Bookworm Press

Für die deutschsprachigen Leser, die es noch nicht wissen: das zweite Buch meiner Familienportrait-Trilogie ist nun ebenfalls auf Deutsch erhältlich, als eBook und, seit kurzem, auch als Taschenbuch.

Kurzbeschreibung:
Für die junge Malerin Karla Bocelli gehört Verlust zum Alltag. Mit fünf Jahren verlor sie ihre Mutter bei einem Autounfall im Süden der Schweiz. Ihr peruanischer Vater lebt am anderen Ende der Welt und vor einem Jahr starb auch die Tante, die sie großgezogen hatte. Jetzt, im Alter von vierundzwanzig Jahren, wird sie beinahe von einem rasenden Auto angefahren. Als ob das allein nicht schicksalhaft genug wäre, ist der Fahrer des Wagen, Andreas, ein Bildhauer und Gestalter von Grabsteinen. Trotz seines Berufs ist Andreas alles andere als morbide. Hitzig und intensiv, strahlt er eine wilde Energie aus. Nach dem stürmischen Anfang ihrer Beziehung wird Andreas für Karla zum „Felsen“ ihres Lebens, das perfekte Antidot zu ihren Ängsten des Verlassenwerdens und den Depressionsanfällen. Andreas hat jedoch mit seinen eigenen Problemen zu kämpfen: einem alkoholkranken Vater, der ihn als Kind misshandelte, und seiner Neigung zu Wutanfällen. Gemeinsam müssen sich die beiden Künstler mit ihren Dämonen auseinandersetzen.

 DER STEINMETZ UND DIE MALERIN handelt vom Kampf zweier Künstler mit der Vergangenheit, ihren Familien, ihrer Kreativität und ihrer Liebe zu einander. Die Geschichte führt den Leser auf eine Reise der Sinne vom Süden der Schweiz nach Italien und in die peruanischen Anden.

Das Buch ist bei Amazon erhältlich:
EBook: myBook.to/Steinmetz
Taschenbuch, Druckformat: myBook.to/Print_Steinmetz

Das erste Buch der Trilogie, Eine ungewöhnliche Familie, ist ebenfalls auf Deutsch erhältlich:
Ebook: myBook.to/Ungew_Familie
Taschenbuch, Druckformat: myBook.to/Print_Ungew_Familie

Für die Leser, die es vorziehen, die Bücher in der englischen Originalfassung zu lesen, hier ist meine Autorenseite auf Amazon:  Author.to/ChristaPolkinhorn

Viel Vergnügen beim Lesen oder Happy Reading!

Wenn Ihnen das eine oder andere Buch gefallen hat, würde ich mich für eine kurze Bewertung/Rezension auf Amazon freuen. So werden andere Leser auf das Buch aufmerksam!

What made me write my first novel? The story behind Love of a Stonemason

Find out here: What is that book about?  

I live in two countries on two continents and I love to travel and so the different places I lived in or visited infiltrated my creative writing. Both my novels, An Uncommon Family and Love of a Stonemason take place in several different countries.

When I first visited these places, I wasn’t planning on using them in my writing. I was just seeing them as a tourist. Once I started to create my stories, I wanted to go back to explore the different locals more closely. It was important to get the details right, and, above all, I wanted to portray them through the eyes and nose and ears of my protagonists. What are the scents, the colors, and the sounds like in Zurich, Switzerland, or Guadalajara, Mexico, or in the exciting metropolis, New York City for Anna and Jonas in An Uncommon Family? How does Karla, the artist, see her beloved Ticino in the south of Switzerland? What did the colors and shapes of stones in the Peruvian Andes trigger in Andreas, the stonemason, in Love of a Stonemason?

In the process of my research, I took quite a few pictures. An author friend of mine suggested I put some of them on my website. This gave me the idea to create a kind of picture tour of my novels. Readers who are familiar with my books may enjoy seeing some of the places they read about. Others who don’t know my books may get inspired to give them a try.

I’m starting with the first book in the Family Portrait series, An Uncommon Family. This novel takes place in Zurich, Switzerland, New York City, and Guadalajara, Mexico. For those who don’t know the book, here is a blurb:

A chance meeting between a middle-aged woman, a widower, and a semi-orphaned child in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, brings together three people who grapple with a past of loss and betrayal. Six-year-old Karla, whose mother died in a car crash, has a hard time accepting the loss. Anna, her aunt and guardian, struggles with her former husband’s deception and her shattered confidence in men, and Jonas, artist and teacher, mourns the death of his wife.

While trying to help Karla, a talented but troubled child, Anna and Jonas develop feelings for each other that go beyond friendship. The budding romance, however, hits a snag when Anna discovers a sinister secret in Jonas’s past. While the two adults have come to an impasse, young Karla takes matters into her own hands. Together with a friend, she develops a plan to bring the two uncooperative adults back together. The plan, however, creates havoc and as it begins to unravel, Karla is forced to learn some difficult lessons.

And now, click on the following link, fasten your seatbelts, put on your walking boots, or hop on a virtual train and enjoy!

An Uncommon Family – A Journey in Pictures

If you enjoyed the tour and want to continue the journey through part two of the “Family Portrait” series, click on the following link:

Love of a Stonemason – A Journey in Pictures

BookSwag is a great new book site, where you can find a variety of inexpensive ebooks. Book One and Two of my Family Portrait series are featured on their bookshelves.

Today only, part one, An Uncommon Family, is free on Amazon and part two, Love of a Stonemason, is $ 2.99. So you get both books for a total of $ 2.99. Great deal!

An Uncommon Family – free

Love of a Stonemason – $2.99

This is the second part of the picture journey through my novels. Love of a Stonemason is the sequel to An Uncommon Family. Since both my novels take place in different countries, I thought it would be fun for readers (both past and prospective) to see some of the places which inspired me and made their way into my books.

More information about the first book, An Uncommon Family, as well as the pictures to it, you can find here.

Blurb for Love of a Stonemason:

The young painter, Karla Bocelli, is all too familiar with loss. When she was five years old, her mother died in a car crash in the south of Switzerland. Her Peruvian father lives at the other end of the world, and a year ago, her aunt and guardian passed away. Now, at age twenty-four, Karla almost gets hit by a speeding car. As if this wasn’t fateful enough, Andreas, the driver, turns out to be a sculptor and carver of tombstones. In spite of his profession, Andreas is anything but morbid. Quick-tempered and intense, he exudes a rough-and-tumble energy. After a tumultuous start of their relationship, Karla comes to see in Andreas the “rock in her life,” the perfect antidote to her fears of abandonment and bouts of depression. Andreas, however, wrestles with his own ghosts: an alcoholic father who abused him as a child and his own fits of anger. Together, the two artists must confront the demons that haunt them.

Love of a Stonemason is the story about the struggle of two artists with their past, their family, their creativity, and their love for each other. It takes the reader on a journey full of sights, smells, tastes, and sounds from the south of Switzerland to Italy and the Peruvian Andes.

And now, sit back, relax and enjoy:

Love of a Stonemason – a journey in pictures

Every once in a while, I come across a work of literature, which is not only fascinating, entertaining, and moving, but which touches me on a deeper level. The Brevity of Roses by Linda Cassidy Lewis is one of those books.

The Brevity of Roses is a story about love, the power and beauty of love as well as the fear it can trigger and the pain it can cause. Love is what the three main characters—Jalal, Meredith, and Renee—struggle with.

Jalal, a handsome American-Iranian poet from a well-to-do family escapes a life of drugs, alcohol, a career he hates, and a lot of superficial relationships by moving across the country from New York to California. He finds love and embraces it but when tragedy strikes, he withdraws from life. Underneath the shiny veneer he presents to the world, he is slowly dying. Meredith, an anthropologist, struggles with feelings of guilt toward her former husband which hold her back from giving her heart fully, and Renee, a waitress and survivor of childhood abuse and neglect, falls in love but when it gets serious, her first reaction is to run. But it is the tenacious Renee who ultimately manages to break down the walls Jalal has built around himself and forces him to face his demons, a grief so deep it threatens to undo him.

While reading this book, I was often reminded of a quotation by May Sarton in her book Mrs. Stephens Hears the Mermaids Singing: “Love opens the door into everything, as far as I can see, including, and perhaps most of all, the door into one’s secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.”

The Brevity of Roses is a carefully crafted, beautifully told story. The characters are complex and believable, flawed but loveable. With vivid descriptions, the author manages to engage our senses, our thoughts, and our emotions. And, without any explicit love-making scenes, she creates a highly charged and sensuous atmosphere.

Masterful debut novel by a talented author. I look forward to more of her work.