#Book Spotlight - There is Sunshine After the Rain

Creative Expressions Literary Services is pleased to announce Virtual Book Tour for There Is Sunshine After The Rain : Making It Through Life’s Struggles by Patricia A Saunders. The tour will run January 21-27, 2018.

Name: Patricia A. Saunders

Book Title: There Is Sunshine After The Rain : Making It Through Life’s Struggles

Release Date: December 20, 2017

Publisher: Book Baby

Genre: Non-Ficition

Page Count: 205

ASIN: B078J836Q3

About the Author

Self Published Author, Patricia A. Saunders was born and raised in Connecticut before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area nearly 24 years ago. She received her Master’s in Management from the University of Phoenix in 2011. After the passing of her mother who had Alzheimer’s, Patricia decided that all the words that she kept to herself were to be released.

Saunders has released her fifth book an autobiography memoir infused with poetry (December 2017)  with BookBaby Publishing called There Is Sunshine After The Rain : Making It Through Life’s Struggles. The book will take the reader on a journey of a young child influences that shape her decisions as an adult. It is a must read that covers being raped multiple times,  a family that protects her,  how she wanted to die after the passing of her mother , and the people who would not give up on her!

Her work has been featured on a Coast to Coast Book Tour at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Toronto Word On The Street, Sacramento Black Book Fair, Tucson Book Festival, Miami International Festival of Books and AARP Life@50+ Spring Convention. Also on In the Company of Poet, Women Owned Business Club Magazine, and Alysha Live! Radio Show and Coach Deb Bailey Secret of Success Talk Radio. She performs locally at spoken word events and Capital Jazz SuperCruise Open Mic with Grammy Award Winner Eric Roberson.

She is a monthly blogger of her own blog Blessed & Curvy who covers today’s hot topics.

She released her first self published book Through the Fire (March 2012) which covered emotions from situations, circumstances, and life lessons that have influenced her over her lifetime. On a mission to complete a book a year in case she inherits the ugly disease she released her second book Loving Me (2013) and third Let It Rain (2014) which is also self published and covers various topics from love, grief, self image, self esteem, bullying, and discovery of self love .Her fourth book (2016) This Too Shall Pass was released by AuthorHouse Publishing and readers have given it a five star rating.

In her spare time, Patricia enjoys writing poetry, traveling, spending time with family and wine tasting.

Synopsis:

Sitting there with the pieces of your life around you, there seemed to be a pattern. There was faith, love, deceit, lust, and loss—in that order. You didn’t think you were deserving of love. That is why everything was being taken from you, and you were ready to give up on life.

Through your poetry, faith, and learning from your past, you can rewrite the story. It was after coming through all the experiences and being stronger, you realized there is always a new chapter.

The book will take you on the journey of a young girl growing up in Connecticut, who had to take some stumbles along the way to come into her own and realize instead of tearing herself down for the decisions she made, there is a lesson. Love is greater than anyone can imagine and can warm you like the sunshine after the rain.

You went from the beginning, the journey, the test, and the testimony to say, “There Is Sunshine after the Rain.”

Excerpt:

Turn Back The Hands of Time
I am standing on the edge
Looking out at the land
The land where you farmed
The land where you broke your back to make a way
I look at your hands that are rugged, swollen, and show the scars
You never gave up because you said you wanted a better life for us
There was never an alarm clock to wake you
You didn’t complain about going to work because it was what you had to do
You talked about the amount of cotton you picked from sun up to sun down
You told the stories that your hands were raw until they bled
As I rode down the highways
Looking at the fields of cotton
My eyes welled up
I asked to stop the car
I got out and I breathed the air
I can only imagine
You shared the tales of having to drop out of school so that you could work the fields
I stretch out my hands now
Though they resemble yours, they have never worked in the field
My hands are smooth like a city girl
If I could turn back the hands of time
I would let you be the childhood boy
Experience the things that you missed growing up
I would let you go to school
You would be an architect
You always liked building things
I understand that I can’t
That was the road that you had to travel
The journey wasn’t always sweet
But if I could! I would! Turn back the hands of time

(c)2017 There Is Sunshine After The Rain

Social Media Links:

Website: www.patriciaasaunders.com 

Facebook: @ blessedpoetpat

Twitter: @ blessedpoetpat

Instagram:@blessedpoetpat

Pinterest: @blessedpoetpat

Blog: www.blessedpoetpat.blogspot.com

Purchase Links:

Tour hosted by Creative Expressions Literary Services

Click Here To Follow The Tour

Susan Corbett - In the Belly of the Elephant - Virtual Book Tour

Non Fiction / Memoir

Date Published: December 18, 2013

Everybody needs to run away from home at least once. Susan Corbett told people she was out to save the world, but really she was running — running from her home as much as to anywhere. Like many women, she was searching for meaning to her life or for a good man to share it with. In Africa, she hoped to find both.

 Compelling and compassionate, In the Belly of the Elephant is Susan's transformative story of what happens when you decide to try to achieve world peace while searching for a good man. More than a fish-out-of-water story, it's a surprising and heart-rending account of her time in Africa trying to change the world as she battles heat, sandstorms, drought, riots, intestinal bugs, burnout, love affairs and more than one meeting with death. Against a backdrop of vivid beauty and culture, in a narrative interwoven with a rich tapestry of African myths and fables, Susan learns the true simplicity of life, and discovers people full of kindness, wisdom and resilience, and shares with us lessons we, too, can learn from her experiences.



Excerpt
The first time I met Death was in a tiny bush-town called Foequellie. It was said that the bush devil who sometimes came to town, dancing to a chorus of drummers, was Death. But he was just a local man dressed in rags and a wooden mask.

On a blue morning of sailing clouds, I crossed the clearing that separated my house from the two-room clinic—the only health facility within a 20-mile radius of thick bush and rain forest. A breeze carried the voices of chatting mothers and crying babies. It was Under Five’s Day, the weekly clinic for babies and children up to five years old. Well into my second year as a Peace Corps volunteer, I worked there, giving nutrition demonstrations and vaccinating children.

Awake from my morning cup of Nescafé and ready for the day, I passed through the dappled shade of a cottonwood tree. This was the town’s Ancestor Tree where the ghosts of great-great-grandfathers, great-aunts, uncles, and cousins hid in the hollows of the trunk with the snakes and spiders, and high up in the branches among the leaves and the ricebirds. The Ancestor Tree loomed next to a red dirt road that twisted its way around the clinic, past my house at the end of town, and on through hillside plots of rice, potato greens, and cassava.

Women with babies tied to their backs in cloth slings gathered at the clinic door. They entered and stacked their yellow “Road to Health” cards in a pile that reserved their place, and then sat on benches to wait their turn and catch up on local gossip.

James, the clinic janitor and local translator, joined me in the waiting room, a 20-by-10-foot space with a dirt floor and mud-plastered walls that smelled of baby pee and sweat.

We said our good mornings; then James explained the causes and treatment of diarrhea. I stood in the center, squeezing oranges into a bowl. As I demonstrated the pinch of salt and teaspoon of sugar needed to make rehydration fluid, a woman came in with a round-faced little girl in tattered shorts and cornrow braids. The two of them sat at the end of the bench, and the little girl laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

Over the next few hours, James and I worked with Francis, the local physician’s assistant and clinic “doctor.” We weighed babies, treated skin and stomach ailments, gave out malaria medication, and vaccinated against smallpox, whooping cough, and tetanus. Morning cool gave way to the heat of day, and the rooms grew stuffy. Sometime before noon, I walked back into the waiting room to call the next in line.

The woman with the little girl took her daughter’s hand to lead her in. The girl, about five years old, tried to stand but collapsed. Her mother caught her, and I ran to grasp the girl’s arm. Her skin burned, and her lips were chapped and dry. She breathed out a rattled sigh, and her head lolled to one side.

“Frances! James!” I called, and they came in an instant. 

__________________________________

A writer, community organizer, and consultant in program management, micro-enterprise development, family planning, and HIV/AIDS education, Susan Corbett began her community development career in 1976 as a Peace Corps Volunteer, working in a health clinic in Liberia, West Africa. In 1979, she joined Save the Children Federation as a program coordinator for cooperative and small business projects in Burkina Faso.  In 1982, Susan returned to the States where she has worked with local non-profits in drug and alcohol prevention for runaway youth, family planning, homelessness prevention, and immigrant issues.

Susan has traveled to over 40 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Caribbean, and Central and North America and has lived and worked in ten African countries over the past thirty years (Uganda, Tanzania, Mali, The Gambia, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mauritius, Tunisia, Nigeria, and Liberia). She lives in Colorado with her husband, Steve, her sons, Mitch & Sam, and her dog, Molly.

Contact Information
Website: http://www.susancorbettbooks.com/


Purchase Links
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/In-Belly-Elephant-Susan-Corbett-ebook/dp/B00HEXVXNE
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/noresults/in-the-belly-of-the-elephant-susan-corbett/1117760316
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/545653

Book Review: A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life

A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life by Deval Patrick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Reason To Believe is a truly inspiring read!! Penned by Deval Patrick, Massachusetts' first (and to date, only) black governor, this book offers deep insight and a transparent look into his remarkable and inspiring life. I believe this should be a must-read for high school students and others seeking direction. This is a wonderful story of humble beginnings and triumphant victories. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone!!

5 Enthusiastic Stars!!

Adrienne Thompson
Author of Seven Days of Change (A Flash Devotional)

View all my reviews

Running in Heels #Book Tour

Title: Running in Heels: A Memoir of Grit and Grace 

Paperback: 360 pages 

Genre: Christian Living, Inspirational, Memoir, Nonfiction

Author: Mary A. Pérez

Publisher: Chart House Press, LLC (January 28, 2015)

ISBN-10: 1631250280 ISBN-13: 978-1631250286

 

 Mary A. Pérez was born in the Bronx, raised in Miami, and now resides in Texas with her husband of twenty years. Her award-winning essays have appeared in La Respuesta and Sofrito for Your Soul.  

 

 “More than a memoir—this book is a promise of hope for anyone who was abandoned as a child, to anyone who woke up hungry and went to bed hungrier every day, for every wife who has loved a husband who left bruises on her heart and on her body.” Somewhere between stealing cold cuts from stray cats and watching a stranger leave her mother’s bed after breaking in through their bedroom window, Mary figured out that her family was dirt poor. Worse than her empty stomach, she was hungry for acceptance and love. She thought she found it when her baby sister was born and she became her “mommy”, taking care of her needs as best she could at the age of seven. Then she had to say goodbye over a small white casket. Mary’s grandparents, first generation immigrants from Puerto Rico, took her in and gave her a glimpse of faith and stability. For a brief, shining spell, she had a real home—until they decided that Mama needed her. They may have been right, but Mama needed more than a little girl could give and Mary lost her way again. Just out of Juvy Hall, Mary found a knight in shining armor to take her away. She became a teenage bride to a man twice her age—a man as deeply enslaved to booze as every “step-dad” she’d had as a child. She loved him anyway, even wearing the bruises he gave her, even when she tried to leave him to give their children a better life. Despite her fear and loneliness, she never imagined it would take a gunshot in the middle of the night to teach her courage. She was even more surprised when rediscovered faith paved the path to forgiveness after so many years of pain. Running in Heels is a memoir of the grit and grace that carried a young girl through the shadows of her mother’s choices and on through an abusive marriage. Mary A. Pérez narrates an incredible story of survival in the face of hopelessness, and learning to forgive against all odds. A story of coming of age, and coming into grace.

 

 

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Tour hosted by Write Now Literary