Exhilarating, Exciting, Superb Teen-Adult Novel by Michael J. Bowler - First Teen Personal Favorite Selection!

Alex' chair was his one prized possession. A few years ago, when he'd had a cool social worker, he'd managed to get a super-sturdy chair built like the one a famous guy named Aaron used for his incredible stunts. Alex had only been seven when he'd seen on the news how fourteen-year-old Aaron mastered the world's first backflip in a wheelchair. It had amazed and empowered Alex to see someone with spina bifida like him accomplishing something so spectacular.
His caseworker at the time, a lady named Sandy Quigley, had convinced the county to pay for his special chair on the grounds that it would be nearly indestructible and would not need to be replaced or repaired often. Alex had been so ecstatic he didn't even feel guilty for spinning Sandy into thinking he really needed something like that.

~~~

Spinner

Spinner has been awarded the Literary Classics Seal of Approval. Spinner has been awarded 1st Place in the Young Adult category at the Hollywood Book Festival.

By Michael J. Bowler

OMG! It's Horror, Paranormal, Urban Fiction...and Scary Great! And I couldn't wait to finish this book... If you're willing to admit you read books for teens, then go for this one... Better yet, get it for a teen you know who loves horror at its finest, and a paranormal skill that I guarantee you will have never seen or read anywhere else. By the end of the book, you will have discovered a secret which seems to imply that this could be a series--make that with an unbelievable, triumphant, group of super-heroes that will amaze and surprise each and every reader...

What is so surprising about them? Well, this group of teenagers, still in school, are unable to read, for one... They are all in special education classes and referred to as "dummies" by most of the other students... But each one also has a special gift, they have become close, loyal friends and use the skills that they have to fight injustice, especially in helping to protect Alex, a boy who has been in a wheelchair since he was young...

Ms. Ashley had been loved by her students. She had created special little methods of teaching so that the children could individually learn at his own pace and not feel intimidated... Now she was dead...

Murdered...by cats...one in particular who was extremely large and seemed to stare right at Alex...

Only thing was that Alex had been asleep, dreaming, as Ms. Ashley was being surrounded...

It traumatized Alex as much as it had when he had dreamed of his parents death many years ago... Now he had lost another loved one who was willing to care for her students unconditionally....

The mention of Ms. Ashley pushed aside all the joy he felt at receiving Roy's gift, and flooded his heart and soul with bloodied images of her demise in his dream. He shivered, seeing once more the fact of that huge, grinning cat.
"Yeah, let's get going." Suddenly, he wanted desperately to get to school. But he feared it, too, because deep down he knew his teacher wouldn't be there today, or any of the days to come.

~~~

Briefly, an overview of Alex's life--he is an orphan living in a group home with a wicked house mother, Jane Walters, who had become aware of Alex's gift of spinning. She had been purposely creating situations of abuse for the other boys and then forceing Alex to heal them. This is done by the injured individual describing when and what pain he has and Alex picturing that in his mind. He then "takes" it into his own body. Yes, it does hurt him for awhile, but then his body reverts to normal. Jane is in the midst of documenting what he does and has begun negotiations to sell Alex for $1M dollars!

But things got even worse when Alex places a necklace they'd found around his neck! What had he done?

In the meantime, Alex's best friend, Roy has picked him up and headed toward school. He shares with the class about his dream and predicts a sub will be coming... When Gwyneth Paltrow joined the cast of Glee, I thought she was a little too "loose" in her student interaction, so she was the perfect substitute to play Ms. Ashley's replacement, Ms. Garrett, Ms. G. And the majority of the boys' tongues were hanging out, given the way she had come dressed for her first day. Immediately I...Alex and Roy...didn't trust her, wondering what was going to happen! 

...The friends sat in silence, the beer having mellowed them, adding to their already dark,

emotional natures. They needed no words between them to understand the feelings

of the other.

They watched roy's favorite video on YouTube. It was these three church boys singing a song called "Ears in Heaven" that roy had found on the Internet right after his mother died, and that he'd

shared with Alex shortly after they'd met. The blond singer named Patrick had a really high voice that Alex thought angels must sound like, and the song made him wonder if his parents and 

Roy's mom might know each other in heaven.

That video, while not really an emo song, had cemented the friendship between Alex and Roy

because both teared up every time they watched it. Roy always joked that Patrick looked like

Alex, but Alex only wished he were that good looking.

They watched the video twice, thinking of their parents and Ms. Ashley. Father Pat always told Alex

that he would see his parents again someday, but he wasn't sure he believed that. He even wondered if Patrick believed the words he sang so beautifully, or if they were just words to him. And he couldn't help noticing Roy stare fixedly at the young boy on screen, as though remembering something else besides his mother. But he refused to spin Roy any more. It was wrong, and he had to control it.

The video ended and Roy pressed the pause button, glancing at Alex with a sad smile. Alex returned it. Yes, that song spoke to both of them in ways most other kids couldn't begin to understand...

~~~

Of course, when I love a book like this one, I want to keep on telling you all about the very cool stuff that is coming... You know, like, why have cats turned wild? Who is Ms. G and why is she acting as she is, especially with, later, Alex? Did she have something to do with Ms. Ashley's murder? And who is willing to pay $1M for Alex? Fortunately, the author has created a series of promotional memes and allowed me to share them!

The best thing, though, is that the friendship which has developed since Alex has spun the boys in one way or another, had forged so tightly that they are all willing to die for him...

Whew! I promise you're going to love this... Well, maybe not everybody if you're not into good versus evil, especially when the evil seems to be winning! But one final surprise is to come, which may totally change the dynamic of this thrilling group of teens...Can't wait to find out in the next book...HOW!

OK, if any of this sounds weirdly wonderful...then I have to tell you it is a Must Read... Of course, all the really good stuff can't be discussed at this point, but some very sick action will be taking place! And, yes, I learned to use "sick" in this book in place of my normal coooolllll! 

Get It!


GABixlerReviews
Free thinkers don't charge
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Michael J. Bowler is an award-winning author of eight novels--A Boy and His Dragon, A Matter of Time (Silver Medalist from Reader's Favorite), The Knight Cycle, comprised of five books: Children of the Knight (Gold Award Winner in the 2013 Wishing Shelf Book Awards), Running Through A Dark Place (Bronze Award Winner in 2014 Wishing Shelf Book Awards), There Is No Fear, And The Children Shall Lead, and Once Upon A Time In America, and Spinner. 
His horror screenplay, "Healer," was a Semi-Finalist, and his urban fantasy script, "Like A Hero," was a Finalist in the Shriekfest Film Festival and Screenplay Competition.
He grew up in San Rafael, California, and majored in English and Theatre at Santa Clara University. He went on to earn a master's in film production from Loyola Marymount University, a teaching credential in English from LMU, and another master's in Special Education from Cal State University Dominguez Hills. 
He partnered with two friends as producer, writer, and/or director on several ultra-low-budget horror films, including "Fatal Images," "Club Dead," and "Things II," the reviews of which are much more fun than the actual movies. 
He taught high school in Hawthorne, California for twenty-five years, both in general education and to students with learning disabilities, in subjects ranging from English and Strength Training to Algebra, Biology, and Yearbook. 
He has also been a volunteer Big Brother to eight different boys with the Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters program and a thirty-year volunteer within the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles. 
He has been honored as Probation Volunteer of the Year, YMCA Volunteer of the Year, California Big Brother of the Year, and 2000 National Big Brother of the Year. The "National" honor allowed him and three of his Little Brothers to visit the White House and meet the president in the Oval Office.
He has a YA horror/mystery novel entitled "Spinner" releasing in June, 2015, and is currently working on the sequel.
His goal as a YA author is for teens to experience empowerment and hope; to see themselves in his diverse characters; to read about kids who face real-life challenges; and to see how kids like them can remain decent people in an indecent world.

You can find him at:
www.michaeljbowler.com
FB: michaeljbowlerauthor
Twitter: BradleyWallaceM
Blog: www.sirlancesays.wordpress.com
tumblr: http://michaeljbowler.tumblr.com/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/michaelbowler/pins/
Instagram: StuntShark

Damascena: The Tale of Roses and Rumi by Holly Lynn Payne - A Fascinating Tale of Love and Forgiveness... Added to Personal Favorites!

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد رومی‎), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى),Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlânâ, Mevlevî (مولوی Mawlawī, "my master"), and more popularly simply as Rūmī (1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turkish, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States...--Wikipedia

Morning light poured through the rounded arched galleries of the caravanserai and across its open courtyard, where camels stood like golden statues tethered by long hemp ropes, their drivers against the walls, slumped and drooling, still asleep.

Be silent, he heard,
Spring is here.
The rose is dancing with its thorn
Beauties have come from the invisible
To call you home.
~~~

Rumi followed a group of small boys tending to the men just waking, delivering coffee in small white cups and tea in tulip glasses. The clanging of cups and small nickel saucers, teaspoons and sugar bowls, sounded like music. It was the first time in a decade that he had not come here seeking news of his beloved friend Shams. He missed the energy of the caravanserai and marveled at the distances these men had traveled, transporting sugar from Egypt, silk from Iraq, cinnamon and cumin from India. Stacks of silver candlesticks and chessboards carved from mother-of-pearl glinted in the early light.  A boy in a colorful wool cap carried a copper tray of fresh simet. He stared wide-eyes at Rumi and rushed toward him. "Fresh, fresh, Mevlana...  They stopped talking and parted when Rumi appeared. Grown men, like the boy, immediately prostrated themselves to the old man. Rumi gently tapped them on the shoulders, resisting the urge to sigh. He was not weary of their reverence; he only wished it were for God, not him. "Please stand," he said gesturing for them to get up off the floor. "You will ruin your knees on me."

There was only one man among them who did not get on his knees. A man, his face unshaven, dirt-smeared, stared transfixed at the girl wrapped in black wool. This head was shaved and he wore the threads of what appeared to be a monk's dark brown robe that had been cut and frayed.

Rumi recognized him as a Christian without the arrogance of a crusader. He was moved by the monk's connection to the girl, as if they had known each other for lifetimes and shared the same heart. The monk trembled when Rumi stepped toward him.

"Do you know her?" Rumi asked, looking down at the body in black wool.

The monk lifted his head to the old man. His mouth opened but no words came. Rumi looked into his mouth and saw that his tongue had been partially cut out...

Rumi met the mond with a gentle gaze.

"Did you travel with her?"

The monk nodded.

"Is she your sister?"

The monk looked wide-eyed, stricken.

"She is your Sister," Rumi concluded gently. Aren't we all spiritual siblings, he thought? "She is my Sister too," he said, and studied the girl, doubtful the monk had given her the cloak." The black wood cloak was not part of the order of any monastery, only the Sufi orders, which was why Rumi, of all people, had been called to help with her funeral...

~~~

Damascena:

The Tale of Roses and Rumi

By Holly Lynn Payne

This author presents to her readers a strange, mystical life drama surrounding the poet, Rumi. Many have heard of him and his teachings, but to read a beautiful story and enter into his life...and the young girl who is the main character... brings to us all the opportunity to learn and absorb the love that surrounded this blessed man...

The rose speaks of love silently, in a
language known only to the heart.
--unknown

How Rumi meets the young girl is brought to us in the Prologue, and happened in Konya, Turkey, in 1270, but the girl had been born more than a decade before that. At first, I thought the story was going to be a fairy tale but it soon became apparent it was written so that the literary characters become much more real, as if this was a true story of a young girl, living at that time, albeit in a much more humble, difficult situation than the average... You see, her mother's mother had sent her daughter to a monastery to have and leave her child. She and her daughter were both indentured to the king and there was no use to try to get out of that role, except they could save the child...

Rila Mountains, Bulgaria 1256
The girl was born beneath the shadow of a dance on the sixth day of the sixth month in the year 1256. Hers was the first birth in the monastery and it riled the young friar, Ivan Balev, to have to clean up her mother's blood. He stood inside the chapel door with a mop and bucket, fingers stiff with the chill of dawn, and he could hear, between the woman's screams, the laughter hissed by the monks who had assigned him this duty.
He was eighteen and assumed they wanted to test him, to see if his massive body stiffened when he saw her breasts. He felt nothing more than astonishment and disgust--not at her body, but at what her body could endure. He had known no man, other than Jesus Christ himself, who had suffered more, and he wondered if giving birth was akin to a crucifixion. If it was, he wanted to know why there was only a son of God. He figured there ought to be a daughter of God, too, if she had to go through this...
Ivan Balev had no curative powers, no hands that could heal, no true way of knowing if he could ever bless anyone, and for this he felt like less of a man watching the woman struggle with her baby. He wanted to carry her out of the chapel and into a proper bed, but he could not move. Not because he was terrified of what he had just witnessed, but because the moment the baby entered the chapel, the smell of roses leaked from its walls. He pressed his nose against the door and smelled roses in the wood. He tested the sleeve of his robe, expecting the smell of dirt and sweat, but it, too, smelled like roses...

"Grow cuttings from the seeds and plant them
on the first full moon. If she wants to know
where I am, tell her I will always be in the roses."
~~~

There were many supernatural components to the birth that frightened Ivan, the priest who was assigned to care of Rasa.  As soon as the birth was completed, the mother, Rasa, pulled out a silk sack of rose hips, directing that her name was Damascena...from the rosa damascena...

Ivan accepted the rose hips, but never planted them as he was instructed! That was the first cruel decision he made...

Even though Ivan was upset with having to take care of the child, even praying that an angel would take the child, when her mother later came back to claim her, he would not let her take her! He also refused to pass on her letters to the girl and merely told her that she had been left at birth and her mother had run away...

And then the stork came...and would sit watching, as if making sure the little girl was being taken care of...Soon, she learned to call him, Bird...

"Bird," she cried, her tiny voice
struggling beneath her sobs...
~~~

Ivan grabbed her small chin and slapped
his hand over her mouth. The girl
shrank under his touch. "Bird," he hissed,
regretting the girl's first word and the
pure love with which she spoke of the
stork...
"The bird will not save you and neither
will these!"
!!!

Ivan refused to believe that the stork was any indication that the
Heavenly Father of All Beings heard Ivan Baley's plea. Ivan considered giving up. So what if he never told Damascena about the roses? So what if he told her that her mother was dead? The words sounded smooth in his mouth, about the creamiest of lies he'd ever tasted. No one would ever know. Or care...

And so she continued to live at the monastery serving Ivan and the other monks, working to
clean the monastery, with little to eat or give her happiness, except the stork--until she started becoming the beautiful woman she would become...

It was dark when Damascena opened her eyes. At first she saw the twinkling of stars through the canopy of trees arched over the trail. She could make out the sliver of moon and the silhouette of a stork that flew just then across the night sky.

"Bird," she called out, her voice strained, throat dry.

She pushed herself off the ground and sat up, feeling dizzy and disoriented in the darkness. She closed her eyes, feeling the familiar weight of a hand on her shoulder and froze, taking in the musky, sweet scent. When she opened her eyes, she saw the hooded man standing before her...

"Where are you taking me?"

"Home," he said. His voice was flat and direct, quite different from the lyrical whispers she had heard coming from another man.

"I have no home," she said, unwilling to explain anything to the stranger.

"Everyone has a home, child. I will help you find it."

~~~

The back cover alludes to the Sufi dance that Damascena learned, so I am not giving anything away to share more about that particular mystical experience she ultimately had...

Certainly, Damascena paved the way for women to join this beautiful and spiritual dance...

Payne takes the spirituality of God, the mysticism of Rumi and his blessed words, merges it with a fantasy that could only occur as part of the times in which Rumi lived...and, perhaps, Damascena may indeed have been there with the touch and smell of her roses which, by now had been turned into oil... Surely there was much pain and loss in the life Damascena led, but I can't help but conclude that it is a truly lovely story that I am honored to recommend highly to you.

GABixlerReviews

Holly Lynn Payne is an internationally published novelist in ten countries whose work has been translated into eight languages. Her new novel, DAMASCENA: the tale of roses and Rumi, unravels the mystery surrounding a gifted orphaned girl who meets the great Persian poet and mystic Rumi in the 13th century and discovers the secret of the rose. Dutton/Plume published her first two novels, The Sound of Blue and The Virgin's Knot, her debut novel, selected as a Discover Great New Writers and Border's Original Voices book. Her third book, Kingdom of Simplicity was nominated for a national book award in Belgium and was named to the mandatory reading list in Ghent. It has also published in the Netherlands, Taiwan and soon China, and is the winner of a Marin Arts Council Grant, first place winner of a Benjamin Franklin Award 2010 and won Grand Prize for the Writers Digest Self-Published Book Awards 2011. Payne studied journalism at the University of Richmond, where she received a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2010. She earned a MFA from University of Southern California and has taught throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, serving on the faculty at the Academy of Art University, California College of the Arts and Stanford. She lives in Northern California with her young daughter, and serves the literary community as a writing coach, publishing strategist and volunteer producer for Litquake--the West Coast's largest week-long literary festival held each October in San Francisco. When she's not writing or coaching other writers, she enjoys getting dirty on a mountain bike. You can read more about her coaching and retreats here: http://www.hollylynnpayne.com or follow her on Twitter @skywritertribe.