{Guest Post+Giveaway} Nancy Klann-Moren: Who Can Forget Their First Book Crush?

Ahh, book crushes. We all have one. Or two. Or more (definitely more for me). I think my first real book crush is the Australian children's classic Dot and the Kangaroo. I remember reading it then watching it on the big screen and I just fell in love ... with the characters, the story, everything. 

So let's chat about book crushes, shall we? I'd like to welcome author Nancy Klann-Moren to the blog today! 

She's also giving away 3 e-books of her award-winning literary fiction piece The Clock of Life which has been described as reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Who Can Forget Their First Book Crush? 
by Nancy Klann-Moren 

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain…. Or so says the legend.”

The first time I found myself more consumed with the way the words on the page were written―over and above the story itself ― was when reading The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCollough. While the story is epic, the characters memorable, and the book iconic, it was the writing that took center stage. Like a first crush, I still remember where I was, and the heat of that summer. This book was an unforgettable milestone that greatly enhanced my reading journey.

Ms. McCollough offered poetic passages throughout her tale that captured raw human desire and desperation so powerfully I had to stop reading and savor them, in the same way I must interrupt a brisk walk to take pleasure in the smell of a flower that has caught my attention.

I felt smitten with her words in the very first chapter when she described the scenery.

“Yet it was a gentle, gracious land. Beyond the house stretched an undulating plain as green as the emerald in Fiona Cleary’s engagement ring, dotted with thousands of creamy bundles close proximity revealed as sheep.”

And since that day, so long ago, when I read her description of making love, as a body poem, it remains how I think of it today.

“From the moment he had pulled her back from the door it had been a body poem, a thing of arms and hands and skin and utter pleasure.”

Remembering back to how the prose in this book literally defined my reading tastes, I began to wonder about the books that have touched others in the same way.

I’d love to hear about your “first book crush.”

About Nancy Klann-Moren

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Nancy tried her hand at writing short fiction while traveling for work in advertising and marketing, as a creative outlet on long plane rides. That led to signing up for writing classes, writer’s conferences and local workshops. Her goal―to create unique stories told in a distinctive voice. Her short stories are eclectic and poignant, and have garnered awards and publication in anthologies. Short stories were her primary genre until one morning while in a workshop at The Santa Barbara Writers Conference, she read an excerpt. When finished, the instructor, Sid Stebel, asked what she was doing for the next couple years, because, “What you have written isn’t a short story, it’s a novel.” After a good deal of foot dragging she realized the subject matter was so important she took up the challenge and penned the novel, “The Clock of Life.” Her collection of short stories is titled “Like The Flies On The Patio.” Nancy is now working on a new novel loosely based on the time she and a friend found an old diary in an antique shop and took a road trip to find the lady who wrote in the book. The novel will take the girls cross country and into all sorts of trouble.

Giveaway!

Nancy is giving away 3 e-books!
Open international.
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The Clock of Life by Nancy Klann-Moren
Amazon.com: Paperback | Kindle Edition

Book Blurb: In the small town of Hadlee, Mississippi, during the 1980's, Jason Lee Rainey struggles to find his way amongst the old, steadfast Southern attitudes about race, while his friendship with a black boy, Samson Johnson, deepens. By way of stories from others, Jason Lee learns about his larger-than-life father, who was killed in Vietnam. He longs to become that sort of man, but doesn't believe he has it in him. In The Clock Of Life he learns lessons from the past, and the realities of inequality. He flourishes with the bond of friendship; endures the pain of senseless death; finds the courage to stand up for what he believes is right; and comes to realize he is his father's son. This story explores how two unsettling chapters in American history, the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, affect the fate of a family, a town, and two boyhood friends.