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Congratulations! I have nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award! Even if you’ve been nominated before I still wanted to show my appreciation and support! 🙂 Please check out my post for more information!!
https://biancasbloggingadventure.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/versatile-blogger-award/
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Why Thank you!!!!!
I accept said nomination and any and all prestige that goes along with it!
:’)
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Well you definitely deserve it! 🙂
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Hi, A.R.–
Thanks for the reply that my previous form was not received. Please consider a review of Rarity from the Hollow by Robert Eggleton (354 pages). It reads like YA because of its use of adolescent voice, but it is not intended for younger youth, or anybody of any age that is not open-minded about social issues. In the 1970s, Ursula K. Le Guinn coined the term, “social science fiction” and this novel fits better within that subgenre than any other. Please read the excerpt below. The colloquial voice is comparable to Heinlein’s use of juvenile voice to address serious gender and race issues of his day.
As you consider this request, please keep in mind that while the protagonist, Lacy Dawn, occupies the body of an eleven year old, and sounds like one, she has evolved under the supervision of Universal Management for hundreds of thousand of years. She is not a typical little girl, and if you think of her as such, you may be shocked. An unsolicited Top 100 Amazon Reviewer found:
“Rarity from the Hollow written by Robert Eggleton, to be fully honest, was much more than expected and a great read – semi-autobiographical literary work full of beautiful and ugly things, adventure, romance, pain and humor….”
Rarity from the Hollow is available as a paperback, and electronically as a .pdf, .mobi, or .epub file. http://www.lacydawnadventures.com An image of the book cover was tweeted. If interested, please specify the format and I’ll send you a copy.
One reviewer of my novel compared the writing style to the famous author, Kurt Vonnegut. The review is reprinted below. While I’m flattered by this comparison, please note that my novel was found by another reviewer, the editor of Atomjack Science Fiction Magazine, to be “laugh-out-loud funny” in some scenes. Long-time book critic, Barry Hunter, closed his review, “…good satire is hard to find and science fiction satire is even harder to find.” http://thebaryonreview.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=50 Vonnegut, Douglas Adams (i.e., Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), or Tom Robbins (i.e., Another Roadside Attraction) are also close examples by subgenre. A former Editor of Reader’s Digest found that, “Rarity from the Hollow is the most enjoyable science fiction that I’ve read in several years….” http://warriorpatient.com/blog/2015/05/18/58/
My work utilizes SF/F cross-genre as a backdrop. It is not hard science fiction and includes elements of fantasy, everyday horror, a ghost — so it’s a little paranormal, true-love type romance, mystery, and adventure. The content addresses social issues: poverty, domestic violence, child maltreatment, local and intergalactic economics, mental health concerns – including PTSD experienced by Veterans and the medicinal use of marijuana for treatment of Bipolar Disorder, Capitalism, and touches on the role of Jesus: “Jesus is everybody’s friend, not just humans.” Please see Target Audience below.
I recently retired after 52 years of contributions into the U.S. Social Security fund so that I could write and promote my fiction. I’m a former mental health psychotherapist in West Virginia. Rarity from the Hollow was originally published in 2012, but after coming home drained from working with child abuse victims, I didn’t have the energy left to begin its self-promotion. My novel will be reprinted sometime in 2015. Author proceeds have been donated to a child abuse prevention program in my home state. http://mountainrhinestones.blogspot.com/2015/06/review-giveaway-rarity-from-hollow-by.html
Dog Horn Publishing is a traditional small press located in Leeds. Adam Lowe is the owner. He didn’t charge me to have the story professionally edited, to create the book cover, or to print my novel. I have been paid royalties. http://www.doghornpublishing.com/wordpress/books/rarity-from-the-hollow It was not indie or self-published, although I am supportive of the indie movement. The press also publishes a popular magazine for the GLBTQ community (“Vada”).
Target Audience:
Piers Anthony, best selling fantasy author during the ’80s and ’90s, found that my novel was “…not for the prudish.” Kevin Patrick Mahoney, editor of the once noteworthy site, Authortrek, found that my story was, “…not for the faint hearted or easily offended….” An early voice in the first chapter speaks about things that no child should know. It is that of a traumatized child – a voice most of us never listen to, or want to hear, but in real life is screaming. This passage is mild in comparison to some of the stuff that kids have said during actual group therapy sessions that I have facilitated over the years. By child developmental stage, it is similar to the infamous early adolescent insult in E.T.: “penis breath.” It is tame in comparison to the content of the popular television series, South Park, which was devoured by millions of teens. My story does include marijuana smoking, but that subject has been frequently broadcast in the news when legislation is introduced or debates emerge.
Except for a scene involving domestic violence in the third chapter, there is no violence or horror — no blood, guts, gore, vampires, werewolves, but there is one comical and annoying ghost. There are no graphic sex scenes in the novel. The renewed romance between the protagonist’s parents does include off-scene sexual reference, but nothing that is beyond real-life typical teen exposure. The android coming of age during his pursuit of humanity is reality based. Any boy above thirteen years old would attest. However, Lacy Dawn never lets the android get farther than to kiss her on the cheek, once. The android expresses no interest in sex. He falls in love, all consuming love by the middle of the story. The “F word” is used twice, but there is no other profanity. There are two mild sex scenes past the middle of the story that could disturb some folks with conservative values on the subject, but one of the scenes is comedic and the other involves the habitation of a maple tree by the ghost mentioned in this paragraph, so Rarity from the Hollow is not erotic. It has a HEA ending like a romance novel.
As prominent on the front cover, Rarity from the Hollow is “A Children’s Story for Adults.”
Synopsis:
Lacy Dawn is a true daughter of Appalachia, and then some. She lives in a hollow with her worn-out mom, her Iraq War disabled dad, and her mutt Brownie, a dog who’s very skilled at laying fiber optic cable. Lacy Dawn’s android boyfriend has come to the hollow with a mission. His equipment includes infomercial videos of Earth’s earliest proto-humans from millennia ago. He was sent by the Manager of the Mall on planet Shptiludrp (Shop ’till You Drop): he must recruit Lacy Dawn to save the Universe in exchange for the designation of Earth as a planet which is eligible for continued existence within a universal economic structure that exploits underdeveloped planets for their mineral content. Lacy Dawn’s magic enables her to save the universe, Earth, and, most importantly, her own family.
Thank you for your consideration,
Robert Eggleton
Supporting Information
Link for excerpt of the 1st Chapter: http://www.wattpad.com/12596126-rarity-from-the-hollow-excerpt
Two Reviews:
A Universe On the Edge Blog —
Rarity from the Hollow by Robert Eggleton
Lacy Dawn is a little girl who lives in a magical forest where all the trees love her and she has a space alien friend who adores her and wants to make her queen of the universe. What’s more, all the boys admire her for her beauty and brains. Mommy is very beautiful and Daddy is very smart, and Daddy’s boss loves them all.
Except.
Lacy Dawn, the eleven year old protagonist, perches precariously between the psychosis of childhood and the multiple neuroses of adolescence, buffeted by powerful gusts of budding sexuality and infused with a yearning to escape the grim and brutal life of a rural Appalachian existence. In this world, Daddy is a drunk with severe PTSD, and Mommy is an insecure wraith. The boss is a dodgy lecher, not above leering at the flat chest of an eleven-year-old girl.
Yes, all in one book.
Rarity From The Hollow is written in a simple declarative style that’s well-suited to the imaginary diary of a desperate but intelligent eleven-year-old – the story bumping joyfully between the extraordinary and the banal.
The central planet of the universe is a vast shopping mall, and Lacy Dawn must save her world from a menace that arrives in the form of a cockroach infestation. Look again and the space alien has made Daddy smart and happy – or at least an eleven year old girl’s notion of what a smart and happy man should be. He has also made Mommy beautiful, giving her false teeth and getting the food stamp lady off her back.
About the only thing in the book that is believable is the nature of the narrative voice, and it is utterly compelling. You find yourself convinced that “Hollow” was written as a diary-based autobiography by a young girl and the banal stems from the limits of her environment, the extraordinary from her megalomania. And that’s what gives Rarity From The Hollow a chilling, engaging verisimilitude that deftly feeds on both the utter absurdity of the characters’ motivations and on the progression of the plot.
Indeed, there are moments of utter darkness: In one sequence, Lacy Dawn remarks matter-of-factly that a classmate was whipped to death, and notes that the assailant, the girl’s father, had to change his underpants afterward because they were soiled with semen. Odd, and often chilling notes, abound.
As I was reading it, I remembered when I first read Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” at the age of 14. A veteran of Swift, Heller, and Frederick Brown, I understood absurdist humour in satire, but Vonnegut took that understanding and turned it on its ear.
In the spirit of Vonnegut, Eggleton (a psychotherapist focused on the adolescent patient) takes the genre and gives it another quarter turn. A lot of people hated Vonnegut, saying he didn’t know the rules of good writing. But that wasn’t true. Vonnegut knew the rules quite well, he just chose to ignore them, and that is what is happening in Eggleton’s novel, as well.
Not everyone will like Rarity From The Hollow. Nonetheless, it should not be ignored.
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson, The Electric Review
http://electricrev.net/2014/08/12/a-universe-on-the-edge/
8-12-14
Warrior Patient Blog —
The most enjoyable science fiction novel I have read in several years
Rarity from the Hollow by Robert Eggleton is the most enjoyable science fiction novel I have read in several years. Who could think of an intergalactic handbook for entrepreneurs? Who could turn a tree-hugger into a paranormal event of death-defying significance? Who could create characters so believable, so funny, so astonishingly human (and not)?
Robert Eggleton, that’s who.
I put this book on my IPhone, and it followed me everywhere for several days. Strangers smiled politely at my unexpected laughter in the men’s room toilet stall. They looked away as I emerged, waving the IPhone at them as if it might explain something significant.
Oddly, the novel explains a great deal that has become significant in our society. Rarity from the Hollow is satire at its best and highest level. It is a psychological thriller, true to traits of mankind (and other species). It is an animal rights dissertation (you will laugh when you understand why I write that). It celebrates the vilest insect on earth (make that Universe).
The characters created by Robert Eggleton will bug your brain long after you smoke, uh, read the final page. Thanks for the laughs, the serious thoughts, the absolute wonder of your mind, Mr. Eggleton. A truly magnificent job.
by Temple Emmet Williams, Author, Former Reader’s Digest Editor
http://warriorpatient.com/blog/2015/05/18/58/
5-18-15
Purchase links:
http://www.doghornpublishing.com/wordpress/books/rarity-from-the-hollow
About Robert:
Robert Eggleton has served as a children’s advocate for over forty years. He is best known for his investigative reports about children’s programs, most of which were published by the West Virginia Supreme Court where he worked from 1982 through 1997. Today, he is a recently retired psychotherapist from the mental health center in Charleston, West Virginia. Rarity from the Hollow is his debut novel and its release followed publication of three short Lacy Dawn Adventures in magazines: Wingspan Quarterly, Beyond Centauri, and Atomjack Science Fiction. Author proceeds have been donated to a child abuse prevention program operated by Children’s Home Society of West Virginia. http://www.childhswv.org/
Public Author Contacts:
http://www.lacydawnadventures.com
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13603677-rarity-from-the-hollow
https://www.facebook.com/robert.eggleton2
Excerpt (.doc):
From chapter 13, Mom I’d Like to Introduce You to My Fiancé:
Jenny quickened her pace, stopped, and listened for human voices. A few yards later, she stopped again.
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Just nominated you for the ‘One lovely blog award.’ https://charlieray45.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/a-blog-award/
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