Kizzie holds a secret appearnce, shes half cat and desperatley wishes to get away from the city. Her dreams hold a fantasy world, and when she buys five cats from a horrible pet store owner she ends up being captured along with her cats. And finds herself in trouble once again and with people much like herself but with different abilities.
Unfinished.
Journey is the first book of the groundbreaking coming-of-age trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, the story of a boy growing up Mormon in America with a dream to play jazz trumpet. It is the recipient of a coveted ForeWord Clarion Five Star Review.
It begins in 1956. Young Shake Tauffler hears a line of music on the radio of a cattle truck that changes his life forever. The music is jazz. The instrument is a trumpet. His family is moving one last time - from a southern Utah ranch to a town outside Salt Lake - on his father's quest to bring his family from Switzerland to the heartland of the Mormon church. In two months, when Shake turns twelve, he'll join his buddies on a shared journey through the ranks of his father's take-no-prisoners religion. At the same time, armed with a used trumpet and his bike, he'll start another journey, on his own, to a place whose high priests aren't his father's friends but the Negro greats of jazz, men he's been taught to believe are cursed but from whose music he learns everything he dreams of being.
Shaded with Huck Finn and James Dean, Shake Tauffler is an American kid we all recognize, a kid who responds to bigotry, abuse, repression, hypocrisy, and death with courage, humor, heartbreak, often pain, and always wonder. His rites of passage are keenly drawn and vividly familiar, his dream to play jazz shared by most any musician. But his ten-year story of growing up Mormon in America takes us to an altogether different place. Journey, the first book of the trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, is for those of us who long to hunker down and lose ourselves in a big American story, one whose narrative canvas takes us from Switzerland to a southern Utah ranch, to Salt Lake and its outskirts towns, into the secret holy places of the Mormon Church, across the landscapes of Nevada, California, Las Vegas, Kentucky, Austria, the Mojave Desert. Lyrical, rowdy, unflinching, Journey follows Shake across the first four years of his search for the clarity and flight of a trumpet line to lift him like a steel bird out from under the iron sky of his faith and guide him to sexual, moral, and musical consciousness. It is a search that resolves - for now - in startling and extraordinary tenderness.
Michael Strong, literary agent and co-founder of Zola Books, describes the book this way:
"Max Zimmer has written The Great American Mormon Novel. For decades, readers have depended upon a few extraordinary writers to understand fully what it means to be an American - Philip Roth, Julia Alvarez, Ralph Ellison, Erica Jong, John Updike. Zimmer has added a critical new dimension to our shared national understanding of who we are and how we got here in this sweeping narrative. Twelve-year-old Shake Tauffler's decade-long journey through the Mormon Church and beyond will resonate with all Americans who ponder their soul and place in our changing national portrait."
"The Barrio of Beverly Hills (excerpted from THE ORANGE MESSIAH) is a dazzling family saga set in the transformational period of the early 1970’s. The hippies, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin were in their heyday. Movies like Jesus Christ Superstar and A Clockwork Orange were huge hits. Fifty thousand Americans had been lost in Viet Nam, and a Constitutional Amendment had been passed, banning discrimination against women based on their gender.
Against this backdrop, Ramona and Carlos Batista, half-Hispanic twins and their friend and lover, Jonah Cahn, are coming of age in Los Angeles. Their story is one of bloody murder and sizzling sex, riotous adventure and heart-wrenching tragedy. It is also a comical roadtrip where everyone “inhales” and one character almost gets drowned by a Spanish-speaking horse. This is in-your-face story telling, visceral yet sublimely poetic, a guaranteed “must read” for anyone who loves a good story.
Amie Sarcetta WW2 medic. The first woman medic on the front line. D-day, her claim to fame but it would become more of a nightmare then a dream...
A story of sacrifice and the cruelty that can exist in love and relationships. Read about the bittersweet heartbreak of Lana when her long time love decided to side with his family over love.
A group of girls are having a sleepover and end up having a scare that begins innoccent and end up deadly. In this story I took some events that happened at my old house that acctually happened.
Teddy is an angel- of sorts. He comes down to earth and feeds off of human energy to survive. It's both a curse and a gift. A gift because it gives him immortality now the human he was has died. It's a curse because the feeling of being human returns when he falls in love with a girl on earth.
Teddy starts to slip in to Ava's dreams and she begins to fall for him too- while she sleeps that is. Worst part is, dream entering is a big no no for Teddy's boss Zeus- so he'll have to pay the price....
Fantasy Author Alfred Bekker about his hero Gorian, writing, and other issues
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Clans are just bloodlines, a common root shared from sire to child. You should know all you can about the different sides, it's war out there after all.
Kizzie holds a secret appearnce, shes half cat and desperatley wishes to get away from the city. Her dreams hold a fantasy world, and when she buys five cats from a horrible pet store owner she ends up being captured along with her cats. And finds herself in trouble once again and with people much like herself but with different abilities.
Unfinished.
Journey is the first book of the groundbreaking coming-of-age trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, the story of a boy growing up Mormon in America with a dream to play jazz trumpet. It is the recipient of a coveted ForeWord Clarion Five Star Review.
It begins in 1956. Young Shake Tauffler hears a line of music on the radio of a cattle truck that changes his life forever. The music is jazz. The instrument is a trumpet. His family is moving one last time - from a southern Utah ranch to a town outside Salt Lake - on his father's quest to bring his family from Switzerland to the heartland of the Mormon church. In two months, when Shake turns twelve, he'll join his buddies on a shared journey through the ranks of his father's take-no-prisoners religion. At the same time, armed with a used trumpet and his bike, he'll start another journey, on his own, to a place whose high priests aren't his father's friends but the Negro greats of jazz, men he's been taught to believe are cursed but from whose music he learns everything he dreams of being.
Shaded with Huck Finn and James Dean, Shake Tauffler is an American kid we all recognize, a kid who responds to bigotry, abuse, repression, hypocrisy, and death with courage, humor, heartbreak, often pain, and always wonder. His rites of passage are keenly drawn and vividly familiar, his dream to play jazz shared by most any musician. But his ten-year story of growing up Mormon in America takes us to an altogether different place. Journey, the first book of the trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, is for those of us who long to hunker down and lose ourselves in a big American story, one whose narrative canvas takes us from Switzerland to a southern Utah ranch, to Salt Lake and its outskirts towns, into the secret holy places of the Mormon Church, across the landscapes of Nevada, California, Las Vegas, Kentucky, Austria, the Mojave Desert. Lyrical, rowdy, unflinching, Journey follows Shake across the first four years of his search for the clarity and flight of a trumpet line to lift him like a steel bird out from under the iron sky of his faith and guide him to sexual, moral, and musical consciousness. It is a search that resolves - for now - in startling and extraordinary tenderness.
Michael Strong, literary agent and co-founder of Zola Books, describes the book this way:
"Max Zimmer has written The Great American Mormon Novel. For decades, readers have depended upon a few extraordinary writers to understand fully what it means to be an American - Philip Roth, Julia Alvarez, Ralph Ellison, Erica Jong, John Updike. Zimmer has added a critical new dimension to our shared national understanding of who we are and how we got here in this sweeping narrative. Twelve-year-old Shake Tauffler's decade-long journey through the Mormon Church and beyond will resonate with all Americans who ponder their soul and place in our changing national portrait."
"The Barrio of Beverly Hills (excerpted from THE ORANGE MESSIAH) is a dazzling family saga set in the transformational period of the early 1970’s. The hippies, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin were in their heyday. Movies like Jesus Christ Superstar and A Clockwork Orange were huge hits. Fifty thousand Americans had been lost in Viet Nam, and a Constitutional Amendment had been passed, banning discrimination against women based on their gender.
Against this backdrop, Ramona and Carlos Batista, half-Hispanic twins and their friend and lover, Jonah Cahn, are coming of age in Los Angeles. Their story is one of bloody murder and sizzling sex, riotous adventure and heart-wrenching tragedy. It is also a comical roadtrip where everyone “inhales” and one character almost gets drowned by a Spanish-speaking horse. This is in-your-face story telling, visceral yet sublimely poetic, a guaranteed “must read” for anyone who loves a good story.
Amie Sarcetta WW2 medic. The first woman medic on the front line. D-day, her claim to fame but it would become more of a nightmare then a dream...
A story of sacrifice and the cruelty that can exist in love and relationships. Read about the bittersweet heartbreak of Lana when her long time love decided to side with his family over love.
A group of girls are having a sleepover and end up having a scare that begins innoccent and end up deadly. In this story I took some events that happened at my old house that acctually happened.
Teddy is an angel- of sorts. He comes down to earth and feeds off of human energy to survive. It's both a curse and a gift. A gift because it gives him immortality now the human he was has died. It's a curse because the feeling of being human returns when he falls in love with a girl on earth.
Teddy starts to slip in to Ava's dreams and she begins to fall for him too- while she sleeps that is. Worst part is, dream entering is a big no no for Teddy's boss Zeus- so he'll have to pay the price....
Fantasy Author Alfred Bekker about his hero Gorian, writing, and other issues
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Clans are just bloodlines, a common root shared from sire to child. You should know all you can about the different sides, it's war out there after all.