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Category Archives: books
Art Festivals in Michigan
Meet your next favorite read
By Emma Palova
Frankfort, MI – What better way to meet your next favorite read than on the shores of Lake Michigan at a local art festival.
After a succesful Lakeshore Art Festival (LAF) in downtown Muskegon, where even a tornado watch couldn’t stop Michigan Authors from selling their books, we have somewhat dispersed. But if you check the previous post about the Michigan Authors Comeback in 2021, and go to the authors websites, you will be able to catch up with them.
I will be in Frankfort on July 4th at the Art in the Park craft show at 517 Main Street from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Stop by to pick up a book or two; I will have Shift Sands Short Stories series, book 1 and book 2 and my newest release “Greenwich Meridian Memoir.” I will also have posters of the cover of “Secrets.”
I will be around Lowell during the Riverwalk next weekend.
July 31- Grand Ledge, Island Fest
Aug. 7- Holland, Art in the Park
Aug. 28- Lowell, Hometown Reception on the Showboat
I also have a virtual booth at the Detroit Book Fest. Check it out at:
https://detroitbookfest.com/directory-manage/
More events to be announced.
For authors: check out the podcast Michigan Authors at LAF for tips on how to organize your events with author Darla Jean Davis and Melanie Hooyenga.
https://emmapalova123.podbean.com
Copyright (c) 2021. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Michigan Authors @LAF
Michigan authors are making a comeback in 2021
Muskegon- They are back and stronger than before; strengthened by the quiet months of the COVID-19 quarantine, these authors used their time to create, write and to launch books in the finnicky technical world.
Michigan authors will be grouped at the Authors Alley at the Lakeshore Art Festival (LAF) in downtown Muskegon on June 26 and June 27. Close to 20 authors will be ready to present to you your next favorite read; from fantasies, short stories, young adult fiction, childrens books to thrillers and mysteries.
You will find Authors Alley along 4th Street on the left hand side of the road in front of the Lakeshore Museum Center and extending into the intersection at Clay Street. The hours are: Saturday, June 26 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, June 27 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Following is a list of participating authors: Ingar Rudholm, Joan Young, Melinda Clark, Sara Shanning, Lon Hieftje, Andrew Smith, Jean Davis, Norma Lewis, Melanie Hooyenga, Michael D. Jones, Lori Hudson, Emma Palova, Bonnie Votkis, Judy Burke, Marianne Wieland, Randy Pearson, Mike Carrier, Gary Buettner and Gregory Scott.
Joan Young 
Sara Shanning 
Andrew Smith 
Jean Davis 
Melanie Hooyenga 
Lori Hudson 
Emma Palova 
Marianne Wieland 
Randy Pearson 
Mike Carrier 
Norma Lewis 
Melinda Clark 
J. Lee Burke 
For links to authors’ websites go to:
https://lakeshoreartfestival.org/attend/authors-alley/
Lakeshore Art Festival on Fox TV
https://www.facebook.com/events/1097983580662621
For the Love of Books Podcast
Listen in to the weekly podcast show featuring Indie and small press authors from authors close and far away.
For podcast interviews with authors: Ingar Rudholm, Joan Young, Andrew Smith, Jean Davis, Randy Pearson and Marianne Wieland go to:
https://emmapalova123.podbean.com
Listen in this Friday to a podcast interview about Michigan Authors at LAF with authors Jean Davis and Melanie Hooyenga.
If you would like to be featured on the podcast pm or email Emma or write in the comment section below.
Copyright (c) 2021. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
For the love of books
Happy St. Pat’s Day
By Emma Palova
Lowell, MI – Check out the first episode of “For the love of books” podcast with Indie author and advocate Diana Plopa. Plopa is a prolific author who has penned nine books in nine different genres; currently she’s working on four more genres. And she doesn’t get them mixed up.
She is a staunch supporter of other Indie authors, and her main goal as the founder of Pages Promotions, LLC is to connect readers with authors in a changed world following COVID-19.
Our next featured guest will be Canadian author Luba Lesychyn. Submit your questions for Luba via the comment section or the Facebook messenger.
If you would like to be on the podcast show as a featured guest contact me in the comment section or on the Facebook messenger. If you would like to be a sponsor of the podcast show, email Emma at emmapalova@yahoo.com.
You will support a brave group of pioneer authors who are navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of self-publishing with small marketing budgets for their books. They share a special camaraderie through their common venture of getting their word out.
Your business/organization will get exposure on all the podcasting platforms and on YouTube.
Here are the links to both the video and the podcast:
About the featured photo: A masked moose in an Irish community in Cannonsburg, Michigan. BTW, the Honey Creek Inn served up an excellent Irish stew made from lamb on Tuesday.
Copyright (c) 2021. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Winter BookFest rolls into Final Week
“I want to dance always, to be good and not evil, and when it is all over not to have the feeling that I might have done better.”
-Ruth St. Denis
Dancing into the fourth week of the Winter Virtual Book Festival, I hear thawing snow drops falling from our gutters and making holes in the white cupola on the balcony. The sun flooded my Covid Sanctuary with golden rays. Most importantly I heard birds chirping in the pergola this morning.
Last night the festival participants marvelled at the readings of childrens’ book authors Carol Trembath, Jordan Scavone and MT Falgoust.
Leave behind your old misconceptions, that children’s books are for kids only. I’ve personally devoured the Indie authors presentations with illustrations like I would have a pepperoni pizza with tons of cheese.
Trembath and Scavone tackled serious subjects like Covid and grief. In her “Fairies and the Global Tree to the Rescue,” Trembath depicts scared fairies seeking help from the Global Tree. The fairies are told to wear a mask and wash their hands and “pixie wings” to stay safe from the “Fairy Flu.” The illustrations were so surreal, that the Global Tree even scared me.
In Scavone’s “Might-E Emilia”, Emilia searches for her inner superhero in the wake of her grandfather Abuelo’s death. Can she find the superhero?
MT Falgoust presented a tasty count down for young readers in “Ten little Crawfish” including a stop for a Mardi Gras parade.
In case you missed it, visit the festival PopUp Book Shop at pagespromotions.com and get your signed book.
I’ve learned so much in the festival workshops about social media marketing for authors presented earlier in the month. Last week, historical fiction authors JuliAnne Sisung and Xander Cross unraveled for us mysteries in histories such as: “Why does history repeat itself?” and that YouTube can be used for primary history research. Hm, who would have thought.
There’s still much more coming this final week as the snowbanks on our gravel road continue to melt. Tonight I will immerse myself with more historical fiction writers who are still undercover until they appear in the Zoom room. However, we will not know which book they are reading from; thus the festival theme “Blind Date with a Book.”
Last but definitely not the least of the festival workshops is “Building Suspense” by author Andrew Smith who will be giving away his “Slice of Fear” to workshop participants. Smith has also served as a backstage hand to the festival organizer Diana Plopa along with author Kate McNeal.
Don’t miss non-fiction readings on Thursday and science fiction this coming Saturday.
Stay tuned for the details on replays, the PopUp Book Shop and the Festival Wrap Up Party on Sunday.
Huzzah!
Copyright (c) 2021. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
A snowy Friday evening with Indie Authors
Join us this snowy Friday evening for some literary fun at the third Virtual Book Festival organized by Pages Promotions, LLC.
The evening will feature memoirists with the theme “Blind Date with a Book.” You can try to match up the reading with the right book for bragging rights.
So far, we’ve had so much fun while spinning the Wheel of Happiness for prizes galore.
The non-fiction authors from last night crushed it. They were: Caroline Topperman, Angela Verges, Erik Bean and Kelly Bolton.
Below is a link to register on Zoom.
Copyright (c) 2021. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Miss Bookseller: An English-Language Indie Bookshop Returns to Krymská – Prague, Czech Republic
A new bookshop devoted to English-language titles—and wonderful coffee—opens on Vršovice’s most bohemian street
— Read on news.expats.cz/prague-shopping/miss-bookseller-an-english-language-indie-bookshop-returns-to-krymska/
I love this article from Expats.cz
Stay tuned for news about my upcoming new book, the “Greenwich Meridian Memoir.” I had to sold off on publishing it due to the COVID-19 situation. But since we’re going nowhere with that, I am moving forward with publishing the memoir in August.
It is now available for preorder on Amazon. Just click on the link below:
NANOWRIMO DAY 25
Greenwich Meridian: Where East meets West memoir with excerpt
Black Friday Countdown
Shop for book 1 and book 2 from the Shifting Sands Short Stories collections this Friday through Dec. 4. Save up to 60 percent. Click this link: https://www.amazon.com/author/emmapalova
Amazon Review of Secrets
In her own unique style, Palova transports us in “Secrets” Part II of Shifting Sands. She exposes a local scandal in “Chief”. “Faustina” details a relationship lost…or is it? Palova shows us the hard line between fact and rumor in “Secrets in Ink.” My favorite, “Silk Nora”, takes us to small town Belding, Michigan at the height of WWI. A lost love is found again. I could go on with my little snippets from the dozen plus short stories in this book, but I think you’ll want to curl up and read for yourselves.
Translation
I finished translating mom’s memories from her first stay in the U.S. until 1973 this morning. Mom Ella captured three years of her life on 12 pages written in a pretty cursive.
When I compare my account of those years spent in Hawkins, TX as a kid to hers as a disappointed housewife, I begin to understand the mechanism of immigration.
From her lines, I could feel all the emotions:
Excerpt: Bittersweet memories
I planned the return home at the end of the school year in June. In April, Vaclav received a letter from his friend in Toronto, who was also in Sudan, with a newspaper clip from a Czech newspaper published in Toronto. There was a note for me in the letter, advising me not to return back to Czechoslovakia, that the amnesty wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. The newspaper article was about a person who had returned back to Czechoslovakia; at the airport he was taken into an establishment unofficially called “Introduction into citizens’ life.” I read the article at least 10 times and I determined that it was propaganda against Czechoslovakia, and that the press exaggerated everything. Deep inside, I doubted, that it could be true.
At the beginning of May, I asked Vaclav if he could buy us tickets to Czech. He was very unhappy, but he knew that he couldn’t keep me any longer in Texas. Although Vaclav refused to return with us, he bought the tickets – with a heavy heart. My desire to return back home was stronger than my love for him. I also firmly believed that he wouldn’t stay by himself in the U.S.A. and that he would return to us.
The scene from the Prague Airport repeated itself at the airport in Dallas; tears, wailing, remorse; I questioned why I had to go through all this again, why couldn’t we return from Sudan home to Czech. This tearful farewell spoiled the joy of my homecoming, and had yet to find out what was in store for me. Finally, after three years, I was leaving Texas, that I never liked.
Copyright (c) 2019. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
NANOWRIMO DAY 12
For NaNo Day 11 go to post “In observance of Veterans Day, NaNo Day 11. https://emmapalova.com/2019/11/11/in-observance-of-veterans-day-2019/
Greenwich Meridian: Where East meets West with excerpt
By Emma Palova
Lowell, MI – We’re moving into winter “blietzkrieg” style- hard and fast. We already have snow frozen to the ground in Michigan as we hit 17F this morning.
I approached this year’s NaNoWriMo 2019 50K word challenge in the same style- hard and fast. I researched the background for the Greenwich Meridian: Where East meets West memoir over the past few years, Moreover, I lived the historical events that shaped the story from Prague Spring in 1968 to Velvet Revolution in 1989 up to the present moment.
I logged into the NaNoWriMo dashboard a total of 27,403 words, averaging daily more than 2,000 words.
The previous years of research and writing have been like putting together the pieces of a puzzle with an unknown picture at the end.
Greenwich Meridian is an epic tale of our family immigration saga from Czechoslovakia to the U.S. spanning more than 50 years. It is also a love story between the main characters mom Ella & dad Vaclav. They celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on Aug. 8, 2019 at Naval’s Mediterranean Grille in Big Rapids, MI.
After hitting a dead end around chapter 12, I took a break from the memoir and worked on the Shifting Sands Short Stories anthologies that resulted in book 1 “Shifting Sands: Short Stories” and book 2 “Shifting Sands: Secrets.”
I completed “Shifting Sands: Secrets” in the summer of 2018. So, I returned to the Greenwich Meridian memoir starting fresh with its second half that includes memories penned by my parents in chapters “In her own words” by mom Ella and dad wrote “How math professor escaped Czechoslovakia.”
Here is an excerpt: How math professor escaped Czechoslovakia
By Vaclav Konecny
I suffered through all the injustices of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia. I did not want to live there anymore. I applied for emigration visa for the entire family to get out of the country; all in vain. At the beginning of 1976, two officers from the Department of Interior visited me only to announce that I would never get the visa, even though I wasn’t working.
Nothing helped my case; neither letters written to president Gustav Husak, who was proclaiming at the time, that people like me could pack their suitcases and leave the country, nor the Helsinki Accords of 1975. In vain, I wrote letters to different institutions, but I always got the same answer: “It isn’t in the best interest of the republic.” However, the only interest of the republic, was for the communists to fill their own pockets. I haven’t met a lot of honest communists there.
The Helsinki Accords of 1975 signed by 35 countries including the U.S. and all the European countries attempted to improve the relations between the communists and the West. However, the Helsinski Accords were not binding as they did not have a treaty status.
The communists abided only by those paragraphs and laws that they wanted to. I was a factory worker operating NC machines at the Precision Engineering Plants in Malenovice. That was the result of an intensive job search and after the recommendation from President Husak. This shows that the officials had no idea about my profession. They were probably judging by their own experience of gaining titles in exchange for lies and deceiving their own bosses. I didn’t complain; I worked honestly at the factory and I carefully probed all illegal avenues of leaving Czechoslovakia. However, I realized that it would be too risky to leave with the entire family. So, I decided that I would leave the country illegally by myself and get the family out of there later.
Different options of escape seemed risky, because the borders were guarded against the people of the country, so they wouldn’t escape, not some outside enemy. Soldiers and their dogs were dangerous; the life of a Czech or Slovak person meant less than the life of a rabbit. I assumed that the border patrol in other countries would be less dangerous.
Stop by for an authographed book from the “Shifting Sands Short Stories” anthologies during Emma’s book signing at the Lowell Area Historical Museum on Nov. 15, 16 & 17.
2019-11-15T09:00:00
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Emma’s book signing at Lowell Museum
Copyright (c) 2019. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
“Secrets” book signing @LowellArts
I am looking forward to my hometown book signing of “Secrets” from the Shifting Sands Short Stories series at the LowellArts gallery on Aug. 10 from 2pm to 4pm during the Livin’ is Easy exhibit.
Stop by for an autograph and for publishing insights. Also check out the story ” Taking the book on the road to connect with readers” about my tour in the Aug. 4 Buyer’s Guide.
The new book is a collection of 15 short stories with the main historical fiction story “Silk Nora” set in Belding, Michigan on the backdrop of the turn-of-the century era of inventions.
Other stories are based on Palova’s years of journalistic experience.
Together with other Michigan authors, Palova stands on the busy streets of hometowns manning her booth or tent, in the malls, at fairs or at art centers.
Locally, the book is available at the Springrove Variety in Lowell. It is on Amazon in both formats: paperback and kindle. It will be at the libraries of KDL, Schuler’s Books, Michigan News Agency and more. It is also at Horizon Books in Traverse City.
Follow Emma’s publishing journey also on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/author/emmapalova
