
Canton, Ohio at the Canton Museum of Art.  The
exhibition ran from February 8, 2009 to April 26, 2009.
and was only the second showing in the United States,
first appearing at the Timken Museum in San Diego in 2008 and ending in January, 2009.

    Itchiku Kubota was born in Japan in 1917 and became a textile art apprentice as a very young man.   His formal education and textile training were disrupted by the Second World War, when Itchiku was sent to war and  was captured by the Russians.   He was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Siberia, forgotten about by everyone except his family, and he drew and painted the Siberian sunsets in order to keep his sanity amid the deplorable conditions.

Itchiku Kubota is best known for reviving and modernizing a lost art of fabric dyeing and decorating called "tsujigahana," which means
"flowers at the crossroads."  It was a technique used in the fifteenth century with natural dyes, but was lost because of it's difficulty in controlling the resulting shading of the textile.

Kubota's masterpiece, "Symphony of Light," was
a series of painted and elaborately decorated silk
kimonos that he said depicted "the grandeur of the universe."  The kimonos were displayed on large black frames and arranged in a giant oval
depicting a panoramic view of the seasons of the year.  The textiles were shaded so that they seamlessly blended into each other ever so slightly, allowing the viewer to almost see the movement of the earth as each breathtaking view is passed.  Once around the oval is not enough to take in the intricate design and the delicate beauty of the shading on the huge silk kimonos, creating
a mural of the natural loveliness of the Japanese countryside throughout the seasons.

 The sheer size of these large kimonos, set side by side, filling up the huge exhibit hall, was a scene to behold in itself.  But upon a closer examination of the subtly dyed silks and the elaborately decorated designs was truly inspirational and awe-inspiring.  It was a once in a lifetime, spectacular display that I will fondly remember.

I sent information on this exhibit to several friends, noting "don't miss this event!" Some thought I had lost my mind, thinking that walking around in a room full of kimonas sounded more like punishment than jaw-dropping beauty and inspiration. The few who took me up on the offer were amazed at the sheer beauty of Itchiku Kubota's work depicting the grandeur of the universe.

Information for this article is from memory of my visit to the exhibition.  Photos are from the Kubotacollection.com and also Canada's Homage to Nature page, www.historymuseum.ca

Schedule for June 27 - July 1, 2016

Mon., June 27     The Kubota Collection, Japanese Kimono Art

Tues., June 28     Interview with Author Crit Kincaid

Wed., June 29     Echo of Heartbreak, A Recipe for Life

Thurs., June 30   Shift by Genevieve Scholl, 
                            An Owl Branch Book Blitz

Fri.,  July 1         MacKalvey House by Carol Ann Kauffman