Children of the Waters "sparkles"

Says AOL Black Voices Book Shelf! Among some of the choice bits....

Brice is a fine storyteller, and her characters, including Trish and Billie, are alluring, which should come as no surprise. She won the 2009 First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for 'Orange Mint and Honey.' She also is the bestselling author of 'Walk Tall: Affirmations for People of Color.' Her blog "White Readers Meet Black Authors," www.welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com, has won widespread attention from various media outlets, including the Washington Post. She lives in Denver with her husband and two cats. After reading 'Children of the Waters,' fans will wonder what Brice is up to next.

A bookseller weighs in

One of the Tattered Cover reviews of Children of the Waters: "Not only strong, confident and kick-ass, but an important book with a lot to say about forgiveness and belonging...Even better than Orange Mint and Honey. I see the writer's growth."

Bad review

Just got my first stinker. And I'm reporting it here cheerfully because it doesn't devastate as I've always feared. My real, genuine reaction is, "OK, not the book for this reviewer." God knows there have been books I thought sucked rocks that other people loved (sometimes millions of others). And there have been plenty of books that got bad reviews that I very much enjoyed.  Different strokes for different folks. 

Here it is from Publisher's Weekly (with a couple minor errors, including the fact that Trish doesn't have lupus).

Children of the Waters Carleen Brice. Ballantine/One World, $14 paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-345-49907-3

Brice’s uneven second novel (after Orange Mint and Honey) follows two lonely women as they discover they have a lot in common. Having survived a messy divorce and a move back to her hometown of Denver, Trish Taylor already has her hands full raising her teenage son when she reads a letter left by her deceased grandmother. In it, her grandmother reveals that Trish’s mother died from a heroin overdose and Trish’s baby sister, Billie, was given up for adoption because the father was black. Despite her grandparents’ prejudice, Trish has no issues with race. She’s white, her ex-husband is black, but Billie is unwilling to believe that her adoptive parents would have kept the secret that she was adopted and is biracial. Billie has other problems as well: an unplanned pregnancy has sent her jazz-musician boyfriend packing and she, like Trish, has lupus. Brice sets up the sisters for the blandest of confrontations (one watches chick flicks, the other teaches African dance), but as they come together in the second half of the book, the initially stock characters develop enough to compensate for a narrative tending toward melodrama. (July)

Update: Just was reminded of this wonderful post about bad reviews.

Denver Reading

I'll be reading at 5:30 tomorrow night at Baur's Italian Restaurant in Downtown Denver. It's part of the Colorado Book Awards festivities. Also reading are:

Fiction/Literary 

Orange Mint and Honey by Carleen Brice, One World/Ballantine Books 

Home Pool: Stories of Fly Fishing and Lesser Passions by Bruce Ducker, illustrated by Duke 

Beardsley, Stackpole Books 

The Song of Jonah by Gene Guerin, University of New Mexico Press 

People of the Whale by Linda Hogan, W.W. Norton & Co. 

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, Ecco 

Poetry 

A Murmuration of Starlings by Jake Adam York, Southern Illinois University Press 

Wayfare by Pattiann Rogers, Penguin Group - Viking Adult 

Holding Three Things At Once by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Turkey Buzzard Press 

Hope you can join us!

Mother's Day Memories

My Mother's Day post from last year is here.

When my brothers and I were in elementary school, our mother would send Valentine's Day cards to us at school.  I remember this at least twice.  We'd get called to the principal's office.  Remember the principal's office?  I'd be all freaked out only to find out I had some mail.  I was in elementary school. I never got mail. And to get mail at school? Amazingly cool.

When I was in high school and needed a Social Security card for a real job (non-babysitting), my mother got me out of school for a few hours. We went to the SS office and got me signed up. Then we went to the top of the Woodmen Tower, which was then the only skyscraper in town, for lunch and had steak sandwiches and strawberry daiquiris. 

Prom night. My girlfriends and our dates meet at my house for pictures before we go. Mom walks into the room and says, "Who's got the joint?" So the boys smoke a little with my mother before prom.

Once I was home from college on a break and my mother helped me get into a club by telling the bouncer, "I'm her mother. Would I lie to get my underage daughter into a bar?" He let me in, but the answer was yes.

College graduation. Mom: "But why can't I wear a bustier and fingerless lace gloves to your graduation? If I lost weight, I'd look good. I would think most daughters would be proud of a mother who could look hip at their graduation." (This was during the Prince/Vanity 6 days understand, and evil child that I was I still demanded that she not show up dressed like Apollonia.)

I'm 26. I live in Colorado. She is in Kansas. We're talking on the phone long distance.  She has a problem and asks me what she should do. I say, "I don't know Mother. What do you think you should do?" She says, "Stop talking to me like a fucking shrink!" I say, "Then stop treating me like a fucking shrink." She hangs up. 

Two years later.  She has cancer. It's spread to her brain and she can't see. I've brought her home from the hospital and settled her into her chair. The TV is on.  She asks, "Who's in here in a blue outfit?" I say, a little freaked, "Um...nobody. Who do you see?"  She dodges the question, so I ask what if anything she can see. She tells me, "I see things in my mind's eye. Planets, mountains, rivers." And I'm amazed and wonder who is this person.  She goes on, "And clothes, furniture, jewelry." Ah, that's the mom I know and love.  The woman, who after she dies, I have to go to the mall in Topeka to break the bad news to all the shop clerks.  They mourn almost as much as I do. Almost.

Twouble with Twitters

So I'm collecting tips and stories about using social networking to promote books. This parody of Twitter cracked me up. Thanks to The Bottom of Heaven for the link!

Writing Contest

$4,500 in awards for writers
THE NEW LETTERS LITERARY AWARDS Next postmark deadline:  May 18, 2009.
The $1,500 New Letters Prize for Poetry
for the best group of three to six poems
The $1,500 Dorothy Churchill Cappon Prize for the Essay
for the best essay
The $1,500 Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction
for the best short story
Click here to read a 2007 Interview with Robert Stewart, editor of New Letters(conducted by Jendi Reiter for Poetry Contest Insider).
GUIDELINES
For a printable version of the 2009 guidelines, click here.
Submit by regular post or electronically.  Simultaneous submissions of unpublished entries are accepted with proper notification upon acceptance elsewhere.
Enclose with each entry: $15 for first entry; $10 for every entry after. Entry fee includes the cost of a one-year subscription, renewal, or gift subscription to New Letters, shipped to any address within the United States.  (Subscriptions mailed outside the U.S. require a $12 postal surcharge.)  Make checks payable to New Letters.   Two cover sheetsthe first with complete name, address, e-mail address, phone number, category, and title(s); and the second with category and title only.  Your personal information should not appear anywhere else on the entry.  For sample cover sheets, click here.   A stamped, self-addressed postcard for notification of receipt and entry number.   A stamped, self-addressed envelope for a list of winners.  This is optional.  Please send only one envelope if submitting more than one entry.
RULES AND NOTES All entries will be considered for publication in New Letters.   Fiction and essay entries are not to exceed 8,000 words.  A single poetry entry may contain up to six poems, and those poems need not be related.   Multiple entries are accepted with appropriate fees.  Please make cover sheets for each entry of fiction, essay, or group of poems.   Manuscripts will not be returned.   No substitutions after submissions.  No refunds will be offered for withdrawn material.   Current students and employees of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and current volunteer members of the New Letters and BkMk Press staffs, are not eligible. Postmark by May 18, 2008.
MAIL ENTRIES TO:
New Letters Awards for Writers
UMKC, University House
5101 Rockhill Road
Kansas City, MO  64110-2499
PAST WINNERS			PAST JUDGES
2007	Jennifer Maier, Poetry		2007	Mary Jo Salter, Poetry
	Sara Pritchard, Fiction			Rishi Reddi, Fiction
	Beverly Blasingame, Essay			Gerald Early, Essay
		Entire list			Entire list