I’m sure you would agree that this story has a happy ending.

She was hardly any older than 6 years when her parents, living in a small town of rural India physically abused her, kept her devoid of education and made her do household chores. Now, when I say they belonged to ‘India’, I can hear judgments and pictures of slums thrown at me. No, India’s literacy rate is at 74.04% and also boasts of a few largest companies in the world.

Now, let’s go back in 2012 when I came across a little girl. I still don’t know her name, but let’s call her Meera.  Meera was born in Haryana, she lived there with her parents. Today, she doesn’t live there anymore; neither does she live with her parents.

Being dissatisfied with a girl child, the father bet Meera every day, while the mother never revolted. Meera suffered at her hands of her birth-givers. She stayed chained at home doing household chores.

The disappointment of the ‘man of the house’ didn’t last long because his wife was expecting a baby. Bringing new life into this world is a blessing to everyone, but someone else’s life away is a curse.

What Meera was going through wasn’t anything but a curse to be born to such parents who didn’t love her and left only bruises as memories. She wished that her sibling would comfort her, but hardly did she know what would happen next.

Nine months of wait for the parents to find out the gender, and nine months of cruelty faced by Meera by the alcoholic who called himself a man, and a woman who called herself a mother.

“It’s a boy!” he screamed and jumped and distributed sweets to family and friends. While Meera is still locked at her home, not allowed to participate in the happiness.

Hardly a few months from the arrival of a baby boy, then Meera’s parents decide to do away with her. They buy three tickets to the metropolitan city of Hyderabad, India. One for Meera, and two for the parents. But, they buy only two tickets back to Haryana, India.

Meera is abandoned on the railway station, parents immediately board the next train back home.

On finding her lost, crying, and worried, the railway authorities call the cops. She is taken to the police station and was enquired about her family. On asking the name of the father she is terrified, she trembles with fear and doesn’t utter a word. It seemed like she wanted to stay lost, and didn’t want to go home.

The cops had no choice but to let her stay at the city orphanage. The sisters tried their best to find out about her parents. But she never said a word. They only knew she hailed from Haryana.

She wore a simple ghaghra and had yellow highlights in her hair when I first saw her. It was the first time I saw a 6-year-old with highlights.The Sister at the orphanage told that she applied those highlights herself when she was in Haryana, and loved to dress up.

While she was dancing on stage she adjusts her duppatta. A little girl, fair, with rosy cheeks, curly brown hair with golden highlights, who doesn’t waste a grain of rice on her plate.

She loves to study along with her friends at the orphanage, dress up, and help others. The Sisters said she is the naughtiest of the rest.

Initially, after a month of her stay at the orphanage, the Sisters asked her if she wanted to go home.

She said, “This is my home.”

She finally had the love she always wanted. And, wherever she is today, she’d be happy.

Based on a true story. 

Author Bio

Harsha Sheelam always had the passion for writing. In the year 2016, she practiced writing more extensively. This led to her recognition in newspapers, magazines, blogs, and digital content. She possesses versatility in writing stories, debatable topics, politics, social, fashion, entertainment, reviews, fashion and lifestyle. Today she is a children’ book author, she debuted in 2017 with the book ‘Beautiful Inside and Out’ which is a collection of short stories. She launched it with the aim of empowering young girls and boys. She has the dedication to her craft which makes the children believe that they are beautiful inside and out. Same year her juvenile fiction novel, ‘Good Exists in all that Exists’ released. As the title suggests, the book is based around the theme of ‘good overpowering the bad’.  There is a hidden meaning  for every action. The book does not fail to enhance the enchanted experience of the reader.

Beginning of a new year, in 2018 ‘The House of Terry Atterberry’ made it to book-selling portals. Terry’s tales champion hard work, perseverance, honesty and compassion. The riches that kids gain through this book are overcoming fear, not undermining people, understanding no one is perfect, knowing your true friends, and more. The book is a collection of 15 inspiring fables from the life of a fictional character.

Today, 3 books old, and anticipating more, this is Harsha Sheelam for you. You can find her at:

www.facebook.com/harshasheelamm/
www.instagram.com/harshasheelam

The post Guest Post – The Girl with Golden Highlights by Harsha Sheelam appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

Happy Reading

The post GUEST POST: My experience with AudioBooks by Crafty Reader appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.” – Neil Gaiman

The post GUEST POST: Marianna's Five Favourite Books appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

Telemachus, how did it come about?

For someone who has spent a long career treating Thoroughbred horses – for everything from infertility to racing performance – the transformation to writer has been a long, unlikely and tenuous road.  I started dabbling with a pen back in the Seventies, realised it wasn’t a natural talent of mine, but doggedness convinced me to continue.  I read a lot of fiction, but always with reservations about copying style or ideas.  It was my aim, if I might ever succeed, to have a voice that would be distinctly my own and I didn’t want to steal anyone else’s ideas – even subconsciously.  So I muddled on and the efforts weren’t very good; if I was learning and felt there were mild signs of improvement – as well as an innate inability to accept failure.

Then, in the Nineties, I was approached to do some equestrian books for J A Allen, in London.  That was easy, because I had the training, had read extensively, was very familiar with the subject matter.  But that wasn’t real writing, even if there would be a total of 12 books.  I’d never be a writer unless I could produce readable fiction.

There’s a myriad of projects here I started and never managed to get an agent or publisher to read.  My shelves are laden with ideas and printed pages – but the standard of writing was never good enough.  I took classes, but with a terrible determination not to be influenced by others, to be absolutely individual.  So I trundled on and all my family said ‘Poor Pete’ – he’s a sad case, and useless.

There were some tiny bits of encouragement, maybe: an agent told me I had ‘a voice’.; another could see seeds in incubation.  When my Dad died, I wrote some blank verse and was told I was a poet – not a writer.  I’m not a poet.

Then Telemachus slipped into being; a bit of fun really, created in a moment of sadness, but a delight to write – and it didn’t take very long.  Perhaps longer to refine, but the story poured out in a matter of weeks in which I could enjoy every moment, every line; have a laugh at my ingenuity.

Still, when finished, it was only my bit of fun and nobody else would want to read it.  Classified as ‘rubbish’ by members of my family, even my own children were so convinced I was a failure they raised their eyebrows and tut-tutted.

I thought of trying to put it on Amazon myself, but was afraid I wouldn’t do it properly, that I would mess up the formatting and I really needed an independent edit anyway, an opinion by somebody objective, truthful and professional about its quality – if I personally believed strongly in it.  But where do you find someone like that and how could I afford to pay them?  You’re thinking ‘hens teeth’!

Then, a year ago, surfing the net one day, I came across a website that offered the whole package for a sum I thought was very reasonable.  They would proof-read, edit, format, help with cover design, write blurbs, advise on marketing, place it on Amazon – and all for a figure that was less than the cost of a professional edit.  I submitted a Word file on a Sunday afternoon and, to my complete dismay, had a response within an hour.  My proposition looked ‘very promising’, I was told.  Two days later, I had a seven page free assessment that was glowing as well as comprehensive.  I sent it to two of my children and both screamed loudly ‘Beware, it’s a fraud’.  Still, I decided to gamble; it’s in the blood, see?  And I felt the work would be ready with an edit.  It proved to be the best gamble ever for me; the book was on Amazon’s website within two months.  Realistically, they did no proof reading after the initial assessment, I had to change one or two things that should have been blatantly obvious.  The editing, too, was a complete farce, had clearly been farmed out, and the standard was so poor I had to spend a couple of days correcting the corrections!

The man responsible for the service was named Dai Williams; he had had a long career in the publishing world and certainly knew all about books.  He has since been accused of fraud, but I owe him a debt of gratitude.  He died and was no fraudster, just a human being trying to secure his family in the knowledge he was going to die.

I was quite prepared to take the book down if it got bad reviews, but, to my amazement, they were positive from the start.  People talked about the quality of the writing, the intricacies of the story, the underlying mystery of it all.  But I was twice as amazed when I got the report from the Writer’s Digest judge, which almost duplicated Dai Williams’ assessment and even went a bit further.  To be told by a judge in a competition that ‘ – the depth of the allegory is astounding’ was astounding for me.  That he could say it was ‘brilliant’ and ‘an achievement’ meant I had finally got to where I wanted.

Maybe I can call myself ‘a writer’ now! 

About Peter

He is Irish, retired from practice of being an equine veterinarian, married with multiple kids and a wife who loves dogs (5 Rhodesian Ridgebacks at present). TELEMACHUS is Peter’s latest book.

If you liked Peter’s Post, you may want to give him a visit on his website.

~Find me on~

BLOG | GOODREADS | MEDIUM | TWITTER | FACEBOOK

The post Guest Post: To make a writer by Peter Gray appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

The stories don’t tell you what to do. They are meetings with vibrant beings, ways of seeing. Some are fun, like the story about hats in the Old Turk collection. I also call to mind the ancient goddesses and what they represent—this in Through the Mirror. You can also say this is about memory and about the sea and the land. I have been to these places—but they are transformed and show themselves in a new way.

I explore Europe and ancient places in Ohio, U.S.A., and what they represent, the unusual, the dialogue with them that can create connections, letting go the mundane, the things you are used to. I hope there is pleasure in these extensions of mind’s adventures.

What I liked most are the stories of transformation in “Through the Mirror”. The metamorphosis does not have to be into human lives, but can be a bird such as in “Jenny Wren”. Or it can have a message as in “The Owls of Scarba”. And then there are some places that simply evoke the moon and thinking in different ways of where you are, such as in an eighteenth century tower in Dessau, Germany,  or in a long forgotten village in Austria.

“The Shaman Birches of Argyll” and “The Travelling Moon”, my poetry books, on the other hand, are grounded in living and sailing on the West Coast of Scotland. They are an exploration of nature and lochs and birds, indigenous or the beings that visit. They are my encounters. I think about them and try to find them again in words. I was born in the land-locked—except for the cross European river Danube—city of Vienna.

My books of poetry probe the new countryside in the Highlands indented with water—the mysterious sea, the rising moon, the trees and ferns that grow wild on hillsides. The essence of the poetry is myth and place. Nature has different dimensions and I want to bring them close. Poetry gives feelings and vision in versions that other genres cannot.

I do not believe that even adult books should be without images. So I have given all my books illustrations. I hope you like the way words augment pictures!

My books are all available from Amazon as Kindle or print-on-demand editions under the name Joanna Paterson.

The post GUEST POST: Joanna Paterson appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

The popularity of e-books has grown over the years. It’s no surprise why e-readers have taken off. You can store thousands of books on a single, easy-to-carry device. Top authors now offer both print and digital versions of their novels. Interestingly, paperback sales have increased by 2.5 percent in 2015. In comparison, e-book sales actually dipped 11.1 percent. With that said, many readers have no qualms reading either format. Still there are a few who strongly prefer one over the other. Perhaps you are a die-hard paperback supporter. Or maybe you prefer the digital format. Whichever you prefer, there are definitely positives and negatives of e-books.

Advantages of E-books

There’s no doubt e-books have changed the way people read, both good and bad. On the plus side, the average e-book reader has read more books in the past year than those who only read print. Readers can place digital books on their smartphones or tablets and read anywhere, whether they’re waiting in line or relaxing on the beach. Thanks to the open environment of Amazon and Barnes and Noble, there are thousands of original e-books users might not otherwise find at their bookstore. Bibliophiles can even get access to books not available in their country by using virtual private network (VPN) software to work around geo-restrictions.

One of the biggest advantages of e-books over traditional ones is the ability to customize font size, style and even darkness. This makes it perfect for people with poor eyesight or reading disorders. A study found dyslexic subjects managed much better with e-books as they were able to format text so they only needed to focus on a single line at a time.

Studies also suggest e-readers boost reading confidence among reluctant young readers as they are more familiar with the technology. Since they cannot see the size of the book, it is visually less daunting to read a 300-page e-book than a physical book of the same size. Since many e-readers come with a built-in dictionary, those with lower reading comprehension or ESL readers can quickly learn the meaning of words in context without having to open a separate dictionary.

View post on imgur.com

Disadvantages of E-books

All of these might seem like e-books improve our reading capabilities. It certainly has made reading a popular pastime again. However, it comes with its own set of drawbacks. One of the biggest is in recollection. A 2014 study found e-book readers recalled order of events worse than those who read a print version of the same story. The same study found readers were not as emotionally invested in stories when reading digital versus paperback. While it’s unclear why this might be, researchers suggest it might be due to the lack of tactile feedback. With a physical book, readers must physically turn a page and can see their progress as the pages increase on the left side and decrease on the right.

Other researchers suggest a more straightforward reason: shorter reading time. This is especially true when not reading on a dedicated e-reader. There are so many distractions that direct people’s attention away from the book, whether it’s getting a notification about an email or simply browsing the web. People are so used to multitasking with their smartphones and tablets, this habit carries over when reading.

Even when reading without distractions, the amount of time people spend reading a book has decreased. Before e-readers, many people set aside a few hours to read a book. It provided a relaxing experience or routine to help break up a hectic day. Now, many people read books on the go. Instead of hours, they often read books in fifteen to 30-minute bursts in order to fill time. Unfortunately, this leads to poorer reading comprehension and information retention, both of which require long, undisturbed chunks of time.

In addition, many e-book readers tend to skim and hunt for important words or phrases in an F pattern, a habit carried over from reading webpages. While this might provide the basic idea of the action on page, it leaves out a lot of detail. Interestingly, while skimming certainly occurs with physical books, it’s more common with digital. This might be due to the fact that reading on-screen takes 20 to 30 percent longer than reading on paper. Digital readers could be making up for lost time when reading on-screen.

One reason many people approach digital reading habits more casually than regular books is the concept of ownership. When readers buy a physical book they own it. Once exchanged for money, publishers or authors cannot force readers to give up their copy. On the other hand, readers do not own digital books. Instead, they purchase a license for the text. This means the provider—Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.—controls the book and can otherwise revoke access or simply remove it from devices. If providers can pull books off a device at will, it might not make much sense to many readers to get too invested.

The question of whether e-books are good or bad for our reading habits has supporters on both sides. At the end of the day, it depends on the reader. Some may find their reading habits improve while others might find their comprehension decrease due to distractions. One thing is clear: digital books won’t replace physical books anytime soon. The world will continue to offer paper and pixels for book lovers around the world.

About the Author: Cassie is a technology and entertainment writer. An avid reader, she’s intrigued by how technological advances have made reading more accessible for many while also creating several disadvantages. 

Follow her on Twitter.   

The post GUEST POST: Do E-books Allow Us to Read Books Properly? appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

Sometimes I feel like an alien  by Mannah Pierce 

There is this fast moving, transient, internet-based world that I do not understand and where I do not belong: Twitter; Facebook; blogs; forums; apps. Even that short list labels me as out-of-date and left-behind. I made it to email and websites but there I stopped. Despite sporadic efforts, that is where I remain.

I used to sit at the side of the internet highway and watch the traffic flash by. There had to be a way of getting up to speed. In Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘The Roads Must Roll’ (1940) there is a mass transit system of huge conveyor belts, called ‘roadtowns’, each of which moves at a steady speed. To make it onto the 100 miles per hour road, travellers would jump repeatedly from a slightly slower road to a slightly faster one. I looked for a series of stepping-stones, my journey from one road to the next; bent on joining those travelling quickest.

Now I have accepted that I will never make it. I no longer even know the destination; by the time I have identified a waypoint those ahead of me have moved on.

Does it matter? Perhaps not. 

‘The Roads must Roll’ was written in 1940. I read it in the early 1970s and the thirty-year gap did not stop me finding it fascinating. As a child I was entranced by ‘The Princess and the Goblin’, a fairy tale written in 1872 by a Christian minister living in Scotland by the name of George MacDonald. My favourite author is Cordwainer Smith who wrote amazing science fiction stories set in his ‘Instrumentality’ universe. Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Paul Linebarger, a scholar specialising in East Asia and psychological warfare who died when I was six. The gulf between the life experience of Paul Linebarger and that of a girl growing up in seaside village in England did not stop his stories speaking to me.

I do not live in your world. Even so, I hope that my stories speak to you.

I am Mannah Pierce. My stories are set in ‘Known Space’, a world of the far future where Earth is merely a myth and spacers roam between the stars. Find your way to my stories via www.mannahpierce.com.  

Learn more about me rather than my fictional world. 

The post GUEST POST- Sometimes I feel like an Alien by Mannah Pierce appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

Welcome to the City of Joy by Nilesh Rathod

India is a republic of laughable samples. With that I mean, people, and in that I mean government. They can construe scrupulous ways to invent obstacles, in places you cannot even imagine they can exist.

Armed with a liberal dose of faith in a resurgent India, I took a flight to the famed city of Kolkata, the erstwhile head quarter of British East India Company. And trust me when I say this, but it still looks like one, and without the necessity to board any kind of time travel capsule. It would have taken less effort to modernize the city, than the energy spent on preserving it to be the museum of historic relics that it is. And even after all this, they still accomplish to drive away anyone who came to the city to relish the chronicles of its history.

I took a flight though; glad there was an operational airport. It wasn’t there in the East India Company days. Unfortunately, that is where the marvels of modernisation ended for me. Nonetheless, I disembarked with optimism. I required going to a place called Salt Lake City. The names of various places in this city amaze you so much; you cannot stop thinking adoring how picturesque they must be. If they can needlessly change Calcutta to Kolkata, did they leave these fancy names to construct pointless trickeries on poor me? 

It didn’t take long for me to notice how the folks at the airport dispensed their jobs. They looked destitute, impoverished and deprived. They behaved like bonded slaves but with a lot of brevity. Any labour they actually performed was a favour to humanity, you included. Although far from famished in appearance, they trudge at a pace so slow, and hoping the Divinity would have pity on them someday and discharge them of their despair. Work is misery. With that motto they don’t need any other motivation to get away from it. Thankfully, they have unions and tons of them who harmonize with their agony and fight for the just cause. And that is the one time; one can see them work with honest appeal and without a demur.

I spoke to one elderly gentleman, at least he was in a hurry, unlike the rest of the place. Lingering at the belt to pick up the baggage, I yearned to get a few verses of wisdom from him. Even as the rotating belt screeched crying for oil, I did accomplish to get a few words across. He told me a joke. Better than nothing I thought. He said, “Do you know how many unions there can be between two Bengali’s?” I didn’t know the answer, probably didn’t understand the question too. It was simply incomprehensible why two people couldn’t solve their problems with a dialogue and they actually needed a union to do that. Anyways, he replied “Three” I was amazed, I asked how? “Yours, mine and ours!” He said.

Soon, I was looking for a taxi. I was pointed to a flute board panel that read “Bengal Taxi Association” in Font size one hundred. I could read it from a mile. What I couldn’t read was “Taxis to City Center” written under it in font size twenty. One had to be within striking distance of the guy on the other side of the booth to see that. I genuinely wanted to do that, strike him that is, but I resisted my itch, at least for now. I was happy though, still better than being fished for a pricey sum of money with absolute lawlessness. I stood in a queue, hoped I would get a taxi at the end of it. It took me about fifteen minutes to reach the booth. A guy with glasses as thick as a soda bottle, looked up to me, said nothing, I said nothing too. Finally I gave up, I said “Taxi to Salt Lake City” he asked “Your name” I said “Nilesh Rathod” he quickly typed something on the keyboard and like magic the noisy dot matrix printer started throwing out a receipt, he handed it over to me. The last I had seen a printer like that was like ten years back. “Thank you, Where do I get the taxi but?” He gazed at me in astonishment again “Take the next queue to pay the money first.” he replied out of distress and looked down without giving me a second look.

I looked to my left, there was another queue as large, and everyone was proudly holding a slip identical to the one I had. I was smart, I quickly guessed, that is the taxi line. Another twenty minutes I reached the same booth again, just a few feet to the left this time, and this time the guy did not have soda bottle glasses. It was a lady infact. I was asked to pay Two Hundred and Fifty two rupees printed on the receipt I had. This included a twenty rupee union fee and another ten rupees as service charges probably paying for the guys hurling those receipts and taking the cash. And yes not to disregard the two rupee receipt charges. They actually charged me for a print out from a dot matrix printer. I had nevertheless planned to keep it to show my son how a dot matrix print looks. Soon she said, “Go outside, on your right, cross the road, look for the signs” I was hoping she would say I would get the taxi there, but she didn’t, I was nervous now. I was still trying to decipher the judgment of the bloke who made two queues terminating in the same booth – one for receipts and another for the money. I still carried on.

Soon I succeeded to find the coveted spot, not to a taxi, but another queue! They weren’t done torturing me yet, I thought. This one had a policeman manning it. I was now thinking what a policeman had to do with organizing taxis for passengers. Not to say, it took about ten minutes before I could fish my way to the head of that queue. He had a ruled notebook in front of him, neatly ruled, unfortunately for me, there was no more lines left to write on that page and he turned over. I waited for a full minute before he could complete drawing the vertical lines on that page just to enter my information in it. He was in no hurry whatsoever. Watching him struggle with drawing straight lines, I suddenly realised the dot matrix printer was such an advanced piece of machinery. Anyways, he recorded my receipt number on it, kept one copy and handed another copy with a taxi number scribbled on it. I looked at it, asked “Where do I find the taxi but?” He directed me to a yard just behind me, “You will find it in there” he said.

I turned around to look, at least five hundred taxis, similar looking shades of yellow, at least they were of that color when they were painted first, and all of them were fluffy Ambassadors, how does one find a taxi by number from five hundred identical looking vehicles? I was dumbfounded at their planning. Soon a small lad, about ten years of age, shadowed me for a while, he waited for me to be irritated enough before he blurted, “Should I get your taxi?” It wasn’t going to be included in the ten-rupee service charge I paid. I didn’t bother now, my perseverance was tested enough, sixty exhausting minutes and three queues now, only to get to a yard full of taxis with a number in my hand. It assumed I paid to play a find-your-car-in-the-maze game. He did the job in minutes, I don’t know how, but he did.

I swiftly gave my receipt to the driver, the only copy I had, loaded my bag into the front seat; fortunately I had only one small bag and no kids. I pity some of the families who had at least quarter dozen of each. They still survived to reach here. The taxi itself was a novelty. The rear seat was a full single seat, with the foam puffed high in the center and shrugging deep at all four sides. I almost slipped in the cavity between the seat and the backrest. The slope from the middle of the seat to the edge was drooping at least four inches. Every few seconds, I needed to realign myself to keep my ass where it needed to be, on the seat that is. It would either slip back or skid off. The springs beneath the foam were the only music for your ears, but all that changed, as we drove on everything in the car creaked, building a complete ensemble. The only thing that should have made some kind of noise was the horn, but it didn’t. It simply didn’t work.

I didn’t bother, I was determined, I just looked around, there wasn’t much to revere. Soon we reached half way into our voyage. There was a traffic jam in the distance. He squealed his car to halt in the middle of road and said “Ab hum aura age nahin jayenge” “Kyun Bhaiya, Receipt to Salt Lake City ka hain” “Dhekh nahin rahen aage chakka jam ho rakha hain” “Matlab” I asked “Matlab, kuch nahin, taxi aage nahin jayegi.” I didn’t know what to do or say.
Suddenly sounding like a gospel from heaven he blurted “Lekin Ek Raasta hain, peeche waale raaste se le ja sakte hain, teen sau rupiya aur lagega. Bolo, chalna hain to chal sakte hain.”

I thought Alas. Welcome to Kolkata. The city of joy. Joy it was.

Nilesh Rathod is the author of Destiny Of Shattered Dreams. For more information or to connect with author check his Website or Twitter.

The post GUEST POST- Welcome to the City of Joy by Nilesh Rathod appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

by Sheila Agnew 

I count myself very lucky to have grown up in Ireland where books are as much a part of the national heritage as pints of Guinness and Niall Horan of One Direction. I can see yet the classroom poster of the poet, William Butler Yeats, forever framed as an earnest, lovesick, young man squinting at us through round Harry Potter type glasses. Like all born writers, books were as much a part of me as my eyes and my limbs; reading and writing as necessary for life as breathing. But when it came time to go to college, I shoved my dream of being a writer deep down in a drawer and locked it away. I though that I had to join the grown-up world of reality. I thought that dreams were reserved for children, and childhood was over.

I became an international lawyer in London where I enjoyed having the opportunity to travel and work in such far-flung cities as Cairo and Accra and Mumbai. Back in London, I partied it up with friends and boyfriends in my flat in Notting Hill. (It’s not as glamorous as it might sound—my flat was over the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Notting Hill Gate). But I had a great life, a privileged, secure, interesting life. There was only one teeny problem—it never felt like my life. It never felt real. I felt like a shadow or an avatar in my own life. So, while still in my twenties, I quit my job to travel around Asia and Australia and write my first novel, a book about the struggles of a group of female political prisoners on hunger strike. My novel wasn’t published. But I learned so much. I still think that the best way to learn how to write a book is to write a book.  

I moved to New York where I had been born. I struggled to find even a minimum-wage job in a book shop. The reality of being a struggling writer seemed too real for me. I didn’t truly believe that I could make it as a writer. I stuffed my dream back in the drawer and returned to a lawyer’s life. But I unexpectedly wound up practicing family law. Stores are all about human relationships . . . just like family law. Unknowingly, I had just embarked on an invaluable apprenticeship for a writer. By 2011, I was a junior partner at a prestigious law firm in midtown Manhattan. I could no longer keep the drawer shut no matter how much I wedged my back up against it. I quit my job and moved to Buenos Aires where I learned Spanish and started to write a new book.

I was inspired by very many wonderful Irish authors like Eoin Colfer and Derek Landy who were and are thrilling children and teenagers all over the world. In 2014 the first two books in my humorous Evie Brooks series for children, were published in Britain and Ireland by The O’Brien Press. More recently they have been published by Pajama Press in the U.S. and Canada. The books chronicle the adventures of an Irish teenager who moves to New York to live with her veterinary uncle. I was inspired to write them by my childhood love for James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small books and by my own experiences in moving to New York.

In 2013, I wrote The Exclusion Wars, a thriller for young adults (and not-so-young adults). It’s about a teenager Latino immigrant who goes into hiding in New York after an anti-immigrant President comes into power. It is strange how writers don’t just shape their books; their books also shape their lives. Last year I ended up working as an English teacher to Latino teenagers in The Dominican Republic, and this past summer, I worked as a creative writing teacher for the financially disadvantaged children of Hispanic immigrants in New York City.

Now I live in Brooklyn. My life isn’t comfortable or secure but I love it. At last, it feels like my life. I’m trying to live my life as hard as I can. That feels good. And it’s a lot of fun. W.B. Yeats wrote:

Children play at being great and wonderful people, ambitions they will put away for one reason or another before they grow into ordinary men and women.

I don’t believe that any book lover is an ordinary man or woman. Books take us with them on extraordinary journeys. They make us extraordinary.

Sheila Agnew is an Irish author living in New York. She is the author of The Exclusion Wars, which is available as an e-book on Amazon in India. “Dark and Dangerous, I loved it. Slick writing, a fascinating premise and a rollercoaster plot, Agnew’s The Exclusion Wars is a book that needed to be written and needs to be read.” Eoin Colfer (author of Artemis Fowl). 

Goodreads Link | Website

The post GUEST POST: From Lawyer to Author by Sheila Agnew appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.

Gun Control

by Richard Rensberry

The recent developments on the gun control front have me scratching my head.  Those who will be violent will be violent whether that have a gun or not.  Gun control is the wrong target when it comes to lessening acts of violence, it only serves to create its counterpart; unchallenged and unrestrained violence.  Just look at the unrestrained violence that happened recently in Paris as proof of the illegitimacy of gun control.

The byproduct of gun control is arms only being in the hands of the violent offensive front, be it criminals, terrorists, drug cartels, governments, you name it.  This end product is the complete opposite of what should be stressed.  What should be stressed is the ownership and skilled use of guns by responsible citizens who would then have the capability to curtail the the irresponsible governmental and criminal elements.  The bad guys will always retain or manufacture weapons no matter if all guns were labeled illegal and taken away from the general citizenry.  

Gun control  results in having the wrong people unarmed.  Law abiding and honest working citizens are the ones that require guns and should be armed to protect themselves, their families and friends, their communities, etc..  Where this ability is absent, there is no freedom from oppression by tyrannical governments and criminal thugs.  For this reason the second amendment to the United States constitution exists, it exists to protect the lives and rights of the people, not the lives and rights of criminals and oppressive governments.  Guns are a vital element in the maintenance of a free society whether one likes it or not.

One Bullet A Poem

We the people within reason

maintain our integrity to defend

our freedom of religion,

ourselves, our families and the constitution

of the United States.  We refuse to bend

when it comes to criminals, political correctness

and the second amendment.

Sane people within reason

believe their Nation

is under God, indivisible

with inalienable rights

and justice for all.

To the republican and the democrat,

to the socialist, liberalist and supreme justices,

to universities and psychiatrists

going weak in the knees on common sense;

until we see higher purpose,

true awakening of judgement and reason

within self, nation and the world,

we will relinquish our guns

one bullet at a time.

The post GUEST POST- Gun Control by Richard Rensberry appeared first on Confessions of a Readaholic.