Uncategorized | The Blog Also Rises

Second Novel: winner of Kindle scout selection!

I am delighted to announce that my second novel, The Rage of Plum Blossoms, just won the Kindle Scout selection for publication by Kindle Press. Thank you to all of those who voted, thereby helping call attention of the Kindle Scouts to the book. I truly can’t thank you enough for your interest and kind attention. Look for it on Kindle and Amazon in October (we estimate). love, Christine

Attorney Quinn Jones is in over her head. Her husband, Jordan Chang, Annapolis grad and superstar businessman, has been found dead outside their Greenwich Village brownstone. He’s wearing clothes that aren’t his, and was last seen at a place he never went while consorting with people he shouldn’t—and he’s vastly richer than he ought to be. Since NYPD has labeled Jordan’s death a suicide, Quinn is on her own to uncover the truth. Courtrooms, Quinn knows. Chanel No. 5, horses, frizzy hair, and martial arts, she knows. Murder, she doesn’t know but she’s learning fast in order to stay alive. With a few clues to work with, including a photo of Jordan with a stunning unknown Asian woman and a copy of a 1986 check payable to Jordan for twelve million dollars, Quinn stalks the back streets of Chinatown, haunted by the need to know what happened that day and why.

Sincerest thanks! Christine

Winner of the Key West contest to write at the Key West Home

A few posts ago, I noted the contest for the opportunity to write in Hemingway’s Key West Home. Well we have a winner. See below link.

And PLEASE COMMENT ON THE TRIVIA POST. Two Hemingway Cookbooks are at stake! Try to win it.

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) – An Irish author has won a 10-day writing stint in Ernest Hemingway’s former Key West study in Florida

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/26/irish-author-wins-time-in-hemingway-studio-in-key-/

EH 8124P Ernest Hemingway fishing, Key West, 1928. Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. — EH 8124P Ernest Hemingway fishing, Key West, 1928.
Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Give away of my first book through GoodReads

To all readers! There is a give away of 10 copies of my first book (Tell Me When It Hurts) on GoodReads. The main character is a Hemingway aficionado so you may enjoy the novel–a romantic suspense–for that reason as well as for the book itself.

Try this link to “apply.” Hope you will. The book is listed on Amazon if you want to see reviews. Good luck! Best, Christine

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/187182

May I ask for your help with my Kindle Scout Nomination?

The below book is the one I hopped over to work on my book called Hemingway’s Daughter. I love it though and it is featured on Kindle scout. If you are able, could you please nominate it. Then Hemingway’s Daughter will come out sooner. THANK YOU!

Hello my friends and readers:

My second book, The Rage of Plum Blossoms, is being submitted to Kindle Scout for possible selection for publication by their private publisher. You don’t have to have read it as it is not yet published (5000 words are displayed though) but it does need your support to be noticed by the Kindle Scout team. A quick summation:

Attorney Quinn Jones is in over her head. Her husband, Jordan Chang, Annapolis grad and superstar businessman, has been found dead outside their Greenwich Village brownstone. He’s wearing clothes that aren’t his, and was last seen at a place he never went, while consorting with people he shouldn’t. Since NYPD has labeled Jordan’s death a suicide, Quinn is on her own to uncover the truth. Courtrooms, Quinn knows. Chanel No. 5, horses, frizzy hair, and martial arts, she knows. Murder, she doesn’t know but she’s learning fast in order to stay alive. With a few clues to work with, including a photo of Jordan with a stunning unknown Asian woman and a copy of a 1986 check payable to Jordan for twelve million dollars, Quinn stalks the back streets of Chinatown, haunted by the need to know what happened that day and why. And then there’s the daughter Jordan forgot to mention.

May I trouble you to nominate my book for review by the Kindle board for consideration? I would appreciate it greatly.

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3W06FFVKSJ4LG

With warmest and sincerest thanks, Christine

Random Hemingway News

News in the Hemingway World

1. The 2016 winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award is a young woman name Ottessa Moshfegh. Ms Moshfegh was raised in Newton, MA is being honored for her first novel, “Eileen.” Patrick Hemingway, the son of Ernest Hemingway, presented the award on April 10^th in Boston. A $25,000 prize was also awarded to the winner.

Patrick Hemingway 2013 at Hemingway Collection

2. The Movie “Genius” is coming out with Colin Firth as Hemingway’s Editor Max Perkins. So far the feedback is mixed. The previewers were concerned that the movie lacked passion. If that is the case, I am sorry to hear it. The Perkins/Hemingway relationship is peripheral in the movie. The focus is on Max Perkins’ relationship with Tom Wolfe played by Jude Law. The movie is based on A. Scott Berg’s biography of Perkins.

3. Caterpillar, the maker of tractors and construction equipment, has donated $500,000 to preserve Hemingway’s home in Cuba. The donation was made for the restoration and preservation of documents and artifacts from the home of writer Ernest Hemingway. It will also be used for the construction of the workshop building which will house a laboratory with archived storage facilities near the Hemingway Museum in Havana. Today, the house turned museum preserves a collection of personal objects and documents including books, hunting trophies, guns, letters, photos, a typewriter on which he tended to write standing up, and the yacht Lel Pilar on which he went fishing and sailed around the Caribbean.

Hemingway’s Summer Days: Lake Walloon

WALLOON LAKE, MI — Childhood summers spent fishing and swimming in a pristine Northern Michigan lake would later imbue Ernest Hemingway’s “The Last Good Country.”

The newly opened Hotel Walloon is borrowing that reference for the name of an upcoming weekend devoted to celebrating the literary giant’s Michigan connection: “Walloon Lake: The Last Good Country, an Ernest Hemingway Occasion.”

Photos of Hemingway’s retreat on Lake Walloon in Northern Michigan. He and Hadley honeymooned there as well.

Biopic: Papa: Hemingway in Cuba (Movie)

A trailer has been unveiled for the Papa: Hemingway in Cuba movie. This biopic features the story of a friendship shared between Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and Ed Myers, a journalist.

I just viewed the trailer and it looks good to me. It echoes Hemingway’s relationship with his great friend, Aaron Hotchner, although this relationship started later in life. Hemingway, for all of his flaws, often was welcoming to young writers and willing to share his personal time and experiences generously.

Please take a look if you have time. Best, Christine

Valerie Danby-Smith Hemingway: Odd happenings

Hemingway often took younger women under his wing and wanted them around. Sometimes it was intellectually stimulating. Sometimes there was an attraction. Sometimes they amused him. Sometimes he just liked them. He had many women as friends: Marlene Dietrich, Slim Hawkes, Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall. He was infatuated with many: Adriana Ivancich is of great note.

Valerie Danby-Smith was initially providing secretarial services to Hemingway. She was part of the entourage of his trip to Spain in 1959 and by the end of the trip, Hemingway wanted her to continue on. Was he romantically attracted? Probably. Valerie asserts that he begged her to continue on to Cuba as he needed her with him. She was 19 at the time; he was 59.. I also think he simply liked her cheerful ways and good nature.

She has written a book about her time with him and is now leading tours in Paris to the old Hemingway haunts. .

Did I mention that she married Hemingway’s son, Gregory? Yes, she did. They met through the Hemingway connection and had four children together. and while their marriage ended in divorce, she appears to have maintained a good relationship with Gregory until his death. She wrote “Running with the Bulls” about her time with Hemingway.

Hemingway’s Letters: Just a few more comments

‘‘It’s such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you’ve done something.’ Cambridge’s new collection of correspondence finds a writer generous to all, at the top of his game.

I have had two other posts on the letters so don’t want to over do it. Still, I can’t overemphasize the value in reading a bit about it to know Hemingway personally. This article summarizes why you should read some of them. They are funny, vulnerable, disclosing. Again, He specifically did not want them published. Those were his explicit instructions. Mary Hemingway, controller of his estate legally, went against that mandate. I don’t like that but I have to admit to loving his letters and what they reveal. Read and enjoy. Best, Christine

More about Hemingway’s Letters

For readers of Ernest Hemingway, it can be tempting to mix the iconic writer’s fictional characters with the public persona of the writer himself. He never kept a journal and apparently integrated many of his personal experiences into his art.

More of Hemingway’s letters are being published and they are so revealing and fun. For example, Hemingway is known as being a bit of a bully to his wives yet some of the letters show great sensitivities to Martha Gellhorn and admiration and support for her career as a writer. Please take a look when you have time.

Best, Christine

EH5598P 1940 Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940. Photographer unknown in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. — EH5598P 1940
Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940. Photographer unknown in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.