14 Oct Welcome to Day 5 of #RRBC’s October #SpotlightAuthor #PatGarcia @pat_garcia! @RRBC_Org @RRBC_RWISA @Tweets4RWISA #RRBCSA

RRBC SPOTLIGHT AUTHOR: PAT GARCIA

It is my pleasure to host Day 5 of the Rave Reviews Book Club (RRBC) spotlight author, Pat Garcia, for the month of October. She is a dedicated member of RRBC/RWISA and serves on the Editorial Staff of The Pipeline Magazine as Chief Staff Writer. Pat is also an active member of the Tweet Support Team. She currently lives outside of the United States as an Ex-Patriate and enjoys living on the European Continent. 

Below is a guest post by Pat Garcia, her author bio, and highlights from her book,

DAY 5 READING AND ITS IMPORTANCE TO ME

Even though I had a strong desire to write, I didn’t have the discipline to stick with it. Not having any writers in my family and coming from a family where I was the first to receive a high school diploma, it was hard for them to accept that writing and music were decent professions that you could make a living from in the Deep South. So, they gave me very little encouragement.

At that time, being the chief dishwasher in a restaurant was considered a high achievement. With the schools integrating in my hometown, I began to dream that maybe I could escape the status quo. My English teacher, Carol Shepard, made a difference in my life. She gave me my first book and opened my heart to Camus, Wordsworth, the Bronte sisters, Victoria Holt, Agatha Christie, Samuel L. Clemens, Faulkner, John Gardner, and many others. I was like a sponge. I soaked in every book that I got my hands on, and at a certain point, I began to write again.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know about Frank Yerby, the first African American novelist born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, until I came to Germany. The Europeans are familiar with Yerby, and still today, many of them are reading his books.

However, I was knocked down again when I listened to another teacher who taught writing. After reading one of my stories, she said it was useless for me to take her class and recommended I move to the Home Economics class, where I could learn something that would be helpful for me to get a job. I was so discouraged that I stopped writing again, but I kept on reading. No matter what it was, fiction or non-fiction, if I got it into my hands, I read it.  During this time, I also began journaling.

These days, I take the time to study book award winners and all the nominees. I invest my time examining style and sentence structure, tone, and how they build up the drama, the tension that keeps a person reading. This has helped me to find my voice in the murky waters of writing.

I smile when I read my first published book, Turn The Light On, because I can see my main character, Della, standing at the window, angry. Her stubbornness comes out because she’s fighting her own feelings of relief that Alessio is alive and the realization that she loves him. It’s that southern flavor of the strong-black-woman-syndrome that so many African American women in the Deep South suffer under.

The snippet below from the book, can probably give you a better picture of what I am referring to:

At the entrance, Della stopped. A familiar, dry lemon-lime scent surprised her, and the hair on her arms rose. She shivered and took a deep breath. That smell – she’d savored it every time he was near. ‘It’s him,’ she thought. ‘He’s here.’ Infuriated that he would have the gall to break into her apartment, Della’s fighting spirit reared its stubborn head. She refused to acknowledge him. Despite her fury, tears of relief streamed down her face. Steeling the excitement inside of her, she strolled over to the huge glass window, and looked out toward the empty penthouse in the building across from hers.

Della confessed to herself that her involvement with the man sitting somewhere in her living room, was more profound than she had been willing to admit, even to herself. Having given him her heart, she hoped that he was her anonymous donor.

AUTHOR BIO: PAT GARCIA

Pat Garcia can’t remember a day when she didn’t desire to write. At the age of three, Pat wrote her first story. No one could understand it because she hadn’t learned to write. So, she read the scribble on her paper to whoever would listen. Born in Blythe, Georgia, (USA), she is also a musician, singer, and songwriter and has released five CDs.

Social Links:

Author Website 

Facebook FanPage

Twitter

HIGHLIGHTS: TURN THE LIGHT ON

Turn the Light On

by Pat Garcia

Would you ever accept a dinner invitation to meet a stranger who never spoke one word to you during your time together? Would you accept that you could not even sit at the same table with them? How about, you don’t even know their name and you continue this “game” for months?

Meet Della Cartwright. A superstar at what she does professionally, but when the tall, mysterious, Italian stranger, Alessio Terracina, enters her world, she begins to question her judgment and everything about her.

In this short story which takes place over the course of one day, this otherwise savvy businesswoman is led into making decisions that could jeopardize her professional life and maybe even cost her her freedom. But the greatest danger…just might be to her fragile heart.

Buy Links:

Available on KindleUnlimited.

Amazon US  ♥  Amazon UK  ♥  Amazon AU  ♥  Amazon CA  ♥  Amazon DE

BOOK TRAILER: TURN THE LIGHT ON

Thanks for supporting the RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB’S October Spotlight Author! To learn more about this author and all the wonderful perks she is receiving under this spotlight, please visit the RRBC SPOTLIGHT AUTHOR forum.