recent article I wrote for www.shared-self-publishing.com
After three frustrating years, one promising literary agent let down, and dozens of rejection letters, I decided to go the "indie" route and self-publish my Young Adult autobiographical novel, CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL.First, I researched and found a reputable POD publisher in WRITER's DIGEST magazine and sent in my complete manuscript. Being a high school English teacher by day, writer by night, I edited the book myself. I had the option with my publisher to choose a pre-formatted cover design, pay extra for a custom designed cover, or design one myself. A self-confessed control freak and what seems like decades carrying around a vision in my mind of my book cover, I, of course, had to design my own.My publisher sent me 10 author copies of my baby book and that is when the real work started. If you think writing is challenging enough, wait until you begin the long journey of marketing your book on your own. My publisher's marketing department helped with a press release form, book reviewer and book store contacts, and other various strategies to help me sell copies.Having an author website set up and networking on various social websites helped me to promote and sell many books. What teen doesn't have a MySpace page? Being a young adult author who writes mainly books for teens, I am now quite proud of the fact that I have over "700 friends" on MYSPACE. A big NY literary agent even found me on www.myspace.com/readmichellekane to propose a new book idea he was interested in having me write!My dream has always been to publish a book. Although I did not get a six figure advance and Jennifer Aniston isn't starring (yet!) in the film version of CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC SCHHOLGIRL, I am very glad I self-published this book. I even have a charity tie-in and have been featured in local newspapers and magazines that announce the fact that I am personally donating 25% of royalties from sales of CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL to domestic violence shelters. The satisfaction comes from not only receiving my royalty checks in the mail, but by giving back to my community and knowing that I am doing SOMETHING to help the fight to end domestic abuse in the USA.
Visit Michelle Kane and Confessions of a Catholic Schoolgirl.
Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts
Friday, January 02, 2009
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
THIS is The Last Lecture--Randy Pausch's contradictions
It is not about achieving your dreams but living your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.
I thought this quote from the late Randy Pausch tied in nicely from one of my earlier posts questioning if chasing dreams was just a waste of time. I totally agree with this quote and strive each day to live it out loud. I am, of course, still waiting for the good karma to come. Patience. Faith. BELIEVE. I think I'm leading my life the right way, are YOU?
Never underestimate the importance of having fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day because there’s no other way to play it.
This quote reminds me to live in the moment and not just for a wish or hope. Sometimes sadness and frustration kill you just a little more each day and you have to be remember to count your blessings, and have FUN because you never know if tomorrow will come.
Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.
I have a love/hate relationship with this quote. Does it contradict with number one above? Is my brick wall stopping the good karma from flowing into my life? Staying up late reading, watching TV, blogging, or shopping online could possibly be brick walls that I built myself? Instead of finishing my next book and spending time doing some actual WRITING, please re-read quote number 2 again.
I thought this quote from the late Randy Pausch tied in nicely from one of my earlier posts questioning if chasing dreams was just a waste of time. I totally agree with this quote and strive each day to live it out loud. I am, of course, still waiting for the good karma to come. Patience. Faith. BELIEVE. I think I'm leading my life the right way, are YOU?
Never underestimate the importance of having fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day because there’s no other way to play it.
This quote reminds me to live in the moment and not just for a wish or hope. Sometimes sadness and frustration kill you just a little more each day and you have to be remember to count your blessings, and have FUN because you never know if tomorrow will come.
Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.
I have a love/hate relationship with this quote. Does it contradict with number one above? Is my brick wall stopping the good karma from flowing into my life? Staying up late reading, watching TV, blogging, or shopping online could possibly be brick walls that I built myself? Instead of finishing my next book and spending time doing some actual WRITING, please re-read quote number 2 again.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
FREE BOOK CHAPTER: KIDS OF 8 MILE HIGH
AS PROMISED, HERE IS THE FIRST CHAPTER OF MY NEW YOUNG ADULT NOVEL:
Forward
Strutting down the hallway in baggy blue jeans, some frayed and worn strands at the bottom of the legs drag onto the floor, picking up the dust and debris at the end of a long school day. Tiny bits of loose-leaf paper and miniscule dust bunnies cling to the denim for dear down the sides of legs, badly concealed by an XXL t-shirt.
They walk through the halls, not making eye contact. You know they see you, and you know why they don’t acknowledge your presence. I did the same thing in high school, didn’t I? You ask yourself, remembering that the teacher was the enemy…and now you are the enemy.
1
DeShaun Johnson saunters past the boarded up houses, some half-burnt to the ground, and checks out the overgrown weeds and uncut grass on the front lawns of his Detroit neighborhood. He shakes his head at the broken, jagged glass of what used to be someone’s window, but now serves as the front door to a dope dealer or heroin addict who has made this their new squatting quarters. Overstuffed and torn black trash bags, stained mattresses with rusty, protruding springs, broken lamps, old toys, and other litter line the front curbs and crumbling sidewalks of his forgotten, neglected city.
His old Detroit high school was forgotten as well, but DeShaun still can’t erase it from his mind. The metal detectors, armed police officers, daily fights and gang activity consumed most of the time that was supposed to be in place for learning. One time, his cousin’s best boy pulled a blade on their math teacher for giving him a D- on a pop quiz. “Change it to an A, or I’ll slice your motherfuckin’ cracker throat.” DeShaun recalls the boy’s exact words to their teacher that day because he was trying to solve an equation with a dull No.2 pencil, but with all his classmates standing on top of their desks cheering and laughing it was kind of difficult getting any classwork done. It was a Monday. “Murder Mondays” as they were known around the school, because something violent always happened on a Monday. That’s just the way it was. An old school tradition or something.
DeShaun hopes his new school will have toilet paper and running water in the restrooms, because his old school rarely did. It was typical of everyone’s mama to buy paper, pencils, pens, glue, notebooks, and toilet paper at the dollar store when shopping for school supplies in the fall. But not this fall, at least not for DeShaun. “Baby, I is not gonna buy toiletries for you to take to school this year. And I fo’sho ain’t gonna let you go to school that is run by gangs,” Juanita Johnson had told her son, DeShaun, when she decided that the city schools were not good enough anymore for her eldest, and brightest son. With DeShaun’s daddy in prison, and five kids to take care of on her own, Juanita could not afford some fancy private school. But luckily, her co-worker at the convenience store in the suburbs has an apartment in North Pointe and said the Johnsons can use her address as proof of residency so that DeShaun could attend North Pointe High School.
As DeShaun walks north to 8 Mile Road, he passes liquor stores with check cashing services, along with cell phone and designer handbags sales. WE TAKE FOOD STAMPS signs hang in the filthy windows of these markets and pawn shops. He strolls past the coney islands, Baptist churches, barber shops, auto body shops, jazz clubs, adult video stores, and skinny, stray dogs running in the streets. Homeless men, with their eyes half closed lean against graffiti labeled, closed businesses, and homeless women push their stolen grocery carts full of recyclable plastic bottles down the empty sidewalks. Ten cents earned for each plastic bottle or aluminum can adds up to buy a couple of cheeseburgers or bottles of cheap wine. DeShaun turns his head and his gaze falls to his shoes. Can’t let them see the sadness in your eyes because their own eyes will grow more sad. Can’t fit any more sadness in the eyes of the lost and forgotten.
As Deshaun steps across the busy, one-way four lane traffic of 8 Mile Road to make the next half mile of his walk to his new school, he pauses at the car wash on the corner. It’s on the left hand, north side of 8 Mile Road—just barely out of Detroit city limits. “Wash your car clean of city dirt and grime before you enter our polished suburbs,” is probably their unwritten motto, DeShaun can’t help but wonder. He knows the car wash is there for a good reason.
Stepping out of the city and into its closest suburb, DeShaun notices the immediate differences. Moving on up the suburb’s tree lines sidewalks, DeShaun admires the flower filled medians with their advertised signs. “Mom-to-Mom sale—September 12. St. Rene’s Catholic Chuch.” And “Talent Show—try-out now North Pointers. North Pointe High School.” He admires the gleaming, shining cars of the used car lots, and reads the help wanted signs in the windows of the oil change and auto supplies stores. There’s a frozen custard stand and a family style Italian restaurant. Coffee shops, strip malls and outdoor café`s with little black wrought iron chairs and pretty red umbrellas at the tables. Men in business suits and women in high heels sit at these little tables sipping cappucinos and lattes, nibbling on chocolate biscotti and lemon scones. White men with blue collared shirts, long hair, and mustaches smoke cigarettes in their pick-up trucks, waiting for co-workers to meet them before their shift starts at one of the many collision shops in town.
DeShaun steers his new sneakers to the left and follows his feet down a residential, side street to where his new school is located. Well manicured, green lawns with flat hedges and flower beds with big plastic deer lounging in them frame tiny, neat looking all brick bungalow homes. Some of the houses have white awnings over the doorways, and most of them have chain link fences with gates in the driveways. The houses are almost identical and sit in perfect straight lines. Halloween decorations of witches and jack-o-lanterns linger on front porches. Welcome mats and flowered wreaths adorn the front doors. Large SUVs and mini-vans are parked in the driveways. DeShaun has only walked one mile from his house, but has already arrived in another world. He bites down hard on his lower lip to try to stop it from quivering and wonders what his new classmates will be like, and if he’s wearing the right shoes. The shoes are popular at his old school and everyone has them. Somehow DeShaun knows this new school will be different.
DeShaun stops to look up at the worn, brick building with paper bears and pumpkins taped to its classroom windows. Even the colorful construction paper artwork can’t camouflage the fact that this public learning institution resembles an ancient automobile factory. “Welcome Back Students!” is lettered on a large sign above the front entrance. A burning flames his cheeks as he realizes that he is not welcome. He is not “back” because he has never been before. He’s a brand new student with brand new Jordans who shouldn’t be going to school there. What if somebody finds out? DeShaun climbs the large concrete steps with a warm wave of dread flooding over him. He’s early. Where are all the students? Shiny, newly waxed floors squeak under his new sneakers and he notices the smell. The undeniable smell of the first day of school. Doesn’t matter what school it is, or where it is. The smell is the same. DeShaun first noticed the first-day-of-school smell upon entering Kindergarten. The smell hasn’t changed over his years in junior high and now high school. He couldn’t help thinking that his old high school and this school probably will only have the smell in common and nothing else.
A plump looking girl with tight jeans, pretty blonde hair and a face to match was the only other person in the empty hallway outside the main office. She stood under a “Go Grizzlies” banner staring at a bulletin board in front of her. DeShaun looks down at her feet to see what kind of shoes she’s wearing. He smiles. They’re Jordans. Like his, but girly. White and pink and tiny, with pen scribbles of boy’s names and little hearts drawn all over them.
“Hi,” the girl says, as DeShaun approaches. “I could hear you squeaking a mile away.”
DeShaun laughs. “Whattup? My name’s DeShaun.”
“I’m Melissa. Everyone calls me Missy, though. You must be new here. Are you a freshman?”
“Naw, girl, I ain’t no freshman. Do I look like some freshman punk to you?” DeShaun cocks his head to one side and raises both arms up in the air, taking a step back so Missy could get a good full look at him. All fifteen and a half years of his gown-ass manliness.
“I dunno. I just don’t remember you going here last year. If you did, I’d remember you for sure.”
“Why’s that? Because I’m so fine?” DeShaun asks, pulling on his chin as if he were stroking a beard.
“No, because you’re black. There’s only like a handful of black kids that go here.”
“For real? What is everyone racist around here or somethin’”?
“Well, if you want to know the truth, yes,” Missy says, nodding her head.
DeShaun’s nostrils flair and he steps closer to Missy so that his face is almost touching hers. He looks down from the top of her head and into turquoise colored eyes. “So you scared of us niggas too, white girl?”
Missy smiles. “You’re not a nigga. And you shouldn’t use that would. Actually, I know I shouldn’t be using it either, but since you all use it to talk to each other, I guess I can just say it this once. But don’t make me say it again, and don’t say it to me again either. It’s a bad word. A hurtful word.”
“What’s with you girl? You trippin’?”
“Naw. I’m just tired of all the black kids calling each other the ‘N’ word in the halls, and of course, it would be offensive if a white kid used that word to a black kid. But I think fair is fair and no one should use it. It should just be turned off, like our cell phones are supposed to be in school,” Missy says, pointing down to DeShaun’s ringing cell phone on his hip.
“Hey, mama. Yeah, I’m here. No, class hasn’t started yet. No, I haven’t found my locker yet. No, no textbooks yet. Mama! I’ve only been here like five minutes! Yeah, I got my schedule.” DeShaun smirks and looks at Missy. “Yeah, I’ve already made a new friend. Bye mama.” DeShaun turns off his cell phone and puts it in his jeans pocket.
Missy smiles. “Come on. Let me show you around your new school.”
Forward
Strutting down the hallway in baggy blue jeans, some frayed and worn strands at the bottom of the legs drag onto the floor, picking up the dust and debris at the end of a long school day. Tiny bits of loose-leaf paper and miniscule dust bunnies cling to the denim for dear down the sides of legs, badly concealed by an XXL t-shirt.
They walk through the halls, not making eye contact. You know they see you, and you know why they don’t acknowledge your presence. I did the same thing in high school, didn’t I? You ask yourself, remembering that the teacher was the enemy…and now you are the enemy.
1
DeShaun Johnson saunters past the boarded up houses, some half-burnt to the ground, and checks out the overgrown weeds and uncut grass on the front lawns of his Detroit neighborhood. He shakes his head at the broken, jagged glass of what used to be someone’s window, but now serves as the front door to a dope dealer or heroin addict who has made this their new squatting quarters. Overstuffed and torn black trash bags, stained mattresses with rusty, protruding springs, broken lamps, old toys, and other litter line the front curbs and crumbling sidewalks of his forgotten, neglected city.
His old Detroit high school was forgotten as well, but DeShaun still can’t erase it from his mind. The metal detectors, armed police officers, daily fights and gang activity consumed most of the time that was supposed to be in place for learning. One time, his cousin’s best boy pulled a blade on their math teacher for giving him a D- on a pop quiz. “Change it to an A, or I’ll slice your motherfuckin’ cracker throat.” DeShaun recalls the boy’s exact words to their teacher that day because he was trying to solve an equation with a dull No.2 pencil, but with all his classmates standing on top of their desks cheering and laughing it was kind of difficult getting any classwork done. It was a Monday. “Murder Mondays” as they were known around the school, because something violent always happened on a Monday. That’s just the way it was. An old school tradition or something.
DeShaun hopes his new school will have toilet paper and running water in the restrooms, because his old school rarely did. It was typical of everyone’s mama to buy paper, pencils, pens, glue, notebooks, and toilet paper at the dollar store when shopping for school supplies in the fall. But not this fall, at least not for DeShaun. “Baby, I is not gonna buy toiletries for you to take to school this year. And I fo’sho ain’t gonna let you go to school that is run by gangs,” Juanita Johnson had told her son, DeShaun, when she decided that the city schools were not good enough anymore for her eldest, and brightest son. With DeShaun’s daddy in prison, and five kids to take care of on her own, Juanita could not afford some fancy private school. But luckily, her co-worker at the convenience store in the suburbs has an apartment in North Pointe and said the Johnsons can use her address as proof of residency so that DeShaun could attend North Pointe High School.
As DeShaun walks north to 8 Mile Road, he passes liquor stores with check cashing services, along with cell phone and designer handbags sales. WE TAKE FOOD STAMPS signs hang in the filthy windows of these markets and pawn shops. He strolls past the coney islands, Baptist churches, barber shops, auto body shops, jazz clubs, adult video stores, and skinny, stray dogs running in the streets. Homeless men, with their eyes half closed lean against graffiti labeled, closed businesses, and homeless women push their stolen grocery carts full of recyclable plastic bottles down the empty sidewalks. Ten cents earned for each plastic bottle or aluminum can adds up to buy a couple of cheeseburgers or bottles of cheap wine. DeShaun turns his head and his gaze falls to his shoes. Can’t let them see the sadness in your eyes because their own eyes will grow more sad. Can’t fit any more sadness in the eyes of the lost and forgotten.
As Deshaun steps across the busy, one-way four lane traffic of 8 Mile Road to make the next half mile of his walk to his new school, he pauses at the car wash on the corner. It’s on the left hand, north side of 8 Mile Road—just barely out of Detroit city limits. “Wash your car clean of city dirt and grime before you enter our polished suburbs,” is probably their unwritten motto, DeShaun can’t help but wonder. He knows the car wash is there for a good reason.
Stepping out of the city and into its closest suburb, DeShaun notices the immediate differences. Moving on up the suburb’s tree lines sidewalks, DeShaun admires the flower filled medians with their advertised signs. “Mom-to-Mom sale—September 12. St. Rene’s Catholic Chuch.” And “Talent Show—try-out now North Pointers. North Pointe High School.” He admires the gleaming, shining cars of the used car lots, and reads the help wanted signs in the windows of the oil change and auto supplies stores. There’s a frozen custard stand and a family style Italian restaurant. Coffee shops, strip malls and outdoor café`s with little black wrought iron chairs and pretty red umbrellas at the tables. Men in business suits and women in high heels sit at these little tables sipping cappucinos and lattes, nibbling on chocolate biscotti and lemon scones. White men with blue collared shirts, long hair, and mustaches smoke cigarettes in their pick-up trucks, waiting for co-workers to meet them before their shift starts at one of the many collision shops in town.
DeShaun steers his new sneakers to the left and follows his feet down a residential, side street to where his new school is located. Well manicured, green lawns with flat hedges and flower beds with big plastic deer lounging in them frame tiny, neat looking all brick bungalow homes. Some of the houses have white awnings over the doorways, and most of them have chain link fences with gates in the driveways. The houses are almost identical and sit in perfect straight lines. Halloween decorations of witches and jack-o-lanterns linger on front porches. Welcome mats and flowered wreaths adorn the front doors. Large SUVs and mini-vans are parked in the driveways. DeShaun has only walked one mile from his house, but has already arrived in another world. He bites down hard on his lower lip to try to stop it from quivering and wonders what his new classmates will be like, and if he’s wearing the right shoes. The shoes are popular at his old school and everyone has them. Somehow DeShaun knows this new school will be different.
DeShaun stops to look up at the worn, brick building with paper bears and pumpkins taped to its classroom windows. Even the colorful construction paper artwork can’t camouflage the fact that this public learning institution resembles an ancient automobile factory. “Welcome Back Students!” is lettered on a large sign above the front entrance. A burning flames his cheeks as he realizes that he is not welcome. He is not “back” because he has never been before. He’s a brand new student with brand new Jordans who shouldn’t be going to school there. What if somebody finds out? DeShaun climbs the large concrete steps with a warm wave of dread flooding over him. He’s early. Where are all the students? Shiny, newly waxed floors squeak under his new sneakers and he notices the smell. The undeniable smell of the first day of school. Doesn’t matter what school it is, or where it is. The smell is the same. DeShaun first noticed the first-day-of-school smell upon entering Kindergarten. The smell hasn’t changed over his years in junior high and now high school. He couldn’t help thinking that his old high school and this school probably will only have the smell in common and nothing else.
A plump looking girl with tight jeans, pretty blonde hair and a face to match was the only other person in the empty hallway outside the main office. She stood under a “Go Grizzlies” banner staring at a bulletin board in front of her. DeShaun looks down at her feet to see what kind of shoes she’s wearing. He smiles. They’re Jordans. Like his, but girly. White and pink and tiny, with pen scribbles of boy’s names and little hearts drawn all over them.
“Hi,” the girl says, as DeShaun approaches. “I could hear you squeaking a mile away.”
DeShaun laughs. “Whattup? My name’s DeShaun.”
“I’m Melissa. Everyone calls me Missy, though. You must be new here. Are you a freshman?”
“Naw, girl, I ain’t no freshman. Do I look like some freshman punk to you?” DeShaun cocks his head to one side and raises both arms up in the air, taking a step back so Missy could get a good full look at him. All fifteen and a half years of his gown-ass manliness.
“I dunno. I just don’t remember you going here last year. If you did, I’d remember you for sure.”
“Why’s that? Because I’m so fine?” DeShaun asks, pulling on his chin as if he were stroking a beard.
“No, because you’re black. There’s only like a handful of black kids that go here.”
“For real? What is everyone racist around here or somethin’”?
“Well, if you want to know the truth, yes,” Missy says, nodding her head.
DeShaun’s nostrils flair and he steps closer to Missy so that his face is almost touching hers. He looks down from the top of her head and into turquoise colored eyes. “So you scared of us niggas too, white girl?”
Missy smiles. “You’re not a nigga. And you shouldn’t use that would. Actually, I know I shouldn’t be using it either, but since you all use it to talk to each other, I guess I can just say it this once. But don’t make me say it again, and don’t say it to me again either. It’s a bad word. A hurtful word.”
“What’s with you girl? You trippin’?”
“Naw. I’m just tired of all the black kids calling each other the ‘N’ word in the halls, and of course, it would be offensive if a white kid used that word to a black kid. But I think fair is fair and no one should use it. It should just be turned off, like our cell phones are supposed to be in school,” Missy says, pointing down to DeShaun’s ringing cell phone on his hip.
“Hey, mama. Yeah, I’m here. No, class hasn’t started yet. No, I haven’t found my locker yet. No, no textbooks yet. Mama! I’ve only been here like five minutes! Yeah, I got my schedule.” DeShaun smirks and looks at Missy. “Yeah, I’ve already made a new friend. Bye mama.” DeShaun turns off his cell phone and puts it in his jeans pocket.
Missy smiles. “Come on. Let me show you around your new school.”
Sunday, February 24, 2008
My website www.michellekane.com is finally back up! Just an FYI if anyone is looking for a web designer/host do not use the company Boston Dedicated. The owner is a shady con artist who tried to extort money from me and shut down my site because I didn't pay him an exorbitant amount of $$$ to buy my domain name from him...my own name!
After many frustrating months and not paying one cent to an extortionist, I now own my domain name and my site is back up! yay me! Maybe nice guys don't always have to finish last...
Thanks for all the support friends. Check me out:
www.michellekane.com
Got LIT? Read the new book, CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL
After many frustrating months and not paying one cent to an extortionist, I now own my domain name and my site is back up! yay me! Maybe nice guys don't always have to finish last...
Thanks for all the support friends. Check me out:
www.michellekane.com
Got LIT? Read the new book, CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL
Sunday, January 27, 2008
My Space Book Review
in case you missed it friends...
Poised at the Edge Book Review
Confessions of a Catholic Schoolgirl.
Michelle Kane
Valerie Bernowski's story begins in the mid-80's. Life is not easy; money's tight, her father rarely shows his face, and her hyper-religious, beleaguered mother is not emotionally available. Where can she turn? She certainly cannot trust sadistic Sister Mary Angelina, or pervy Father "Fingers."
She begins to rebel against the Catholic Church, her soon to be divorced parents, and just about everything else. The world unfolding before her is world of cyclical abuse. Her mother married a man, who berated, hit, and raped her, just like her mother had before her.
The more Valerie learns about her family, the more she comes to realize that emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, have been long-accepted family traditions. Things come to an ugly head when Valerie and sister Rachel go stay the summer with their father. Not only is he never home, but there's not even any food for the girls to eat. Eventually Valerie calls her mother to go home early. Rachel (who has a boyfriend in the neighborhood) stays. A few days later Rachel is delivered home, black and blue, from being beaten by their father.
Michelle Kane tells a stark straightforward tale of abuse. In the end we see Valerie emerge a strong (yet damaged) young woman, determined to have the cycle end with her.
25% of EVERY BOOK PURCHASE GOES TO HELP VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.
Written By Melissa.
Poised at the Edge Book Review
Confessions of a Catholic Schoolgirl.
Michelle Kane
Valerie Bernowski's story begins in the mid-80's. Life is not easy; money's tight, her father rarely shows his face, and her hyper-religious, beleaguered mother is not emotionally available. Where can she turn? She certainly cannot trust sadistic Sister Mary Angelina, or pervy Father "Fingers."
She begins to rebel against the Catholic Church, her soon to be divorced parents, and just about everything else. The world unfolding before her is world of cyclical abuse. Her mother married a man, who berated, hit, and raped her, just like her mother had before her.
The more Valerie learns about her family, the more she comes to realize that emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, have been long-accepted family traditions. Things come to an ugly head when Valerie and sister Rachel go stay the summer with their father. Not only is he never home, but there's not even any food for the girls to eat. Eventually Valerie calls her mother to go home early. Rachel (who has a boyfriend in the neighborhood) stays. A few days later Rachel is delivered home, black and blue, from being beaten by their father.
Michelle Kane tells a stark straightforward tale of abuse. In the end we see Valerie emerge a strong (yet damaged) young woman, determined to have the cycle end with her.
25% of EVERY BOOK PURCHASE GOES TO HELP VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.
Written By Melissa.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Writer's Digest Magazine says...
this about Michelle Kane's new book CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL..."great title...bright, clear voice..."
GOT LIT?
GOT LIT?
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