it’s real now
Originally published at What She Says. You can comment here or there.
It’s official. Here is the announcement-
Works by Cook, Schaap selected for Electronic Book Series
New Rivers Press is pleased to announce that two works, a novel and a collection of short stories, have been selected for publication in the New Rivers Press Electronic Book Series. The works include Click by Rebecca Cook and Up the Hill by James Calvin Schaap.
In the literary psychological thriller Click, we meet Ronnie, a woman who is struggling with psychosis following the death of her husband and two children in a car accident. Through rumination and hallucination, the novel takes us on a commingled journey through Ronnie’s past and present, a life filled with self-injury and hypersexuality, and her struggle to sort out fantasy from reality. When a new boyfriend, George, enters the scene, the reader wonders if George can save Ronnie, but there is also a handgun, and soon, we fear for everyone’s life.
Up the Hill by James Calvin Schaap is inspirational literary fiction, a series of interconnected short stories about how the dead handle being spirits in a world that continues on without them, but also with them. Narrated by the town’s former newspaper editor, a spirit whose home is now the local cemetery, Up the Hill witnesses how the dearly departed deal with their pasts and with the present in scenes that result in forgiveness, redemption, and divine intervention. In Up the Hill, death is only a threshold to understanding, not only for the deceased, but for the living.
About the authors
Rebecca Cook writes poetry and prose. Her essay, “Flame,”(Southeast Review), was a notable essay in the 2013 Best American Essays. She was a Bread Loaf Fiction Scholar (2009), and has recently published work in Southeast Review, Pank, Grist, Plume, The Cortland Review, Sliver of Stone, Mayday Magazine, The Georgia Review, Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, Atticus Review, The Nervous Breakdown, and The Rumpus. New essays are forthcoming in Brain, Child, and Seneca Review. A series of love poems was published recently in the Romanian Anthology, The Mood At Noon. Her chapbook of poems, The Terrible Baby (2006), is available from Dancing Girl Press. Her first book of poems, I Will Not Give Over, was published in 2013 (Aldrich Press).
James Calvin Schaap taught literature and writing at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, for 37 years before retiring recently. He has published many short stories and several novels, including Romey’s Place, In the Silence There Are Ghosts, The Secrets of Barneveld Calvary, and Touches the Sky. In addition, he’s written a variety of non-fiction books, including Things We Couldn’t Say, the war-time biography of the Dutch Nazi Resistance fighter, Berendina Eman, as well as CRC Family Portrait, a history of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. He and his wife Barbara are the parents of two adult children. They live just outside Alton, Iowa.
Spread the word!!
-rebecca