Joe M. O'Connell: violet crown book award

Showing posts with label violet crown book award. Show all posts

Friday, October 26, 2012

'Evacuation Plan' is now an e-book!

First off, I'll be signing my novel-in stories Evacuation Plan during the Texas Book Festival from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday and noon to 2 p.m. Sunday outside the Texas Capitol. Stop by and say "Howdy."

Just as important, Evacuation Plan lives a new life as an e-book is all of the various formats. Thanks to Sisterhood Publications for adding me to their stable of fine writers. You can look in the column on the right for more info on this award-winning tome. The new cover includes a photo I took a million years ago.

Want to read it for free? Here's how:

Sisterhood Publications is so excited to announce our newest release, the award-winning EVACUATION PLAN: A NOVEL FROM THE HOSPICE by Joe M. O'Connell.

We want YOU to help us spread the word, so we are making it worth your while. There's a free copy of the book, a free DVD where Joe talks about the book and a $25 gift certificate to Amazon to the first person who spreads the word in ten different places on the Web.

Rules:

1. You cannot write "Buy Joe's Book 10 Times on your FB profile.
2. You cannot write "Buy Joe's Book 10 Times on your friends profiles. If you write it on your profile on Facebook, that counts for one time.
3. You must take a screen shot of your comment. For information on how to take a screen shot please visit https://www.facebook.com/SisterhoodPublications for exact details.
4. Once you have visited 10 different Internet locations and posted about Joe's book, please send your screen shots, your name, snail mail address to draneydesign@gmail.com.
5. Example of what to post. "Make sure you check out Joe O'Connell's new book, EVACUATION PLAN. I'm in a contest to win a copy plus a $25 gift certificate" or something like that.
6. Examples of places where you can post: FB (once). Twitter (Once), Tumblr (1), Reddit (1), Google + (1), Pinterest (1), Your website (1), Your Blog (1), etc. See? Not so hard, kind of fun, and you can win a book, a CD and a $25 giftcard to buy MORE books. So let's play.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Support your local author

Kind words from Todd Glasscock's blog about my novel EVACUATION PLAN...

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Violet Crown Book Award finalist!

I just got word that my novel-in-stories EVACUATION PLAN is a finalist for the Violet Crown Book Award in Fiction given out annually by the Writers League of Texas. Very nice prize--$1,000 for the winner, which is announced Nov. 1 at the Texas Book Festival!

The six finalists are in the hands of some unnamed judge at this point. I know what that's like. I was the final judge for this contest two years ago. It was a tough job, but I was blown away by one book. I'm sure this year's judge will feel the same, but there's not telling which book that will be. I truly am just flattered to be a finalist.

Cyndi Hughes of the WLT sent a letter telling us finalist folk about it. I came home yesterday after a very long day. We'd been at a wedding in Temple then a surprise birthday party in the big city of Hutto. We got the mail as we were driving in with a very overtired Nicholas. Tiffany handed me the letter, and I at first thought it was junk mail. You rock, Writers League!

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

"Tales alternately gentle, dramatic, surrealistic, that collectively affirm the beauty of being alive, even as they acknowledge that all of us face the necessity of making our own 'evacuation plan.' "
-- Brad Buchholz, Austin American-Statesman

" The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity. "
-- The Texas Observer

"It was very hard for me to put this book down. It carries us through the deepest meaning in life and most painful, most hopeful memories for a wide range of fascinating characters. Based in a hospice, this book could have easily resorted to cheap sensationalism, or whacked us upside the head with stereotypic melodrama, but instead it was respectful, honest, and tender. The characters will stay with you - you may even recognize some of them within your own life. "
-- Award-winning author Carmen Tafolla

"An excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living."
-- Wayne Alan Brenner, The Austin Chronicle

"O’Connell has drawn some colourful and believable characters. The material relating to the hospice and terminal care rings true, all the way to reconciliation and forgiving."
-- Dr. Roger Woodruff, International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care

"The tales are nicely written, and some are quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie."
-- Texas Monthly

“Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice by Joe M. O'Connell is nothing short of remarkable … a novel that walks hand-in-hand with death and yet, somehow, the reader finishes the book feeling inspired to live.”
– The Paisano

"A wonderful blend of lives ordinary but with sometimes extraordinary elements. We all share these stories of life in some way, despite moments of harshness or unforgiving pain. There is always a common thread of humanity and ultimately forgiveness to be found, even if it's in the last moment of life."
-- Elaine Williams, author of A Journey Well Taken

"Reading Evacuation Plan is akin to unwrapping a series of small perfectly-chosen presents. Both human and humane, The book resembles a modern Spoon River Anthology with its vivid, touching glimpses into the lives of those in and around a hospice."
-- Tim McCanlies, screenwriter The Iron Giant, writer/director Secondhand Lions

"In Evacuation Plan Joe O'Connell does for the process of dying what Sherwood Anderson did for middle America in Winesburg, Ohio--he shows us in brief flashes the aching beauty of the grotesque, and shows us how extraordinary small lives and quiet deaths can be."
--John Blair, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winning author of American Standard

"Here's a book so rich with stories of the living, so filled with people's bountiful problems, as well as incidents of wry forgiveness, one realizes over and over the circling forces of life's completeness. It's not a sad tale nor a needless feel-good account but a balanced, sometimes comic, affirmation of what is here and what we all know is waiting."
-- Carolyn Osborn, award-winning short story writer

"The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan."
-- Will's Texana Monthly

O'Connell's protagonist skillfully navigates under the guise of a writer seeking raw materials for his craft in the stories of the dying, but mines and refines instead the stuff we're all made of. In this finely crafted novel, we come away with much more than the astute observation that many of the best stories begin at the end. But, then again, that notion is also worth a lot.
--Jesse Sublett, cancer survivor, rocker and author of Never the Same Again

"Joe O'Connell's Evacuation Plan--this Decameron of the hospice--encompasses a paradox. Death comes for everyone, but death is the only human universal because everyone dies, and witnesses dying, with private, unspeakable shame. Yet there are a few minutes left to speak. As people die, they tell stories which spawn new stories, which remind us that death is agony, a violent struggle, but so is living."
-- Debra Monroe, Flannery O'Connor Award winning author of Newfangled and Shambles

Joe M. O'Connell

Friday, October 26, 2012

'Evacuation Plan' is now an e-book!

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Support your local author

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Violet Crown Book Award finalist!

About Me

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

stat counter

Blog Archive

Followers