Midwest Book Review – Cheechako!

Cheechako
Jonathan Thomas Stratman
CreateSpace/Amazon Digital Services, Kindle edition
9781470185909 $5.99 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006R2NJ12

Cheechako is a young adult novel that opens with a bang: "Will nearly made it to safety before they spotted him. "Get him!" someone shouted."

With such a vivid opening a young adult reader can't help but continue to absorb the story of greenhorn Will Rollins (cheechako, in Native language), who has a hard time fitting in to his new Alaskan home. His rescue of a stranded dog earns him a sled dog and a new friendship, and Elias teaches him about outdoors survival in Alaska.

Chapters weave an inviting portrait of not just a growing friendship between two very different boys, but a series of lessons in outdoors survival that come in unexpectedly handy when disaster strikes.

There are many other outdoors adventures for young adults on the market, but CHEECHAKO holds more specific survivalist detail than most, backed by strong protagonists and dialogue.

From a wolf's threat and a near-death encounter with snow and cold to a storm that strands Will's family and leaves him their only hope for survival, this pairs vivid and fast-paced adventure with a strong story line that will keep young adults interested in the ultimate outcome.

Cheechako holds many insights and not a few twists and turns, and shows how a loner ultimately makes a name for himself in a challenging social and wilderness environment.

It's a saga young adults - particularly those who like wilderness survival stories - will relish.

"I was...held hostage to the very last page."

Here's a fresh review of Indecent Exposure from Melanie, a reader in Eastern Washington. Thanks Melanie!

"From the first paragraph, I was totally captivated by this book and held hostage to the very last page.

We find widower Father Hardy, an Episcopal Priest, living and doing God's work with the Athabascan people in the small town of Chandelar, Alaska.  This fast-paced novel opens with Father Hardy being taken into the freezing wilderness by two men from town to collect the frozen body of dead man Frankie Slick, a small time hoodlum from Chandelar.  As Father Hardy tries to figure out who killed Frankie Slick, he finds plenty of evidence that connects Frankie and his shady business dealings with many of the people in town as well as other more ominous characters all of whom have a reason to kill Frankie.  And, to my surprise, Father Hardy is not only a priest, ministering to the townspeople, but also a well-rounded man who can handle himself in a fist fight and knows how to shoot a gun.

Mr. Stratman has written a story that has mystery and international intrigue with characters who are not really what they seem to be.

With descriptive phrasing such as ..."the insides of door hinges white with frost", and..."a million facets of icy diamonds set into the surface of the drifted snow", this reader was not only drawn into the icy cold of the Alaskan winter, but grateful not to be there.

The surprise ending will leave you with the feeling that everything really is as it should be.

This is a “must read” for those who enjoy adventure, intrigue, and mystery."

Check this link to sample nearly four chapters of Indecent Exposure: 

http://www.amazon.com/Indecent-Exposure-ebook/dp/B007D199YC/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_1

Here it Comes! Cheechako in Paperback.

It's been out and doing pretty well on Kindle, now get set for Cheechako, due to be available in paperback within the next week or so. Yes, I am excited. I'd be more excited if it weren't so darn much exacting work. 

The good news is, I live with a professional copy editor, Billie M. Judy. I didn't realize I was marrying a person who could turn out to spot such tiny details as an extra space on a page. As her book and copy clients know, she's really good.

The bad news is that I still have to do all of the technical formatting for publication on my own. Oh well. It's all coming together. 

About the cover photo ... After digging through a thousand images online, both free and for money, I came up this one of the boy and his husky on Flicker, by a Norwegian photographer, Leif Vidar Gullstad, who was kind enough to give me a very good deal on the use of his image. 

The paperback Cheechako will also initially be available on the Amazon site at $8.99, with a Nook version just around the corner. 

Thanks to all of you for your comments and kind words. Thanks particularly to those who have purchased early and posted written reviews. While the act of writing is very solitary, it appears the act of launching takes a village.

And now, in the words of the great Maurice Sendak, let the wild rumpus start.

E-Publishing, the 8th Deadly Sin, Now on NPR

Great New "Indecent Exposure" Review

Just wanted to share today's newest 5-star review with you!

Wow!, March 12, 2012

By

Loves to read - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Indecent Exposure (Kindle Edition)

From the initial death of the unlamented Frankie Slick, this plot grows and twists enough to have kept me up past my bed-time! The complex character of Father Hardy, Episcopal (yes, they can get married) priest, brings an interesting moral prespective to the needs of his town as he discovers secrets and history during his investigation. Add some complex friendships, a welcome nocturnal visitor and a mysterous woman to make this mystery riveting. The setting in very rural Alaska after the end of WWII is real enough to feel the ice! This excellent blend of setting, characters and mystery left me hoping for more.

Announcing: Indecent Exposure, an Alaska Mystery Novel

The year is 1955. Eisenhower is President. Al Kaline and the Dodgers still own Brooklyn. And Elvis is driving a truck.

Up north in Alaska, the Cold War heats up fast when secrets are stolen from a Dew Line Radar Station. What the new priest, young Father Hardy, doesn’t know could kill him. A list that includes murderers, spies and survival at forty degrees below zero.

He’s an Episcopal priest, newly ordained and newly a widower. New to this remote Alaskan village, he’s helping the villagers and hiding a broken heart. But who helps him when a body is found and a young girl threatened–when he sees things he just can’t explain?

Can he trust his new friends? Andy–an Athabascan Indian–dead-eye sniper in World War II Italy. And Evie. Is Hardy falling for her? Is she the murderer?

In a land where any exposure is dangerous, indecent exposure kills.

Now available on-line at Amazon Kindle Books.

Writing What You Know

Like Will Rollins in Cheechako, I moved early to Nenana, Alaska from Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can find Nenana near Fairbanks on the map, near dead center in the state.

I was just seven when we moved, eight in the photo above. Yes, that's me, smiling, with our dog Chena, the one who managed to get himself stranded on the ice during breakup. No, I didn't actually go out there and get him. And I never forgot the drama of that moment, years later turning it into one of my first sales to Cricket Magazine and then into the first Cheechako chapter.

As a former Jr. High English teacher and sometimes writing coach, I have often advised writers to "write what you know." I remember an eighth grader wailing "but I don't know what I know."

Or as Yogi Berra might have said, "I didn't know all the things I knew."

And like Berra, we would be right.

I can't rattle off many facts about the interior of Alaska, but I know how snow crunches– how it sounds and feels underfoot when the temperature rises. I know the softness and surprise warmth on my face of the midwinter chinook wind that drives the temperature up maybe thirty degrees in an hour, and when it goes leaves me longing for spring.

I know the sounds of trees cracking in the bitter cold, the winter wolf howl that raises hairs on the back of my neck, and the first soft scent of cottonwood trees at just about breakup time.

And it's that knowing that lets us write authentically. The experiential knowing that informs and enriches our storyteller voice. That inspires us through to our successful conclusions.

Sometimes, unexpectedly, we sit down to discover we do know a whole bunch of the things we know. See ... right there on the page.