The Chocolate Shop

Posted on November 30, 2019November 30, 2019 by michaelcsahd

The Chocolate shop by J.J. Spring
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The rocky relationship between an overbearing mother and her prodigal daughter becomes even more tumultuous when the mother, distraught over witnessing her husband’s long, painful death, decides to satisfy her terminally ill aunt’s last wish.

I really misjudged this novel when I started reading it. “This sounds rather bland,” I thought. Well, I started getting into it pretty quickly, despite the slow start. Not that I thought the start was bad; it just didn’t seem congruent with the genre I like to read.

By the time I got halfway through the book, I told myself, “This is actually pretty good, I’m going to give it a 4 star.” As I neared the end, I figured the book could end in one of two different ways. One way, I decided that I would give Spring a 3.5 star. The other way I would go 5 stars all the way.

Looking at my rating, you can plainly see that J. J. Spring did not disappoint me. A perfect ending for a beautiful story wrought with difficult decisions. The challenges Laura Beckman faces are ones I hope I never have to face with my own children.

The story starts with Laura Beckman agonizing over the suffering of her dying husband in a hospital room. He lies there, unable to speak, and when he does communicate with her, it’s to beg her to allow him to die, to stop the suffering. Needless to say, she stays with him as he slowly declines, kept alive by the doctors as long as possible.

Shortly after his death, her aunt Nora makes them promise to not let her suffer like that. So between herself and her aunt Gracie, they come up with a method for humanely allowing her aunt to commit suicide, but not before granting her one last adventure.

Laura and Gracie soon become the saviors to several terminally ill patients, starting a group they coin the chocolate shop.

I won a signed copy of this book, and I would recommend it to anyone really. Unless you’re an ostrich. Don’t read this book if you’re an ostrich.

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Storm Cloud Haze

Posted on November 20, 2019November 20, 2019 by michaelcsahd

Storm Cloud Haze: A memoir in poetry, prose and polaroids by Alessandra Wike
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow! How do you rate this? How do you rate someone’s life, their pain, their suffering, their fear? I didn’t really want to, but I know how important it is for an author.

If this were a work of fiction, my rating would be so different, or if I were to rate it on the writing alone. I disliked the poetry. Even the prose was written poetically, and I care little for that style of writing. However, I’m going to ignore that part of my brain for this review. It’s trivial to the story being told in Storm Cloud Haze.

Storm Cloud Haze is a story of pain. It’s a story of trauma. It’s a story of acceptance. It’s Alessandra’s story. To say I found the story frightening is an understatement.

When I took Kenpo Noh Shin Do, it was to learn to defend ourselves, to end a fight quickly, and by whatever means necessary. But how? How do you win a fight when your opponent is your own body? The concept is terrifying, and Alessandra’s experiences are chilling.

I can only commend Alessandra for her bravery, for seeking hope in a situation that seemed devoid of it.

I won this book in a contest. I could tell right off that it’s not my typical read, but as a literature student, I learned not to turn down a book just because it’s not in the genre that resonates with me.

This book contains a beautiful, haunting story of survival. I highly recommend it to anyone really. It’s short and gives you something to think about.

Because of what this book is, because of what this book stands for, I can only leave it five stars. But again, how do you rate this?

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Making Of A Cover, Part Three

Posted on June 28, 2019June 28, 2019 by michaelcsahd

The Day Of The Photo Shoot

This was your classic busy day, during which you scramble to get everything done in the short amount of time you have allocated. We had to meet our photographer at “solar noon.” Why? Simply because we were using a green screen, poor-man style.

Basically, I had bought some green fabric, which we needed to hang from a tall fence, and the sun had to be directly above us so that it would not cast a shadow.

So we had a timeframe to get ready in. One of the largest issues with using my daughter as the model for Samara was her hair color. Samara has dark black hair, and my daughter has dirty blond locks. Otherwise, she fit perfectly.

So her cousin, who used to work in beauty departments, suggested that we use spray-in hair coloring, because we did not want to use a permanent dye.

We had gone to Sally’s Beauty Supply the day before to buy one of these sprays, and that morning, we took my daughter over to her cousin’s house to get it colored and to apply makeup.

If you are unfamiliar with beauty supply products, then you are blessed. That stuff stinks. I can hardly understand why anyone would sit in a nail bar (parlor, I’m not sure what they’re called), and suffer that scent. I get sick walking by them at a mall.

Anyway, her cousin started spraying her hair with this stuff, and it was working wonderfully. Her hair was turning black before our eyes, and it was drying quickly. She was a third of the way through when the can started sputtering.

Now we were in trouble, sort of. I jumped in the car and raced down to Sally’s.

You know that feeling you get when it seems like you’re rowing up a current, trying to fight against the rapids? Well, that’s how I felt when I pulled into Sally’s and found it closed. Of course it was closed on a Sunday.

However, my quick thinking had me ramming the car in reverse and skipping over to Walgreens. They have beauty supplies, right? Damn straight.

I found L’Oreal Paris Magic Root Cover Up, as per her cousin’s recommendation, and raced back to her house.

She finished spraying my daughter’s hair, and it looked black! Except (and here I’m rowing up that river again), the new stuff bled . . . badly. Her face and makeup would get a black streak in it any time the wind blew a strand into her face.

We decided that it was fine. It would make her look dirty, and Samara was dirty a good portion of the book, so good.

We went to pick up her costume, then drove over to meet our photographer, just in time.

The first round of pictures were taken against the green screen so that we could get the solar-noon lighting.

This is the one I used for the cover

Pay close attention to her hair. It is black in the front and not so much in the back. This was due to the Sally spray lasting and the Walgreen spray not. Anyway, these were a lot of fun, and we took oh so many more, but these were my keepers.

We were not done yet, however. We headed over to a local park next, which had a nice nature trail and a river next to it, to take some more natural pictures.

We took this awesome set and thought we were done after that, but then my daughter noticed a neat-looking tree in the distance and wanted to climb it and get some pictures in that.

They came out nicely too. You may recognize the middle one from my Twitter or Facebook banner.

Next week, I’ll go into what it took to make the actual cover.

That’s all for now.

~Michael C. Sahd