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Where Awesome Book Readers Meet Awesome Writers

1. Stutter Creek by Ann Swann
   Ann Swann is also the author of All For Love, a contemporary love story published by 5 Prince Publishing. She is the author of Stevie-girl and the Phantom Pilot, and Stevie-girl and the Phantom Student, and Stevie-girl and the Phantom of Crybaby Bridge, tales of the supernatural. She has also written numerous award winning short stories. She lives in Texas with her husband and their rescue pets. She loves libraries and book stores and owns two different e-readers just for fun. Her to-be-read list has taken on a life of its own. She calls it Herman. Contact email: swannann76@yahoo.com
2. The Legionnaire: Origins
   Mr. Parkinson was an Air Force avionics technician, a decorated veteran of the Persian Gulf War and several peacekeeping missions. He has lived overseas in numerous countries and travels extensively. He has written a newspaper column on computers and been published in several magazines.
3. Heaven on Earth: Simple Ways to Be Happy
   Timothy McKinney lives in Redondo Beach, California with his wife Cindy and their two children Heather and Robbie. He went to the University in Southern California, where he got degrees in business and psychology. Since 1997, Tim has been a corporate trainer who conducts workshops on subjects related to happiness and workplace effectiveness. He is a passionate vegetarian who enjoys SCUBA diving in the kelp forests of Catalina Island.
4. Mary of Shadows
   Jeffrey Aaron Miller is a 1997 graduate of the Creative Writing program at the University of Arkansas. He has held a wide variety of jobs over the years, from social worker to bus driver, from postal carrier to pastor, but through it all, he has remained a storyteller. He is the author of numerous novels, both print and e-books, in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and YA. He resides in Northwest Arkansas with his wife and children.
5. Three At The Center Of Rage by Martin J. Ryan
   I was born in New York City in 1928. My father had flown airplanes made of canvas and sticks in WWl, in France, while my mother had sung and danced in vaudeville. Everything was fine until the Crash of 29. What I recall is a series of one-bedroom apartments and hard times, but my older sister and I had no complaints since this was simply the way things were, and many were worse off than we were, some of whom we occasionally took in for a week or two. People shared back then.  As a child I was always drawing with pencil and crayon, and painting with oils on cardboard. But most important at the time, I was a street kid along with hundreds of others and loved it. I shined shoes, sold newspapers, carried wet wash for Wong’s laundry, delivered groceries, then worked in a ping-pong paddle factory and various warehouses. For a few months in 1945 I served below decks in the engine room in the U.S. Maritime Service, before segueing that winter into the Army Engineers, which consisted of building things, blowing up things, and running machinery.  I worked as an accounting clerk for a steamship line, shared driving big rigs interstate (first trip about 3800 miles, no super highways), then as a wire lather (way up) constructing high-rise apartment buildings. In 1949 I began using my G.I Bill: Fine art at the Art Student’s league of New York, and in 1950 at the Workshop School of Advertising and Editorial Design and Illustration, where I met my future, and very talented, wife, Lorraine, to whom I’ve been married for 59 years. After one semester she left to attend The Parson’s School of Design. When my G.I. Bill expired I returned to the Art Student’s League at night, paying my way for a couple of years by running elevators, including the “tower car,” in the Wall Street Bank that was the model for the one I used in Three At The Center Of Rage. Yes, as my character Charlie did, I had occasion to climb from the boardroom to the bank’s roof at 2 or 3 in the morning, absent Charlie’s rage, of course, to admire the amazing view.  I designed record album covers but never went into advertising or illustration. Rather, having seen my wife’s work in decorative product design, I followed suit working on staff as a designer for 3 companies before, in 1963, creating my own design studio in midtown Manhattan. Thrilling, perilous in terms of no real security, I managed to hold on while employing two artists, eventually becoming a consultant designer and design director for a number of corporations. Meanwhile we had two beautiful daughters, Aimee and Betsy, and by 1968, talented freelancer Lorraine would come in on a part time basis; then in 1973 she became my full time partner. While all this was going on I attended a writer’s workshop, at night, at what was then known as the New School for Social Research. Eventually, lucky for Lorraine and me, Aimee and Betsy provided us with 5 wonderful grandchildren.  Retiring to Connecticut, Lorraine and I returned to fine art. Lorraine has shown in galleries and won many awards in juried shows. I focused on wildlife/nature in my paintings, then out of curiosity bought a computer, tinkered with it and studied web development at Western Connecticut University. I produced two websites (still on view): www.RyanArtDuo.com which is a gallery of our paintings, and www.UncleSammySays.com, a decidedly left-of-center blog featuring my political rants and cartoons, most of which were devoted to trashing the Bush/Cheny administration. I say was because I have not updated either site since 2007, due to the fact that I was writing my novel. But while the Uncle Sammy blog itself is old news, I am using this same site as a lead-in for my novel, providing sample chapters, etc., having superimposed a new Three At The Center Of Rage web page. Thanks for reading this.
6. Peasants Come Last
   Serving many years on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. J. Larry Brown riveted national attention to the existence of hunger in America in the 1980s, when he led a team of prominent doctors on field investigations into 25 states. The founding director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty, Dr. Brown also founded the Feinstein Famine Center and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy. Dr. Brown chaired the board of Oxfam America, and also chaired the medical task force of USA for Africa and Hands Across America. He is the author of numerous articles in both lay and scientific journals, such as Scientific American and Encyclopedia Britannica, and several books including Living Hungry in America. He has appeared often on national television including CNN, Good Morning America, Today Show, and network news programs, and testifies frequently before Congress. A young Peace Corps Volunteer in rural India in the late 1960s, Brown later served under President Carter as Assistant Director of the Peace Corps. He recently served a stint as Country Director of the Peace Corps in Uganda, and now resides with his wife, Judi Garfinkel, in Oman, where they direct the Center for International Learning (www.omancenter.org).
7. The Seventh Crane
   Czech-American author Birgitte Rasine writes literary fiction that pulls the beauty and the pain of the human experience out into the open by their very roots. Compared by readers to Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and James Joyce, Ms. Rasine’s work cracks open the vast and varied depths of the human psyche to illuminate our eternal quest for freedom, success, and fulfillment. Published works include “The Serpent and the Jaguar,” “Confession,” “Verse in Arabic,” and “Bakaly,” among others. A former journalist and screenwriter for the Hollywood film industry, Ms. Rasine also currently serves as the Chief Evolution Officer (CEO) of LUCITÀ Inc., a hybrid design and communications firm based in Silicon Valley. She holds a BA in Film Aesthetics from Stanford University, studied cinematography at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and completed a professional masters degree in international relations in Spanish at the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset in Madrid, Spain. A member of various literary and professional organizations including Pen Parentis and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, she is also a Founder’s Circle member of the Association of Women in Water, Energy and Environment and sits on the Board of Directors of the American Fund for Czech and Slovak Leadership Studies, a non profit organization in New York City that supports young leaders in healthcare, education, and the environment.