S. Rose's Blog
February 20, 2017
Sparrow in the Wind has won a silver medal in the 2016 Florida Book Awards
Sparrow in the Wind has won the silver medal in the category of general fiction. Many thanks to the FBA team for this honor, and congratulations to all the other winners!
http://floridabookawards.lib.fsu.edu/
http://floridabookawards.lib.fsu.edu/
June 2, 2016
Book Give away
Enter to win one of 6 signed, first edition copies of my new novel, Sparrow in the Wind
From June 9 through June 30th.
From June 9 through June 30th.
March 26, 2016
Sparrow in the Wind
My new novel, published by Bedazzled Ink, is available for pre-order on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Sparrow-Wind-S-...
Link to Bedazzled Ink: http://binkbooks.bedazzledink.com/boo...
http://www.amazon.com/Sparrow-Wind-S-...
Link to Bedazzled Ink: http://binkbooks.bedazzledink.com/boo...
November 12, 2015
January 27, 2015
FREE Kindle Promo 2 Sci Fi books!
TODAY! 1/27 - 1/30 4 more days DOUBLE FREE Kindle Promo Get Book 1 & 2! First time promo for Children of Quaezar! Pick up both ebooks and find out how the story ends.
Song of the Manatee: Children of Quaezar
Song of the Manatee: Aria of Light
http://www.amazon.com/Song-Manatee-Li...
http://www.amazon.com/Song-Manatee-Ch...
Song of the Manatee: Children of Quaezar
Song of the Manatee: Aria of Light
http://www.amazon.com/Song-Manatee-Li...
http://www.amazon.com/Song-Manatee-Ch...
September 18, 2014
FREE KINDLE BOOK, SEPT. FRIDAY 19-23
Song of the Manatee: Aria of Light
FREE Kindle ebook giveaway promo from Friday 19th to Tuesday 23!
I am giving away Book One to celebrate the release of Book 2, Children of Quaezar , which concludes Aria of Light.
Follow link to grab your free Kindle book!
http://www.amazon.com/Song-Manatee-Li...
FREE Kindle ebook giveaway promo from Friday 19th to Tuesday 23!
I am giving away Book One to celebrate the release of Book 2, Children of Quaezar , which concludes Aria of Light.
Follow link to grab your free Kindle book!
http://www.amazon.com/Song-Manatee-Li...
January 14, 2014
Link to Youtube Audiobook sample
Follow the youtube link below to listen to Jeanne O. Whitehouse narrate the audiobook version of Bridge Ices Before Road
http://youtu.be/lFEn6mQzUV0
You can get a full copy of the audiobook for free with a new trial membership at Audible here:
http://www.audible.com/t1/30trial_at?...
http://youtu.be/lFEn6mQzUV0
You can get a full copy of the audiobook for free with a new trial membership at Audible here:
http://www.audible.com/t1/30trial_at?...
November 9, 2013
Audio Book of Bridge Ices Before Road is Available at Amazon!
Audio Books: A way to read more, not less.
Audio books can never take the place of reading (unless you are visually impaired or dyslexic, and I mean that respectfully.) For those of us who are fortunate to enjoy reading print,it is our own imaginations that create a unique adventure. But there are only so many hours in a day, only so much time we can just sit and read! You can't read and drive; some of us can't read and ride shotgun-I get carsick if I try.
A well done audio book allows us to augment our book
time. With that in mind, I had my novel, Bridge Ices Before Road produced as an audio book. I must say, narrator Jeanne Whitehouse surpassed my hopes and expectations. She created a work of art with her voice. Jeanne makes the characters come so vividly to life that it's hard to believe they're not real people!
If you have never tried an audio book, I encourage you to go to Amazon and consider Bridge Ices Before Road. You can get it free with a trial membership at audible.com, linked with Amazon. If you don't like the book, or decide within 30 days that audio books are just not your thing, audible.com will refund your money, no questions asked. I hope you will give it a try. If you are already a member, Bridge Ices Before Road is sure not to disappoint. It would also make a great holiday gift.
Happy Holidays. Sienna Rose
Bridge Ices Before Road
Audio books can never take the place of reading (unless you are visually impaired or dyslexic, and I mean that respectfully.) For those of us who are fortunate to enjoy reading print,it is our own imaginations that create a unique adventure. But there are only so many hours in a day, only so much time we can just sit and read! You can't read and drive; some of us can't read and ride shotgun-I get carsick if I try.
A well done audio book allows us to augment our book
time. With that in mind, I had my novel, Bridge Ices Before Road produced as an audio book. I must say, narrator Jeanne Whitehouse surpassed my hopes and expectations. She created a work of art with her voice. Jeanne makes the characters come so vividly to life that it's hard to believe they're not real people!
If you have never tried an audio book, I encourage you to go to Amazon and consider Bridge Ices Before Road. You can get it free with a trial membership at audible.com, linked with Amazon. If you don't like the book, or decide within 30 days that audio books are just not your thing, audible.com will refund your money, no questions asked. I hope you will give it a try. If you are already a member, Bridge Ices Before Road is sure not to disappoint. It would also make a great holiday gift.
Happy Holidays. Sienna Rose
Bridge Ices Before Road
November 2, 2013
Charlie Bray's review of Bridge Ices Before Road, as featured on The Indie Tribe
The book opens with Frances Orillio, like most children of her age, learning her way. But unlike most children she is not developing in the midst of a caring, loving family whose very existence revolves around its offspring. She is trying to plot a course through a plethora of secrets and lies, unaware of where she comes from and with little idea where she is headed. She is, nevertheless, brought up to observe certain values and standards, and to know her place within society. She knows that, whilst by no means affluent, she is certainly not at the bottom of the pile. She is taught that Negro children, for instance, play in their park and white children play in their park. When she challenges this she is treated to a back-hander from her dad for being ignorant. She is told to avoid certain dodgy alleyways around her neighbourhood, which are apparently infested by equally dodgy individuals.
So when she inadvertently finds herself in one, and is confronted by Mad-Dog Malone and her brother Tommy, her minder, in a dark alley, she is treated to a crash course in life at the bottom of the pile. It is during this encounter that the incredible skill of the author, Sienna Rose shines through for the first time. Almost paralysed with fear, Frances flays around for common ground in the hope that the similarly aged tomboy, Mad-Dog will refrain from attacking her. The superb dialogue that ensues throughout this scene, and the undoubted bond that rapidly develops between the two, is actually the catalyst of the whole story. We are privileged to follow the girls into early adulthood and to witness how burning issues of the time – homophobia, women’s rights, racism, abuse and hypocracy are dealt with so clumsily that, in hindsight, the reader’s toes curl with shame and embarrassment.
Another area in which the author excels is the one of setting. She paints a breathtakingly accurate mental image of the period, and is very adept at depicting every detail of deprived locations. The reader is actually in there amongst the characters. What a way to enjoy a book!
And quite apart from dialogue and setting, the main characters themselves are given so much depth that they will never be strangers to the reader, who will always care deeply what happens to them.
Two action scenes portray how adept this wordsmith is at that particular category. In one horrifying scene, Mad-Dog’s drunken father is violently assaulting his children, who try hard to protect each other. He is interrupted by an unexpected visit from the local priest, who decides discretion is the better part of valour and creeps sheepishly away. I was that absorbed and emotionally charged by the skilful writing of this scene that I dearly wanted to dive down into my kindle and sort Mad Tommy out myself. I know, they’ll be coming to take me away anytime now.
The other scene is a raging inferno, so intense in description that the reader does well to avoid being burned.
So, in conclusion this book excels in all areas. Relationships are tenderly explored, social issues are dealt with in keeping with the era that the book is set within, dialogue continually moves the plot forward, the setting is created with such clarity that the reader seems to be part of it all and the action scenes are quite breath-taking and often harrowing.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough and urge you to read it.
The audio version of this book is due for release later this month and the narrator, Jeanne Whitehouse, suits it perfectly. She is a top producer for Audio Creation Exchange, and those who happen to enjoy audio books can be assured of a high quality professional product.
So when she inadvertently finds herself in one, and is confronted by Mad-Dog Malone and her brother Tommy, her minder, in a dark alley, she is treated to a crash course in life at the bottom of the pile. It is during this encounter that the incredible skill of the author, Sienna Rose shines through for the first time. Almost paralysed with fear, Frances flays around for common ground in the hope that the similarly aged tomboy, Mad-Dog will refrain from attacking her. The superb dialogue that ensues throughout this scene, and the undoubted bond that rapidly develops between the two, is actually the catalyst of the whole story. We are privileged to follow the girls into early adulthood and to witness how burning issues of the time – homophobia, women’s rights, racism, abuse and hypocracy are dealt with so clumsily that, in hindsight, the reader’s toes curl with shame and embarrassment.
Another area in which the author excels is the one of setting. She paints a breathtakingly accurate mental image of the period, and is very adept at depicting every detail of deprived locations. The reader is actually in there amongst the characters. What a way to enjoy a book!
And quite apart from dialogue and setting, the main characters themselves are given so much depth that they will never be strangers to the reader, who will always care deeply what happens to them.
Two action scenes portray how adept this wordsmith is at that particular category. In one horrifying scene, Mad-Dog’s drunken father is violently assaulting his children, who try hard to protect each other. He is interrupted by an unexpected visit from the local priest, who decides discretion is the better part of valour and creeps sheepishly away. I was that absorbed and emotionally charged by the skilful writing of this scene that I dearly wanted to dive down into my kindle and sort Mad Tommy out myself. I know, they’ll be coming to take me away anytime now.
The other scene is a raging inferno, so intense in description that the reader does well to avoid being burned.
So, in conclusion this book excels in all areas. Relationships are tenderly explored, social issues are dealt with in keeping with the era that the book is set within, dialogue continually moves the plot forward, the setting is created with such clarity that the reader seems to be part of it all and the action scenes are quite breath-taking and often harrowing.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough and urge you to read it.
The audio version of this book is due for release later this month and the narrator, Jeanne Whitehouse, suits it perfectly. She is a top producer for Audio Creation Exchange, and those who happen to enjoy audio books can be assured of a high quality professional product.
July 28, 2013
Encountering the other: Racism 40 years ago and today
Greetings All.
The one year anniversary of Bridge Ices Before Road, published September 4, 2012, is fast approaching. In my first and only novel, one of the many themes I wrestled with was the culturally specific racism I encountered as a white child of a blue collar family, growing up in a working class suburb of New England in the 60s and 70s. If you didn’t live through it, you might not fully understand the peculiar experience of being so geographically and socially separated from black people that many of us didn’t know they existed for the first three or four years of life. Subsequent to what was often a bewildering encounter, perhaps while shopping in the city of Boston, the only black people most of us saw were servants in the movies, like the nice old man who danced up the stairs with Shirley Temple, or Buckwheat in The Little Rascals. Our schools remained strictly socially segregated long after the legal integration in the south, so I was a freshman in high school before I ever spoke to a black person, another student. Unfortunately, it did not go well.
So what am I blathering on about? Here it is: As I wrote from 2010 to 2012, I wondered if the racial element of my story had any current social relevance, or was it just a look back to the bad old days? After all, we have an African American president! Now, in so far as I can determine, the question— whether or not the racial dilemmas of forty years ago carry any contemporary applicability—has been sadly and unequivocally answered, in the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, and the trial that sent shockwaves from coast to coast. Clearly, even though we’ve improved as a nation and a culture, the same roads of mistrust and misunderstanding still lead to the badlands of hostility and lack of empathy, with terrible consequences for us all.
If you read Bridge Ices Before Road, you’ll see that while I explore some of the origins of the strife, I don’t insult the reader with any pat answers, or platitudinous justifications. Nor do I present the issue as, metaphorically speaking, strictly black and white. No one gets blamed. The cycle of mistrust, hostility and violence isn’t clearly demarcated between good guys and bad guys, which might offend some people, though offence was never my intention. What I wished to convey was the deep, many layered complexities of prejudice, and leave the reader with something to think about. In so doing, I hope I made a tiny, very humble contribution to finding a way out of the mess we still find ourselves in these many years later. Only when enough well intentioned people think carefully about a problem can there be any movement towards a solution.
The one year anniversary of Bridge Ices Before Road, published September 4, 2012, is fast approaching. In my first and only novel, one of the many themes I wrestled with was the culturally specific racism I encountered as a white child of a blue collar family, growing up in a working class suburb of New England in the 60s and 70s. If you didn’t live through it, you might not fully understand the peculiar experience of being so geographically and socially separated from black people that many of us didn’t know they existed for the first three or four years of life. Subsequent to what was often a bewildering encounter, perhaps while shopping in the city of Boston, the only black people most of us saw were servants in the movies, like the nice old man who danced up the stairs with Shirley Temple, or Buckwheat in The Little Rascals. Our schools remained strictly socially segregated long after the legal integration in the south, so I was a freshman in high school before I ever spoke to a black person, another student. Unfortunately, it did not go well.
So what am I blathering on about? Here it is: As I wrote from 2010 to 2012, I wondered if the racial element of my story had any current social relevance, or was it just a look back to the bad old days? After all, we have an African American president! Now, in so far as I can determine, the question— whether or not the racial dilemmas of forty years ago carry any contemporary applicability—has been sadly and unequivocally answered, in the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, and the trial that sent shockwaves from coast to coast. Clearly, even though we’ve improved as a nation and a culture, the same roads of mistrust and misunderstanding still lead to the badlands of hostility and lack of empathy, with terrible consequences for us all.
If you read Bridge Ices Before Road, you’ll see that while I explore some of the origins of the strife, I don’t insult the reader with any pat answers, or platitudinous justifications. Nor do I present the issue as, metaphorically speaking, strictly black and white. No one gets blamed. The cycle of mistrust, hostility and violence isn’t clearly demarcated between good guys and bad guys, which might offend some people, though offence was never my intention. What I wished to convey was the deep, many layered complexities of prejudice, and leave the reader with something to think about. In so doing, I hope I made a tiny, very humble contribution to finding a way out of the mess we still find ourselves in these many years later. Only when enough well intentioned people think carefully about a problem can there be any movement towards a solution.
