Monthly Archives: October 2014

Showcasing Willa’s Journey Home

I don’t do a lot of promos here. I read books. I give my opinions on those books. I don’t generally see it as my job to help authors sell those books.

But Willa’s Journey Home is something else altogether. It’s more than just a book. It’s an opportunity. It’s part of something bigger than itself and a chance to help those endeavouring to be bastions of hope to those in need. If you’ll take a few minutes to watch the following video you’ll see that too.

From the Website:
Willa’s Journey Home, an illustrated children’s book, tells a story of hope on the difficult path traveled by homeless women who find their way to Shalom House.

Willa is a little bird who never learned to fly and so never had a safe nest of her own. Losing her way, she wanders alone in a big and sometimes scary forest. With only her hope of finding a real home, her journey leads her to a special tree where other birds help her take flight and find her very own home.

In sharing our story of hope you can be a part of changing lives by helping us educate and raise awareness about the issues of homelessness. Willa’s Journey Home will also generate revenues for Shalom House, supporting holistic programming for the homeless women we serve.

At Shalom House, we give hope to homeless women through innovative programs and supportive services designed to help them stabilize and rebuild their lives.

It’s important for us to give a voice to Shalom House women, who so often aren’t heard. In telling Willa’s journey, we discovered it isn’t easy to share those stories with children in a way that is relatable, impactful and not too scary. When asked to read a book about homelessness to a group of younger children, we couldn’t find any stories. So we wrote one ourselves.

Children have a great capacity for understanding and caring. Willa’s Journey Home fosters that understanding and early social awareness, inspiring a new generation to share the gift of hope and dynamic action with others.

Reading Willa’s Journey Home to the kids in your life – your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, students, Sunday school class, youth group – and talking to them about the story teaches kids about homelessness, showing them that no matter what age, they can make a difference.

Willa’s Journey Home can be shared with all ages. Her story will cultivate meaningful discussions between children and adults about homelessness.

I first became aware of Willa’s story through Jane Miles, whose mixed media art brings life to little Willa and her story. Jane is possibly the most open, genuine person I have ever had the pleasure to meet and call a friend. Her art is just as clear-sighted as her personality and, through many an afternoon chats, I’ve been thrilled to watch her pride and confidence in this project grow.

I’m also honoured to have the chance to help, even in this small way, bring it to peoples’ attention. Willa’s Journey Home is not just a pretty book. It’s a beautiful endeavour, with beautiful ambition, brought to fruition by many a beautiful hearts. If you’re able, please consider being one of them and making a donation to the Indiegogo campaign. I’ve made mine. Will you?

About Shalom House
Shalom House clients are homeless women, ages 18 and older, many of whom are chronically homeless and suffering with mental illness and/or chemical dependence.

Mission Statement – Shalom House gives hope to homeless women through innovative programs and supportive services designed to stabilize and rebuild lives.

Emergency Shelter – The only 24-hour, full service residential program for chronically homeless women with mental illness and chemical dependency in the City of St. Louis; 25 beds, 90-day program.

Transitional Housing Program – Provides semi-independent rehabilitation housing program for homeless women with a serious and persistent mental illness and/or chemical dependence. The program is certified by the Missouri Department of Mental Health; 12 beds, 24-month program, aftercare program.

Permanent Supportive Housing – Provides clients with permanent housing in addition to intensive in-home supportive services; 30 scattered site apartments (private residences with landlords).

Supportive services – Individual and group counseling, occupational therapy, life skills training, health and case management, mental health programming, substance abuse counseling, recovery services, resource and referral, coordination of care, spiritual programs, Butterfly graduate program, Furnishing Hope (furnishing client and graduate apartments).

Book Review of Dark Moon Rising (Stella Brock, #1), by Ashley Dunson

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I downloaded a copy of Ashley Dunson’s Dark Moon Rising from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Stella Brock hunts the things that go bump in the night. It isn’t a glamorous job, but it keeps the lights on…usually. Now, the hunter has become the hunted and the source of all childhood terror is hot on her trail. She’ll need the help of a sexy elf and an arrogant jaguar shifter to avoid being caught by one of the most notorious monsters of all. If only she could control darkness beginning to rise within herself.

Review:
Wow, I got so much more than I bargained for with this one. I really enjoyed it. Stella was a great lead character, who managed to be tough without being unfeeling. She also successfully walked that tenuous line between being pleasantly, sarcastically irreverent and being suicidally confrontational. Dark Moon Rising is a fun read and I’d be happy with it for that alone, but it’s not flawless.

While I enjoyed the book and the events of the book, there didn’t seem to be any overarching plot beyond, here are Stella and her friends and these are the things they do in response to a series of seemingly random stimuli. Again, it’s fun but it felt anchorless. There was no single challenge Stella and her cohort needed to overcome or identifiable point in which their adventure could be seen to have been complete. I don’t mean it’s a cliffhanger, it’s just (I think) part of one series-wide plot instead of having its own. The result is that the ending felt sudden, even if it wasn’t.

It’s also one of those books in which every powerful paranormal male all but falls at Stella’s feet, despite her attempts to dissuade them. Now, unlike a lot of other such books, there is a reason for that here and it is an integral part of the story. But it still started to feel redundant after a while.

Lastly, the book could do with a little more editing. It was odd, I noticed very few misspelled or misused words. (There were some, but not a ton.) But every few pages a word just seemed to be missing. Here’s an example: “Do have any idea how that fascinates us?” Obviously, that’s supposed to be, Do YOU have any idea how that fascinates us? More often than not it was a ‘to’ or an ‘a’ missing though, small words that don’t change the meaning or context of a sentence but cause the reader to stutter over an otherwise smooth sentence.

So, in the end, if you’re looking for a little fluff to pass an evening with and you’re willing to overlook a few flaws, this is worth picking up.

Book Review of Finding Release (Wild R Farm, #1), by Silvia Violet

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I bought a copy of Silvia Violet‘s Finding Release.

Description from Goodreads:
Coleman Wilder is a half-breed werewolf. Some days the tension between his human side and his werewolf instincts threaten to tear him apart. But the challenge of running a horse farm as a gay man in a conservative Tennessee town keeps him focused until he meets horse shifter, Jonah Marks.

Jonah’s family insists that shifting is sinful, but Jonah longs to let his stallion run free. Desperate to escape his family’s judgment, he asks Cole, his secret crush, for a job. Cole turns him down, scared his desire for Jonah will make him lose control. When Jonah’s brother threatens his life, Cole struggles to save him and give them both a second chance at the life they’ve always wanted.

Review:
I love me some m/m shifters. I do. I was even intrigued by the idea of a horse shifter (though I did wonder were all that extra mass would come from). But the truth is that this book just didn’t live up to its potential.

Scroll up. Read the book’s description. Add in some serious insta-lust/love and a lot of inappropriately timed and out of nowhere sex, then read the description 50 more times. There, you’ve just read the book. It’s so repetitive that I can’t think of anything not in the description that was added in the ~200 of the story. It was just the same arguments, internal thoughts and mushy, lovey-dovey drivel over and over and over again. It was also incredibly predictable and all the challenges were overcome easily.

The writing itself was fine, but there was no world-building, no character development, no shades of grey to those characters, no growth of a relationship, no depth to the plot, no twists, no turns, no unexpected events, no finesse in the story, and no doubt from page 1 that everyone would have their awkwardly arranged, anything but naturally occurring happy ending. No, this one was not a winner for me.