Smorgasbord Posts from Your Archives 2023 #Potluck – #AuthorPromotions #GuestPosts – Christine Robinson – Hosted by The Story Reading Ape

Welcome to the new series of Posts from Your Archives 2023 where I will be sharing posts from the last six months of 2022 I have selected from the archives of willing participants. If you wish to be included the information is at the the end of the post.

This is the first post from the archives of the Story Reading Ape and Chris has been a huge supporter of fellow bloggers and authors as long as I have been blogging which is over ten years. It is a wonderful place to be showcased and if you are in need of a pick you up at the start of the week then his Monday Funnies will do the job.

Today an example of a guest post on Chris’s blog, and all the details you need to be promoted on his site can be found HERE

Meet Guest Author – Christine Robinson with host Christopher Graham, The Story Reading Ape.

I’m Christine, sometimes called Chris or Chrissy, and I’m an older aged writer.

In 2013, when I retired as a nurse practitioner in psychiatry, I started co-authoring books. A year later, I created a WordPress blog, Before Sundown – remember what made you smile. I gathered valuable experience from writing fiction, non-fiction and screenwriting. It took a few more years before I braved writing my own book. In May 2022, I published a debut, historical fiction, Three Years of Her Life, a mix of history, imagination, music and romance. It was borne out of the love of researching family history, to be exact, my famous German grandfather‘s history. He was a trumpet soloist in NYC, Boston and Detroit orchestras. Rumor had it, he was adopted, and his dying words were, “No one is to look into my past. That history dies with me.” That’s all I needed to hear. I relentlessly searched, uncovered his secret in Germany, and wrote his story.

There were no gold stars for me writing little kid stories in school. But, later in life, the psychology of writing fascinated me. Figuring out how people put together and expressed their thoughts when they wrote. I had a couple of co-authors for examples, and I learned a lot about my own writing style.

More resources came when I started college at age forty-two. I majored in Psychology, and went on the acquire an MA in Marriage & Family Counseling, a BSN, MSN, and NP nursing degrees, and a Family Nurse Practitioner Board certified license. And I worked in psychiatry, right in the thick of clients’ real-life problems. I heard it all, grist for the mill in my story themes.

Living abroad in the 1970s and 1980, I’ve had culturally rich experiences meeting and learning about people from all walks of life, in Italy, Greece and Japan (5 years in each country). A different world perspective for inclusion in writing. Traveling to other countries was educational and fun, especially skiing the Matterhorn (Italian Alps), and ski slopes in France, Austria and Switzerland. Language lessons were a necessity to survive, and speaking them was almost impossible back home in English dominant U.S. I did retain a lot of conversational Italian, and remember people’s actions and expressions that may creep into a story scene or two.

In younger years, I was an avid reader, Nancy Drew books, my favorites. Then, it was poetry by women authors: Adrienne Rich, Ann Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Teenage years, I had jobs baby-sitting, and worked summers as a full-time nanny in a coastal town. I modeled for an Illustrator Photographer, and was featured on East Coast billboards. I earned $15.00 for that photo shoot on a cold October day. I dove in and out of an unheated pool, crossed my arms on the edge, threw my head back and smiled, with no goose-bumps or chattering teeth.

Musical talent in the family brought me to cello lessons early on, and later, guitar and flute. I’ve taken up the guitar again, not as easy as it was. But, it’s a needed brain recharge from writing books on the computer.

Southern California has been my home for over thirty years. I’ve lived those years with Robert, and we have newly acquired, energetic, Border Aussies, Maddie and Max. I’ve not finished writing, yet, with a sequel in progress. Beyond Three Years of Her Life, has the plot explode and the characters evolve, move forward. Even their victories created consequences.

Blog – Facebook – Twitter

LinkedIn – Instagram

Pinterest – Goodreads

Amazon:

USA – UK – CA – AUS – IN

©Christopher Graham 2022

My thanks to Chris for inviting me to share posts from his archive and I know he would love to hear from you..

About The Story Reading Ape

My literature Hero is Terry Pratchett who, in one of his Science of Discworld books, postulated that Homo Sapiens Sapiens survived all the pitfalls that made other Homo Sapiens species become extinct, by being story telling apes.

If this is the case, then in order to be effective, for every story telling ape there had to be a story listening ape.

I am descended from them, except I read stories instead of listening to them; and author’s are the tellers of the stories I read.

I don’t so much read books as devour them, (sometimes re-devouring them several times), so I’ve set myself a long term task, to list all the books I’ve ever read on Goodreads – trouble is I’ve got the memory of a sieve and I must have read thousands of them!

After years of lugging books around with me when I travelled (pre-internet), or order them to be delivered to wherever I was (post internet), I got an eReader, which enables me to support my local library, as well as giving me access to practically every Kindle, EPUB & PDF format book ever published, via the internet.

Now all I have to do is spend the next several lifetimes reading them (I hope re-incarnation is true, although not having memories from previous lives might be a snag)

What is the purpose of my blog?

1. To introduce YOU to new (to me) authors I’ve come across in my wanderings through books and the cyberforest.

2. To provide a platform (battered old homemade soapbox) for authors to introduce themselves to you. (See my Contact Me Section for Guest Author article Guidelines)

3. As an informal information service to authors, poets, or anyone else who is thinking of becoming a published person of that ilk.

4. To promote FUN and an OASIS OF CALM and Font of useful Knowledge andTips for Indies (please do NOT feed my naughty chimps or they may follow you home) from the woes and stresses of the real world.

I hope you enjoy my blog and join my Troop of Followers

Connect to the Story Reading Ape: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK Blog: The Story Reading Ape – Twitter: @StoryReadingApe

 

Chris and his sister gathered together the poetry written by his mother Agnes Mae Graham into a collection – My Vibrating Vertebrae and other poems.

One of the reviews for the collection

Jo Robinson5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, Inspiring, Perennial

Agnes Mae Graham’s poetry is refreshing, uplifting, funny, and at times deeply moving. She vividly brings to mind the horror of life during the terror attacks in Ireland in The Terror and the Tears, and also how heartbreaking and lethal it must have been to have to choose sides during those tragic times in Kitty and Joe. Then she moves on to the joys and loves of youth and young motherhood, the awe of first flight, and the love and memories of home and hearth. And for a good old belly laugh she whisks us back to childhoods laughs and tears in Really!

I was given the honour of editing and formatting this book, and from the first smile it gave me I realized what a gem of a collection it was. All about real life, from the bubbliest joys to the darkest despairs, this book of poetry will always be right at the top of my “read more than once, and often” pile. I highly recommend this book to all humans for smiles and introspection both. 

Read the reviews and buy the collection: Amazon UK –  And: Amazon US

How to feature in the series?

• All I need you to do is give me permission to dive in to your archives and find two posts to share here on Smorgasbord. (sally.cronin@moyhill.com)
• Rather than a set topic, I will select posts at random of general interest across a number of subjects from the second six months of 2022. (it is helpful if you have a link to your archives in your sidebar by month)
• As I will be promoting your books as part of the post along with all your information and links so I will not be sharing direct marketing or self- promotional posts in the series.
• If you are an author I am sure you will have a page on your blog with the details, and an ‘about page’ with your profile and social media links (always a good idea anyway). I will get everything that I need.
• As a blogger I would assume that you have an ‘about page’ a profile photo and your links to social media.
• Copyright is yours and I will ©Your name on every post… and you will be named as the author in the URL and subject line.
• Previous participants are very welcome to take part again.
• Each post is reformatted for my blog and I don’t cut and paste, this means it might look different from your own post especially if you are using the block editor
• If I do share a post which contains mainly photographs I will share up to five and link back to the original post for people to view the rest.

N.B – To get the maximum benefit from your archive posts, the only thing I ask is that you respond to comments individually and share on your own social media.. thank you.