Not Waving, Drowning earns a Kirkus Review!

What Kirkus had to say:

Sands, Linda NOT WAVING, DROWNING CreateSpace (224 pp.) $14.99 Paperback $2.99 e-book September 26, 2011 ISBN: 978-1466409736

The lives of three women, separated by time and connected by loss, are woven together in unexpected ways in Sands’ debut novel. The seductive Southern charms of Savannah, Ga., provide the backdrop for Sands’ tapestry of a novel that interweaves the lives of three women from starkly different eras.

In August 2011, photographer and grieving widow Maggie Morris arrives in Savannah after her husband’s sudden death in a boating accident. While investigating his mysterious drowning, Maggie becomes entangled in the lives of several local residents. One of these is a handsome, young lighthouse restorer who recounts the story of the famous Waving Girl—Savannah’s own maritime legend who greeted ships for over 40 years from the island home she shared with her brother.

In alternating chapters, the novel flashes back to the 1890s, when a feisty newspaper reporter named Bobbie Denton, who also happens to be Maggie’s great-grandmother, meets the actual Waving Girl, née Florence Martus, while on assignment in Savannah. Flora’s story, told from an intimate point of view, centers on one day in 1940 when the 72-year-old woman lays to rest her dead brother, George, while recalling her life’s dark secrets.

If this all sounds a bit complicated, it is. Sands writes with graceful lyricism about the longings and regrets that bind these disparate women, and the images of lonely lighthouses and windswept shores are often stunning. As a whole, however, the novel suffers from narrative interruptions, with the chapters alternating rapidly and often abruptly, and many threads becoming tangled as a result.

On their own, each woman’s story is rich and engrossing. In an ambitious novel spanning more than a century, Sands creates tension in small moments and haunting questions—many of which are not answered until the final pages.

Despite the awkward narrative structure, there is plenty of Southern charm to keep readers hooked until the end. Strong female characters and an evocative setting make this an enjoyable read.

What Bookwenches had to say:

Title: Not Waving, Drowning

Author:  Linda Sands

Author’s website:  http://linda-sands.com/

Publisher: BookBaby

Release Date:  September 26, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-61842-1715 Length:

Novel Format:  Electronic

Genre: Fiction

Language/Violence Level:  2 Sensuality Level: 3 Rating:  5+ Keeper

Reviewed by:  Clea

The stories of three women, spanning a century, interlink with one another in beautifully haunting ways. Flora, a feisty elderly woman, chooses to reveal a lifetime full of secrets to a complete stranger on the day of her beloved brother’s death.  Bobbie, a turn of the century reporter, travels for her job but is actually running from the trauma of her past, sacrificing her soul for scraps of love. Maggie, a woman who finds it increasingly difficult to express her emotions, goes to Savannah to look into her husband’s mysterious disappearance. ******** Savannah, Georgia, with all its quirks and traditions serves as a back drop to a multigenerational story of three unconventional women who struggle to survive the paths their lives have taken. Their stories are linked by beautiful poetry filled with love, hurt, death, grief, and life. The poetry serves not only as a tool to link the women and their experiences, but it also enhances the feelings behind each scene and draws the reader into the lives of these characters even more. Flora, Bobbie and Maggie are three unique characters that will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading their stories. They are strong, independent women full of heartache who struggle to survive and move forward with their lives the best ways they know how. Often that means making unwise choices in life which can lead to little bits of insanity, but sometimes that’s the key to survival. This book is overflowing with emotion and a lot of it is often sadness and loneliness, but the author manages to interject mild touches of humor even in the darkest moments of sadness. This may move you from tears to giggles in the blink of an eye, but the author does it in a way that is tasteful and serves to remind you that life goes on. One thing about this book that kept me turning the pages is how the story leaps from different points in time and takes us on a timetable throughout the history of the world from the late 1800’s, to the 1940’s then jumps to modern times.  I loved how the author uses this technique to show how the things we do, think and feel will affect people of generations to come. Not Waving, Drowning isn’t a happy-go-lucky story that will perk you up and make you feel good about life; instead it is a beautifully written, sad story that will leave a lasting imprint on your soul.

Many thanks in advance.

( you can also get ebooks anywhere you like to connect or buy paperback from Amazon- see links in red HERE )

But the reality is… when the mountain didn’t come to Mohammad, the fat bastard got off his lazy ass and went to the mountain.

Today, I give you all a mountain.

AND 10 free ones this week to those who write to me on my facebook page and ask- nicely- or not so nicely… after all this is a free world. Speak up.

*insert hauntingly mystical soundtrack here*

Links to posts by David Gaughran, found on his blog: Let’s Get Digital.

all links are here…. download and be reading within seconds.

CLICK THE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR A LINK TO AMAZON/KINDLE

click the lower case words for a link to all e-readers, including phones, computers and high tech stuff yet to reach the USA

                  1. LEGAL THRILLER

         based on a true crime in 1970′s Philadelphia

2. ADULT THEMED FAIRY TALES IN SNIPPETS 

             ever wonder what someone is thinking?

3. LIKE YOUR BASKETBALL?  HOW ABOUT A REF WITH A FOOT FETISH?

           this is what I thought about sitting in floor seats at a Hawks game

4. TRAFFIC JAMS CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE- FOREVER

                   you’ve all been here- sort of

5. NOT YOUR AVERAGE BEACH READ, BUT THERE IS A BEACH, AND A GIRL

                           oh and there’s bad guys

6. JOUSTING, KNIGHTS, AND A WORD PUZZLE. ARE YOU GAME?

                                of course you’re game

John Locke, the author- not the LOST character-though both have pretty amazing stories, has recently signed a distribution and sales of print only deal with Simon and Schuster (who seem to be all over the board this month).

Is this the end of traditional publishing as we know it? Or an exciting pre-eminent takeover by authors?

Locke was the first self-published author to sell a million e-books through his own company. Which pretty much tells us he knows what he’s doing. And now, with this deal… he’s kind of a hero around here.

Kudos to his agent, Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, who handled the deal.

Locke-ism for the day: “When I saw that highly successful authors were charging $9.99 for an e-book, I thought that if I can make a profit at 99 cents, I no longer have to prove I’m as good as them … Rather, they have to prove they are ten times better than me.

Why bother, you may as?

Exactly.

If a notoriously slow, political and inbred Hollywood can create the script, sell the idea to backers pool the money, cast the film, announce that Kiera Knightly is the lead in said film, enlist directors, crew and even create, costume and release a full length feature film, in less time that Simon & Schuster’s can edit, proofread, typeset, design and print a book,  all computerized, mind you- a book that came out of an MFA program and is probably been worked over and over and over so much that it’s nearly perfect- a book that was purchased in October of 2010… and STILL isn’t released?

And at a time when the traditional industry appears to be slow ( a 3% decline in fiction books in 2010, and similar numbers in 2011 from the top publishing houses)… you’ve got to wonder just what the hell is wrong with US publishing. And why the hell Rebecca Serle isn’t just sending her digital words straight to Amazon and keeping one hundred percent of the money.

Hello, Rebecca?

Give in. READ.

Here’s the link to my smashwords page, scroll to the bottom to click on the stories.  Thanks for putting me in your pocket. I like a bumpy ride.

by Caryn James

In a world of sinking sales, gimmicks have become the literary writer’s life raft, and maybe something more.

Is the fiction any good? Here’s a look at several serious yet gimmicky novels, all worth reading for one reason or another. Whether those reasons have anything to do with their high-profile stunts is a more intriguing question.

13, Rue Thérèse
By Elena Mauli Shapiro

Mesh gloves, a rosary, a pencil-holder made from shells of German guns—these are some of the real-life objects that inspired this World War I-era novel, with photos of the objects scattered through the pages. Shapiro inherited the cache of treasures that belonged to a scarcely known neighbor; all she really knew was the woman’s Paris address and name, Louise Brunet. The novel constructs a frame in which an American academic imagines Louise’s story through her possessions: the fiancé killed in the war, her bourgeois marriage, her sexual fantasies.

Piling on the tricks, the book includes codes that let you see the reproductions with an iPhone app, or you can find them on the novel’s website (www.13rueTherese.com) along with video of the objects, snippets of audio from the text.  It’s all fluffy and engaging, but take away the pretty, busy-making stunts and you’re left with an unimaginative, unconvincing story. As a character, Louise is shallower than Madame Bovary, less surprising than a Desperate Housewife; her academic creator is a stick figure. The gimmickry masks this first novel’s hollowness while adding a momentary allure.

The Lover’s Dictionary
By David Levithan

Novels don’t get more contrived than this, but here’s a stunt that works. Each chapter in this slim book begins with a dictionary word and definition, arranged alphabetically. Jumping off from these words, the unnamed narrator tells of his life-shaping love affair, from their first date to their first apartment together, on to the discovery of his girlfriend’s one-night fling and his attempt to get past the betrayal. It’s a juicy story, and the language—spare, resonant, often poetic—makes it even better.

Sometimes the chapter’s connection to the dictionary word is direct:

“Recant, v.
I want to take back half of the ‘I love you’s because I didn’t mean them as much as the others.”

At times the narrator leaps past literal meanings to associations. “Fast” is both a noun and a verb, the verb “to fast” suggesting “the opposite of desire…. It is what I feel after we fight.”

Intentionally or not, this elliptical novel, with readers filling in the blanks of the story, mirrors the kinetic, participatory feel of the Web, where reading is more than just glancing at a page. There are models for such oddball structures in ’70s experimental fiction, but Levithan is the author of YA novels, including (as co-author) Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, the basis for a Michael Cera movie. The Lover’s Dictionary seems inspired by a new, wired generation.

The Object of Beauty
By Steve Martin

Martin’s novel about the New York art scene follows a dealer named Lacey from obscurity to the glitzy stratosphere and down again, observed by the narrator, an unassuming guy who has been sort-of loving her for years. Throughout the book we find small reproductions of the real-life art the fictional Lacey runs across. The reproductions take up a quarter or half the page, always with titles, dates, and dimensions below, as if the novel had morphed into a catalogue.

I love Martin’s writing. Shopgirl is a gem, a late-20th-century novel of manners. So when I say this is not his best book, I’m criticizing it as a serious work, not some celebrity vanity project. There is a stiff, pedagogical tone to An Object of Beauty, as Martin talks down to an audience that he seems to think needs to have the art spoon-fed….

If the book had given us new art—maybe by the fictional, Banksy-like character called Pilot Mouse—that would have been something fresh, instead of a stunt that makes the novel worse.

One Day
By David Nicholls

A bestseller in the U.K. and here, this breezy, entertaining romance checks in on the nearly-two-decade friendship of Dexter and Emma every year on July 15th, from 1989 to 2007. Same day, different stage in their relationship, as they go from college acquaintances to best friends, then fall out when he becomes an egotistical TV host and she a struggling writer, only to reconnect—you can see where this is going.

Nicholls’ writing is fluid, his characters likable; he creates colorfully fleshed-out scenarios of their changing social scenes, from earnest bed-sit conversations to noisy, drug-fueled restaurants. Those strengths have nothing to do with the same-day structure, though, which gets a little annoying. It feels like a blatant commercial ploy—an author needs a hook—that luckily doesn’t damage the novel.

I can easily see this as a movie-book, a la Harry Potter’s newspapers, because film shapes the novel more that its calendar-bound form. Nicholls, who writes both screenplays and fiction, has built One Day on movie-ready scenes, and director Lone Sherfig (An Education) has already wrapped the film version, with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess (scheduled to arrive this summer).

One Day is not The Great American Stunt Novel—we don’t have that yet—but together these books point in that direction. In a world of sinking sales, gimmicks have become the literary writer’s life raft, and maybe something more.

Caryn James writes the James on ScreenS film and television blog for IndieWire.com and also contributes to other publications, including The New York Times Book Review. She has been a film critic, chief television critic and cultural critic at the Times and an editor at the Times Book Review. She is the author of the novels Glorie and What Caroline Knew, and has appeared as a film commentator on CBS Sunday Morning, Charlie Rose, Today, MSNBC and other programs.

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