Blog Tour: Pintsized Pioneers at Play

 

Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger written by Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis

Young Adult Nonfiction

Date Published: 11-04-2025

Publisher: Bariso Press

Pintsized Pioneers at Play: Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger explores the forgotten world of how kids lived, laughed—and sometimes limped—through their childhood years in the Old West.

While their parents settled the land, these pintsized pioneers explored it, creating their own adventures with homemade toys, daring games, wild animal encounters, and risky escapades. This engaging sequel to the award-winning Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time shines a spotlight on the joys and perils of play in a land still being tamed.

From exploring the prairie and wrangling critters to celebrating frontier holidays and watching traveling circuses, this book reveals how children carved out fun and entertainment in a rough-and-tumble world. Learn how railroads and mail-order catalogs brought new toys, how schools and churches doubled as social hubs, and how a simple game could end in laughter—or injury.

Written for young adults but fascinating for readers of all ages, Pintsized Pioneers at Play is packed with history, heart, and a hint of danger. Written at a tenth-grade reading level perfect for curious minds, Pintsized Pioneers at Play includes a glossary of related terms.

Perfect for fans of Western history, educators, homeschoolers, and lovers of untold American stories!

Excerpt

Not even Christmas Day could rouse John Taylor Waldorf from his bed at two o’clock in the morning, but the annual arrival of the circus train in Virginia City, Nevada, was a different matter altogether. Waldorf and his friends arose early and willingly on circus day when on any other morning it “would require at least three calls and the threat of a ‘dose of strap oil’ to make me crawl out from under the covers.”
And why not? The circus provided an entertaining escape from daily hardships, much like the frontier theater, but much more exciting, as it combined the elements of an art exhibit, a traveling zoo, a professional band, a parade, a sideshow with oddities, a gymnastic meet with acrobats and aerialists, an equestrian show, a fashion show with performers and animals in exotic costumes, an occasional history lesson, and a three-ring environment awhirl with amazing activities and prankish clowns.
“Several thousand people are in the city from neighboring towns and from the country,” proclaimed the Evening Kansan of Newton in May 1897. “Circus day is equal to any legal holiday of the year, and today might have been a legal holiday so far as appearances were concerned. Nothing is quite of so much interest to everybody as a circus.”
The spectacle offered children a brief glimpse of the world beyond the boundaries of their farms or small communities. A circus was a childhood delight, allowing frontier youngsters to see exotic animals like elephants, lions, tigers, camels, zebras, monkeys, and even an occasional rhinoceros, giraffe, or hippopotamus.

 

About the Author

 

 Preston Lewis is the award-winning author of more than sixty western, historical, juvenile, and nonfiction works. In 2021 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary achievements. The Will Rogers Medallion Awards named him the 2025 recipient of the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the literature of the American West.

Western Writers of America (WWA) has honored Lewis with three Spur Awards, one for best article, a second for best western novel and a third one for YA nonfiction in 2025. He has received eleven Will Rogers Medallion Awards (seven gold, two silver and two bronze) for written western humor, short stories, YA nonfiction, short nonfiction, and traditional Western novel.

Harriet Kocher Lewis is a retired physical therapist and PT educator. As an assistant clinical professor of physical therapy at Angelo State University, she taught documentation and scientific writing among other topics as the department’s coordinator of clinical education.

After retirement she became the publisher of Bariso Press and in that capacity an award-winning author and editor. Books she has edited have earned a Spur Award, Will Rogers Gold and Bronze Medallions for YA nonfiction and western humor, a Literary Global Book Award for cookbooks, and an Independent Author Award for western nonfiction. Other books she has edited have been finalists for Spur Awards in juvenile nonfiction and for Independent Author Awards for both memoirs and humor.

Kocher Lewis is co-author with her husband of the Spur Award-winning Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time and three books on artificial Intelligence, all published by Bariso Press. They live in San Angelo, Texas.

 

Contact Links

Website

Publisher

Facebook

Twitter: @prestonlewisaut

Goodreads

Instagram: @barisopress

Purchase Links

https://mybook.to/PinsizedPioneersatPlay

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Blog Tour: Alan Hovhaness

 

Unveiling One of the Great Composers of the 20th Century

Biography

Date Published: October 28, 2025           

Publisher: Peanut Butter Publishing

In the year 2000, after Alan’s death, Hinako Fujihara-Hovhaness started writing poems, which was the only way she could cope with her great loss. They were written with her limited English, yet they were spontaneous and poignant, straight from her heart. After she had written hundreds of poems, it was not enough. Hinako started writing stories from my memories about Alan, events she had experienced with him.

To Hinako, “Alan was a master of counterpoint and an intellectual, yet he had many different sides to his personality, from being a polite, distinguished gentleman to a wild savage, idealistic, and old-fashioned man to sexy womanizer. He understood human nature and emotion, and I think that is why his music touches people’s hearts and is loved by them, even though his music is built on an intellectual foundation”.

 

 

Excerpt

Foreword

In David Ewen’s seminal book from 1982 about American composers, he begins his entry 
about Alan Hovhaness:

“One of the most prolific composers of the 20th century, with some three hundred compositions 
in all media and most in large structures to his credit. Hovhaness has arrived at an 
individuality of style by synthesizing the music of the Western world with that of the East.”

In reading Hanako Hovhaness’s wonderful book about her husband and their life together, 
I am reminded of Hovhaness the man, husband, and philosophical thinker. Each of those personas 
were reflected in his music. He was always true to his art and created a very large body 
of work that, no matter how they are influenced from Japan to India and Armenia, has a clear 
and poetic compositional voice.

He started writing music in the 1930s but was more broadly noticed as a student at Tanglewood 
in 1942. From all reports, it was not a good time for Hovhaness, but he established 
himself as an independently thinking composer even then. He certainly embraced particularly 
trendy forms such as aleatory, but as he wrote: “To me, atonality is against nature. There 
is a center to everything that exists. The planets have a sun, the moon the earth. The reason I 
like oriental music is that everything has a firm center. All music with a center is tonal. Music, 
without a center is fine for a minute or two, but it soon sounds all the same. Things which 
are very complicated tend to disappear and get lost. Simplicity is difficult, not easy. Beauty is 
simple. All unnecessary elements are remover-only essence remains.”

I first played Hovhaness’s music as a high school trumpet student performing his Prayer of 
St. Gregory. I was struck by playing a living composer who wrote music that was very beautiful 
and yet playable by students of every level. Interestingly, even today his music is better 
known by younger students than professionals.

In my article for Gramophone magazine in 2019 about important, lesser-known American 
composers, I wrote this about Hovhaness:

“I met Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000) when I was 16, recording his work for trumpet and 
band, Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places. His music is played often, but usually by student 
groups. It is very melodic, usually not too difficult to perform, and each piece selectively is 
evocative of the music of Armenia, India, Hawaii, Japan, Korea or America. Alan was always 
a very spiritual person, drawing on nature for inspiration. He also prided himself on his use 
of counterpoint and was disappointed his works were not studied in counterpoint classes.”

He was highly prolific, having written approximately seventy symphonies. Like Haydn, the ones with titles are the ones most often programmed. His second symphony, Mysterious 
Mountain, is an evocative work, combining traditional white note (on the piano) melodies 
and harmonies with an underlying accompaniment often sounding not only harmonically unrelated 
but gesturing apart from the main material. The work has numerous solos for woodwinds 
and brass. It also contains an extraordinary double fugue in the second movement, 
and it ends with an exquisite full-bodied chorale for the entire orchestra. It was premiered by 
Stokowski during his opening concert as music director of the Houston Symphony in 1955. 
Reiner recorded it with Chicago in 1958, which helped make Hovhaness’s reputation. In the 
last fifteen years, while it has had many performances, I could only find a handful by professional 
orchestras, other than my own. In fact, when I recorded it for PBS television with the 
All-Star Orchestra in 2016, many members of the orchestra, loving the work, asked why they 
had never heard the piece before. These were players from America’s most important orchestras. 
Most composers of his time did not accept Hovhaness into their circle because of his 
simpler style. There were exceptions such as Howard Hanson and Lou Harrison. I remember 
David Diamond always speaking highly of him, especially during our time together in Seattle.

There have been several important conductors who have supported Hovhaness, including 
Stokowski, Kostelanetz, and Reiner. Both Dennis Russel Davies and I have continued to perform 
his works, and others such as Ozawa, Ehrling, and Rostropovich have performed his music.

On the 23rd of April 2001, a Hovhaness memorial concert was held in Seattle’s Benaroya 
Hall and subsequently repeated in New York. For the first time the concert hall waived its 
rental fee. I read out a letter from composer Lou Harrison that declared Hovhaness “one of 
the great melodists of the 20th century” and “a master to us all.” I paid the following tribute 
when speaking to the Seattle Times: “He was trying to add beauty and sensitivity to the world. 
He cared deeply about goodness and about nature, and he has had a tremendous impact. I’ve 
known Alan since 1963, throughout it all, even in the times when his music wasn’t so fashionable, 
he stuck to his thinking and to his distinctive style, which had a passion and a great 
reserve. He stood out. Alan was amazing, he was one of the great composers of our time.”

In 2011, I lead a weeklong celebration of the 100th anniversary of Alan’s birth with the 
Seattle Symphony. I’ve recorded eight CDs of his music and continue to preform works each 
season and with great public success. His music has lived on and will continue to because of 
its beauty and passion.

– Gerard Schwarz, Music Director: All-Star Orchestra; Frost  
Symphony Orchestra; Palm Beach Symphony; Eastern Music 
Festival; Conductor Laureate: Seattle Symphony; Conductor 
Emeritus: Mostly Mozart Festival Distinguished Professor of 
Conducting at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami

Author Contact Link

Website

                                                                                                                  

Purchase Links

Amazon: Standard Edition

Amazon: Special Edition

Shopify

Blog Tour: The Pink Dress

 

Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen

Memoir

Date Published: September 30, 2025

Publisher: She Writes Press/Tantor

Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon

Run Time: 8 hours and 4 minutes

For fans of Little Miss Sunshine and Secrets of Miss America, this memoir from a national award-winning author reveals the reality of being the first Guyrex Girl in the 1970s. Beauty pageant stories have never been this raw, this real.

Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn't have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso's Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the "Kings of Beauty"—just as the 1970's counterculture movement began to take off.

A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane's time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author's failed relationship with her mother, and her parents' failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.

The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era's conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get "MRS" degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest "If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!" at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women's traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.

 

 

Cami Hensley · The Pink Dress

About the Author

A NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, JANE...

melds personal narratives of American families often with compelling stories of western women. Jane is a late bloomer as an author. After teaching for thirty years, she was honored by the Texas State Legislature by formal resolution for her work with local history and education in 2008. She edited and directed publishing fifteen volumes of Texas local history with her former students before she decided to write on her own. Jane's first book propelled her membership on the Western Writers of America board and later as its vice president. Jane continues to judge entries for the WWA's prestigious Spur Award; reviews new book releases; authors articles for various magazines; and speaks to groups in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.

JANE'S FIRST TWO WORKS HAVE WON NUMEROUS AWARDS IN HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY AND WOMEN'S STUDIES...

including two Spur Awards, two Caroline Bancroft History Prizes, the Texas Book Award, and the Barbara Sudler Award for the best book written on the West by a woman. Jane was also a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, High Plains Book Award, two Women Writing the West’s Willa Literary Awards, Independent Book Award, Foreword Indies Book Awards, and Sarton Book Award.

Released in fall 2024, Jane’s third book—what she calls her Covid book—is The Pink Dress, A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen, a Foreword Indies Book Award winner in pop culture and Women Writing the West's Willa Literary Award finalist in creative nonfiction. The narrative brings far West Texas to life during the 1970s’ American Counterculture era.

Jane's newest book, The Breath of a Buffalo, A Biography of Mary Ann Goodnight, will be released from the University of Oklahoma Press tentatively in fall 2026.

Today Jane blissfully escapes into her literary world in the remote White Mountain Wilderness near Nogal, New Mexico, when she is not speaking at various events or preparing for her next nonfiction book.

Contact Links

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Blog

Goodreads

Instagram

Purchase Link

Amazon

PROMO: Pintsized Pioneers at Play

 

Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger written by Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis

Young Adult Nonfiction

Date Published: 11-04-2025

Publisher: Bariso Press

Pintsized Pioneers at Play: Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger explores the forgotten world of how kids lived, laughed—and sometimes limped—through their childhood years in the Old West.

While their parents settled the land, these pintsized pioneers explored it, creating their own adventures with homemade toys, daring games, wild animal encounters, and risky escapades. This engaging sequel to the award-winning Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time shines a spotlight on the joys and perils of play in a land still being tamed.

From exploring the prairie and wrangling critters to celebrating frontier holidays and watching traveling circuses, this book reveals how children carved out fun and entertainment in a rough-and-tumble world. Learn how railroads and mail-order catalogs brought new toys, how schools and churches doubled as social hubs, and how a simple game could end in laughter—or injury.

Written for young adults but fascinating for readers of all ages, Pintsized Pioneers at Play is packed with history, heart, and a hint of danger. Written at a tenth-grade reading level perfect for curious minds, Pintsized Pioneers at Play includes a glossary of related terms.

Perfect for fans of Western history, educators, homeschoolers, and lovers of untold American stories!

 

About the Author

 

 Preston Lewis is the award-winning author of more than sixty western, historical, juvenile, and nonfiction works. In 2021 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary achievements. The Will Rogers Medallion Awards named him the 2025 recipient of the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the literature of the American West.

Western Writers of America (WWA) has honored Lewis with three Spur Awards, one for best article, a second for best western novel and a third one for YA nonfiction in 2025. He has received eleven Will Rogers Medallion Awards (seven gold, two silver and two bronze) for written western humor, short stories, YA nonfiction, short nonfiction, and traditional Western novel.

Harriet Kocher Lewis is a retired physical therapist and PT educator. As an assistant clinical professor of physical therapy at Angelo State University, she taught documentation and scientific writing among other topics as the department’s coordinator of clinical education.

After retirement she became the publisher of Bariso Press and in that capacity an award-winning author and editor. Books she has edited have earned a Spur Award, Will Rogers Gold and Bronze Medallions for YA nonfiction and western humor, a Literary Global Book Award for cookbooks, and an Independent Author Award for western nonfiction. Other books she has edited have been finalists for Spur Awards in juvenile nonfiction and for Independent Author Awards for both memoirs and humor.

Kocher Lewis is co-author with her husband of the Spur Award-winning Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time and three books on artificial Intelligence, all published by Bariso Press. They live in San Angelo, Texas.

 

Contact Links

Website

Publisher

Facebook

Twitter: @prestonlewisaut

Goodreads

Instagram: @barisopress

Purchase Links

https://mybook.to/PinsizedPioneersatPlay

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

PROMO: Rattler

 

(Riptide MC)

 

Motorcycle Club Romance, Age Gap, Suspense

Date Published: November 7, 2025

 

Lily ran from a nightmare straight to Rattler's arms. He’s all leather, muscle and lethal promise. Dare she hope for an HEA?

 

Lily -- Abusing me was bad enough, but when my a**hole of a boyfriend threatened to shoot a tiny kitten, I brained him with a pot of spaghetti sauce and ran -- straight into the arms of the tattooed VP of the Riptide MC. He’s everything my ex isn’t, and that gives me hope. He promises to keep Scrapper and I safe, but my ex isn’t the forgiving kind. He said he would kill me if I left him and I know he’s going to come looking for revenge.

Rattler -- She might be younger than me in years, but there’s a world of experience looking out of those gorgeous eyes, and it isn’t the good kind. When she pulled a gun on me, I knew she was my kind of woman. She’s on the run from an a**hole who used her as a punching bag. He might have the local law enforcement in his pocket, but me and my brothers in Riptide have military experience, and sometimes vigilante justice is necessary.

 

Trigger Warning: This is an MC action thriller romance. It contains violence, abuse, coarse language, vigilante justice, and adult situations. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after. Enjoy!

EXCERPT

 

Rattler

Thor and Janet were actually going to tie the fucking knot! I suppose I should have seen it coming, but they’d been playing friends-with-benefits for so long I guess I thought that’s all they’d ever be. And now here I was -- sitting in a bakery waiting for a box of frilly wedding-type cupcakes to take back to the clubhouse for the old ladies to sample. Not sure how I got conned into playing fetch. I was happy for them and all, but you’d think they could have sent a prospect, not the fucking VP.

The bell on the door tinkled, and I looked up as a woman came in. She looked rough. More than rough. One eye was black, and through the open collar of her coat I could see a circle of greenish yellow bruises on her neck. Her clothes looked like she’d slept in them, and she had a bulging backpack slung across one shoulder. She looked young, too young to be stuck in the kind of relationship those bruises indicated.

She glanced in my direction and quickly looked away. Yeah, she was scared of something. Or more likely, someone. She walked up to the counter, and I noticed a slight limp. Probably from the same incident that gave her that black eye.

Maybe I was wrong. Ace always chided me for jumping to conclusions. She could have been in a car accident or tripped and fallen down a flight of stairs. The problem was, in my experience, that only happened once in a very long while. I’d bet my bottom dollar there were more bruises hidden under her clothes, in varying shades of blue, yellow, and purple. Evidence of an ongoing series of attacks.

Impotent assholes who beat up on their women were one of my triggers, and I looked outside to see if maybe this was my lucky day. Maybe the asshole was here with her.

She asked the woman behind the counter for a coffee, and when the lady turned to get it, she grabbed a muffin and stuffed it in her pocket. The attendant turned back and sat the cup of steaming coffee on the counter and rang in the purchase. Pulling a few bills out of her bra, the newcomer paid the bill and hurried back outside, gulping the coffee down as she went. I watched as she turned the corner and headed down the alley beside the bakery.

Standing, I strode over to the counter. Tossing a couple of bills on the counter, I smiled. “For my coffee, and the muffin you forgot to charge my friend for.”

“Your friend?” Her brows raised in disbelief.

“That’s right. She must not have seen me waiting for her. I’ll be back in a few minutes for those cupcakes.” I pivoted and strode out the door before she could ask exactly how anyone could miss seeing someone as big as me.

I turned the corner and saw the woman crouched down at the far end of the alley, petting a kitten that had its head poked out of her backpack. She gave me the side-eye as I sauntered toward her, trying to look as unthreatening as possible.

I obviously didn’t do a very good job. She waited until I was about ten feet from her, far enough away not to touch her but close enough to block the view of anyone who happened to walk past the mouth of the alley. Then she straightened up and pulled the gun out from under her shirt. She made damn sure I saw her flick the safety off.

“Don’t come near me.” She pulled the backpack a little closer as if to protect the tiny scrap of a kitten in it.

Did I seriously look like the kind of guy who’d hurt a kitten?

Apparently, she thought so. I held my hands up. “I just wanted to talk. I’m not going to harm you.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Tim send you?”

I frowned, taking in her battered appearance. “Tim the guy that did that to you?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, and the gun didn’t waver. “Fuck off.”

I had to work at not smiling. The swear words sounded cute coming out of such a tiny thing. “No, I have no fucking idea who Tim is. I just saw you come in and nick that muffin and wondered if maybe you needed a hand. I paid for the muffin, by the way, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

She snorted. “Not high on my list of worries right now.”

“Fair enough.” I gestured at the ground. “Doesn’t look all that comfortable down there. Care to come back into the bakery and we can talk?”

“Why would I want to talk to you?”

I shrugged. “I’m a nice guy. No offense, but it’s pretty obvious you’re running from someone. Maybe I can help. Do you have somewhere to go? I can offer you and your little companion there a ride.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I could see her calculate the odds of me being a serial killer. “I’m looking for the Riptide MC. Do you know where to find them?”

 

About the Author

Anne Kane lives in the beautiful Okanagan Valley with a bouncy little rescue dog whose breed defies description, a cantankerous Himalayan cat, and too many fish to count. She spent many years trying to fit in and act normal, but finally gave up the effort. She started writing romance in 2008, and her fate was sealed when she won a publishing contract with Red Sage Publishing and just a month later Changeling Press accepted her first submission. Since then she has published more than thirty stories in a variety of sub-genres, all with a happily ever after.

She has two handsome sons and six adorable grandchildren and enjoys spending time with them whenever she can. Her hobbies, when she’s not playing with the characters in her head, include kayaking, hiking, swimming, playing guitar, singing and of course, reading.

 

Author Links

Website

Facebook

Twitter (X)

Goodreads

 

Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress

Save 15% off any order at ChangelingPress.com with code RABT15

Pre-Order Today

Blog Tour: Corporate Almighty - 2098

 

 

Political Satire/Fiction

Date Published: October 28th, 2025

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

At the turn of the next century, a corporate oligarchy rules America with an iron fist. Commercial jingles have replaced the Top Forty, babies come from factories, and the race captivating the nation isn’t between political candidates. It’s the cutthroat competition to find the formula for No-Sog Stay-Crisp Cornflakes.

The battle pits cereal titan Todd Swindell, head of Flakes Alive Incorporated, against Chad Scandalman of the Great American Flake Company. When Scandalman hires a diminutive assassin named Twinkle to bump off his rival’s top chemist, it sparks a war of the flakes that makes the bloody feud of York and Lancaster look tame by comparison.

But not everyone in the Cornflake capital of Domino, Indiana, is happy with the status quo. Ziggie Wexler, an unemployed pipefitter and all-around average Joe, knows that something is deeply wrong with his country.

All history prior to 2040 has been banned, but old-timers whisper about the days when people still voted for their leaders. After Ziggie posts fiery polemics against the state to the Clandestine Journal, he becomes a marked man. But in a world built on lies, there’s one truth he’s sure of. Somebody needs to fight back.

 

Excerpt

Zigmund Wexler, a German-American pipefitter, fidgeted with his right ear, where the intelli-phone implant rested inside. He wondered whether medical professionals had ever performed an intelli-phone unplant. Sure, the device was hands-free, but Ziggie struggled through a constant ringing in his left ear, which he blamed on the device in his right ear. And he just could not get used to the gadget weighing down the right side of his brain.

Other people had no problem with the electronic organ. But most people were phone people, that is to say, they loved to blab over the phone all day while their country went to hell and were not bothered by the inconvenience of metal machinery parked in their ear canal forever. However, Ziggie was no phone person; he did not talk much over the phone. He hoped that one day he could find an underground doctor who would remove it.

And the commercials! One had to tolerate a minimum of two hours and twenty minutes worth of commercials every day. That was the rule. For the unworldly, this was acceptable. But for Ziggie, a veteran intellectual, these blasted verbal ads proved insufferable. Little twenty- to thirty-second plugs for this product or that. Inane and dainty laugh-alongs, nerve-grating jingles, and tireless ditties that featured the most stupid humans and animals doing the most stupid things.

One commercial from a major butchery featured a manmade piggie called Porkenflesh who absorbed a bolt of lightning that inspired him to arise from a state of nonexistence and hand out free packages of sausages to the neighbors. That ad was so successful that a follow-up called Brood of Porkenflesh featured piglet children. The piglets left a pork roast on everyone’s doorstep. Then, as is the case with all free-market packs of fools, they milked the thing as far as they could, and came out with a commercial for Pork ‘n’ Poop, a pink litter box for pet pigs, which had become the rage in the 2090s.

Phone implants became available in 2046 but mandatory in 2073, and since then, the gadgets had been embedded in the ears of children as soon as they reached the age of five. As for the implantee, he or she had the option of turning the phone off by verbal command (as long as they had listened to the required two hours and twenty minutes of commercials): recite the phone serial number and the words “phone off.”

So, during face-to-face conversations with others, one could disable the phone, though, unfortunately, with that being a hassle, it led people to limit face-to-face communication with other people, a bad thing for a society that already lacked in human relations. One had to leave the phone on at least eight hours a day. Ziggie deplored the entire process of carrying a phone in his head and would pay a sizable sum to have it removed.

 

About the Author

Retired IT professional, James Owens is a trained computer engineer and technical documentation specialist who earned an A.A.S. in computer programming and a B.A. in English from Purdue University.

Immensely curious about human behavior, James spent the 1970s hanging out on the streets to observe people, many of whom became inspirations for his fictional characters. Later, he worked in cube farms at conservative insurance companies, where the idiosyncrasies of corporate personalities sparked his imagination.

James has spent the last decade reading and writing offbeat fiction about bizarre protagonists. Corporate Almighty: 2098, a dystopian tale about the rise of the corporation and the fall of democracy, follows his first two novels, Animal Candy and Pods of Bubbledumb: A Study in Mass Depravity.

Born and raised in an industrial suburb on the south edge of Chicago, James lives with his wife Sue and four cats in Evansville, Indiana.

Contact Links

Website

Facebook: Jimmy Owens

Purchase Links

Amazon

B&N

Apple Books

Kobo

PROMO: Mama Sheep and the Mysterious Cup

 

 

Children's Picture Book

Date Published: March 1, 2025

 

 

 Mama Sheep and the Mysterious Cup is a heartwarming children’s picture book that combines gentle humor, colorful illustrations, and an engaging mystery perfect for toddlers and early readers. Mama Sheep loves to keep her home tidy, but one morning she discovers a mysterious cup of water on her bathroom counter. Determined to solve the puzzle, she asks her little lambs, Daddy Sheep, and even the neighbors if they know where it came from.

This playful story invites children to laugh, guess, and join in on the mystery, while also teaching them about curiosity, problem-solving, and family togetherness. With its cozy farm setting and lovable characters, Mama Sheep and the Mysterious Cup makes for the perfect read-aloud for families, classrooms, and storytime at libraries.

 

 

About the Author

 

 I’m Carlie Guerrier, a children’s book author who writes meaningful and imaginative stories for ages 3–10. My books explore themes like courage, purpose, friendship, and believing in yourself, all while making kids smile and laugh along the way. Inspired by my own children, especially my oldest daughter’s creative spark that brought Mama Sheep to life, I create stories that families can enjoy together.

When I’m not writing, I love cooking for my family, teaching Sunday School at church, and watching Sci-Fi and superhero movies with my kids. I also enjoy sharing my stories through school visits, storytime events, and online read-alouds. Along with my books, I offer signed copies and fun activity pages so children can keep the adventure going at home.

 

Contact Links

Website

Instagram

Facebook

BookBuzz

Purchase Links

Amazon

B&N

Target