Guest Blogger: Timothy Sagges

Books-n-Kisses is pleased to let Timothy Sagges take over the blog today:  

I’ve been inspired to write since sixth grade. My teacher, Miss Fletcher, would regularly assign book reports to the class. Thank God the stories we were to read and report back on were short. As is currently true, I was never an avid reader.

Miss Fletcher and I discovered together that I also lacked the discipline to structure a book report in a way that made any sense. Instead of reporting on Jack and Jill’s motivation for running up the hill, I would explore and expound on the possibilities and consequences of the well being empty, their quest for water, and the exotic places the two would travel to fetch a pail.

In what I know now to be her ability to help a child grow, she would elevate my pathetic attempts at book reporting to what would become a weekly ritual of Timmy reading to the class his latest story.

As I grew and set my sights on becoming independently wealthy, I put my zest for writing on the back burner and set out to earn a living. And although hundreds, possibly thousands of ideas have, over the decades, popped into my head and have been duly scribbled on post-its for future reference, it wouldn’t be until my 49th year of life that I would make the connection between having a neat idea and the process of writing. Writing is hard work. Staring at a blank computer screen is daunting at best. But one can only mull an idea over for so long before going insane. So with the characters, plot and timeline long ago etched in, and haunting, my brain, I opted to do whatever I could to purge the story and make room for something else, (more stories). And after reading the self-published novel written by a friend of a friend, I thought, I can do that! And I did. With discipline I never knew I possessed I sat at my computer every night for five months with the goal of getting 500 words down on paper.

I would give almost anything to find Miss Fletcher.

***

Best Seller
By Timothy B Sagges
Paperback
Price: $14.99
ISBN: 9781456478193
Pages: 326
Release: February 2011
Amazon | B&N | BestSeller-book.com

Thirty-five year old fiction writer, Richard Rossi would do just about anything to get his manuscript published. However, months of rejection and unanswered prayers have strained his capacity to hope. Alone in New York City, he teeters on the brink of alcoholism, as his hope erodes into desperation.

His prayers are finally answered when a simple misdirected piece of mail spawns a chance encounter with an extraordinary man, Seth Volos, Publisher. And while their unholy alliance thrusts Richard to the top of every Best Seller list in America, the horrifying outcome for the book’s legions of fans is anything but a happy ending.

Timothy B. Sagges Bio:
Fifty-year-old actor, director and playwright, Tim Sagges has been tormented by a series of recurring night terrors since 1967, long before there was a name for such a curse. It is only recently that he has found the courage to formulate some of these visions into works of literature. In an effort to purge himself of the unrelenting horror of his dreams, he has created Best Seller, the first in a series of nightmares exorcised from his mind and onto the page.

He is currently the owner of Eye Candy Vision in Philadelphia.

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Review of Time Slice by Kerry Downing


Time Slice
By Kerry Downing
Ordinary People. Extraordinary Adventures. Science Fiction with Heart.
Newly retired workaholic Roy Washburn is not ready for a life of leisure. On a trip to the mall with his wife, he finds a small metal cylinder with odd markings. One nudge of the cylinder’s triangle-shaped pointer and Roy finds himself embarking on an exciting new adventure in the Time Stream.
There he meets The Traveler, a tall, gangly being who shows Roy how to use the cylinder to visit other civilizations that co-exist on “his” Earth, each occupying a different, thin Time Slice. The Traveler solicits Roy’s help in recovering an object invented by his murdered father and beyond his own reach. Roy is his last hope.
At first it seems that the Traveler’s wish might be easily granted. But after Roy’s wife Emily becomes ill and his daughter’s long-held resentments rise to the surface, he can no longer “travel” at a moment’s notice. He also discovers the very real physical and mental risks involved in roaming the Time Stream.
Despite the dangers, Roy is determined to help the Traveler. But he can’t do it alone. Fortunately he has a loving wife and a core group of loyal friends. But first he must convince them–and his daughter–that he isn’t crazy …
My thoughts:
This was a hard book for me to review.  I am not an overly huge sci-fi fan.  So I struggled with whether I liked or disliked this book.  I think I came to the conclusion that it was just okay for me.    I had a hard time connecting with the characters and the story at times really didn’t keep my attention.   I will chalk this all up to the fact that I am not a sci-fi fan.   I think the idea behind the story was good.  The characters all had their moments that I enjoyed them.  But in the end it was just okay for me.
If you love Sci-fi I would recommend you checking out Kerry’s book.  If you are not, well I won’t say don’t read it because everyone has their own opinion.   I would tell you please read the other reviews of the people that loved this book and decide for yourself. 
Kerry Downing’s Bio:
Kerry Downing set out to become a meteorologist, but was hooked by the world of computers instead, becoming a systems analyst and programmer. Astronomy and science fiction are his passions. He’s been gazing at the stars at all hours of the night since the age of 10, when he received his first telescope. As for science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke and his brand of “it really seems as if it could happen” has always been his favorite. In the 90s, Kerry found the third love of his life: his wife, Lucy. They live in St. Louis, Missouri, with their five children. Time Slice is Kerry’s second science-fiction novel. His self-published, debut work is The Collective.

Guest blog with Dorothy James


The Passions of the Old
From the novel, “A Place to Die”
Crimes of passion, it is said, are not usually committed by criminals, but by so-called ordinary people, pushed by unbearably strong emotions to find release in what would normally be for them an unthinkable act. The passions of the old are held in check in . . . the Haus im Wald  . . . if more were said, if more discussion were acceptable, if less emotion were suppressed . . . if they only had more sex.  But what then? Betrayal, jealousy, envy, revenge, injured pride, broken hearts—none of these classic motives for crimes of passion are obviated by sex, on the contrary. The fact is that the residents of the Haus im Wald are still alive, and so by definition, whether they have sex or not, their passions run high (324-5).
My murder mystery, A Place to Die, is set in a retirement home in the Vienna Woods, the Haus im Wald. Most of the characters in this novel are over sixty and some are over ninety.  This might have been an odd sort of novel a hundred years ago, but now, life expectancy is on the rise—the number of people reaching ninety has tripled in the last thirty years, we are told—there may well be 8 million centenarians by 2050, we are told. This means that the life of the old is of more and more concern to all generations, to none more right now than to the baby-boomers who, themselves in their sixties, often have parents in their eighties and nineties.  And those who are younger have to live with the thought that they themselves might live into their nineties and hundreds. For better or worse, old age is an expanding term.
In my novel, an old man is killed and an Inspector comes into the house full of old people, seeking the murderer in the midst of them.  Into the lives of the residents crash not only the Inspector but also two baby-boomer Americans visiting an aged mother.  During this tense time, they are forced to take a look into their own lives and what may lie ahead as they themselves get older.
I first had the idea of setting a murder mystery in a retirement home simply because it seemed to me a ideal plot device—a ready-made group of suspects, obliged by circumstances to stay at the scene of the crime.  I did not set out to create a particular microcosm, to examine the dynamics of a group of old people, to analyze the likelihood that a crime of passion—or a cold-blooded murder—could occur among them. But as the investigation proceeded, I found myself looking closer and closer into the particular society I had chosen, the society of the old, that ever-growing segment of the population which is the ultimate destination of us all.
A Place to Die 
Hardcover
Price: $34.99
ISBN: 9781450082709
Pages: 436
Release: April 21, 2010

Paperback
Price: $23.99
ISBN: 9781450082693
Pages: 436
Release: April 21, 2010

Eleanor and Franz Fabian arrive from New York to spend Christmas with Franzs mother in her sedate retirement home in the Vienna Woods. Their expectations are low: at best, boredom, at worst, run-of-the-mill family friction. But when the wealthy, charming Herr Graf is found dead in his apartment with an ugly head wound, the Fabians are thrust into a homicide investigation.

Some residents and staff have surprising connections to the dead man, but who would have wanted to kill him? Inspector Büchner tracks down the murderer against a backdrop of Viennese history from the Nazi years to the present day. Witty, suspenseful, lyrical, this is a literary whodunit that will keep you guessing till the last page.


Dorothy James Bio:
Dorothy James was born in Wales and grew up in the South Wales Valleys. Writer, editor, and translator, she has published short stories as well as books and articles on German and Austrian literature. She has taught at universities in the U.S., England, and Germany, makes her home now in Brooklyn and often spends time in Vienna and Berlin.

She wrote A Place to Die in her attic apartment on the edge of the Vienna Woods. She has travelled far from Wales, but has not lost the Welsh love of playing with language; she writes poems for pleasure as does Chief Inspector Büchner, the whimsical Viennese detective who unravels the first mystery in this new series of novels.

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