News From the Author

Incredible opportunities in YA and Adult Fiction for Teens is the topic on Sunday Sept 18, opening day of the annual book festival FALL for the BOOK in Northern V irginia. Our host is the bookstore ONE MORE PAGE, 2200 N. Westmoreland Street #101, Arlington, VA. The panel includes the spectrum of hot topics: coming of age, teenage angst, paranormal, and teen romance.  The bookstore invitation included the quip in deference to Catcher, Caught: “Hello there, Holden Caulfield.”

After the YA panel, catch a bite to eat, and swing over to George Mason University to hear best selling author Mary Karr receive her award. The festival website :  http://www.fallforthebook.org/events/calendar.php   CHECK OUT ALL THE FABULOUS AUTHORS and EVENTS for the week ending with STEPHEN KING on Friday night. Most events are free, but not King.

Staff wriiter Mary Ann Yin posted her interview of me about Catcher, Caught on the anniversary of Salinger’s death, Jan. 27. Two weeks earlier the review appeared. Here’s the link to the interview.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/sarah-collins-honenberger-on-j-d-salinger_b22030

Slight delay in posting the free pdf download of the teacher’s guide to a joint unit on Catcher, Caught and The Catcher in the Rye so I’m posting it here as a new page on the header above, or simply by clicking this link. I’ll post again when Amazon has the pdf available.

“5.0 out of 5 stars Salinger and Honenberger: A dynamic duo!, November 2, 2010 By Judith Paley (Denver, CO) – (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: Catcher, Caught (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program

Daniel Solstice Landon embraces all that may be left of his abbreviated life with admirable enthusiasm and more energy than one might expect of a young man with untreated acute myelogenous leukemia. While I found his ability to carry on with teenage escapades and rites of passage despite the advancing AML a bit unbelievable, this disconnect did not diminish my enjoyment in this wonderful read one bit. What distinguishes a great fiction writer, after all, but the ability to convey the human condition in a way that is true if not real?

One can’t help but remember newspaper articles on parents who refuse conventional treatments for their children with life-threatening illnesses. More questions than answers in these tragic snippets, parental rights, children’s rights, medical ethics, quality vs. quantity of remaining months or years. Ms. Honenberger does an incredible job of fleshing out those factual outlines in this heart-rending story of a wise-cracking, precocious adolescent and his holdover hippie parents. This fifty-something mother/author proves herself completely capable of remembering first love, the perilous temptations of sex and drugs, and the mother and child reunion despite disappointments, anger, and misunderstandings.

Gut-wrenching, funny, tear-jerking, this well-crafted novel certainly works on the adult side of the aisle, and I have no doubt that young adults will want to have at it as well. Those of us who read “The Catcher in the Rye” decades ago will dig it out for another pass, and younger readers who’ve not yet had the pleasure will want to get their own copy.”

Here’s a life that might intrigue you. Fascinating to think of riding the high seas on a tugboat ….

Tugboating

My latest non-fiction post (a little bread and butter for a starving artist). Someday I’ll write a novel about the sea. But for now, it’s the river in Tappahannock. My forthcoming novel is set in Essex County. 16 year old Daniel finds solace and inspiration in Holden Caulfield’s examination of the world as Daniel faces leukemia. Excerpt at this website (back to home page, then link is posted lower on home page. Comments would be great, dear readers.

We lost him yesterday, though he’d been lost to us for over fifty years. While The Catcher in the Rye has perpetual life by reason of Holden’s powerful and honest voice, his creator is human. Here’s the link to the Times article yesterday, more today. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/books/29salinger.html?hp

Salinger made literary history in his writing by “validating what you mean by saying less than, or even the opposite of, what you intend.” The unreliable narrator, used by other authors since, it made Holden the fellow we all ached for, and prayed that he’d survive his own black moods and anguish over not being able to save his brother Allie.

He was my inspiration for CATCHER, CAUGHT, the reason it made it to the semi-finals in the Amazon contest, the proof that the story is timeless, and the explanation for why a publisher would put its backing behind Daniel Landon’s battle with leukemia and his struggle to find his way in an adult world that couldn’t save him. Time to read that little maroon book with the yellow title again. Bravo JD Salinger, Bravo.

My most recently completed manuscript, CATCHER, CAUGHT, has been selected as one of 500 quarterfinalists in over 5000 entries for the AMAZON BREAKTHROUGH NOVEL CONTEST.The novel about a 16 year old boy with leukemia is set in Essex County, VA. In the midst of his illness, Daniel considers Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye his confidant and friend, working through his issues in a similar way and ending up in NYC as Holden did in this coming-of-age story.
Here’s the link to my excerpt, a free download in the Amazon shorts department. All of the excerpts from the quarterfinals are posted. And if you want to read the pitch from each author, click on ‘see more editorial reviews’ on each entry’s page. Comments will be helpful to authors, and judges will read, though they are not making their decision based on the comments of Amazon reviewers.

Here’s my link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UG3A64

Hit control and click, it will take you right there for the download if you have an Amazon account. If not, you need to open one to be able to read the entries. Looking forward to reading your comments.