__
(For the tearful US vet viewed on PBS
and all his fellow wounded)
I came up over the rise
said the vet, to find myself face
to face with death,
a German soldier
pointing his rifle straight
at my chest; I had no chance
to raise mine
we stood there awhile, youth
to youth, desire to
desire, tandemly clothed in
drab weeds of war, intent
on a mission planned out by
strangers, safe
and sound in a room
full of maps far, far away from
this once verdant
meadow, this river
of blood
I saw in his eyes not man,
not monster, but an unwelcome
glimpse of forever; he saw
in mine a quivering
flame, unready, unwilling
to be snuffed to that
darkness ahead of my time
in that frozen moment, he
summoned a courage far
beyond killing for
country or cause
his eyes
slowly softened, freeing
the breath I’d held as
my last, and, shaking his
head, he dropped to
the ground the cold, hard
steel, leaning upon it
as if it were now a cane
said he in a soft, wistful voice,
"for you, the war is over"
I live every hour, each
undeserved minute,
burdened with knowing
for absolute certain I’d never
have been that brave
or that kind
--Jo VonBargen 2011
God bless our troops, from all wars, everywhere.
Especially those still suffering,
reliving the horror.
 Amazon Product Description:
Family is not our greatest success story; the Mueller’s being no exception. Set in a present-day wilderness community, the story recounts Anne Mueller’s determination to find her runaway daughter, save a neighbor child on the run, and understand what it is we do that drives our children from us. She persists; inspired by her Cree native friends’ model of harmonious living and a harrowing wilderness experience that changes everything for her.
Anne’s relationship with her dog, Timber, her horse, Spook, a neighbor child, Little Bit, her friend, Billie and the vast wilderness around her are compelling elements of this novel, which proves to be both thought provoking and brimming with wildness. It is an adventure story on many levels.
***********
How I wish I had read this book 40 years ago! Christina Carson has done it again. SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN is much more than a Canadian wilderness adventure. She is a wisdom seeker in real life, and has the incredible gift of being able to convey what she has found in a riveting, transformative story that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
You will find yourself in love with the soulful characters of the novel: the lovely, widowed Anne, who narrates the story with an undercurrent of past hurts ever near the surface; Sarah (Little Bit), the wounded and confused girl who comes into her life; Billie, her trusted and loyal male friend of many years; and of course, the Cardinals, a native Cree family who provide much of the wisdom to be found here.
I found much of my own philosophy for life in this book, having been raised in that beautiful tri-culture of New Mexico, where Native ways informed much of my early life. One particular quote from the book is something I've always known at a cellular level, and wish all parents and spouses would heed: "They need not live life afraid, and if you're not afraid, you've no need for control." If you think about it, one fear or another is really the basis for all the pain we cause others in attempting to control them. Besides being a very compelling and exciting read, this book is extremely rich in the knowledge and importance of reconnecting to nature and Great Spirit. Like the Tao teaches, those who are disconnected from the Tao will suffer. It is same wisdom one will find in Native American Spirituality. It is Truth to the core and something upon which we must meditate and ponder.
The author gives us a touchable sense of the spirit of friendship and sacredness. You come to realize that the gifts of spirit and earth that are found in many traditions are for the healing of all beings and the peaceful friendship of all peoples. Her gift is in making you feel it. She gently leads you down the path to love, compassion, generosity, patience, wisdom, justice, courage, respect, humility and all the other great gifts of soulful living.
I would recommend this book to anyone that chooses to seek a greater understanding of the self. This not a Native only understanding as the symbolism and methods utilized within it have been available to all at one time or another. It is simply written with a basic insight into the process of the recovery of our humanity from the perspectives of First Nation People. A process, I might add, that invites one to transform one's perspectives to live a more balanced, healthier and happier life.
This is a bonafide spiritual growth tool which is suitable for youth and adults. I have seen few books that are written in such easy to read, yet compelling, language but so truly FULL of information.
This book will cause much introspection and will give a wonderful roadmap for those that are courageous enough to take the journey. I recommend this book to everyone old enough to read and understand. In point of fact, you should seek out anything Christina Carson writes. Your life will indeed be the richer for it!
--Jo VonBargen 2012
 AMAZON PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
A tightly crafted legal thriller written by an attorney who knows the law.
A national coalition known as the Christian Militants attempts to overthrow the United States government and all hell breaks loose. As the rebellion threatens to divide the nation, two unlikely leaders arise in the opposing camps. Will they save the Union, usher in the Kingdom of God or plunge the United States into all-out civil war?
***********************************************
The first thing that caught my eye in this novel was the panoply of character names: Ert Roberts, Leadoff Pickens, Quanah Parker Brown, etc. I found myself giggling knowingly. (Quanah Parker's mother was first buried right up the road.) As a resident of East Texas and frequenter of town squares, fiddlin' contests, and Walmart, I would have guessed from where this author hailed even without a byline. I don't know what possesses mothers in this area to name their babies as such; one guesses it is to separate them from the garden variety Bubba Jays. Texas has no dearth of colorful characters, and East Texas has them in spades. No need to make this stuff up. No sirreee. I say this with all due respect (NO, I am not writing this to "Dueling Banjoes"); my own roots go all the way to the backwoods of Tennessee, and there's no way of knowing if the family tree even forked, let alone branched.
On a "seriouser" note, Stephen Woodfin has delivered a BOMB of a novel here. Why would this surprise me? He claims to be an attorney. Nah. Number one, any lawyer joke I ever heard doesn't come near fitting his depth of character. Number two, no practice would hire someone who could out-write most masters of the literary canon, for fear of being overshadowed. That said, however, no one would believe I was once the general manager for an English Rose company, either. Good writers should give up the eating habit. If he is indeed an attorney, he needs to quit and devote more time to cranking out these profound novels. Woodfin, your country needs you.
Always a fan of apocalyptic anything, I was taken with the immediacy of a breathless, first-page plunge into the action of this story, thanks to character Ithurial Finis. See what I mean about names? (Ithuriel - "discovery of God" - is one of the 3 deputy sarim (princes) of the holy sefiroth serving under the ethnarchy of the angel Sephuriron in 16th century literature) How appropriate! The author regularly weaves classic references like this into all his writing, revealing the striking underpinning of vast knowledge and education. Be assured that anything he pens is a wealth of learnedness that continually intrigues the careful reader. No yawns holding a Woodfin book!
Don't be daunted by the huge number of chapters herein; the story moves along at breathless speed, each chapter more dire than the last. One almost needs an oxygen tank. I won't go into the brilliance of plot, the exquisiteness of language, or any of those things others have already said. It's all there; it's all perfectly there. Ultimately the purpose of reading, for me, is to learn and to feel something of the author's spirit and worldview during the act of creation. I learned. I deeply felt. I'm still free-falling toward a vastly changed home turf, out of that rose-colored glider from which Stephen Woodfin so ably and purposefully shoved me.
The unsettling thing about Next Best Hope is its possibility. At any moment, with the slightest impetus, these events could unfold as written in the real world - this existence where polarization has taken root like an unkillable weed, each of us caught up in our own little orbits of ambition, rampant consumerism and self-fulfillment to the degree that we haven't taken seriously the burgeoning, low roar emanating from the neighborhood tea parties of God's self-appointed elite. One need only look at the rest of the world to see how that turns out. Have we failed to absorb the disturbingly high body count numbers of those who have been murdered in the name of one god or another? Do we really believe that power and greed don't also occupy church pews and pulpits? We ignore these things at our own peril.
I submit that the public should read this author's fiction en masse, not just for the thrill, which it definitely will be, but for a strong dose of HOW it might be. A distasteful potion? For sure. Will it be good for us? Without question. And speaking of questions, we simply have to ask: is Stephen Woodfin the H. G. Wells or George Orwell of our time? If he's still a practicing lawyer in ten years, we'll know.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
 Knockout! A Passionate Police Romance
Amazon Product Description:
A #1 Kindle Best Seller in Romantic Suspense, Romantic Adventure and Women Sleuths
Interpol cop, Anna Leyton, spirals down into a hopeless vortex of sexual and emotional passion as she fights to keep her professional cool. Who is deceiving who in this fast moving ride across continents? What motivates her art loving prize-bull of a lover Freddie La Salle? The power of love and trust stands against greed and crime as conflicting forces grapple for that knockout punch.
*********************************************
This book is HOT. It is HOT because it is so, so incredibly intelligent!
The language. The LANGUAGE!! Emma Calin's work is amusing, diverse and insightful, with razor-sharp dialogue to sweep you along. She's brash, bold, witty, emotionally intelligent, and perhaps most importantly, she's smart. She uses words to imperceptibly cast an invisible net over your brain and heart to capture and pull you in. The delicious, descriptive language and imagery can only come from a fine poet at her best.
In a romance novel you expect to see flailing arms, legs and thinly veiled private parts, with all the accompanying pawings, slobberings, steam risings and quasi-porn-film dialog. Much too easy. In this novel, sex is treated so tenderly, lovingly and naturally, the term "romance novel" seems too limiting. This is a high quality suspense novel interwoven with an intriguing love story! It is quite intelligently treated and utterly unpredictable.
Now don't get me wrong. The sensuality here made me feel things in places I didn't know I still had places. #oh!hellotherelibido This is the magic of it. To me, the blatant over-use of raw sex and pornish dialog is always a turn-off...very comical, in fact...and thoroughly unenjoyable.
Anna Leyton is as human as an author can make her. A real woman with authentic feelings, foibles, doubts and fears. A woman with courage, with a strong moral code, a woman capable of giving and receiving great love. In fact, all of the characters in this story are completely fleshed out and quite believable.
The author does a great job of fore-and-aft-shadowing and pacing, keeping the reader completely engrossed and unwilling to set it aside, even to eat. I highly recommend you read it, not only for the entertainment, but for the lasting impact this author will have on your mind. You will want to seek out everything she writes. She is a shining example of the quintessential sassy, smart and educated woman we all so dearly admire. And you will remember Anna Leyton.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
 Amazon Product Description:
The story of Gerald and Kathleen, a helicopter crew chief and a U.S. Army Nurse, who meet in Vietnam after Gerald is seriously wounded. Gerald is transferred to Brooke Army Hospital near San Antonio, for rehabilitation. Kathleen is transferred to Brooke because she has served three tours in Vietnam and is on the point of total burn out.
Gerald recovers, leaves the Army, and tries to return to civilian life. Kathleen leaves the Army, opting to stay in San Antonio, working at St. Mary's Hospital.
For twenty years they experience the aftermath of war, something we now call PTSD. Finally they begin separately traveling the roads they hope will take them home.
*********************
Once again, Bert Carson's writing has grabbed me by the gut, slung me into a world I couldn't know, and left me gasping at his soulful, creative brilliance. Such a well crafted story leaves one with the feeling that, even though fiction, this author has lived this stuff; he has birthed these characters from his own harrowing war experiences and brought them to credible life here.
Bert is a natural-born raconteur....on any subject. Ask anyone who knows him. If he'd been born in West Africa, he would have been the highly revered griot, traveling from village to village relating the stories and lore of the times, never ever missing a detail, a fact or a beat.
Like all of his writing, this novel has a wonderful redemptive quality. Even when he's taking you down through the dark, harrowing valleys of human experience, you can rest assured he will get you to the other side renewed, refreshed and ready to climb with hope and vigor up to the mountain top, where the light of the universe has transformed him and thereby, you.
No one who hasn't been through war really knows much about PTSD * (see below); it's a term tossed around so often these days the reality of it sort of gets overlooked. In 'Maddog & Miss Kitty', the author has given us one of the best pieces of writing I've ever seen which is both entrancing, entertaining, and educational. He weaves the reality of this condition into the story so cleverly, you don't even know you're learning something, and indeed, one is left with a new, deeper empathy for those who have served in our military. I knew of these things before, but I didn't really know them til I read this amazing story.
The four short stories after the end of the novel are a lovely bonus, beautifully written, and continue his underlying theme. Thoroughly enjoyable!
Bert Carson, as I've said before, has an amazing intellect which shines through all his work, and a wonderful humility and soulfulness which touches us deeply. This novel will stick with you, I promise. I strongly urge you to read it.
*Trauma and PTSD
The essential psychological effect of trauma is a shattering of innocence - utter disillusionment: it means a loss of faith that there is any safety, predictability, or meaning in the world, or any safe place to hide. These events are often unable to be processed by the mind and body as other experiences are, and due to their overwhelming and shocking nature, they are not integrated or digested. The trauma might then have continued effects, haunting the survivor and preventing normal life from continuing until the person receives help.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition created by exposure to a psychologically distressing event outside the range of usual human experience, one which would be markedly distressing to almost anyone, and which causes intense fear, terror, and helplessness. The trauma is an assault to the person’s biology and psyche. The event may have happened recently or a long time ago, leaving that person with lingering conditions such as hyper-arousal, re-experiencing, or avoidance (numbing down).
Trauma, like unresolved grief, can cause overwhelming feelings, depression, agitation and anxiety, mistrust of others, difficulty in relationships, shame, guilt, despair or a sense of meaninglessness, and helplessness and hopelessness. Returning to one's previous family, social or work life is impossible for some, and psychotherapy provides a safe place for trauma survivors to tell their story, feel less isolated, and tolerate knowing what happened.
Psychologists help patients make connections between feelings and symptoms occurring in the present and aspects of the traumatic event(s). Through treatment, survivors begin to make sense of what happened and how it affected them, understand themselves and the world again in light of it, and ultimately restore relationships and connections in their lives.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
Amazon Product Description:
The story of Gerald and Kathleen, a helicopter crew chief and a U.S. Army Nurse, who meet in Vietnam after Gerald is seriously wounded. Gerald is transferred to Brooke Army Hospital near San Antonio, for rehabilitation. Kathleen is transferred to Brooke because she has served three tours in Vietnam and is on the point of total burn out.
Gerald recovers, leaves the Army, and tries to return to civilian life. Kathleen leaves the Army, opting to stay in San Antonio, working at St. Mary's Hospital.
For twenty years they experience the aftermath of war, something we now call PTSD. Finally they begin separately traveling the roads they hope will take them home.
*********************
Once again, Bert Carson's writing has grabbed me by the gut, slung me into a world I couldn't know, and left me gasping at his soulful, creative brilliance. Such a well crafted story leaves one with the feeling that, even though fiction, this author has lived this stuff; he has birthed these characters from his own harrowing war experiences and brought them to credible life here.
Bert is a natural-born raconteur....on any subject. Ask anyone who knows him. If he'd been born in West Africa, he would have been the highly revered griot, traveling from village to village relating the stories and lore of the times, never ever missing a detail, a fact or a beat.
Like all of his writing, this novel has a wonderful redemptive quality. Even when he's taking you down through the dark, harrowing valleys of human experience, you can rest assured he will get you to the other side renewed, refreshed and ready to climb with hope and vigor up to the mountain top, where the light of the universe has transformed him and thereby, you.
No one who hasn't been through war really knows much about PTSD * (see below); it's a term tossed around so often these days the reality of it sort of gets overlooked. In 'Maddog & Miss Kitty', the author has given us one of the best pieces of writing I've ever seen which is both entrancing, entertaining, and educational. He weaves the reality of this condition into the story so cleverly, you don't even know you're learning something, and indeed, one is left with a new, deeper empathy for those who have served in our military. I knew of these things before, but I didn't really know them til I read this amazing story.
The four short stories after the end of the novel are a lovely bonus, beautifully written, and continue his underlying theme. Thoroughly enjoyable!
Bert Carson, as I've said before, has an amazing intellect which shines through all his work, and a wonderful humility and soulfulness which touches us deeply. This novel will stick with you, I promise. I strongly urge you to read it.
*Trauma and PTSD
The essential psychological effect of trauma is a shattering of innocence - utter disillusionment: it means a loss of faith that there is any safety, predictability, or meaning in the world, or any safe place to hide. These events are often unable to be processed by the mind and body as other experiences are, and due to their overwhelming and shocking nature, they are not integrated or digested. The trauma might then have continued effects, haunting the survivor and preventing normal life from continuing until the person receives help.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition created by exposure to a psychologically distressing event outside the range of usual human experience, one which would be markedly distressing to almost anyone, and which causes intense fear, terror, and helplessness. The trauma is an assault to the person’s biology and psyche. The event may have happened recently or a long time ago, leaving that person with lingering conditions such as hyper-arousal, re-experiencing, or avoidance (numbing down).
Trauma, like unresolved grief, can cause overwhelming feelings, depression, agitation and anxiety, mistrust of others, difficulty in relationships, shame, guilt, despair or a sense of meaninglessness, and helplessness and hopelessness. Returning to one's previous family, social or work life is impossible for some, and psychotherapy provides a safe place for trauma survivors to tell their story, feel less isolated, and tolerate knowing what happened.
Psychologists help patients make connections between feelings and symptoms occurring in the present and aspects of the traumatic event(s). Through treatment, survivors begin to make sense of what happened and how it affected them, understand themselves and the world again in light of it, and ultimately restore relationships and connections in their lives.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
 ABOUT PLACE OF SKULLS
(Amazon Product Description)
"A man with no known past and no name as been dispatched to the deserts, ghost towns, and underbelly of drug-infested Arizona to uncover a secret that could forever change the scope and teachings of Christianity.
A DEA agent has written that he possesses the unmistakable and undeniable proof that Christ did indeed return to earth again and walk the land of the Aztecs almost fifteen hundred years after his crucifixion on the cross. But has the agent found a relic? An artifact? A long lost manuscript of the written Word? No one knows, and the agent dies before he can smuggle the secret out of an empty grave.
Andrews St. Aubin can't dig past the charred fragments of his memory, but he must unravel the legend of Quetzalcoatl, the white-skinned, blue-eyed, god figure whose sixteenth century ministry, death, resurrection, and mystical promise to return someday to gather up his people closely parallels the Biblical story of the man called Christ. Is Quetzalcoatl merely a myth, or was he Christ himself?
In St. Aubin's quest to find the answers, he becomes involved in a rogue CIA plot to invade Mexico and wage an unholy war on drugs. He finds himself pursued by the same mysterious assassin who struck down the DEA agent.
Does the artifact actually exist? Who possesses it now? St. Aubin battles an unseen and unknown enemy in an effort to survive long enough to discover the truth. If he doesn't, he knows that death awaits him on the desert sands of a land held sacred for centuries by the mysterious and holy ones."
*******************************************************************************
I've been reading Caleb Pirtle short stories for some time now, enjoying them immensely, and was curious to see if his talent could survive the rigors of a long novel. Indeed, it has, and gloriously so!
I love a sharp dose of authenticity - when a story is told arrow-straight and fiction feels like reality, when you may have never been to a certain place or met someone like the character you're reading, and yet you feel the narrative's truth. Caleb Pirtle definitely has a gift for this...in spades. In PLACE OF SKULLS the writing is tensile-taut, the story lines are interwoven seamlessly, and all the gory details are nicely intact.
You can't imagine a gentleman like this author ever knowing an earthly thing about the underbelly of life that this novel depicts, but his writing resounds with the tone of real people imbedding a real place in time. The story breathes you in and holds its breath as the tension mounts.
The language is both stark and deliciously detailed. Scorching heat and terror are the forest, and the wiles and emotions of humanity fill the spaces between the trees.
An intricate plot and fleshy, memorable characters, the expressive narrative and relentless pacing will no doubt cause PLACE OF SKULLS to be remembered as indeed one of the best mysteries of the year.
--Jo VonBargen 2012
what memories you gave me,
Mother, speaking in your own
Indiana way, your
Dutch coal miner Dad and
Irish/Cherokee Mom
printed on your face
and mine for all time
in your dying days you
prayed to a formless, weightless
God whom you loved
because Daddy did
but never spoke of, as if
telling would erase Him
like the face of unknown stars
in the garden now so odd
without you in it, cactus
and alien grasses carry on
in the warm, Texas breeze like
your own breath was
rustling there
I smile and remember that
before speech stopped, you
spoke in a tongue only
small creatures knew...
we looked at you, puzzled,
but the pets and great-grands
all instinctively
understood
you lingered amid
utmost years-long suffering
with only your fate
as a pillow; we held you,
tried to comfort it all away,
and then, in our arms, you
smiled and softly met death,
so silent, so strange
--Jo VonBargen 2012
Huge thanks to Laura Zera for her gracious request for a piece on "what I would want said to me on my 80th birthday"! I am indeed honored to do so! Laura says Booktrope is organizing a bunch of guest blog posts in support of Write for the Fight and I'm delighted to contribute in small part to this very crucial effort to raise money for breast cancer research.
 Go here to read my guest blog at Laura's. Enjoy!
 Laura's wonderful essays appear in the book at left. Click the pic to go to Amazon.
Best selling author Tess Hardwick of Seattle and Tracey M. Hansen of Florida, frustrated by the pain and suffering breast cancer has inflicted on their loved ones, determined to take action and put their talents to a good cause.
The result of their creative energy is WRITE FOR THE FIGHT: A Collection of Seasonal Essays, crafted from the hearts and souls of thirteen unique and inspirational writers, for which all author royalties will be donated to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. The writers each respond to personal, thoughtful questions about the seasons of life we move through, from the age of five to eighty.
Published by Booktrope, it was released as a NOOK Book at Barnes and Noble in March, and for the Kindle at Amazon in early April. It will also be available in paperback at both sites at the end of April.
Thanks again, Laura, for inviting me, and here's rooting for huge success in this collaborative effort to find the cure!
Go here to read Laura's brilliant guest post on Chick Lit+
Okay. I am done! I've written a new book, posted it (see bottom of page), I've gotten all the new book covers posted and now I'm gettin' under the kivvers for a week! #whew
I was finally convinced after reading all the articles lately about the importance of covers. #whattheheckwasIthinkng Why did it take me so long? I love the new look of them and could kick myself for dragging this out so long. I'm hoping readers will like them, too, and perhaps hang around and get the urge to hit One-Click!
Well, I do have to brag a little here. I made them all myself, cropping royalty-free stuff I found, then layering on text using a couple of the free logo generator sites. To me, the best ones to use are cooltext.com and flamingtext.com. Then I used my paint.net software to tweak or change the colors, and to layer stuff onto the 500 X 800 cropped wallpaper background, then saved to .jpg. Now mind you, it was very labor-intensive and not everyone has the time or patience it takes, but it was certainly free in terms of dollars, if not in time and trouble. I did learn an awful lot about graphics in the process.
I had so many visions of what I wanted in ebook covers, but explaining those to a hired graphics person would have been impossible, so this was the best route for me, personally. The new covers are posted on the right side of this page; each is linked to the Amazon site where listed if you wish to read descriptions. I'd be happy for you to critique them if you'd like. No thin skin here! Always looking to learn and improve. Thanks so much, my lovely friends, for taking a look!So here's the new book in the lot...finally! My fans have been after me to do a collection, so that came together as well. That was grueling, too, so maybe I'll get under the kivvers for two weeks! Here 'tis: "It Ain't Shakespeare, But Oh, How it Glows" is a variety of prose and poems taken from a large body of work done over thirty years time. Several themes run through these writings about human spirit, not the least of which is love, albeit failed love. The importance of these writings is to illuminate the power of love, even when it is love spent without return or love bestowed beyond all prudence. That power manifests as strength, resilience, wisdom and a strong determination to overcome. As such, unconditional love is its own reward in a world where, sadly, millions of women are subjected to being used and abused because their naïveté and kindness is mistaken for weakness...or perhaps because cultural, religious or familial ties require that they endure it. Some of these poems and essays exist to shine a hard light on these unfortunate and dreadful circumstances, if only to light a candle in the shadowy places where truth often hides. The hope is that there is enough beauty, contemplation and #inyourface rant scattered throughout so that the reader's experience isn't rife with gloom, depression and scattered entrails!
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