Episode 493 - Phyllis Gobbell - PRODIGAL, a Southern novel that echoes an ancient Biblical story

Phyllis Gobbell’s writing career spans four decades. Her history of publication includes both fiction and nonfiction, with a total of five novels and over thirty stories and articles in literary journals, anthologies, and magazines. One of her first stories appeared in the anthology, HomeWorks, in 1996, a collection of writings by Tennessee authors living at that time, including Alex Haley, Robert Penn Warren, and Peter Taylor.

Gobbell, a Nashville author, writes a little bit of everything. Two true-crime books, An Unfinished Canvas (Berkley, 2007; Diversion 2020) and A Season of Darkness (Berkley, 2010), are accounts of high-profile, cold-case murders in Nashville. Now Gobbell authors the Jordan Mayfair Mystery Series: Pursuit in Provence (Five Star, 2015), Secrets and Shamrocks (Five Star, 2016), and Treachery in Tuscany (Encircle, 2018), winner of Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award for Best Cozy Mystery.

Gobbell received the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Award in Fiction. Other writing achievements include the Leslie Garrett Fiction Prize awarded by the Knoxville Writers Guild, Tennessee Writers Alliance Short Story First Place Award, and the North Carolina Writers’ Workshop First Place Award in Creative Nonfiction. She received a Pushcart nomination for her story, “Primates,” which was published in Bellevue Literary Review. She won the Creative Nonfiction First Place Award from the Knoxville Writers’ Guild for her essay, “In the Car with Mother on Christmas Eve.” Twice she has received the Leslie Garrett Award for Fiction.

An active participant in the writing community, Gobbell helped organize the Tennessee Writers Alliance in 1990 and served on its Board of Directors for ten years, including two terms as president and one as chair of the Board. She was also a founding member of a writers group that still meets every Tuesday night, the Nashville Writers Alliance.

For twenty years, Phyllis Gobbell served on the English faculty at Nashville State Community College as Associate Professor. She taught courses in composition, creative writing, and literature. She served as editor of the literary magazine, Tetrahedra, for eight years.

Gobbell earned her B.S. in Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and received her M.A. in English from Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee, where the graduate program offered a creative thesis option. Her thesis was a collection of stories entitled Listen to Me. Most of the stories have been published in literary journals and have received awards.

https://phyllisgobbell.com/

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Episode 492 - AJ Whitney - Sovereign, When Your Number is Up - Orphans Face A Dire Fate

AJ Whitney is a young adult author living in the Kansas City metro with her husband of nearly 20 years and two teenagers. She is also a high school counselor, dubbed as “the punk rock school counselor.” Apart from books, which are her oldest love, she also enjoys making and listening to music, befriending every animal imaginable, playing board games, and getting sucked into D&D campaigns against her will.

Book One of AJ’s speculative / dystopian series Sovereign is expected in 2025. She also writes horror, thrillers, fantasy, and dark contemporary fiction. When reading an AJ Whitney book, expect a page-turner with twists, cliffhangers, and dark surprises.

Book - Soverign - Number 332 is living to be sacrificed.

A teen with no name, she'll take part in the Sending alongside nine other orphans after the Festival.

They will be left in the Fields and taken by the Sovereign as gifts, and the town will be blessed with a decade of bountiful harvests - same as the past three centuries.

But after so long, even the town elders begin questioning the decennial Sending and the very existence of the Sovereign.

They've all forgotten about the gray-haired woman who saw everything. The rotten crops. The starvation. The message scrawled in the barren Fields.

Every 10 years.

https://a.co/d/7yPiuGN

https://ajwhitneybooks.com/

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Episode 491 - Steven Joseph - Fiction, Nonfiction Author, Possibly Cranky, Lawyer and Run-On Sentences

Embracing the Culture, Celebrating Milestones, and Achieving Zen

Steven Joseph is a first-generation American, veteran attorney, negotiator, prolific speaker, and a modern humorist. He’s a real New Yorker. A fully cured overweight person, Steven is a five times Boston Marathon runner and 16 times NYC Marathon runner – balancing it all perfectly through the art of Zen.

Yet Steven believes he is smart enough to know that he hasn’t figured everything out, except for crankiness

Embracing Crankiness One Book at a Time

Steven Joseph is an excellent attorney and a remarkable writer. He’s gone from writing comprehensive legal briefs to penning award-winning fiction and nonfiction books for children and adults.

Being a son of a Holocaust Survivor, Steven recognizes and celebrates his Jewish heritage. Most of his writing is based on the concept of survival, which was ubiquitous in the household he grew up in, and acknowledgment which, he learned through his zen practice. As a crankiness expert, Steven can help you manage your emotions, embrace your crankiness, and improve communication with friends and family.

Steven is the author of the Mom’s Choice Award-winning The Last Surviving Dinosaur: The TyrantoCrankaTsuris and The Crankatsuris Method: A Grownup Guide to Effective Crankinessthat , and the forthcoming Snoodles, Kidoodles, Poodles, and Lots and Lots of Noodles. Sign up to stay informed.

https://www.stevenjosephauthor.com/

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