Good morning! Another Monday is upon us, which means we might encounter several beasts to contend with, but never fear. The Monday always passes. Cincinnati got a nice snow and sleet storm yesterday, which falls in perfect line with spring. ;) Without further ado, here's today's featured post: Sunspots by Karen S Bell.
Buy Links
Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/Sunspots-ebook/dp/B00ANBR4TQ/
Amazon (Print): http://www.amazon.com/Sunspots-Karen-S-Bell/dp/148230757X/
Blurb
“One can never be, and should never be,
smug about life,” says Aurora Goldberg. An aspiring New
York actress who has never realized her dreams, Aurora Aurora
On one of her temp assignments she meets
Jake Stein, a man who could “charm the skin off a snake” and she decides to
follow her destiny as his wife in Austin ,
Texas Aurora
With the help of friends, family, and
the ghost of Viola Parker (her home's original owner), Aurora
Excerpt:
My passion for
acting surfaced as a young child when my so-called natural talent flung itself
into the world full-blown and raw. Not wanting to attend pre-school one
morning, I laid my arm over my head and “pretended” that my head hurt as I had
seen my mother do many times before. That deceit uncovered a truth made known
by philosophers of the ages, but of which I was certainly unaware. Pretending
to feel and to really feel do not appear differently to the external
world—if you do it right. Aside from being great fun, the stage was an obvious
platform to hone that skill.
As Celeste
Abbott, my alter ego, I spent most of my time as either a receptionist or
data-entry clerk. It was not by choice, because I dreamed of being sought after
by the best directors and to work continuously like Julia Roberts or Nicole
Kidman or have a great stage career like Patti Lupone.
I had several
fits and starts on the roller-coaster ride of acting that kept me hooked and on
the payroll of two temp agencies where I had accumulated so many hours that I
was eligible for health benefits—a situation that pleased my mother but
underlined my failure to get into Actors’ Equity, or make enough money that
AFTRA or SAG allowed me into their health plans. My first paying gig was a
commercial with five other girls that shot all day on location at the Jersey Shore
“Okay,
ladies,” said the director. “Try and pretend it’s not 40 degrees. Look like
it’s summer. I know you’re quite cold in those shorts and tee shirts, so let’s
get this done quickly. Chase each other. Laugh. Throw the ball. Have fun. Okay,
good. You over there, go sit in the parked car.”
“Me?”
“Yes, but can
you do anything about those blue lips?”
There it was.
I was chosen to sit behind the wheel of a convertible and gaze sexily into the
camera for a tight close-up—the money shot. I could taste the possibilities of
fat residual checks or even better—being discovered by some producer who
thought my look “perfect for the lead” in some mega-funded movie, but instead I
caught a chill and high fever that kept me out of temp work for a week. When
the commercial aired, I realized that the only close-up not on the cutting room
floor was my foot sporting the running shoe I had been wearing.
My optimism,
however, could not be thwarted because my real passion was Broadway and it was
the dream that kept my juices flowing. My closest encounter with a stage career
had been a part I landed in an off-off Broadway play downtown. Off-off Broadway
is where any basement or falling down hotel can be a theater and anything can
be a play. But more importantly, off-off Broadway meant there was no real
money, so budgets were tight.
This gig was
in the Meatpacking District in a storefront of what looked like a condemned
building. The windows of the store were blacked out so that the streetlights
wouldn’t interfere with the stage lighting. The audience sat in folding chairs
and the house could hold about 60 souls who weren’t turned off by the lingering
odor of the daytime businesses. The stage was a wooden platform that was long
and narrow and made moving about a bit risky. I was chosen to play the “unnamed
woman,” one of three characters. The other two characters were her “unnamed
lover” and “death.” More performance art than a play, it had one act with one
scene. As the unnamed woman, I wore a mask and gold body paint (that covered my
exposed skin and bright-pink bikini) and sang two songs that had no set melody.
“Hey ho, hey
ho. The setting sun sends swords of gold. Hey ho, hey ho. The light. The light.
Please light my love.” Or some such nonsense was my opening number. My
challenge was to improvise the music every night to a drum that was my sole
accompaniment. One night, I believe I crossed into copyright infringement when
this melody came very close to sounding like the song for the seven dwarfs in
Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the other song sounded
like, The Sound of Music. I was paid a small amount of money that
included cleaning up the stage and backstage afterwards. Unfortunately, the
show closed after one week and ended my brush with stardom.
Review
Tahlia Newland
Awesome Indies
“SUNSPOTS
is a moving, beautifully-written mystery about the devastating
consequences of obsessive love.
Bell’s elegant prose not only describes
the events and scenery of this self destructive love story in riveting detail,
but also skilfully evokes the atmosphere both internal and external. The
structure of the story is very clever. At the beginning of the book, our
empathy is aroused for grieving widow Aurora Goldberg. It appears that she had the
perfect marriage to charming Jake, but as the story progresses, we and Aurora
Popular fiction tends to romanticise
love where one looses themselves in the other, or feels completed by the other,
or feels they cannot live or be happy without the other; Sunspots takes this kind of notion to its extreme to show how
disempowering an obsession with the object of our love actually is. Obsession
not only blinds you, it makes you weak, needy and boring. Your partner is
likely to turn elsewhere to get away from your clinging, especially if you end
up harping on at him that he never gives you any attention anymore. It’s
dangerous to let your whole life revolve around one person, for when they leave
you—by death as it is in this case—you are devastated. As the book progresses
we come to see how much Aurora
Bell brings a metaphysical element to
the story with the addition of Viola
Parker, the ghost of the sister of Aurora Aurora sees
that this pattern of obsessive love and betrayal by Jake—in his previous
incantations—has been repeated in past lifetimes that ended with Aurora
Bell deals with interesting themes here,
that we tend to repeat patterns until we make a conscious effort to change
them, that the past can be changed by
actions in the present, and that when someone ‘saves’ us with love, in a
healthy, balanced relationship we also to some extent ‘save’ them.
Highly recommended to anyone who likes
psychological depth in their romance. I give it 5 stars and a place on the
Awesome Indies list.”
Book Trailer
About the Author
Walking with Elephants was my first novel, although I am not new to writing. I was a
theater critic and celebrity interviewer for a weekly tabloid in Jacksonville , Fl and I earned a Master’s in Mass
Communication from Oklahoma
State University
With my second novel, Sunspots, I
continue to be in awe of the magical and wondrous phenomenon called life. As an
observer and obvious participant in feminine values and approach to our human
challenges, I bring this perspective to my work. Fascinated by the mysteries of
the unseen forces that perhaps play a role in guiding our choices, I search for
answers in the mundane as well as in the cosmic forces that surround us.
Connect
with Karen S. Bell
Email: karen.bell@yahoo.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarenSueBell
Schedule: http://www.cblspromotions.com/2013/03/blogbarrage-sunspots-by-karen-s-bell.html
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