Check out Sofia Essen’s new website and blog at http://www.novel-reads.blogspot.com/. She features interviews with authors, book reviews, and her own periodic blog posting. It’s a beautiful site that reflects what must have been hours (days?) of research and effort.

And while you’re at it, consider buying Sofia’s new novel (http://youmeandthebigc.blogspot.com/), Change of Pace. I love a feel-good story with a happy ending. Change of Pace main character, Anna, took me with her on her first real adventure in life. I felt like I was traveling around Crete and making friends with her friends, enjoying the extended vacation. There was just enough mystery with her new boyfriend and tension with her mother to keep me turning the pages to see how it all worked out. Sofia is very skilled at immersing readers in her stories. And at least as important, she is donating 100% of her royalties to Michaela’s Lymphoma Appeal, so not only will you get a great read, you’ll be contributing to a very worthy cause.

So please check out Novel Reads and enjoy! (Of course, my enthusiasm is NOT just because I was one of the authors she interviewed!)

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Autumn Colors may be purchased for Kindle or in paperback at Amazon, OR ordered through any bookstore, OR signed copies through my website: www.dawnlajeunesse.com.

In Her Mother’s Shoes will be available in late May/early June at all of the same locations, plus formatted for Kindle and Nook ($2.99!) – more information when the release date is finalized.

Watch for more information about Transition as the story develops. Here is a little teaser that I hope will whet your appetite:

My name is Sarah. In three days I will turn one hundred years old. I was born on the day before the 9/11 attacks at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I am the only surviving member of my generation, notorious for being the first since the early nineteen hundreds to experience a drop in life expectancy.

I felt compelled to share my story so future generations in this great country of ours can better understand how we evolved to where we are now, and at what cost. I’ve spent the past three years researching the key circumstances and events of the last century and their impact on decisions made and our lives here. I lived through it, naturally, but since I saw it through my own personal experience I believed that documentable facts were needed to support and expand on my experiences as described. I was a teacher during the Transition, and I like to think that facilitated my seeing it all from multiple perspectives beyond my own and my family’s, through the eyes and experiences of my students and their parents. Children born during and after the Transition would never know a different life.

There was a story told in my early life that was a warning, of sorts, of the direction our country was taking. It went like this:

“A young foreign exchange student asked his professor: ‘Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.

The young man said that it was no joke. ‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn.

When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.

The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again.

You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he saw happening in America The government keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as business bailouts, extended unemployment benefits, alternative energy loans and subsidies, tax credits for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, farm subsidies, welfare, food stamps, foreign aid, subsidized medical care and drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time. And the people aren’t happy – not just because of the loss of freedom, but because many come to believe they are not being given enough.” 

This story was intended to raise awareness of the loss of freedoms resulting from increasing government regulation. But it applied equally to how people adapted to the changes during the Transition. The heavy government hand alluded to in the story was lifted, but another hand replaced it.

As my childish awareness of the world around me matured, I thought I had a clear understanding of what was going on and why. I worked hard at trying to remain objective. So much of what happened seemed like business as usual, I, like most, failed to see the pen growing around us. And by the time we did, most of us didn’t really care.

In many ways, life was better than it had ever been – after The Final War, that is. In fact, it was the war, I now see, that allowed the earliest changes to move forward with less public challenge than would otherwise have been the case. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I remember, when I was very young, hearing adults argue about the government and complain about the constant political battles that prevented anything meaningful from getting done that would reverse the downward plunge of our country’s position and respect in the rest of the world.

That ended with a nuclear attack in early 2017.

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