Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Book Blitz: Reflections by The Pamlico Writers Group





With a love for poetic words and their meaning, a well respected business owner  and native of Beaufort County had a vision. He wanted others to experience and feel the powerful meaning of words. The birth of the Pamlico Writers Group by Jerry Cuthrell in the late 70's has made that dream what it is today.


Since its inception, the Pamlico Writers Group has helped many authors achieve their dreams. Some have written and published books of their own. Others have been inspired to resurrect works long forgotten. Many have come and gone, but the Pamlico Writers Group stands as a beacon of hope to future writers and their dreams.

The Pamlico Writers Group's mission is to help other aspiring writers accomplish their goal in writing. We achieve this through our local critique group meetings, online critique groups, and by offering as an incentive to our young people, a High School Scholarship fund. We're honored to be a co-sponsor of the Pamlico Writers Conference that helps make funding possible for this scholarship. Our visions, help shape the minds of the future.


Connect with the Author here: 
~ Facebook ~ Website





Reflections: Images and Memories, is a collection of exemplary writing by our members and future members. The prose and poetry in this volume represent a collage of work by published authors and emerging writers. Pamlico Writers’ Group is particularly honored to include prose and poetry from high school students—young emerging writers to whom we entrust our future. Each writer whose work is included in the anthology has expertly crafted a piece around his or her own interpretation of this year’s theme—Reflections: Images and Memories. The collection is the culmination of hard work and truly affirms the group’s commitment to its mission. With this anthology, The Pamlico Writers’ Group is proud to deliver its finest product to date.



~ Amazon ~ Amazon UK




Meet Half of The Authors:


 Playwright Beverly Horvath found a passion for films and stageplays while living in Los Angeles and has participated in many small theatre productions. Beverly now resides in Aurora, NC, and has been writing for screen and stage since 2001. She has written original screenplays, book adaptations for screen and two musical stage-plays while collaborating with talented musicians/lyricists. Her musical play “Whiskey Flats” has been produced in New Bern, North Carolina.
Christina Ruotolo is a published author and freelance writer. She works in newspaper Advertising, is a Hot Dish food writer, a bookseller at Barnes & Noble and an adjunct creative writing instructor at a community college. She is the author the poetry collection, The Butterfly Net, and co-author of the nonfiction book, The Day The Earth Moved Haiti. She has a BA in Communications and Literature and a Master's degree in creative nonfiction from East Carolina University. She has won writing awards through Wildacres Writers Retreat, Carrie McCray Awards for poetry, and has published poetry, nonfiction and photography in past editions of The Petigru Review.

C. Inathe Marshall received an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach, in 2011. She was poetry editor for ARTLIFE Magazine and her poems have appeared in Convergence, 2004, ArtLife, 24th Anniversary Issue, 2004, Verdad Magazine, 2009, Spillway, 2010, RipRap, 2011, The Packinghouse Review, 2012, Beyond the Lyric Moment: Poetry Inspired by Workshops with David St. John, 2014, ELKE, 2016 and Redheaded Stepchild Magazine. She was the December 2016 Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts Writer-In-Residence and attended the 2017 Sewanee Writer’s Conference. 
           
                             

Denis Listerman-Vierling: I am a former social studies teacher and retired Greek Orthodox priest. My wife and I moved from California to Washington, North Carolina in June of 2017. My hobbies include puppetry, gardening and writing. The only published writings have been limited to parish histories and family genealogy books. However I have written a number of fiction stories in my spare time. Now that I am semi-retired, I hope to devote more time to writing.
Dennis Sinar has been a listener nearly all his life. Working as a physician, listening was essential to making an accurate diagnosis and so stories about people provided ample material.   He has published two short story collections about the fictional characters that live in Marsden NC. These are stories told by people you would meet on the street in any Southern town and describe their highs and lows with life, love, and family. Roger and Patrice, a retired couple from Boston, link the stories as they struggle to understand the ways of the South.

    Diane de Echeandia is a native North Carolinian, born in Wilmington, NC.  She writes poetry, short stories and creative non-fiction.  Diane has won awards in competitions sponsored by Christopher Newport University, the North Carolina Writers' Workshop in Asheville, NC, and the Pamlico Writers' Conference. Her poetry has appeared in SUNY Delhi's publication, Agate; Art Inspires Poetry: An Anthology of Ekphrastic Poetry 2015, 2016; A Carolina Christmas Anthology 2016; Skinny Poetry 8/16; and online magazines Eskimopi, and Bindweed February 2017. Diane has enjoyed teaching ESL to college students, and refugees.  She lives in New Bern, NC.




Deborah Dolttle has lived in lots of different places but now calls North Carolina home. She has a BA from the University of Colorado, an MA from George Washington University, an MFA from San Diego State University, and now teaches at Coastal Carolina Community College.   Two chapbooks, No Crazy Notions and That Echo, have won the Mary Belle Campbell and Long Leaf Press Award, respectively.  She has had more than 350 poems published in literary magazines, with some most recently having appeared or will soon appear in Atlanta Review, Bear Creek Haiku, Edge, Oberon, Pinyon, Seems and TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics.  An avid print-maker, she has put together a small collection of hand-made limited edition book art. Married to a retired Marine, she has a son and a daughter and three grandchildren.   When not teaching or writing, she volunteers as a Wildlife Rehabilitator.  She and her husband currently share their house with four cats and a backyard full of birds.

Doris Schneider was born in Texas, and lived all over the U.S. and Canada. After thirty-three years of teaching theatre at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and North Carolina Central University in Durham, Doris retired to little Washington where she paints, designs jewelry, plays violin and writes.   Doris has published two novels: Borrowed Things and By Way of Water and has short stories in the anthology, A Carolina Christmas. She is currently seeking publication for her novella, Drummer Girl. Her time is divided between the NC coast and the mountains, where her husband Jim Coke raises wildflowers.
Hallo! I would like to introduce myself as Dylan Fink, an aspiring writer. One of my favorite pastimes is reading, and I always loved to do so. Books created a gateway for my own imagination to blossom into something more than just a simple thought. With my imagination, I could create mass expanses of terrain, huge worlds where people of all types could live. Deep space battles, magical beings, gods fighting over the planet. I want to inspire other people to use their imagination in writing and in reading. That is my goal in writing, and I hope you enjoy.
             

Eileen Lettick is a former elementary classroom teacher and staff developer. After 30 years in the classroom, she continued her mission in literacy—changing readers into writers. Eileen has presented literacy workshops to teachers and administrators on the east coast from New Hampshire to Florida. She maintains her literacy resource website for parents, teachers, and students-- scribbles-n-lit.org. Her own writing, whether fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, often develops through the eyes of strong female characters.
Eileen won the 2017 award for nonfiction at the Pamlico Writers’ Conference for her memoir, The Poetry Lesson. Her middle grade time travel novel, Sarah the Bold, as yet unpublished, placed as a finalist for the 2012 Tassy Walden New Voices in Children’s Literature Book Award. Eileen has published poems in The Teacher’s Anthology of Creative Communications and in the July 2017 issue of Wallingford Magazine. Her article, May the Road Rise up to Meet You appeared in the 2013 July Challenge Magazine. She is presently completing a young adult novel, My Life on Roller Skates.


My name is Elizabeth White and I have always been interested in the arts. My interests have evolved from drawing to expressing myself in poetry, but I’ve always found comfort in creativity. About two a year and a half ago is when I got into poetry; in a way, it brought me back to life in a time when I was not doing well. I intend to collect all the poetry I’ve written and put it in a book and hopefully publish it.


EM Slatterley, The author, that's me to the left, was born on Long Island, New York, which by the way, happens to be the setting for my second historical novel, Nowhere to Go. My wife, Cathy, and I are currently retired and living in North Carolina, close to the Atlantic coast. We have three grown children and three grandchildren. How did I get into writing? Well, I've always been interested in writing and I've written a few things in the past, but now I have the opportunity and more time to share my talent with new friends and faithful readers. 


Hello, my name is Emani Dunning and I am 18 years old. I am from Greenville, NC, where I attended and recently graduated from South Central High School .  I love to spend time with my family and friends, eat, help others and smile! I am now a freshman at Winston-Salem State University with a major in Biology, to have a successful career as a neonatologist or pediatrician and with writing being something I do well, I also plan to become an author. I would like to thank my supportive family, and Mrs. Painter for giving me this opportunity, and also the Pamlico Writers for granting me this title! God bless! 
         



Jonathan Clayborne is the author of “Ten Dollars and a Zippo,” a poetry collection he published in 2017. Clayborne is writing a southern-gothic novel, which he hopes to publish in 2018. He sometimes writes under the pseudonym S. Kruger, and is a director, co-founder and screenwriter for Haunted Pamlico, a Halloween-centered organization that makes short horror films. An award-winning print journalist, he left the newspaper field in 2012. He is an entrepreneur focusing on creative writing and other ventures. His contribution to this anthology is an excerpt from his tentatively titled “Garden Journal,” a soon-to-be-published series of reflections and photographs spanning more than 30 years of his gardening life. 
     

Gloria Loftin: I have been writing since I was five years old. That is my first love.  I am also a voracious reader.  I live in Grimesland, NC. We moved here in 2005 from Northern Virginia. I missed out on college when I was younger.  My parents had four children to support. My parents could not afford to send me to college at that time.
I had my chance when I asked my mom and dad if they would pay for me to go to college at the age of 6, and they said yes.  I missed out when I was younger, but I believe that I appreciated it more at that age.  Now I just love to learn, something I did not care for as a teenager.
I am unpublished, but hope to remedy that soon.  I have found a wonderful group of people who support and encourage every chance they get.
Thank you for the time to get to know me a little better.


Janine Sellers, homemaker, wife and daughter in a historic section of New Bern, has been writing poetry since she was sixteen. With wordsmithing as part of her DNA, she has been the editor and cover designer of two successfully published books. The portals to Janine’s world include book stores, libraries and yard sales. She loves people, especially first person storytellers. An excessive note-taker and memoirist, Janine strongly believes in getting things down on paper. She is happily retired from a professional career in association management.
     

   Jo Ann Steger Hoffman is a writer, editor, and former corporate communications director whose publications include a children’s book, short fiction and a variety of poems in literary journals, including The Merton Quarterly, Pinesong, Fall Lines and New Verse News. She has received recent contest awards from the Pamlico Writers and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival.  Her 2010 non-fiction book, Angels Wear Black, recounts the only technology executive kidnapping to occur in California’s Silicon Valley. A native of Toledo, Ohio, she and her husband now live in Cary and Beaufort, North Carolina.

Check out our event page below to see where you can find the rest of the Authors!



To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 



Sunday, July 17, 2016

True Colors by Krysten LIndsay Hager

 
The Landry’s True Colors Series is a clean reads young adult humor series about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, middle school and high school, frenemies, crushes, and self-image. It’s a clean reads book so it’s suitable for ages 11 and up.


Landry Albright just wants to be one of the interesting girls at school who always have exciting things going on in their lives. She wants to stand out, but also wants to fit in, so she gives in when her two best friends, Ericka and Tori, push her into trying out for a teen reality show modeling competition with them. Landry goes in nervous, but impresses the judges enough to make it to the next round.
However, Ericka and Tori get cut and basically “unfriend” her on Monday at school. Landry tries to make new friends, but gets caught up between wanting to be herself and conforming to who her new friends want her to be. Along the way she learns that modeling is nowhere as glamorous as it seems, how to deal with frenemies, a new crush, and that true friends see you for who you really are and like you because of it.
 


Excerpt:
The competition was for girls between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, but it felt like Ericka, Tori, and I were the youngest ones there. I only saw a couple of girls from school, and the lineup looked more like something you’d see on a music video set. All the girls were gorgeous, and they had these curvy womanly bodies. I looked like a skinny little kid next to them. The first girl walked out, and I heard the judges say she “owned the runway,” and, “walked like a gazelle.” I was starting to feel ill. I wasn’t sure which way it was going to come, but I knew I had to find a bathroom — fast. I started to get out of line when Ericka grabbed my wrist.
“It’s almost time,” she said. A tiny bit of spit flew out of her mouth and hit my cheek.
I wasn’t sure why she was so intent on me going through with it, but she had a death grip on my arm, so I didn’t have much of a choice. Her number was called and she walked out to the stage. One of the other girls said she walked like a kid with sand bucket stilts on her feet, but she came back with a smirk on her face like she knew she’d get chosen.
“They said they had never seen such long legs,” she said.
Tori was next.
“She walks like a gorilla at feeding time,” said the girl behind me. I went next, and I tried to focus on not tripping over my feet. My mom’s pumps had a rubber sole on the bottom, which probably wasn’t the brightest idea seeing as my shoes were making squeaking noises as I walked. I was so nervous I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked. I looked like the plastic clown who blows up balloons with its mouth at the Pizza Palace. When I got to the end of the runway, I tried to cross my feet to turn like the other girls had, but I over rotated and ended up doing a full spin which made my kilt fan out and gave the mall walkers a view of my blue underpants. I tried to act like it was intentional and did an extra turn. One of the judges put her hand up to stop me, and I held my breath as she started to speak.

Other Books in the series:


Best Friends…Forever? (Book 2):
Landry Albright hopes the new year will start off in an amazing way—instead she has to deal with more frenemy issues, boy drama, and having most of her best friends make the cheerleading squad without her. Suddenly, it seems like all anyone can talk about is starting high school next year—something she finds terrifying.
Landry gets her first boyfriend (her crush, Vladi), but then gets dumped just as things come to a head with her friends. She feels lost and left out, but finds good advice about dealing with frenemies from what she considers an unlikely source. Landry faces having to speak up for what’s right, tell the truth (even when it hurts), and how to get past the fear of failure as she gets another shot at competing in the American Ingénue TV show modeling competition. Will she get a second chance with her friends, fame, and Vladi?

Landry in Like (Book 3):
Things seem to be going well in Landry Albright’s world—she’s getting invited to be on local talk shows to talk about her modeling career, her best friends have her back, and her boyfriend Vladi has becoming someone she can truly count on…and then everything changes.
Suddenly it seems like most of the girls in school are into hanging out at a new teen dance club, while Landry just wants to spend her weekends playing video games and baking cup-cakes at sleepovers. Then, Yasmin McCarty, the most popular girl in school, starts to come between Landry’s friendship with her best friend Ashanti. Things take a turn when Yasmin tells Vladi that Landry is interested in another boy. Can Landry get her relationships with Ashanti and Vladi back or will she be left out and left behind?


What people are saying about the Landry’s True Colors Series:

From Teenage Book Recommendations in the UK: "This is a fantastically relatable and real book which I feel captures all of the insecurities and troubles which haunt the modern teenage girl. It is about a young model who has to go through tough times when she is torn between a life as a model and managing her friendships. You learn which friends she can most trust and which will create the drama typical of teenage life. Follow the life of Landry and try to see if you can find out which are her true friends before their true colours are revealed. This book is all about relationships, hopes and truth. I loved this book!"
From Books & Authors Spot: “This book is such an inspiration for those who just care about their looks and are tensed about them. This thing is looks aren't everything. This book is related to every teen's problem. Hager has written a very inspiring novel.”
“Krysten captures the teenage girl today. The struggles are real, the issues are something children have been dealing with since before I was a teen, and oddly-Krysten captures the readers! I was prepared for another "Mean Girls" story. This is NOT that. This is the real story of teenage girls! You watch Landry flower into a young woman who finds out trust is an invaluable item to find, and friendships are hard to seek genuine realism in. You will learn about relationships with not just friends, but peers, boys, and others. The details put into the book will draw you, and make the story so much more realistic. Krysten expresses emotions beautifully through her writing, and the story flows flawlessly…” By Candice J. Conway Simpson
“True Colors, is just a dazzling story of how middle school kids show their true colors of jealousy, drama, loss and gains of friendship. However, the way Krysten wrote her story; she wrote it with passion, creativity and honesty that this story line could be placed in anyone's life at any age.” Review by Double Decker Books
 “Krysten Lindsay Hager understands what it means to be a teen today, and she writes with an authentic voice. Landry, the main character, is funny, lively, and very real. Readers will relate to her struggles with friends and family, self-esteem and self-discovery, boys and school and life in general. It's fun to read about Landry's blossoming modeling career and the changes it brings.” Review by Author Diana Jenkins

Author Bio:

Krysten Lindsay Hager writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, the celebrity world, values, and self-image in True Colors, Best Friends…Forever? Landry in Like, Next Door to a Star and Competing with the Star. Best Friends…Forever? was ranked at #1 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases in Teen & Young Adult Values & Virtues Fiction and True Colors is an international bestseller. Her work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Bellbrook Times, the Grand Haven Tribune, and on the talk show Living Dayton.




Author social media links:

Purchase:
Amazon US paperback: http://amzn.to/29gsqPw
Amazon US ebook: http://amzn.to/29tp2EF
Amazon UK ebook: http://amzn.to/29mv46L
Amazon AU ebook: http://amzn.to/29umy7d
Amazon CA ebook: http://amzn.to/29umCUm
Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/29oFynI
Barnes and Noble Nook: http://bit.ly/1S5wUuk