Move Over, ‘Gone with the Wind’, a Review

Ranking: 5 quills

“The Kitchen House” ….Kathleen Grissom has written a contemporary story of the old south with a new twist…that of the indentured servant.

White immigrants to this country, indentured for years, were nothing more than white slaves.
An immigrant would contract to work for an employer for several years in exchange for the cost of passage and room and board. They lived with or near their employer and worked as an unpaid servant. This was a common occurrence between the 17th and 19th centuries. They survived beatings, rape, and sometimes were killed by their employers with impunity.

Synopsis: ‘When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. Orphaned while on board a ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves in the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, a slave and the master’s illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin. Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. Forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.’

The Kitchen House is a tragic story of page-turning suspense, exploring the meaning of family, where love and loyalty prevail.

This is so well written you won’t be able to put it down. I cannot wait for Grissom’s next novel….I know it will be a good one!

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Join me at my Book Signing on Saturday!

BOOK SIGNING

Shaver Book Sellers, on Madison Square here in Savannah has invited this author to hold a book signing.

This event will begin at

2PM on Saturday, November 17th.

Shaver’s carries all of Sugarek’s children’s books, her poetry and her novel, “Women Outside the Walls”. Also available will be most of her play scripts.

Come by and say “hello” and enjoy this historic, iconic book store that is locally owned and operated. Enjoy a beautiful fall day in Madison Square.

Shaver’s Booksellers
326 Bull Street (Madison Square)
Savannah

What do you do with a great Review?

Stop! Enjoy! Writing is a lonely business….oh sure, family and friends read our stuff (sometimes reluctantly) and sometimes they really like what we’ve done! LOL But, a good (or great, if we’re so lucky) review from someone who doesn’t sleep in the bed next to us, or sit across the Thanksgiving table from us, or see us at work every day; that’s a rare validation that keeps us writers doing what we do. Perhaps non-writers don’t know this but most of us who put pen to paper have no idea whether or not what we write is good or worthy of your attention and when we put it out there we hold our breath while it is judged.

The fine folks at BookReview.com have written a thorough (and very complimentary review of “Ten Minutes to Curtain”. Scroll down to take a gander, or click here to read it on the original site.

Book reviews from all genres: children's books, mystery novels, biographies, alternative health books, sci-fi books, humor, history, music and more

Teen Fiction
Title: Ten Minutes to Curtain! A Collection of Short Plays for the Young Actor
Author: Trisha Sugarek
Rating:

Must Read!
Publisher: CreateSpace.com
Web Page: www.amazon.com
Reviewed by: Eric Jones

Trisha Sugarek is a writer after my own heart. Her work is an ode to life meant to introduce children to the wonders and horrors that make life worth living. Ranging in length and production value, many of her plays invoke the feel of the old morality plays, and inherit their sense of distinction. They have been collected under the aptly titled, “Ten Minutes to Curtain”, and reading them back to back encourages them to be performed together as they flow exceedingly well from the first story of 1920’s poverty, to her final comedy about a loving, and unusual, modern housewife’s bizarre meeting with a multi-millionaire.

“Ten Minutes to Curtain” contains ten mini-dramas meant for middle school or high school production. They are appropriately simple in construction and complex in conflict, lending great emphasis on the characters established in each play. While Sugarek offers brief explanations on the stage sets, she sharply leaves them open to interpretation, allowing for many of the plays to be performed on a blank canvas as might be necessary in a class room or school yard.

“Love Never Leaves Bruises” is the pinnacle of Sugarek’s dramatic angle, and occurs at the peak of the book’s arc. It revolves around an abusive high school relationship between a boy and girl, and the emotional battle that the girl fights with her mother. While being representative of a classic case of high school hormonal imbalance, the play puts a major problem on its face and demonstrates to kids how harmless dating can quickly turn dangerous.

But Sugarek is not content to keep all of her plays in a setting familiar to the children who will be performing them. Her plays encourage an exploration of both time and emotion. “Pan of Potatoes”, “La Verne and Mr. Service”, and “The Waltz” all take place during the 1920s, and while dealing with situations that children can relate to; poverty, dance parties, and poetry, they also introduce them to the work of Robert Service, as well as the social constructs of other periods.

Sugarek’s master work can be cut up and performed in the segments that make up the larger work, but I believe that they would be best served in performance back to back. The over arching theme is that of children’s natural conflict with parents as they grow older. It’s an astonishing work that finds a way to say so much with so little, and turns the bare stage into every young man and woman’s living room. A perpetual battle ground for issues of trust and mistrust, laughter and misery, overwhelming loss and astounding triumph. ~~BookReview.com

We writers are very self-critical……but remember to stop and enjoy the successes….something that you know is well written….your book sales….or a review that tells you that you are on the right track. You deserve it!!

Bertie, the Bookworm…..gets glowing review

‘….Being a great-grandma and a big fan of the Fabled Forest stories, I read “Bertie, the Bookworm and the Bully Boys….” before I sent a copy off to each of my many grandkids and great grandkids. I thought it was wonderful. The children I sent the books to are enjoying reading it. Hard for me to believe some of them are reading without the help of a parent. Sugarek makes a lot of parents very happy with her fairy tales and gentle lessons about being kind and not bullying others because they might be smaller or different. I really enjoy the series because many of the characters return to each story and I look forward to seeing what they are up to now. I highly recommend these fables to parents and grandparents…..’ Margaret C. A great-grandma

To buy or review all the children’s books
click here
“Stanley, the Stalwart Dragon”
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The Exciting Exploits of an Effervescent Elf” ====>

What’s your favorite word? Nostalgia is one of mine!

Were you there when the movie “Little Women” came out? Not the new (1994) version…the old version (1949, it’s on DVD) with June Allyson who played Jo, Peter Lawford as Laurie, Margaret O’Brien as Beth, Elizabeth Taylor as Amy, and Janet Leigh (yes! from Psycho fame) as Meg. Do you go all nostalgic when you think about those simpler times with Jo, Beth, Amy, and Meg? I do. Have you read the book by Louisa May Alcott? She was writing about her family.

Part of me wishes I had a bunch of sisters, (be careful what you wish for, right?) part of me wishes that I had lived in a simpler time. I am a part of a family like the Marches. My mother had five sisters and six brothers. I grew up with twelve aunties and uncles. And so many cousins I still don’t know the number.

So I write about them. I am much like Jo; writer, tomboy (in my younger days) outspoken and trying to be the very best at what I do…….writing.

My suggestion to other writers is to write about your grandmother, great-aunt, second cousin, twice removed. Write about what you know. Write about the past. I am so very lucky to have the ‘Guyer girls’ to draw from …..I couldn’t make up the stories that they have given me out of their real lives.

Who, What Inspires your Writing? (part 2)

You find inspiration in the strangest places. I was dedicated to writing scripts for the stage. A few years back, I attended this production of my children’s play, Emma and the Lost Unicorn, outside of Boston .

After the actors had their curtain calls, the Director told them that if they changed out of their costumes and did their assigned tasks back stage, they could ‘have some time with Trisha’.

So I found myself holding impromptu stage craft classes with these adorable young actors (age 5–18). I was struck how serious they were about their craft. Their questions were very sophisticated. And then it happened……the inspiration to dare to write something completely out of my comfort zone…..a book.

The youngest ones begged me to write the stories from my scripts in storybook form. They wanted to have Emma, Stare, Cheets, and Stanley in their personal libraries. Three children’s books and one novel later I have found a new outlet for my story telling. These children, who knew no fear, gave me enough courage to try chapter books, poetry, and a novel. Experimental at times, risky at times, scary, but so rewarding. So step out of your comfort zone and try writing in a different format… it’s very liberating and you might surprise yourself. I did!

When was the last time you were behind bars? No, seriously!

This has been an incredible journey for me as a playwright turned novelist. In play writing you must tell your story in 100 pages or less, definitely in less than two hours and everything you want to relate to the audience must be conveyed through the dialogue. In the theatre world there’s a term: “method acting” which means you get as close to your character as you can. If the character you are going to portray is a prostitute, you follow and talk to whores. (been there, done that. Honolulu, 1992 ) If your character is a woman who’s husband has been in prison for the past 13 years, you get inside her head.

I’m a ‘method’ writer, (every chance I get.)

In 1999 I had reason to visit a men’s DOC facility. (prison). I was visiting a confessed murderer as research for one of my earlier scripts. My writing has taken me to some unexpected places to say the least. On a Sunday morning I found myself sitting in the reception area with three dozen other women. Wives, sisters, mothers, daughters of convicted felons. As I waited, I wondered how long they had been coming to visit; how long would a woman wait for her man behind bars; and what a terrible impact this must have on the children, visiting their fathers in this place. Sitting there I was suddenly compelled to write their stories. I tried to interview as many women as I could and this was no easy task.

Their closed society is cloaked in guilt and shame. But they finally let me in and I discovered, for the most part, incredibly brave and strong women. They would tell their friends and neighbors, “my husband travels with his work” to explain the man’s absence. Always appearing cheerful and strong while visiting their men, the women I spoke with, had a pull off down the highway where they would congregate (after leaving the prison) where they could cry, scream, and moan and be comforted. Where they could share, with other women who understood, what their lives were really like outside the walls. Away from the eyes of their men and the prison officials.

Fast forward to 2011: My heart had been nagging me for years that my stage play,(by the same name) had MORE to say. And it wouldn’t let up!! The message was, “you have to tell the rest of these women’s stories. GET BUSY!!”

For someone who was so comfortable writing in the genre of ‘scripts’ this was a scary prospect. Yikes! I thought, a novel was at the very least 70,000 words and over 300 pages long. What could I possibly have to say? One year and four months later I had a 335 page novel in my hands. Evidently my characters had plenty to say! At times I was surprised and delighted with my women and their stories. At other times appalled. As many writers will tell you, at some point, the characters sort’a….no…they definitely take over and you become simply the typist.

I am hoping that my readers enjoy this journey and find some empathy for those women doing hard time outside the walls.

My Review – The Orchid House

Rating: 4 quills

The Orchid House by Lucinda Riley is an intricately woven story of real men and women. How the author weaves their stories and brings them all together at the end is indeed brilliant. From a ‘grand house’ of rural England to war torn Thailand and back again.

As a child, concert pianist Julia Forrester spent many idyllic hours in the hothouse of Wharton Park, the grand estate where her grandfather tended exotic orchids. Years later, while struggling with overwhelming grief over the death of her husband and young child, she returns to this tranquil place. There she reunites with Kit Crawford, heir to the estate and her possible salvation.

When they discover an old diary, Julia seeks out her grandmother to learn the truth behind a love affair that almost destroyed the estate. Their search takes them back to the 1940s when Harry, a former heir to Wharton Park, married his young society bride, Olivia, on the eve of World War II. When the two lovers are cruelly separated, the impact will be felt for generations to come.

When the last thread is snipped the reader is satisfied and well content with a very good read.

Writer shares a little wisdom…

writing, writer, blogger, blog, playwright, fiction, books for kids, poetry, Haiku — Going home………to Ireland 1998

Today at 4:30pm EST my wisdom (such as it is) was posted again on Care2.com with 20,000,000 members. If you missed it in July, here it is again.Now keep in mind that I still consider myself a small town girl, stumbling through this life as best I can. But, if I reach out and touch just one other woman and make her life a little easier, I am content.

“Must Read” rating for “Stanley, The Stalwart Dragon”

BookReview.com gave the first in the Fabled Forest series, “Stanley, the Stalwart Dragon” a wonderful review. Head over to their site to see it, or read on below!

Children’s Books
Title: Stanley, The Stalwart Dragon
Author: Trisha Sugarek
Rating:

Must Read!
Publisher: CreateSpace
Reviewed by: Eric Jones

Trisha Sugarek is often known for her stage plays for children which take on a fun, but instructional tone and lend children an eye-opening narrative on the problems and decisions that come with growing up. Her first novel, “Stanley, the Stalwart Dragon”, is an extension of her stage work. Fully illustrated by Mitchell Lamar Larkins, it is a collection of life lessons rolled into a single journey, with a loveable protagonist who finds friendship and hardship out in an unfamiliar world. Stanley is very different from other dragons because he doesn’t blow fire. No, he blows bubbles. This leads him to feel ostracized with the dragon community and in a fit of anger he runs away to the woods where he’s greeted by a band of mixed races; elves, pixies, animals, clowns, and faeries all gather to remark on Stanley’s mysterious condition. What’s remarkable about Sugarek’s fiction is in her ability to draw depth into what might have simply been cartoon characters. City Slick is, without a doubt, my favorite. He has the sly veracity of a huckster, but appears genuinely friendly. He’s also illustrated to resemble Woody Wood Pecker, and although he’s not quite the villain, he plays the role of a trickster who gets Stanley into his predicament by convincing him to join the circus. Stanley moves then from a nice group of misfits to a bad group of misfits, and learns a strong lesson in comparing the two. There is no shortage of fun and interesting characters to grab children’s attention and engage their imagination. Being a playwright, Sugarek comes from a medium that’s heavy on dialog, and that transitions well into children’s fiction, making “Stanley, the Stalwart Dragon” a great book to read out loud to children. Parents can change voices to represent different characters, or they can highlight character’s lines that the children themselves can play. This is a novel, so there’s a slight issue of length. It’s best read as a serial over a number of nights rather than straight through, although the appearance of the book can be deceptive since it’s about the same height and width as children’s books like “Polar Express” or “Green Eggs and Ham”. However, Sugarek makes no bones about it being more advanced. She uses big words to stimulate her young readers such as ‘effervescent’, or ‘rhetorical’, which is a method reminiscent of the works of Roald Dahl. “Stanley, the Stalwart Dragon” is a captivating children’s novel from start to finish, a cartoonish romp through a fantastic world that’s full of jokes and lessons that will ensnare any child’s ear.

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BOOK SIGNING

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