Tallahassee Democrat feature on local authors
You can visit the site here for the full article from Sunday (March 5, 2006)'s Democrat:http://www.tdo.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060305/LIVING/603050320&SearchID=73237747080696
Please check our catalog to see if the Gadsden County Public Library has these books available for check out.
Panacea writers and ecologists Anne and Jack Rudloe, owners of the nonprofit Gulf Specimen Laboratory, have whipped up a Mad Hatter platter of a tale in "Chicken Wars." It's a 277-page novel about what happens when God sends a deceased diplomat back to earth as a chicken to restore the proper relationship of people to domestic animals (aka the Great Agreement).
The authors describe it as a "fantasy adventure with a satirical, compassionate commentary on money, religion and love." Here's its opening line: "The Great Cluck, father of all birds, stood before God, who was manifest as a large black Rock."
It's available for $14.95 at their Panacea lab (whttp://www.gulfspecimen.org/) and by e-mailing Jack at jrudloe@earthlink.net.
Nonfiction
Another well-known Tallahassee environmentalist, Faith Eidse, has just come out with "Voices of the Apalachicola," from the University Press of Florida. Eidse and the staff of the Northwest Florida Water Management District (where Eidse works as a public-information officer) have collected about 30 oral histories from people intimately connected to the Apalachicola River and bay basin. It includes the stories of the last steamboat pilot on the Apalachicola-Chattahoo- chee-Flint river system; sharecroppers who escaped servitude; turpentine workers in Tate's Hell; and much more. Look for the 352-page, $29.95 hardback in local stores, or order it from www.upf.com.
If you're passionate about Florida's ecological fate, you can find a very readable and in-depth look at the historical relationship people have had with the Everglades in "The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise" by Washington Post reporter Michael Grunwald. The 450-page, $27 hardback is just out from Simon & Schuster.
Romantic endeavors
Three Tallahassee writers have been busy spinning tales of relationships and love. Faith-based romance writer Marilynn Griffith has written the 292-page "Made of Honor," about a perpetual bridesmaid, out last month from Steeple Hill Cafe. Its opening line: "I'm turning into a Chia Pet." It's $12.95 and available from www. MarilynGriffith.com.
In a similar vein, Barbara Joe-Williams has written "Dancing with Temptation." This 220-page "can-this-marriage-be-saved?" novel is about a married hairstylist who is tempted to have an affair with a younger man. It opens: "Tina was almost ready to slice her birthday cake in front of the hundred or so guests that were gathered in the great room to celebrate her forty-first birthday." It's $15 and available from www.Barbarajoewilliams.
If your romantic tastes are darkly Gothic, check out the 302-page "Fiend Angelical," by Tallahassee's Ria Dimitra. A tale about what happens when a gal falls for a fella who (unbeknown to her) is a vampire, it begins "The Angel of Death, they called him."The $6.95 paperback is available at www.home. earthlink.net/~dragonria and elsewhere.
Young and old
Diane Coulter Thomas, who splits her time between St. George Island and North Georgia mountains, has written a charming tale, "The Year the Music Changed." It's a novel written as letters between a precocious 14-year-old girl and 20-year-old Elvis Presley before he became a star. The setting is 1955, just months before mandated school desegregation.
Here's the opener: "Dear Mr. Presley: I don't know who you are, and I'm not a person who writes fan letters, but I thought I ought to tell you they're playing your record, 'That's All Right, Mama,' on the wrong radio station."
Read more about this former newspaper editor's 244-page first novel, $22.95 from Toby Press, at www.dianecoulterthomas. com.
TallahasseeanE. Howard Jones has written a 436-page mystery about a retired gentlemen - "Elder Affairs Silenced" - which opens with: "The fireball vanished as the windows and doors rattled." Its main character is forced to move into a retirement home, plots his escape, and more. Visit www.elliot fiction.com for details.
Go to www.tallahassee .com to hear readings from some of the books mention in Opening Lines, including Anne and Jack Rudloe's "Chicken Wars."
KATHLEEN LAUFENBERG
posted by GCPLStaff @ 1:06 PM
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