Book of Mercy Finalist in Midwest Book Awards

 Book of Mercy, Censorship, Libraries, Parenting, Publishing Industry, Writing  5 Responses »
May 142012
 

Book of Mercy was a finalist in the 22nd Annual Midwest Book Awards, which were announced on May 9 in Bloomington, MN.

Is this a big deal?

I interviewed Antigone Brown, the main character in Book of Mercy, about her view of this momentous event. She is a mother-to-be who stands up to the book banners in her small North Carolina town, even though she can’t read.

Me: So Antigone how are you feeling about this nomination?

Antigone: They like me. They REALLY like me.

Me: Yeah, it was cool to be nominated. Publishers from 12 Midwestern states submitted 362 entries in 50 categories in this year’s competition.

Antigone: That many? Well, it’s validation. [Lowers voice.] After all, this was an indie (self-published) book.

Me: Why do you need validation?

Antigone: In the fiction world, as a female lead character, everybody is comparing you to either Scarlet O’Hara or Katniss Everdeen.

Me: Really? I had no idea.

Antigone: Yes. I only take on a group of highly influential women removing “undesirable” books from the school library . . .

Me: And don’t forget the pie thrower.

Antigone: How could I? I’m still washing that banana cream out of my clothes. But Scarlet in Gone with the Wind faced down the Union Army, and Katniss in The Hunger Games outmaneuvered mutant killer wasps. Tough competition.

Me: Personally, I hate contests.

Antigone: I’m with you. But we live in a world consumed by contests, from sports to American Idol and the Academy Awards.

Me: Still, I’m sorry I didn’t pit you against hordes of fighting men or an evil empire.

Antigone: Irene (the leader of the censors) was evil enough.

Me: Cheer up. You have a secret library. I doubt Scarlet ever read a book, and Katniss was too busy trying to feed her family.

Antigone: Yes. Bookhenge. Nice name for a library, by the way. But back to all these contests. I’m beginning to wonder what my child will be compared to.

Me: You’re always worrying about that baby.

Antigone: Of course. What’s a parent to do?

Me: You have many agonizing years ahead of you. There will be school recitals and pageants and spelling bees.

Antigone [shudders]: Kids called me a loser because I had trouble reading. I don’t want that for my child. I don’t see why we have to make comparisons at all.

Me: Because if you lose, it is supposed to make you try harder the next time.

Antigone: You mean, in the next book, you’ll try to write a better me?

Me: There is no better you. I will write a different you.

Antigone: Make her skinnier. She’ll like that.

The Midwest Book Awards are sponsored by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association.

________________

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to this blog, make a comment, or check out Book of Mercy. It would make Antigone happy, but please don’t compare her to Scarlet or Katniss. She gets touchy about those folks.

 Posted by at 4:55 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Why Not Start Your Own Library?

 Book of Mercy, Books, Libraries, Maud's House, Reading  2 Responses »
Apr 272012
 

The goal is to build more libraries than Andrew Carnegie. That’s 2,510. They don’t have to be big or built of marble or be guarded by massive stone lions. They just have to have books and people who want to read them.

The Little Free Library movement started in 2010 in Hudson, Wisconsin, with a tiny library that resembled a one-room schoolhouse. It could hold about 20 books and was built in memory of teacher and book lover June A. Bol by her son, Todd Bol. The concept was simple: take a book; leave a book. Grow literacy like a flower garden in your own front yard. Place a bench by your library so on a summer evening a neighbor and his grandchild can stop by, grab a book, and sit down right then and there and read it.

This simple idea took off and now there are Little Free Libraries in more than 40 states and 20 countries. You can get plans for building your own little library at the Little Free Library website and see a diverse collection of tiny bibliothéques. They are works of art and as individual as they come.

No Library Cards, No Fines

I love the idea of sharing books with abandon, of no one keeping records or collecting fines. I search for libraries wherever I go, and I delight when I find them in unsuspecting corners, like an old general store in Vermont or a historic lodge in Montana. Someone cared enough about the summer readers or vacationing hikers to pull together an often well-worn collection.

Back when Rubbertoes, my partner, and I were geocacheing every weekend, we actually started our own lending library in a cache by a Minnesota lake. We called it Maud’s House after my first book and stocked it with copies of said book carefully protected in waterproof bags. Geocacheing operates on the same principle as the Little Free Library: take something and leave something. With GPS in hand, our visitors took a book, enjoyed a pleasant hike around a lovely lake, and left behind anything from Mardi Gras beads to a McDonald’s toy. It was a fair trade. Some of them read the book and brought it back for the next reader, while others maybe passed it on, leaving it in some other cache so it could travel the world (like some kind of ceramic gnome).

In my novel Book of Mercy, my protagonist Antigone Brown created her own library, Bookhenge, in response to the censorship in her community:

While the rest of Mercy chained holiday wreaths to their doors and cursed contrary Christmas tree lights, Bookhenge exploded in a spirit of giving. No one kept track of the books; no one supervised what someone else read; no one mutilated the books they didn’t like or agree with; no one plucked the words they found distasteful from the pages with razor blades. There was something pristine about the library Antigone built, something that shone like a beacon that child after child followed to a new land.

Whether you create your library to foil the censors or just to see the smiles on the faces of the kids in your neighborhood, don’t ever think you are doing a small thing. If you can instill one other person with a love for reading, and that person impacts another person, you could start an avalanche. And we need one. According to Statistic Brain, 42% of college students will never read another book after they graduate.

That’s nearly half the population missing out on love and adventure and zombies. Yes, I’ll take readers who love zombies over no readers at all. So let’s give Andrew a run for his money. Build a library.

___________________

Do you have a Little Free Library? Tell us about it. Where have you found libraries in odd places?

If you enjoyed this post, you might like my other writing: Maud’s House, about what happens when a town loses its art; and Book of Mercy, a funny novel about a serious issue: censorship. 

 Posted by at 12:18 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force: Get Out Your GPS

 Book of Mercy, Books, Reading  125 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

January 31, 2012: Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force has come to an end. Thank you to all who stopped by and chatted with me on this blog and by email. Please visit my blog again. Also, I’d love to have you friend me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. A special congratulations to Anita, the winner of the Book of Mercy Gift Basket. The next time you play Bananagrams think of Antigone.

Calling all Sherlocks, Stephanie Plums, Richard Castles, and all you readers/geocachers/scavenger hunters.

It is time for the Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force—the most fun you’ll have on a scavenger hunt all year.

We call it get loaded because we’re going to load up your ereaders with FREE eBooks. And some of you are going to score loads of prizes as well—special gift baskets by the five participating authors and a new Kindle.

Eager to get on the trail?

Get out your GPS (Great Powers of Scavenging) and put in these coordinates:

Why am I doing this tour? Because I want you to meet: Antigone Brown, a women who can’t read and is pregnant with her first child; Irene Crump, president of the Mercy Study Club and determined to rid the town of Mercy of “undesirable” books; and Ryder, a runaway who steals right into Antigone’s heart (and yours, too, I bet).

Basically, it all boils down to a literary smackdown between Antigone and Irene. Who will win? Will censorship prevail in Mercy or will Antigone be able to save the books she can’t read? There’s a secret library involved, a brawl (with pies), hubcap art, boxing deer, and more.

How do you get this must-read? Leave a comment on my blog, during this tour, and I’ll send you a FREE eBook of Book of Mercy. Be sure to leave your email address and what type of eBook you’d like (PDF, Kindle, ePUB format).

Rules of the game:

  • Leave comments on every site of the tour. Use your GPS to hop around the tour. Try to hit every author site. Leave a comment at every site. Each comment earns you a free eBook from that site’s owner AND an entry into the site’s giveaway AND an entry into (drum roll please) the Big Golden Cache at the end: a FREE KINDLE!
  • Find your clues. After you comment, hop over to the Indie Book Collective and get clues for hidden info. While you’re there, sign up for the IBC newsletter and earn 5 MORE ENTRIES for that Kindle.
  • Grab your GPS and start hunting down info.
  • Collect all the info and e-mail your answers at the end of the tour to IBC to earn EXTRA entries for the Kindle drawing.
  • Cheating is allowed. Keep this on the down low, but I will be giving a few hints on Twitter. Follow me at @sherryroberts7 and get some insider info on this super-scavenger hunt.

Prizes:

  • Books, books, books. All of the eBook variety. Collect a FREE eBook at every author’s site. That means you’re hunting for five days, but it’s worth it. A comment on this site earns you an eBook copy of Book of Mercy.
  • Giveaways. Leave a comment at each author’s site and get entered into that author’s special giveaway. What’s in my gift basket? A signed paperback copy of Book of Mercy for your personal library. A dozen of the best cookies on the planet courtesy of Two Smart Cookies (because you won’t be able to put down Book of Mercy and will need nourishment) and a Bananagrams game (in honor of my dyslexic heroine, Antigone, who sees letters mixed up all the time and has to make sense of them). I have to limit this giveaway winner to the U.S. #sorry.
  • Free Kindle. For each comment you leave on my site, you will get one entry into the drawing for the Big Golden Cache at the end: a FREE KINDLE! For every piece of information that you scavenge from the five authors’ sites and take back to the IBC site, you get a Kindle giveaway entry. Sign up for the IBC newsletter and get 5 more entries.

So stuff that ballot box, baby. Scavenge like crazy. Don’t miss a day or a site.

Give a Big Cyber Hug to My Sponsors

Go visit my wonderful sponsors’ sites and leave a comment. These folks do a tremendous service for the reading community. Plus they have interesting stuff to say about books. Bookmark these sites; subscribe to them. Please.

SmartLit

Journey of a Bookseller

Defrosting Cold Cases

Purple Jelly Bean Chair Reviews

Reading Is My Cheap Addiction

A Word about My Tour Mates: Amazing Paranormal Reads

Go back to Day Three: Chelsea Fine’s YA paranormal romance, Anew, presents a conundrum I can honestly say I have never encountered in my long reading life. This is a fresh take on the love triangle, and you’ll find yourself wishing there was a way for everyone—brothers Tristan and Gabriel and lovely Scarlet—to live happily ever after. But first they have to break not one, but three curses. A promising start to the Archers of Avalon series. Bring us more, Chelsea. What are you doing on this tour? You need to be writing.

Get ready for Day Five: Liz Schulte is a talented writer who has woven an intricate plot with an amazingly seductive bad boy (don’t the vulnerable ones get us every time). In Secrets, she alternates first-person chapters between photographer Olivia and mysterious Holden. The world has plans for Olivia. Can she keep from falling into the abyss? Side note: The dream sequences in this book are amazing.

That’s it. So get going. Comment. Scavenge. Cheat all you want. Get those prizes. Get loaded.

Remember: Leave a comment on my blog, during this tour, and I’ll send you a FREE copy of Book of Mercy. Be sure to leave your email address and what type of eBook you’d like (PDF, Kindle, ePUB format). Here’s the question I’d like you to answer: What’s your favorite banned book and why?

 Posted by at 3:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour

 Book Marketing, Book of Mercy, Censorship, Creativity, Maud's House, Publishing Industry  2 Responses »
Jan 232012
 

This book tour I am going in my pajamas.

I am participating in the Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force sponsored by the Indie Book Collective this week, and I hope to get more mileage while putting on fewer miles. This is the new paradigm in publishing.

You see, in my last book tour (back in the ’90s when few people were talking about virtual anything much less a virtual book tour), I traveled for ten days from Los Angeles to Vermont to promote my book, Maud’s House. I talked to packed houses and empty ones; one horrendous thunderstorm washed away all my potential readers in Chicago.

Maud’s House is the story of a Vermont artist who loses and regains her creativity. As a child prodigy, Maud drew on the walls of her house, every square inch. As an adult, she is has lost her muse, drinks too much Rolling Rock, and seems to only be able to draw postcards featuring cows.

The neat thing about any book tour, virtual or physical, is meeting readers and learning about their lives. On the Maud’s House tour, I met readers who cracked me up and who touched me with their stories.

One woman admitted that she had begun writing again after reading my book: “I was raised in a strict home where we weren’t allowed to dance or paint or write. I’m in my fifties and starting my first journal.”

Another woman said she had a brother who, like Maud, drew on the walls. He was always getting in trouble with their mother. In the end, he became a successful artist. One day, the mother discovered one of her son’s early drawings secreted way on a wall inside a closet. She seriously considered cutting that part of the wall out and having it framed.

I hope to meet more great readers on this tour. Come back to this blog on Thursday, January 26, my featured day of the tour, and let’s talk. I am promoting my new novel, Book of Mercy, this time. It’s a funny novel about a serious issue (censorship), so we’ll have lots to discuss.

See you Thursday. I’ll be in my PJs, so don’t dress up on my account.

________________________________

What’s on your mind? I’m listening. Maud’s House is about pursuing your creativity no matter where it takes you: to the painting studio, the kitchen, the garden, the antique car in your garage. What do you take to the level of an art? Leave a comment below.

 Posted by at 2:24 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

12 Shameless Reasons to Shop the Indie Book Blowout

 Book of Mercy, Books, Christmas, Holidays, Kindle, On Writing  22 Responses »
Dec 122011
 

This time of year you are inundated with promotions—every single one of them shameless. I’d like to keep Christmas pristine just as much as the next guy, but what’s an indie author to do? I’ve got birds to feed, kids who need more electronics, and an 81-year-old father expecting something for Christmas.

We’re all—both indie and traditional publishers—fighting for your attention. Hey, you out there in cyberland, yes you, look at me, look at my book (major waving and jumping around). Put down that L.L. Bean catalog and come to the Twelve Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout.

The Blowout is like that annual book sale you wouldn’t miss for the world, the one held at your church or your local library. Every year you go, slowly making your way down aisles between tables crammed with books. Your neck gets a crick in it from turning at just the right angle to read book titles on old moldy spines. The room smells of books—and excitement. What treasure will you find this year?

The Twelve Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout is full of treasures. Here are twelve shameless reasons why you should explore it:

  1. The most shameless of the shameless: my new novel, Book of Mercy, is there. Where else will you get a serious topic—censorship—all wrapped up in a funny novel? (There’s pie throwing, a wife who binge drives, a navigationally challenged husband, a villain who wears Prada, hubcap art, and a bad guy who likes Richard Nixon masks.) FOR JUST 99 CENTS. The first three chapters alone are worth that. And once it’s on your Kindle, it’s easy to get to, unlike some partridges in pear trees.
  2. Turtles (not to be confused with turtle doves) are fearful things. They duck back into their shells at the slightest provocation. At the Blowout, you can work on facing your own fears. You WILL find the perfect book for Uncle Harvey or Aunt Rose. There are more than 200 from which to choose—and every book is only 99 cents.
  3. Looking for something foreign? I don’t think there are any books in French or about hens. But you should examine every one, just to make sure.
  4. If you hadn’t read this far, you wouldn’t know that the famous holiday tune actually sings of “colly birds” on the fourth day, not “calling birds.” What’s a colly? It’s a blackbird. In England, a coal mine is called a colliery, and colly refers to something being black like coal. Isn’t it great to learn new stuff? No doubt you will access all kinds of new information in your Blowout books.
  5. I cannot promise you that you will receive five gold rings this Christmas. However, if you shop at the Blowout, you could win a new Kindle. Buy a book and get entered into the giveaway. What will you do with another Kindle? Keep it for yourself and give your old one to your kid.
  6. Don’t lay a goose egg this Christmas. You can give Blowout eBooks to friends and family who don’t even own Kindles. They can download a free Kindle app and read into the wee hours of the morning on their computer, iPad, or smartphone.
  7. Duckling or swan? Shopping at the Blowout will bring out your inner beauty. Because that’s what reading and books do. They grow our spirit, make us laugh, and feed our dreams.
  8. If you’re a maid who has a lot more milking to do before the sun sets and can’t face the mall, simply turn on your computer and head to the Blowout. You can satisfy any reading appetite without leaving your desk: scary horror stuff, fun romances, intriguing mysteries, smart contemporary fiction, mind-blowing paranormal tales, and in-your-face nonfiction (it’s all true, baby). Every book is 99 cents, which fits perfectly into a milkmaid’s budget.
  9. Remember the Black Friday riots: people grabbing toys out of other people’s carts; shoppers shoving, pushing, and pepper spraying? At the Blowout, we are all about decorum. You can act like a lady or a gentleman—and still stuff your stocking to overflowing with Kindle books. Go ahead, do your happy dance now.
  10. Every day of this special sales event, the Blowout will be giving away Amazon gift cards to winners randomly selected from the Indie Book Blowout subscriber database. That ought to set your lords to leaping. Enter the giveaway with each purchase. That’s extra smackeroos to supplement your Christmas budget (or to pack your Kindle with more Blowout deals).
  11. Sorry, there is no music being sold in this holiday promotion. You will have to get your pipers piping elsewhere.
  12. Drum roll, please. This wouldn’t be a shameless list if I didn’t mention my book again. Book of Mercy: a funny novel about a serious issue—censorship. Don’t fall for a book of similar title by some guy named Cohen; that’s poetry. I don’t write poetry, and I don’t sing. But I have always wanted someone to dance me to the end of love.

So let’s get in the shopping, er, holiday spirit. Go to the Twelve Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout NOW and begin wandering our virtual aisles. The Blowout only lasts from December 12-24, 2011. It is sponsored by the Indie Book Collective, a group of authors who believe readers rock.

Happy holidays and enjoy your books.

_____________________________________

MORE! Check out these blogs by other Indie Book Blowout authors:

Rachel Thompson: Indie Book Blowout Begins!

J. Sterling: Being an Indie Author

Shannon Muir: The 12 Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout

Abbey MacInnis: Twelve Days of Christmas Event

Ron Vitale: The 12 Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout

JC Andrijeski: 12 Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout (with free Kindle and Kindle Fire!)

C.K. Bryant: 12 Days of Christams: Indie Book Blowout!

 Posted by at 7:14 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Winner of the Book of Mercy Giveaway

 Book of Mercy  No Responses »
Oct 032011
 

Congratulations to, Wren Andre, the winner of the Book of Mercy Giveaway! I am so excited for her. She won the following:

    • An I Read Banned Books tote bag
    • $25 Amazon.com gift card
    • Plus a surprise item: A signed copy of my new novel, Book of Mercy

I also want to thank all of you who participated in the Book of Mercy Giveaway. It is my dearest wish to communicate with as many readers as I can. Isn’t that half the fun of doing this crazy writing stuff—to make contact, to find out what we have in common, to laugh together?

So, happy reading, everyone!

 Posted by at 8:55 am  Tagged with: , ,

Be Vigilant; Your Books Could Be Next

 Book of Mercy, Books, Censorship, Reading  2 Responses »
Sep 262011
 

I am not a conspiracy nut. I don’t believe I am being watched ALL the time, and I try not to think about what they put in our food. But I am pretty sure that books disappear from the shelves, unless we say something. People never believe you when you maintain that censorship could and does happen. “Book banning here? This is America,” they scoff.

Maybe actual bans are rare in the United States, but it is not for lack of trying. On average, there are about 500 book challenges a year in American libraries, according to the American Library Association. This number goes up or down depending on the political climate and what side of the bed the censors get up on.

That’s why we need Banned Books Week, an annual event sponsored by a number of book-loving organizations including the ALA to a) celebrate the freedom to read, and b) draw attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Banned Books Week is always held during the last week in September, when kids are just starting to hit the books again and parents have more time to read. Here are a few examples of books challenged in 2010-2011 and why:

  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: A parent claimed that it gave her 11-year-old daughter nightmares and could numb other children to the effects of violence.
  • What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Boys: A Guide for Parents and Sons: Banned in 21 schools in Texas after a parent complained. It contains definitions of rape, incest, sexual assault, and intercourse.
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Challenged in Republic, MO, schools because it is “soft pornography” and “glorifies drinking, cursing, and premarital sex.”

I have followed the topic of censorship for years as I researched my own novel Book of Mercy. Most censors object to books because of sex, violence, swearing, and “to protect children.” But other times, their reasons are just silly. I used actual challenged books and the actual reasons for their challenges as part of the story in Book of Mercy. (Yes, sometimes you can’t make up this stuff.) Here’s an excerpt in which Study Club President Irene Crump identifies books that should be banned in Mercy.

“The Stupids Step Out,” Irene said. “Describes families in a derogatory manner and might encourage children to disobey their parents.”

Arabella huffed in disgust. “That’s an absurd name for a family, fictional or otherwise. What if Tolstoy had called her Anna Idiot instead of Anna Karenina?”

Arabella got no argument from Irene, who constantly fought the battle for eloquent language with her own children. She thought “suck” should be something you did with a straw, not a description of your homework. . . . 

Irene went on to another book. “A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them . . .”

Julie cleared her throat and attempted a half-hearted smile. “Irene, surely when you were a child, you too hated doing the dishes.”

Irene peered over her glasses at Julie. “We had a maid for that. Even so, there is never an excuse to take a hammer to the Wedgewood.”

America is a free society. Those of us who abhor censorship have to tolerate those who enjoy it, and vice versa. That’s how we know we are free. We have this system of checks and balances. But it is never safe to fall asleep at the wheel.

So be vigilant. Rock Banned Books Week, wear an “I Read Banned Books” button, read something someone else considers salacious. Check out the Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop—you could win books, swag, or gift card moolah. Go to the ALA’s website and find out more about the Banned Books Week Virtual Read-out.

Whatever you do, just don’t sit there. Give books a chance.

 Posted by at 9:35 am  Tagged with: , , ,

“Mom, They’re Banning Books!”

 Book of Mercy, Books, Censorship, Parenting, Reading  2 Responses »
Sep 222011
 

I had been stumbling around in the plot of a book I was writing for some time. I knew the protagonist couldn’t read and that books were disappearing. I was going for some kind of Alice Hoffman magical realism thing. Perhaps with a little humor since my book’s working title was “Too Dark to Read,” after the Groucho Marx quote: “Outside a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” But then in 1996, my daughter came through the door, crying, “Mom, they’re banning books!”

My daughter was a junior and an IB student in a North Carolina high school. She had a mean forehand and a voracious love for books, including the book in question, The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes. Fuentes is recognized as one of the most influential writers in Latin America. In fact, in 2006, he received the Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech and Expression. Ironic, I know.

My first response was to sit down, read the book, and discuss it with my daughter. It is the story of celebrated American writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce, who mysteriously disapeared in Mexico during its civil war. Fuentes imagines the fate of Bierce among Pancho Villa’s troops in a tale that examines “the borders between men and women, dreams and reality, Mexico and the U.S,” as Publishers Weekly put it.

What the censors in our town (parents of one of the students) objected to were explicit scenes between a young Mexican revolutionary and the American teacher, who falls in love with him. I had no problem with my 17-year-old daughter reading those scenes. But then I’ve never denied my daughter a book she wanted to read.

After an intense public meeting and a review by committee, The Old Gringo eventually was returned to the shelf and the IB curriculum. But in the process, my daughter’s English teacher, a favorite of many of the kids, decided to move on, perhaps to a place where teachers didn’t receive hate mail.

This incident had a huge impact on the direction of my book. Book banning in fictitious Mercy, North Carolina, became the conflict, and Antigone Brown, the woman who fights the censors, ponders the same questions I had as I wrote letters in protest of the removal of The Old Gringo.

All too often, censorship is a parental issue. As Antigone says in Book of Mercy, “I want to protect my child from the world. But I also want to protect the world for my child.”

What I learned in writing this book and in raising my daughter is that books can never be allowed to disappear from the shelves without a squeak. We must say something; explode the discussion in letters, e-mails, tweets, and public meetings. We must never let censorship dissolve into the dark.

According to the American Library Association, on average about five hundred books are challenged every year in the United States—and those are just the ones we know about. Some would say this is horrible. But I think if we didn’t have a way to challenge the actions of others, we wouldn’t be truly free.

So I accept that book challenges are necessary, but I also am happy when they fail.

Book of Mercy, a story about a woman who faces her greatest fear to save a town’s books, is available in paperback and on Kindle. Read more about Book of Mercy or check out an excerpt.

 Posted by at 7:25 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Don’t You Love Underdogs?

 Book of Mercy, Books, Censorship  1 Response »
Sep 112011
 

I love underdogs.

I like to read about them, and I like to write about them. I rooted for David and not Goliath (please no hate mail from giant lovers), cheered on Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she took on each week’s Big Bad, and now there is a Catholic school kid who identifies herself by the avatar name “Nekocha” who has started an unofficial library of banned books that she runs out of her school locker.

When her school put several classics such as Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, and Paradise Lost on the banned list, she decided to bring her personal copy of Catcher to school. She was surprised when another student asked to borrow it. And thus, Nekocha’s secret library was born. Soon her locker was overflowing with banned books, so she appropriated the empty locker next to hers in which to house her collection.

Even though she is violating school policy, Nekocha believes it is worth it. She says, “Before I started [the library], almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but they go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I’m doing a good thing, right?”

This story first appeared back in 2006 on the Web in a question posed at Yahoo! Answers. No one really knows if it is true. Some claim it is a hoax, doubting that anyone can get 62 books in a school locker.

But I really don’t care if it’s true or not. Nekocha’s story is close to my heart because Antigone Brown, the star of my novel Book of Mercy, also starts a secret library and stands up to the powers that be for the sake of banned books.

People like Nekocha and Antigone Brown are ordinary folks, who push aside their fears and do something extraordinary. Perhaps I am attracted to them because I have a lot of fears of my own, like shooting rapids and meeting up with mosquitoes. Perhaps I hope that I have the courage to stand up when the time comes. And maybe I am not alone, maybe that is the reason the concept of Nekocha was created or, if she is real, she stepped forward.

Whether you’re imagined or not, for now, all my support goes out to you, Nekocha. You’re my hero, kid.

Book of Mercy, a story about a woman who faces her greatest fear to save a town’s books, is available in paperback and on Kindle. Read more about Book of Mercy or check out an excerpt.

 Posted by at 9:39 am

Book of Mercy Giveaway

 Book of Mercy  No Responses »
Sep 012011
 

Do You Read Banned Books?

This giveaway has ended, but please do complete the form below to be added to Sherry’s notification list. She’ll keep you updated on other giveaways, events, and publishing milestones.

I told Antigone Brown of Book of Mercy that I was doing a giveaway to launch my book and to promote awareness of banned books. “Don’t give away a book,” she said. “Books are such trouble.” But then the dyslexic Antigone would say that since words are like circus performers—jumping around on the page for her all the time. Still, she is the hero of my book and I like her a lot, so I gave in.

Instead, to give a send off to Book of Mercy, a novel full of funny characters trying to get a handle on a serious subject (book banning), I am giving away an “I read banned books” tote bag. Perfect for lugging around your Kindle, Nook, or books plus a sandwich, hairbrush, sunblock, your phone, and a small animal. BUT that’s not all. I also will be giving away a $25.00 Amazon.com gift card.

Banned Books Week is organized by the American Library Association. The ALA is NOT endorsing this giveaway. I just admire this organization’s great work. It collects and compiles information on challenges to books in the United States. Check it out here.

Banned Books Week 2011 runs from September 24 to October 1. So this promotion will end at 11 p.m. CST on October 1, 2011. There will be one winner. On October 2, I’ll announce the winner, contact you for your snail mail address, and send your tote bag and gift card.

Want to win? Of course you do! Here’s how to enter: Simply complete the form below to be on Sherry’s notification list.


Enter the Book of Mercy Giveaway
Email:  
First Name:  
Last Name:  
Submitting this form places you on Sherry’s rarely used notification list. We do not share email addresses, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

 

Voila! You’ve entered!

The winner will be selected at random from among the active members of Sherry’s notification list who joined the list between September 1, 2011 and October 1, 2011.

Want an extra chance to win? Like the Sherry Roberts Facebook page in addition to signing up for the notification list, and we’ll put your name in the hopper twice.

On Facebook and Twitter, I talk about books, writing, editing, publishing, parenting, the world in general. And I plan more giveaways in the future. So keep in touch.

Follow @sherryroberts7 on Twitter

Good luck and support reading in any way you can. Book of Mercy will be available in paperback and ebook by mid-September. We’ll keep you posted on release dates.

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