BeachBoundBooks
  • Home
    • My Books
  • Blogging About Books
  • Author Interviews
  • Giveaway Linky
  • Book Review/Author Interview Request Form

A Season Without Rain Virtual Tour & eBook Giveaway

6/17/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture

Picture
About the Book

Title:
A Season Without Rain           
Author: Joe Schwartz
Genre: General Fiction
Length: 348 pages
Release Date: November 2013
Imprint: Enigma Press

Summary: Jacob Miller is angry with himself, the world, and God. Life seems so unfair, so cruel, that he can’t imagine why anyone even tries. After having a nervous breakdown, selling his business, filing for bankruptcy, having a baby, and finding out he owes over twenty grand in taxes, he is hardly happy to be alive.

In the span of a year, Jacob will discover three very important things about life. Things can always be worse. There really is a God. And if you wait long enough anything can change.

A Season Without Rain explores that gray area between poverty and middle class life, the struggling underclass for whom there are no advocates. A powerful story told in a modern, everyday voice that will entrench readers in Jacob Miller’s black world of anger, hate, resentment, lies, and violence.

A Season Without Rain is Joe Schwartz’s first novel. His previous short story collections Joe’s Black T-Shirt, The Games Men Play, and The Veiled Prophet of St. Louis have been acclaimed vulgar as Bukowski and visceral as Carver. Joe lives and works in St. Louis happily writing stories exclusively about the Gateway City.


Picture
About the Author: Joe Schwartz

A St. Louis native, I write exclusively about the Gateway City. I prefer the style of fiction deemed transgressive fiction. That is my stories protagonists generally find a solution to their problems through either illicit or illegal means. I personally prefer stories told through a criminal's point-of-view. It is never the crime that fascinates me so much as the motivation to do it and the terrible, almost predictable outcomes to such actions. Just as I have an expectation of writing to be read I believe that it is as important, if not more so, that you as a reader should have the expectation of being entertained as you read. Anything less is such a disappointment.

Life is short. Stories are forever. -Joe

GOODREADS ~ BOOK PAGE ~ FACEBOOK FAN PAGE



Three Reasons to Write
Guest Post by Joe Schwartz

There are probably a million good reasons to write. Could be the next Gone with the Wind is burning inside you or simply a story that you want to preserve for your children i.e., The Shack. To write a novel, something so good that it lives on to become something of a symbol, is a long and winding road. Only time will tell if you did it. In the meantime you should do your best and let it rest. Not everybody will write something great, but rest assured that there is no deeper satisfaction than having written a novel, to have put your hand to the plow and done something equal in accomplishment to single handedly building a home or assembling a race car. This is a task for those with both talent and skill. A book, start to finish, could take years to write up to a lifetime. This is not a something you do casually on weekends in between going to the beach and watching TV sports. It is something that robs you of your sleep without mercy or remorse. But what is the acid test? How can you unequivocally know if you got ‘it’ whatever it is? I offer you the following three points to ponder.

1.      There is only one you.

This is self-evident yet it is the most under rated quality that popular writers fully understand. The trick is to find your niche, that quality of writing that first entertains you as creator and then organically finds an audience. Mark Twain and Stephen King couldn’t be two more different writers. While Twain is a snake charmer with words and Uncle Stevie is doing his damndest to scare the bejesus out you the thing they have in common is that they both have their own, unique writing voice. There are many imitators but there is only one original.

2.      You can speak English.

I didn’t know I was writer until someone finally told me, explained it to me. My theory was anybody could write. You can speak English, so why can’t you write it? The thing is writing is like dancing, or acting, or singing – everybody thinks they can do it.  That is why I subscribe to the theory that a writer without readers is worthless. You must open yourself up to the world that is criticism by the most important, valuable critics a writer can ever have, readers. The greatest novel ever written will perish with its author if he fails to publish it. With a few clicks of a mouse anyone’s work can be in print today. The question is, do you have the guts to do it?

3.      A story can change the world.

Sounds so simple, that it is almost cliché, but it is the truth. Revolutions have begun and wars have ended because writers have dared to put down their thoughts, an explanation of the world as they see it without trying to condone or excuse the conditions. I think immediately of George Orwell, a writer with unmatched vision penning manifestos like Animal Farm and 1984, that still reach into our social consciousness as a guide post warning of what is all too possible when, as Edmund Burke said, “Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.”

When I was a boy my mother used to tell me the bedtime story of Georgie the Monkey, in hindsight a blatant rip-off of Margret and H.A. Rey’s beloved Curious George. Still, it was the best thing my five-year-old mind had ever heard. To this day she laughs that I remember it, but despite its obvious foolishness, she can recall it word for word. The thing is her story lit the fire in me that burns today, to tell a story that will never be forgotten. And isn’t that what every writer wants, not to be a celebrity, but to be remembered always for writing one hell of a story? 


A Season Without Rain
eBook Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Delivered by FeedBurner


    NetworkedBlogs
    Blog:
    Blogging About Books
    Topics:
    Book Reviews, Author Interviews, Book Giveways
     
    Follow my blog

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Picture

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

Like What You See?