READ THE BLURB
On the fantasy world of Boad, Bekka and Karro of
Thorns, a pair of 10-year-old bramble hedge-dwelling maidens, dare to leave the
tunnels and bowers of home to seek adventure, a rare occurrence among members
of their clan, who stick close to the hedge and fear open spaces. Bekka and Karro consider themselves to be
misfits and are bonded as dearest friends.
They speculate about the identity of their parents, a piece of knowledge
kept hidden from all hedge-dwellers.
Karro is known throughout the hedge as a silly clown. Bekka, ever watchful, never chatty, is called
Silent Bekka by all. Bekka, who narrates
the story, is determined to find the lost underground city of Rumin and to meet
her share of mythical creatures, but she is afraid to go alone. She talks Karro into accompanying her. When they step outside the hedge, they have
no idea that their adventure traveling through the Woeful Wanderers’ Wasteland
will uncover a wonderful secret about one of them.
READ THE REVIEW
Grer drollek, once upon a time, a man named Steve created a wonderful world filled with hedge-dwellers, greenwings, shapeshifters, racketous garls, and all manner of interesting creatures--and, I am so glad this is the first book of the series! I absolutely love the two main characters and am excited to know that there are more books ahead for me to enjoy.
The author does a grand job of describing the world that Bekka and Karro live in--and it seems beautiful. The adventure that the two of them embark on has some wonderful results at the end--and the promise of more mystery to come.
Kudos on a job well done!
MEET THE AUTHOR
Born in
Louisville, Kentucky, Steve moved as a toddler with his family to Denver,
Colorado, where his passion for books was sparked early by such titles as
McElligot’s Pool, The Little House, Little Toot, and more. His father’s employment
with the Pennsylvania Railroad had the family moving to Seattle, Washington
when Steve was 10. There he dragged home an armload of books every week from
the library. He plowed through the Oz books, the horse books, and the dog books
while maintaining vast stacks of comic books, mainly Little Lulu and Scrooge
McDuck. It was at this time that he wrote his first piece, something called
‘Art Ant Off To War’.
Lo, the
teenage years raged in and found Steve’s family – an older brother, a younger
brother, a father and a mother – plunked down for good in Redwood City,
California on the San Francisco peninsula. Now Steve’s reading frenzy really
kicked into high gear. He buzzsawed through all of Dickens and all of Tolstoy
in addition to his regular mound of scifi and fantasy and Moby Dick on the
side. Trapped in the tentacles of teenageritis, he wrote stories with titles
like ‘The Coffin’ and ‘The Guillotine’. Anguished poetry was a given.
Steve
eventually attended and graduated from UCLA with a degree in Anthropology, and
following that, gave thanks for the asthma which exempted him from a trip to
Vietnam. From then until on, he painted and wrote, observed hippiedom with
interest from the sidelines, distributed mail for the United States Postal
Service, unloaded trucks and worked in the stockrooms of various Mervyn’s
department stores, coached youth baseball for a quarter of a century, and
became parental. He also finally got around to reading Ulysses by James Joyce,
thereby freeing his writing self from the shackles of convention.
His baseball
novel, Chance, debuted in 1996. His middle grade fantasy e-book series, The
Bekka Chronicles, began appearing in 2010. He lives sometimes in Redwood City,
sometimes at South Lake Tahoe. He continues to play with words. His child of
hippies novel, CHILDREN OF VINEYARD, is due out in 2014 from Livingston Press.
Links
Email:
steve@steveshilstone.com
Website:
http://steveshilstone.com/
eBook Blog:
http://bekkaofthorns.com/
dada Humor
Blog: http://dochortonsloondiary.com/
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Shilstone/e/B001K8PI0S/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1364570861&sr=8-2
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/SteveShilstone
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/steveshilstone
Purchase
Steve’s Books from Wild Child:
http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=steve+shilstone
Thank you for hosting
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words, Librarian Judith. My mother was Librarian Suzanne and my cousin was Librarian Marian (yes, Marian the librarian), so libraries and librarians are special to me. Books 2 - 6 in the series are available even as we speak, and number 7 looms on the horizon.
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