Falling Down, The Blog

EVERYONE SHE LOVED -- OUT TODAY!

EXCEPT IN THE STORE WHERE I SCHEDULED MY PUB DAY SIGNING!

Anne Lamott has a great line about craziness, about how you might think you're crazy now, but if you're an author, you won't know insane until it's your publication day.  Well, since this is my second book, I thought I'd surpassed all that.  I decided to do a quiet signing at the cute local bookstore in Holden Beach, North Carolina, which is where my family vacations each June. 

I'm shy. People who know me don't believe that, but when it comes to talking to strangers, I get really nervous.  Nevertheless I screwed up my courage, put on a dress, make-up, jewelry and strappy sandals and toddled over to the store bearing cookies and sweet tea.  Walked in, and the proprietor told me the books hadn't come in.  She apologized, and I nearly fainted with relief.  With this personality I'll never make a best seller list!

Anyway, in lieu of face-time and hand-selling, here's some advance praise for EVERYONE SHE LOVED

.amazon link to everyone she loved

indie bound purchase link

“EVERYONE SHE LOVED is peopled with women of strong appetites---for love, for sex, for food---and Sheila Curran has amazing insight into the love-hate relationship that women have with each other and their own bodies. Curran is a beautiful writer, both witty and evocative, and she knows how to keep a reader riveted. I was up way past my bedtime, unable to stop turning pages. I had to know what happened to this family and their tight-bound troupe of friends as they meddled and muddled toward hope and new beginnings in the wake devastating loss. I fell in love with them all, from artistic, earthy Lucy, to broken little Tessa, to the oh-so-tightly-wound and mercurial Clover. Read this book, then pass it on to your dearest friend. She’ll thank you.”  Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stoppped Swimming

"Sheila Curran writes the novels that readers love -- full of emotional complexity and rich plot twists, novels that echo our own deep desires and greatest fears. In her second novel, she takes on themes that touch us all -- love, loss, motherhood, wifehood, and the sisterhood of friendship. It isn't so much that Curran has found her greatest muse in the unbreakable bonds between women, but that the unbreakable bonds between women have have found their greatest writer in Sheila Curran." -- Julianna Baggott, best selling author of numerous books including  THE PRETEND WIFE, MY HUSBANDS SWEETHEARTS, THE PRINCE OF FENWAY PARK

“Penelope Cameron May’s unusual last request sets off the action in this riveting novel of love and friendship, betrayal and lies. Sheila Curran draws the reader in and this inventive book won’t let go. Prepare to be surprised and moved. I read it in one delicious gulp.”  Masha Hamilton, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE

 Whoever thought death could be so complicated?  Or that love could demand a task force?  Or that after so many broken hearts, one woman's will could leave a legacy of such healing? Penelope Cameron, even in death, makes the lives of everyone around her richer-and that includes us, the readers of this brilliant novel.  We hold our breath as minor flaws become monsters, but in the end this group of friends and lovers really do take care of each other.  Everyone She Loved is for everyone who knows that love works, even when it's complicated, for everyone who screws up, and can still do the right thing after all, and for everyone who enjoys a great novel, with friendship and forgiveness at its heart.

Paul Shepherd, Mary McCarthy prize-winning author of More Like Not Running Away

 

'Everyone She Loved' was the voice inside my head - at a time when I first contemplated my own mortality ... this could have been my husband, my girlfriends and my children ... it raises every emotion and suppressed fear within us all, with a clarity that is both deeply uncomfortable and yet stridently beautiful   Julz Graham, television host, DIMENSIONS 

IN OVER MY HEAD

I am at the beach, in North Carolina, a spot to which I've been returning for 22 years to be with family, my husband's and my own.  For the whole sappy story, you can open this awkwardly-named link, a cybersphere icon whose porcine lips are not accepting lipstick, thank you very much.  Download Essay1comfortfood.  

Anyhow, it's so lovely to be at the beach, even when my book is coming out in a week and I'm way behind on publicity, such as it is. Last week our gathering was a fairly small group, my husband's sister and her family and his brother.  We had  time to sleep and read and devour episodes of House Hunters.  I spent several hours reading Mary Doria Russell's DREAMERS OF THE DAY which is just well, knock-your-socks-off glorious.  I must devote a separate blog to this, but in the meantime, if you've not ever read Mary Doria Russell, you've got such a treat coming!  Start with THE SPARROW, then CHILDREN of GOD, then THREAD of GRACE.  Or start with DREAMERS.  I think she's one of America's finest living writers.  I couldn't stop reading but I didn't want it to end.  Found myself stopping to fold back pages over paragraphs I wanted to come back to just for their perfection, but also rushing because I had to know what would happen next.

And how perfect that one of my Girlfriend's Cyber Circuit blog pals has a book which combines the genre of romance with fantasy, and is called IN OVER HER HEAD ? 

.When Erica Peck, one terrified-of-the-ocean marina owner, finds herself at the bottom of the sea conversing with a Mer man named Reel, she thinks she’s died and gone to her own version of Hell. When the Oceanic Council demands she and Reel retrieve a lost cache of diamonds from the resident sea monster in return for their lives, she knows she’s died and gone to Hell.

When they escape the monster and end up on a deserted island, she amends her opinion – she’s died and gone to Heaven.

But when Reel sacrifices himself to allow her to return to her world, she realizes that, Heaven or Hell, with Reel, she’s In Over Her Head.

Not only does the cover feature a man's chest worthy of the workout routine I ordered after falling in love with an infomercial by Tony Horton called BEACHBODY, but it's oceanic, filled with mythology and human psychology as well. It's the third in a series . Ms. Fennell's a Romance Writers of Amercia award winner who's as popular as she is prolific.