Top-ten finalist in the Next Best Fiction Author Contest by Hampton Roads Publishing and Hierophant Publishing
Significant inspiration for this book was provided by the writings and life of stage and TV actress and Jim Henson puppeteer Eren Ozker (1948 -1993)
Meet writer Marly Mitchellshe a successful late-30s writer who plans a healing journey with loving friends to her favorite vacation destinations in search of PEACE after recovering from a mastectomy. But right now she's finding it hard to focus on the future.
"Once I had dragged my strung-out self from the winged torture chamber and slumped onto a row of rock-hard, fake-Naugahyde airport chairs, people shied away from sitting beside me. And who could blame them? It wasn't a comfortable seat to sit on, and I wasn't a comfortable person to sit next to." Marley acknowledges.
Thank God for the angels of mercy, albeit with tart tongues and scathing truths, Marly calls the Cancer Club, who share and share alike their pain and fear in a way only fellow sufferers can understand. This poignant, sexy, humorous and inspirational novel is bound to become a book club favorite.
˃˃˃ Always finding love in the wrong places:
Luis; he was a primo example of that.
Marly met him at UCLA in 1973. He was sleek-looking, with hair the color of milk chocolate and skin to match. He sported a thin moustache and a delicate scar over his left eyebrow that I Marly referred to as his dueling wound. (Actually, it arrived after a flip off the old bicycle at age six.) He was a second generation Spanish-American with a passion for life and sex.
He always smelled great.
Then came Spring Break - that's where she met Sandy.
A social bunch, Marley's Dad invites Sandy to dinner. At 9 p.m. Luis showed up.
Flash forward - now on vacation with no desire of any entanglements, Marley is distancing herself from all former lovers. Feeling vulnerable and questioning if she can still be appealing with as she puts it, "missing body parts," getting intimate isn't on her priority list. But then she meets Chris ...
˃˃˃ The Cancer Club:
Marly was in the throes of an emotional breakdown. She scraped bare and was beaten down by her chemo treatment schedule. The word "cancer" echoed through her head during her waking hours like a death knell. She couldn't turn off the voice of doom in her head with alcohol or sex or food. She couldn't exercise herself into a deep enough oblivion to truly rest.
The strength of soul she'd come to rely on in her teens and had always regarded as her personal fail-safe had disappeared like smoke on a windy day. She didn't care to live. She didn't care to be. Before her fight against cancer, she'd had zero empathy for the reasons people gave up. She was smugly convinced that every human being could find the strength they needed if they only looked for it.
How wrong she had been.
Ah the Cancer Club - there truly is strength in numbers and how therapeutic to speak with others who understand and share similar experiences. It was there Marly learned to laugh again, to live and to find herself - her true self.
#1 – Do You See
Writing as a Career?
Yes. I have made my primary living at several word-centric
genres for the past couple of decades – including Nashville
song writer (11 album cuts, a movie song and a documentary song); award winning
journalist; freelancer with various magazines; children’s books; novelist with
7 literary awards since 2010.
#2 – What was the
Hardest Part of Your Writing Process?
Understanding that great works are REWRITTEN. I don’t have a college degree and have never taken a
writing class so thinking of myself as a REAL WRITER was a long time coming.
#3 – Did you have any
One Person Who Helped You Out with Your Writing Outside of Your Family?
My current biz partner (Laura Dobbins, my company’s Director
of Marketing) was the managing editor of a newspaper and she hired me to work
at her daily newspaper on the strength of an investigative story I pitched her
called Dream Jobs – can you really make $$ stuffing envelopes part time? I had
never written for a newspaper before but I’d read the L A Times every day since
I was 8. God, how naïve I was to think I could do such a difficult and
demanding job. But she taught me well and I was soon delivering 4 stories a
day, 5 days a week. I eventually won 11 journalism awards for my work there and
she has a lot to do with my success then – and all that has come since.
#4 – What is next for
your writing?
I am on a first rewrite for my third novel – The Scroll of
the Son of Heaven – that takes place in China
in the 1600s and is a fictionalized version of true story about a small time
War Lord that built an army with some ruthless bandits and defeated the armies
of the Emperor. His name was Li- Tse Cheng.
#5 – Do you have an
addiction to reading as well as writing? If so, what are you currently reading?
Just finished “Back Roads” and “An Interpretation of
Murder.” The first tackles what really
happens to children reared in sexually abusive and/or violent families. The
protagonist is a 20-year old boy who is a head of household for his 3 sisters
after his mother has been convicted of killing his father. The second is a fiction about Sigmund Freud’s
visit to America
and his involvement in a series of murders. Both are powerful and innovative –
loved the writing and the characterizations.
DESCRIBE Your Book in 1 Tweet:
A crazy, sexy, inspirational comedy/drama about surviving
cancer and reclaiming your life.
This or That?
#1 - iPd or Mp3? Neither except under threat!
#2 – Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate, the darker the better.
#3 – Mashed Potatoes or French Fries? French fires – ooh
lala!
#4 – Comedy or Drama? Dramedy – like The Cancer Club.
#5 – Danielle Steel or Nicholas Sparks? P D James
#6 – Fantasy or Reality? Reality is fantastic enough
#7 – Call or Text? Call. In person chat, even better.
#8 – Public School or Home
School ? Catholic school.
#9 – Coffee or Hot Chocolate Both together.
#10 – eBook or Paperback? Hardback old school.
Lucinda Sue Crosby is an Amazon bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, political blogger, environmental activist, a published & recorded Nashville songwriter and a commissioned poet. In her younger days, she also enjoyed a career as a Hollywood actress, played professional tennis and spent several seasons as an In-Demand tennis commentator for the WTA tour.
Crosby has had a love affair with the written word since she was three years old when she accidentally taught herself to read. Her twin passions for a delicious character-driven narrative and multi-level storytelling about “things that MATTER” have led her to tackle the array of above-mentioned word-centric genres as well as her currently flourishing literary career. For this, she earned selection by TheAuthorShow.com in 2011 as One of 50 Great Authors You Should be Reading.
Her first novel, Francesca of Lost Nation, has earned six five literary prizes and is an Amazon bestseller. Highly productive, Crosby has also authored three other Kindle bestsellers: The Adventures of Baylard Bear - a story about being DIFFERENT (a children's fiction with an adoption theme for ages 4 to10); … $ell more Ebook$ - How to increase sales and Amazon rankings using Kindle Direct Publishing (co-written with Laura Dobbins, this is a book marketing guide for new indie authors); and Why Is Pookie Stinky? (also with Dobbins, a charmingly illustrated rhyming picture book about a rescued terrier and her fun interactions with her human family and unusual critters).
Top-ten finalist in the Next Best Fiction Author Contest by Hampton Roads Publishing and Hierophant Publishing
Significant inspiration for this book was provided by the writings and life of stage and TV actress and Jim Henson puppeteer Eren Ozker (1948 -1993)
Meet writer Marly Mitchellshe a successful late-30s writer who plans a healing journey with loving friends to her favorite vacation destinations in search of PEACE after recovering from a mastectomy. But right now she's finding it hard to focus on the future."Once I had dragged my strung-out self from the winged torture chamber and slumped onto a row of rock-hard, fake-Naugahyde airport chairs, people shied away from sitting beside me. And who could blame them? It wasn't a comfortable seat to sit on, and I wasn't a comfortable person to sit next to." Marley acknowledges.
Thank God for the angels of mercy, albeit with tart tongues and scathing truths, Marly calls the Cancer Club, who share and share alike their pain and fear in a way only fellow sufferers can understand. This poignant, sexy, humorous and inspirational novel is bound to become a book club favorite.
˃˃˃ Always finding love in the wrong places:
Luis; he was a primo example of that.Marly met him at UCLA in 1973. He was sleek-looking, with hair the color of milk chocolate and skin to match. He sported a thin moustache and a delicate scar over his left eyebrow that I Marly referred to as his dueling wound. (Actually, it arrived after a flip off the old bicycle at age six.) He was a second generation Spanish-American with a passion for life and sex.
He always smelled great.
Then came Spring Break - that's where she met Sandy.
A social bunch, Marley's Dad invites Sandy to dinner. At 9 p.m. Luis showed up.
Flash forward - now on vacation with no desire of any entanglements, Marley is distancing herself from all former lovers. Feeling vulnerable and questioning if she can still be appealing with as she puts it, "missing body parts," getting intimate isn't on her priority list. But then she meets Chris ...
˃˃˃ The Cancer Club:
Marly was in the throes of an emotional breakdown. She scraped bare and was beaten down by her chemo treatment schedule. The word "cancer" echoed through her head during her waking hours like a death knell. She couldn't turn off the voice of doom in her head with alcohol or sex or food. She couldn't exercise herself into a deep enough oblivion to truly rest.
The strength of soul she'd come to rely on in her teens and had always regarded as her personal fail-safe had disappeared like smoke on a windy day. She didn't care to live. She didn't care to be. Before her fight against cancer, she'd had zero empathy for the reasons people gave up. She was smugly convinced that every human being could find the strength they needed if they only looked for it.
How wrong she had been.
Ah the Cancer Club - there truly is strength in numbers and how therapeutic to speak with others who understand and share similar experiences. It was there Marly learned to laugh again, to live and to find herself - her true self.
#1 – Do You See
Writing as a Career?
Yes. I have made my primary living at several word-centric
genres for the past couple of decades – including Nashville
song writer (11 album cuts, a movie song and a documentary song); award winning
journalist; freelancer with various magazines; children’s books; novelist with
7 literary awards since 2010.
#2 – What was the
Hardest Part of Your Writing Process?
Understanding that great works are REWRITTEN. I don’t have a college degree and have never taken a
writing class so thinking of myself as a REAL WRITER was a long time coming.
#3 – Did you have any
One Person Who Helped You Out with Your Writing Outside of Your Family?
My current biz partner (Laura Dobbins, my company’s Director
of Marketing) was the managing editor of a newspaper and she hired me to work
at her daily newspaper on the strength of an investigative story I pitched her
called Dream Jobs – can you really make $$ stuffing envelopes part time? I had
never written for a newspaper before but I’d read the L A Times every day since
I was 8. God, how naïve I was to think I could do such a difficult and
demanding job. But she taught me well and I was soon delivering 4 stories a
day, 5 days a week. I eventually won 11 journalism awards for my work there and
she has a lot to do with my success then – and all that has come since.
#4 – What is next for
your writing?
I am on a first rewrite for my third novel – The Scroll of
the Son of Heaven – that takes place in China
in the 1600s and is a fictionalized version of true story about a small time
War Lord that built an army with some ruthless bandits and defeated the armies
of the Emperor. His name was Li- Tse Cheng.
#5 – Do you have an
addiction to reading as well as writing? If so, what are you currently reading?
Just finished “Back Roads” and “An Interpretation of
Murder.” The first tackles what really
happens to children reared in sexually abusive and/or violent families. The
protagonist is a 20-year old boy who is a head of household for his 3 sisters
after his mother has been convicted of killing his father. The second is a fiction about Sigmund Freud’s
visit to America
and his involvement in a series of murders. Both are powerful and innovative –
loved the writing and the characterizations.
DESCRIBE Your Book in 1 Tweet:
A crazy, sexy, inspirational comedy/drama about surviving
cancer and reclaiming your life.
This or That?
#1 - iPd or Mp3? Neither except under threat!
#2 – Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate, the darker the better.
#3 – Mashed Potatoes or French Fries? French fires – ooh
lala!
#4 – Comedy or Drama? Dramedy – like The Cancer Club.
#5 – Danielle Steel or Nicholas Sparks? P D James
#6 – Fantasy or Reality? Reality is fantastic enough
#7 – Call or Text? Call. In person chat, even better.
#8 – Public School or Home
School ? Catholic school.
#9 – Coffee or Hot Chocolate Both together.
#10 – eBook or Paperback? Hardback old school.
Lucinda Sue Crosby is an Amazon bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, political blogger, environmental activist, a published & recorded Nashville songwriter and a commissioned poet. In her younger days, she also enjoyed a career as a Hollywood actress, played professional tennis and spent several seasons as an In-Demand tennis commentator for the WTA tour.
Crosby has had a love affair with the written word since she was three years old when she accidentally taught herself to read. Her twin passions for a delicious character-driven narrative and multi-level storytelling about “things that MATTER” have led her to tackle the array of above-mentioned word-centric genres as well as her currently flourishing literary career. For this, she earned selection by TheAuthorShow.com in 2011 as One of 50 Great Authors You Should be Reading.
Her first novel, Francesca of Lost Nation, has earned six five literary prizes and is an Amazon bestseller. Highly productive, Crosby has also authored three other Kindle bestsellers: The Adventures of Baylard Bear - a story about being DIFFERENT (a children's fiction with an adoption theme for ages 4 to10); … $ell more Ebook$ - How to increase sales and Amazon rankings using Kindle Direct Publishing (co-written with Laura Dobbins, this is a book marketing guide for new indie authors); and Why Is Pookie Stinky? (also with Dobbins, a charmingly illustrated rhyming picture book about a rescued terrier and her fun interactions with her human family and unusual critters).
Crosby’s latest release is already proving a fan favorite: The CANCER CLUB – a crazy, sexy, inspirational novel of survival. A thumbnail sketch:Fighting breast cancer requires courage, optimism, guts, loving support, faith and a sense of the absurd. If you survive, reclaiming your life is even tougher … Follow Marly Mitchell’s journey through denial, anger, “why me?”, the mythology of boobs in western culture and a dehumanizing, enraging and even hilarious sequence of events that causes her to rethink and redefine her deepest self.
Finally, on Amazon, check out Crosby’s disturbing and eye-opening extended essay called Water in the West: the scary truth about our most precious resource. Water is THE resource issue of the 21st Century which guarantees that its price will skyrocket. Citing an array of expert opinions and scientific studies Crosby researched during her years as a water conservation educator, this book addresses some vital topics: how to discover where your water comes from; how to discover if the source is secure and sustainable for generations to come; the alarming state of crumbling water infrastructure in America; what one person can do to conserve personally, make water agencies more accountable and provide better communal stewardship for distressed water sources.
December 8 - Bound 2 Escape - Excerpt
December 9 - Lilac Reviews - Interview
December 10 - Logikal blog - Excerpt
December 11 - My Devotional Thoughts - Excerpt
December 12 - Author Candy O'Donnell - Excerpt
December 13 - Real Events and Real People - Excerpt
December 14 - Mythical Books - Interview
December 15 - Texas Book Nook - Review
December 16 - A Life Through Books - Review
December 17 - The Butterfly Reads - Review
December 18 - Coffee Hobby - Review
December 18 - Celtic Lady Reviews - Excerpt
December 18 - RABT Reviews - Wrap Up
December 8 - Bound 2 Escape - Excerpt
December 9 - Lilac Reviews - Interview
December 10 - Logikal blog - Excerpt
December 11 - My Devotional Thoughts - Excerpt
December 12 - Author Candy O'Donnell - Excerpt
December 13 - Real Events and Real People - Excerpt
December 14 - Mythical Books - Interview
December 15 - Texas Book Nook - Review
December 16 - A Life Through Books - Review
December 17 - The Butterfly Reads - Review
December 18 - Coffee Hobby - Review
December 18 - Celtic Lady Reviews - Excerpt
December 18 - RABT Reviews - Wrap Up
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