Lucian and Norman Parker are as close as twin brothers can be.Together with their father, they run a railway station in Warm Springs, Oklahoma, during the Depression. But when both brothers fall in love with the same girl and Lucien marries her, a rift they never imagined begins to form between them.Soon, World War II takes the twins away from home, to the Pacific, and it is there, as prisoners of war, that their bond is forever broken: one of them dies, and the other makes an agonizing decision that will change his life forever.TICKET HOME takes readers on a journey back through youthful days of wonder, past the loss of innocence, and explores the power of the kind of love that can salvage dreams.AUTHORBIO: James Michael Pratt is a full time writer and radio host. His weekly syndicated radio show, "The Bestsellers Show," is produced by PCBroadcast.com and is heard in a growing number of markets nationwide.A native Californian, he has been married to his wife Jeanne for twenty-four years and is the father of two children, Michael and Amy. Before beginning his writing career he was active in financial and real estate related business in SouthernCalifornia.A frequent guest speaker, James focuses on the motivational themes of hope, belief, love, and achieving success with a balanced life. ENDISBN: 0312266928 TITLE: Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir AUTHOR: Horn, Stacy DESCRIPTION: You've passed forty. You're single, deeply addicted to watching television, and obsessed by the past. Your business seems to be failing. You're hopelessly devoted to two diabetic cats, whose dietary and medical regimens dictate your schedule. Not only are you informed your apartment is haunted, you're actually starting to believe it may be true. This is a life? Waiting for My Cats to Die is Stacy Horn's heartbreakingly honest and achingly funny reply to her own question. Here is a memoir that goes straight to the indignities and preoccupations of midlife: what happens the moment we realize that life has a distinctly downward pull to it, and that death is more than simply some theoretical possibility. Stacy decides dying is not something she's going to take lying down. Having polled subscribers on echonyc.com, the online service she founded, for advice, she concludes that the best strategy in the battle against aging is a frontal assault. We're all going to end up in graveyards? Fine. Let's make them as homey and welcoming as we can. She clears away underbrush from abandoned cemeteries, wipes cobwebs from forgotten crypts, looks for gems amid the clutter of storage rooms and basements, tracks down precious records of long-dead relatives, interviews the elderly for the wisdom of their age, and pores over local archives, seeking the identity of her ghostly roommate (and hoping to learn why it seems to have nothing better to do than hang around a small one-bedroom apartment in the West Village of Manhattan). As this wonderful, courageous, and irresistible memoir shows, acting out can be both survival strategy and affirmation. There's no avoiding the day when the credits will roll on your life, so accumulate as many credits as you can (that way, they'll take longer to unroll). Stacy seizes her days with fierce passion: she learns to drum, sings with a choir, writes treatments for TV shows, somehow manages to keep her business on an even keel, and freely embraces all the fantasies and denials that sustain every one of us. And those poor afflicted cats? Their furry, stubborn will to live provides reason enough to celebrate. Waiting for My Cats to Die will make you weep, laugh, commiserate, and fall back in love with life.AUTHORBIO: Stacy Horn is the founder of echonyc.com, a virtual community, and the author of Cyberville. She and her cats, Beems and Buddy, live in New York.
James Michael Pratt is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling fiction author. Jim recently completed research and co-writing for the documentary and Rex J. Pratt Film, Between Iraq and a Hard Place. He is currently writing a screenplay taken from his regional bestseller, The Good Heart. Called "... a master of moral fiction," by Booklist, his novels are filled with history laden plots, conflict, mystery, and romance.
People Magazine billed Jim's breakout novel, The Last Valentine (1998-1999) "...a return ticket to Bridges of Madison Country territory." It is scheduled for a Hallmark Hall of Fame television "Movie of the Week" in early 2007. The Lighthouse Keeper, (2000-2001) and Ticket Home (2001-2002) hit bestseller charts across the country. Kirkus Reviews called the trio "...the fictionalization of The Greatest Generation," for the vivid portrayal of life and love before, during, and after World War Two.
Paradise Bay, (2002-2003) is a coming-of-age story geographically set between LA and an abandoned fishing hamlet just north of Santa Barbara, CA. Paradise Bay holds secrets for a present day musician son who never knew his Vietnam War hero-father. Sweeping back to the 1950s-60s with social changes, music, horrors of Vietnam, we see a young aspiring "piano man," drafted into the Marines and then seriously wounded. His music sleeps with him for thirty years. He will awaken from a battle induced coma to a strange world with new music, a son he never knew, and a love he had thought lost forever.
The Good Heart, (2005) depicts the entrapping of three troubled lives, one beating heart, and an unsolved mystery. Set in the fast-paced, power-hungry climate of the nation's capital and Tallahassee, FL. Jim's newest novel combines political and medical intrigue with passion and danger while unraveling the mystery behind a brotherly pact that has lain hidden for forty years.
Jim cultivated story-telling from his earliest days of carefree 1960's boy at play in the fields and hills near the old Corriganville Movie Ranch sets in Simi Valley, CA. His father's World War Two combat and two older brother's Vietnam service influenced Jim, at an early age, to study history in gen eral and military history specifically. Fluent in Spanish, he often uses the language and settings of old California and the Southwest where he grew up to add color, realism, and flavor to his stories.
In memoirs created as tributes to everyday parents, Jim reminds the reader in MOM, The Woman Who Made Oatmeal Stick to My Ribs, and DAD, The Man Who Lied To Save the Planet of a time and place when seemingly complex matters of life had simple, straightforward answers colored by time honored and traditional virtues and values. He recently finished two novels in the inspirational category, both available at Amazon.com; The Christ Report and As A Man Thinketh, In His Heart.
As well as author, James Pratt serves as Chairman of PowerThink Publishing, LLC. For more on James Michael Pratt and his writings see: www.jmpratt.com and www.powerthink.com.
