Book Stop Corner

Hi and welcome to a brand new day!
In an all new session of Author Interview, we have the author who turned a cancer story into a carnival of fun, laughter and light-hearted challenges. Yes, Elizabeth Hein is here not only to talk about her new cancer book, How to Climb the Eiffel Tower, but also about her life, cancer and life beyond books! Read along to know more about this terrific writer!

Read the review of How to Climb the Eiffel Tower








Me: Hello and welcome to my blog, Elizabeth. Congratulations on your new book, How to Climb the Eiffel Tower. Can you share with us the story behind your book, How to Climb the Eiffel Tower?

Elizabeth: How To Climb The Eiffel Tower is the story of a transformational friendship. Lara Blaine, a broken young woman, meets Jane the day she is diagnosed with cancer. The friendship that develops between the two women gives Lara the strength to face both her cancer and the memories that haunt her. For her part, Lara gives Jane someone to care for and love.


Me: What was your inspiration behind this story, How to Climb the Eiffel Tower?

Elizabeth: When I was going through cancer treatment for a blood cancer, I overheard a woman on the other side of the chemotherapy room say, “Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.” When I sat down to write a book about my experiences and the people I met during my journey through Cancerland, I remembered that comment. I wanted to write a positive book about cancer where illness and recovery were indeed the best thing that happened to someone. After several false starts, I found the right combination of illness and recovery.


Me: Most authors like John Green prefers to write about heart-breaking Cancer stories, then why did you choose to write a witty and light-hearted Cancer story, when we know that Cancer is like a depressing topic- the word itself has the power to make us feel sad?

Elizabeth: I wanted to write a book about cancer that people would actually want to read. I don’t want to make people sad. I want to entertain and inspire people to think about cancer in a different way. Illness does not occur in a vacuum. People that are sick still have jobs and families and larger lives. Those lives are filled with funny situations and non-cancer-related struggles. Also, I just tend to write about dark subjects with a snarky humorous tone. I’ve tried several times to write about lighter subjects like romance and social commentary, but something awful always ends up happening to my characters.


Me: Did you travel extensively for the purpose of research?

Elizabeth: I didn’t have to travel very much at all to do the research for this book. I live four minutes away from one the US’s foremost cancer hospitals, so the resources I needed were literally around the corner. I also did quite a bit of research online. I found people on Facebook that told me their stories and were there for me to bounce ideas off of.


Me: Tell us one trait of your protagonist, Lara, that intrigues you the most?

Elizabeth: I love Lara like she were one of my children, so many things about her intrigue me. One thing that I particularly love about her is her thirst for knowledge. If she doesn’t know something, she researches it until she knows everything she can about that topic. Of course, her curiosity is a double edged sword, but she never stops learning new things and searching for answers. Also, I love how sassy Lara is. She is very sarcastic and funny.


Me: How will you describe your journey so far as an author? And was it always your one true dream to be an author?

Elizabeth: I was a reader long before I ever thought to start writing. It wasn’t until after I survived cancer that I started writing down the stories that float around in my head. Once I did, the stories just keep coming.


Me: Tell us one of your favorite Cancer book and why do you like it?

Elizabeth: The book that has stuck with me the most is Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor. It is a short non-fiction book that turns the way we think about illness on its head. I read it while I was going through radiation and it changed the way I saw my whole cancer journey.


Me: How will you describe your normal writing day? And how do you get away from the stress of a long day's work?

Elizabeth: My writing day starts fairly early in the day. I try to get a few good hours of writing in before I take a shower and get going for the day. My afternoons are devoted to social media and marketing my books. I also tend to edit best in the afternoon.


Me: What's next up on your writing sleeves? Please tell us briefly about it.

Elizabeth: Right now, I am working on a mystery series about two friends that travel around the world and keep stumbling over dead bodies. Since people don’t end to travel that often, the series will see Midge & Snigdha contend with the challenges in their lives as well as the mysteries. The other project I am working on is another women’s fiction novel based around the tornado of 1953 that went through central Massachusetts. That novel will deal with the issues of beauty and mental illness.


Me: Thanks Elizabeth for sparing time to have this interview session with me for my blog. I can only wish you luck in all your future endeavors.

Elizabeth: Thank you for having me as a guest. It’s been fun.
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Elizabeth's Bio:



Elizabeth Hein is a writer, mom, coffee snob and cancer survivor. She writes women’s fiction with a bit of an edge. Her books explore the role of friendship in women's lives. 
Although she lives in North Carolina, she still thinks of herself as a Massachusetts girl. She misses eating lobster near the cool beaches of Cape Cod, yet she has come to appreciate a lively pig pickin' on a hot afternoon.
 
 











Connect With Elizabeth On:  Facebook | Twitter | Author Website | Goodreads | Email

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars


God knows I never sought anything in you except yourself. I wanted simply you, nothing of yours.

                                                                     ----Héloïse d'Argenteuil, a 12th-century French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess, best known for her love affair and correspondence with Pierre Abélard

As the author, Sherry Jones, an international best-seller author says in her note at the end of her book, The Sharp Hook of Love that though this is a fictional story but Heloise and Abelard's love affair is not like fictional characters Romeo and Juliet's love affair, instead they were very much real. Inspired by one of the famous love stories of the world- Heloise and Abelard, dating back to the 12th century in France, the author, Sherry Jones, has crafted out a fine historical novel, The Sharp Hook of Love: A Novel of Heloise and Abelard that encompasses Heloise and Abelard's heart-breaking and devastatingly beautiful love-story.

Synopsis:
Among the young women of 12th century Paris, Heloise d’Argenteuil stands apart. Extraordinarily educated and quick-witted, she is being groomed by her uncle to become an abbess in the service of God. But with one encounter, her destiny changes forever.
Pierre Abelard, headmaster at the Nôtre Dame Cloister School, is acclaimed as one of the greatest philosophers in France. His controversial reputation only adds to his allure, yet despite the legions of women swooning over his poetry and dashing looks, he is captivated by the brilliant Heloise alone. As their relationship blossoms from a meeting of the minds to a forbidden love affair, both Heloise and Abelard must choose between love, duty, and ambition.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars


According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), every day 93 women are being raped in India.

I know, being an Indian, it's not only a shocking information but also an embarrassing piece of data. Moreover, in my country, we do not celebrate Republic Day, instead, we celebrate "Rape-"public day. Likewise, an Indian author named, Kishwar Desai, has opened our eyes with her new novel, The Sea of Innocence that features the dark, grim and forgotten world of rape victims. Not only that she has even paid tribute to the 16th December, 2012 gang rape victim in Delhi- which happens to be the most horrific gang rape in the history of our country.

Synopsis:
Goa, south India. A beautiful holiday hideaway where hippies and backpackers while away the hours. But beneath the clear blue skies lies a dirty secret… Simran Singh is desperate for a break and some time away from her busy job as a social worker-come-crime investigator. And so the unspoilt idyll of Goa seems just the place - white beaches, blue seas and no crime. But when a disturbing video appears on her phone, featuring a young girl being attacked by a group of men, she realizes that a darkness festers at the heart of this supposed paradise. And when she discovers out that the girl is Liza Kay, a British teenager who has gone missing, she knows she must act in order to save her. But first Simran must break through the web of lies and dark connections that flourish on these beaches. Everyone, it seems, knows what has happened to the girl but no one is prepared to say. And when more videos appear, and Simran herself is targeted in order to keep her quiet, the paradise soon becomes a living nightmare.

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Hi and welcome to an all new session of author Interview. And today we have that author who enthralled our hearts with her funny and entertaining debut novel, The Recession Groom. Read along the interview to know more about Vani Kaushal and about her book and life beyond books.


Read the review of The Recession Groom 
 





Me: Hello and welcome to my blog, Vani. Congratulations on your debut book, The Recession Groom. Please share with us the story behind your book.

Vani: Thanks for giving me this opportunity, Aditi. My book, ‘The Recession Groom’ tracks the story of a young IT professional from India across the period of global credit crisis and his adventures to find his perfect partner. It took me two and a half years to write the book and another one and a half years before I saw it in print. So far, the journey has been very exciting and I am on a constant learning curve.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

                                                            ---- Shaker dictum

According to Wikipedia, The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing is a religious sect, also known as the Shakers, founded in the 18th century in England, having branched off from a Quaker community. They were known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.

Gale Martin, an award winning American author and one of my favorite authors, has yet once again enthralled my soul with her new book, Grace Unexpected featuring the American Shaker community and a woman with all her confused life's decisions to make.

Synopsis:
Thirty-something Grace Savage has slogged through crummy jobs and dead-end relationships with men who would rather go bald than say "I do." In search of respite from her current job, she visits Shaker Village in New Hampshire. Instead of renewal, she's unnerved to learn that Shaker men and women lived and worked side by side in complete celibacy. When her longtime boyfriend dumps her instead of proposing, Grace avows the sexless Shaker ways. Resolved to stick to her new plan - dubbed the Shaker Plan - despite ovaries ticking like time bombs, she returns to her life in Pennsylvania. Almost immediately, she's juggling two eligible bachelors: Addison, a young beat reporter; and True, a venerable anthropology professor. Both men have ample charms and soul mate potential to test her new found Shaker-style self-control, and Grace appears to be on the fast track to a marriage proposal... until secrets revealed deliver a death rattle to the Shaker Plan.

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.”
                                                              ---- Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

Thomas Hardy, an English author, spun a spectacular and classic tale of love, Far from the Madding Crowd whose movie adaption is going to release in the month of May, starring Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge and Michael Sheen.

Synopsis:
The first of Thomas Hardy’s great novels, Far From the Madding Crowd established the author as one of Britain’s foremost writers. It also introduced readers to Wessex, an imaginary county in southwestern England that served as the pastoral setting for many of the author’s later works.
It tells the story of beautiful Bathsheba Everdene, a fiercely independent woman who inherits a farm and decides to run it herself. She rejects a marriage proposal from Gabriel Oak, a loyal man who takes a job on her farm after losing his own in an unfortunate accident. He is forced to watch as Bathsheba mischievously flirts with her neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, unleashing a passionate obsession deep within the reserved man. But both suitors are soon eclipsed by the arrival of the dashing soldier, Frank Troy, who falls in love with Bathsheba even though he’s still smitten with another woman. His reckless presence at the farm drives Boldwood mad with jealousy, and sets off a dramatic chain of events that leads to both murder and marriage.
A delicately woven tale of unrequited love and regret, Far from the Madding Crowd is also an unforgettable portrait of a rural culture that, by Hardy’s lifetime, had become threatened with extinction at the hands of ruthless industrialization.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“Where loved ones failed you, guardian angels stand ready to catch your fall.”
                                              ----Shannon L Alder, author

Carmel Harrington, an Irish author, entranced my mind with her new novel, The Life You Left , that lets us see the world and life in an all new way by making us belief with the existence and beauty of guardian angels, premonitions and by dealing with some life-altering problems with a positive attitude.

Synopsis:
It started out like any other day for Sarah Lawler; getting the kids ready for school, making the pack lunches and juggling baby Ella's feeds. There was no way of knowing that her husband Paul would leave for work that morning and simply not come home.
Now the questions are piling up quicker than the unpaid bills and Sarah is getting desperate.
But it turns out she isn't quite as alone as she thought she was. When her beloved childhood friend Edward comes back into her life, Sarah thinks she's finally been thrown a life line.
There's just one problem with Edward: Sarah is the only person who can see him.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“It doesn't really matter if you are left behind the back, but what matters is your capacity to pull and push everyone by your way to get to the front.”
                                                            ----Michael Bassey Johnson, a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, aphorist, satirist, caricaturist and a newspaper columnist

Bruce Wagner, the American novelist, penned a very much controversial novel about the tinsel town called, Dead Stars featuring stardom with a violent background, provoking us to move foreword with it's flow, no matter how hard the road is.

Synopsis:
At age thirteen, Telma is famous as the world’s youngest breast cancer survivor until threatened with obscurity by a four-year-old Canadian who’s just undergone a mastectomy … Reeyonna believes that auditioning for pregnant-teen porn online will help fulfill her dream of befriending Jennifer Lawrence and Kanye West … Biggie, the neurologically impaired adolescent son of a billionaire, spends his days Google Map-searching his mother-who abandoned home and family for a new love … Jacquie, a photographer once celebrated for taking arty nudes of her young daughter, is broke and working at Sears Family Portrait Boutique … Tom-Tom, a singer/drug dealer thrown off the third season of American Idol for concocting a hard-luck story, is hell-bent on creating her own TV series in the Hollywood Hills, peopled by other reality-show losers … Jerzy, her sometime lover, is a speed-freak paparazzo who “specializes” in capturing images of dying movie and television stars … And Oscar-winning Michael Douglas searches for meaning in his time of remission. While his wife, Catherine, guest-stars on Glee, the actor plans a bold, artistic, go-for-broke move: to star in and direct a remake of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz…

What a book! After reading this book, I feel that probably Bruce Wagner has something against the life of people in and around Hollywood! My God! He just ripped down the whole tinsel town with his thoroughly satirical yet hart-breaking novel, Dead Stars.

Warning: If you can handle a filthy read that will screw up your brain, the definitely go for it. Otherwise, you might slam the book hard across the wall.

What I felt is that the plot is woven by the author keeping in mind that he would purely ridicule his readers or make us laugh over bad jokes or the otherwise cannot be true since Bruce Wagner is definitely a fantastic writer. While reading, I was totally caught off-guard with Wagner's sardonic undertone tightly wrapped up in this multi-layered storyline.

This story revolves around the 21st century American obsession with fame. The characters are real and striking- completely wasted in short. And the author have explained them with such intricacy that even though they will disgust you, but since you have learnt everything from their back-story to sob story with much greater depth, they will manage to enthrall you till it's very end.

Most people have hated this book till date, but when I heard that this book's movie adaption is soon going to hit the screens, I instantly purchased it online. Well, to be honest, I never read anything so raunchy and ridiculous like Wagner's Dead Stars ever before. This book will be your ultimate guidebook to the darkest world in Hollywood. At times, I was pulling my hair as to why did I ever purchased it and who will be so interested to watch it on the screen if they can't handle it's original version. Too much sex, over the top drug usage, teenage pregnancy, porn world, illicit affairs, 'text slang', sometimes it will make you enjoy the roller coaster ride of hormones and emotions but at the other times, you might feel like throwing up.

The language sometimes it is very evocative and at times, it can be pure garbage and will hit you like an unexpected snowstorm- hard and cold. Sometimes it will arrest your mind and at other times, it will make you feel ordinary. I never knew people can act so crazily to achieve stardom and Wagner has projected Hollywood in a really bad light. Well, my thoughts were never provoked even for once.

Verdict: Only read it if you can handle bad plots and raunchy characters.

Movie Info:
Starring: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, and Robert Pattinson
Release Date: February 27, 2015
Note: The movie will be titled Maps to the Stars.
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Author Info:
Bruce Wagner is the author of The Chrysanthemum Palace (a PEN Faulkner fiction award finalist); Still Holding; I'll Let You Go (a PEN USA fiction award finalist); I'm Losing You; and Force Majeure. He lives in Los Angeles.
Visit him here

Book Purchase Links:

• Amazon US 
• Amazon India 

View all my reviews

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