The Lodestarre gets a YouTube page!

Hey -- Look at me -- I'm on YouTube!!!

Or, more accurately, "Finding Emmaus" is.

Ladies and gentlemen, Pamela Glasner has entered th 21st century, albeit kicking and screaming :-)

I'd love it if you'd check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCOKQe1pF7o

"Finding Emmaus" new book trailer

This video is a gift from a good friend of mine, Natalie Walker, from Lincolnshire, UK. Hope you enjoy it.

Moravian Book Shop in Historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Presents "Finding Emmaus"

Author PAMELA GLASNER invites you to join her at Moravian Book Shop, the oldest bookstore in America, as she discusses how she created the story and its characters, her unlikely sources of inspiration, and how she intertwined Puritanism, the birth and growth of new nation, the myths and misconceptions of mental illness, true historical figures and aspects of the daily lives from the early 1600’s so that the lives and loves and experiences of her characters actually come to life.

“Finding Emmaus by Pamela S. K. Glasner is one of the most fascinating novels I have read this year. Honestly, this book had me from the opening paragraph and didn’t let go even after the book ended.”
~~Five-Star Review by April M. Hanson, San Jose, CA; ReviewTheBook.com~~

Books will be available for purchase, and Ms. Glasner will be available for signing them after the presentation.

Location: Moravian Book Shop — Historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
428 Main Street, Bethlehem, PA, 18018

Date: Saturday, August 21st, 2010
Time: Beginning @ 1:00PM, New York City time

You aren't required to make reservations, but if you'd like to let them know you're coming or if you have any questions, call Christine Hower at 610-866-5481

Finding Emmaus’ Great Success!

“It was an honor and a pleasure,” said author Pamela Glasner, when she spoke of her remarkable opportunity to present her new novel, Finding Emmaus, at the prestigious Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center in New York City.

“The year is 2008. I am, as I have been for the past two hundred and fifty-one years, ninety-eight years old.”

Those are the opening lines of Finding Emmaus, book one of The Lodestarre Series, and that, in part, is what Ms. Glasner shared with her audience on Monday evening, April 26th 2010, in their beautiful Event Room on the third floor.

Despite the day’s persistent downpours, the event was well-attended and both Ms. Glasner and her book were well-received. After a fifteen-minute presentation, which included the reading of two short excerpts, the floor was opened to the audience to ask questions if they wished. And ask questions they did … for 20 minutes.

“I've so much to be grateful for, so much to look forward to, and wonderful people in my life to depend on and celebrate with. And all I can say is Thank God.

“There’s no reason for any of this to have happened,” says Glasner of her new career. “Outside of my degree, which says I’m an English teacher, I've no formal training to be a writer. I had no résumé with which to wow a potential agent or publisher, nor did I have an office wall-papered with rejection slips or a bookshelf full of unwanted manuscripts.

“All I did was spend three days in a monastery at a silent retreat and, in the absence of external noise, I dug deep down inside myself and found the voice that’s apparently been clamoring for my attention for fifty-something years.”

Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved

Review of 'FINDING EMMAUS' by filmmaker and author Peter Thomas Senese

A Timeless Masterpiece of Writing

Pamela Glasner’s ‘Finding Emmaus’ is an extraordinarily thoughtful, provocative, and brilliantly written futuristic novel built on deep historical information and insight that readers will unquestionably delight in both the story’s depths and spires. As an author and avid reader, I have become particularly discriminating when reviewing other writer’s written works and have purposefully not publicly written a review in two years. However, I thought that Pamela Glasner’s masterfully written story was worth breaking my current trend since I was so enraptured with the subject matter and Ms. Glasner’s writing style, and I think many will benefit from reading this story the way I have.

‘Finding Emmaus’ is in fact one of the most enjoyable and fascinating novels I have EVER read, and I simply cannot recommend or endorse enough Pamela Glasner’s delightfully marvelously written story of the human spirit, the pharmaceutical industry, and what appears to be dead-on accuracy about how we, as a society, have chosen not to celebrate our differences, but have tried to classify individualism as peculiar traits that must be brought into line.

In ‘Finding Emmaus’, which I want to point out is a clever title because biblically, ‘Emmaus’ is an alleged ‘home’ town of a biblical figure during the time of Christ, yet there is no historical data that demonstrates the town ‘Emmaus’ ever existed. However, Pamela Glasner’s metaphor of ‘Finding Emmaus’ or “Finding Home” is one I think mankind continues to search for. Regardless of one’s religious or philosophical beliefs, attaining an enlightened state is what we all seek, isn’t it? But what is ‘home’? Could it possibly be a peaceful celebration of our unique honesties and perspectives? Brilliant!

The story’s two main characters are Empaths possessing what society considers to be abnormal personality traits. Francis Nettleton and Katherine Spencer live three hundred years apart, yet their stories intertwine in this groundbreaking novel as they uncover a multibillion dollar conspiracy in which millions of Americans are being misdiagnosed and drugged so that the capitalistic engines greased by greed and narcissism that is the pharmaceutical industry will continue to earn fortunes.

Finding Emmaus, book one of The Lodestarre series, is writing at its best, and I believe we have amongst us in Pamela Glasner a rare author possessing dynamic insight into society’s complex social complacency matched by this literary maestro’s ability to weave a complex and complicated story built on brilliant character development and impeccable research. ‘Finding Emmaus’ is a story that needs to be heard as it is a call-to-arms against mankind’s tendency for complacency and desire for uniformity as much as it is a soaring endorsement of the celebrations found in the individualism of the human spirit.

After reading ‘Finding Emmaus’, for several days I sat and thought about the messages and storyline in Pamela Glasner’s sharply written story. At times I found myself thinking about ‘The Jungle’, about ‘The Brave New World’, and even some films that address the issue of conformity. In Pamela Glasner’s ‘Finding Emmaus’, readers everywhere have been given a rarity: a wonderful, can’t-put-down story so light and so heavy, so joyful yet so sad, so celebratory yet so frustrating, so current yet a call of what may be. Pamela Glasner’s ‘Finding Emmaus’ is a very special book that readers everywhere will delight in. I cannot endorse ‘Finding Emmaus’ enough, and I look forward to reading the next book in The Lodestarre series. This is writing at its best!

And, of course, please don’t forget to visit my website to read the previews of ‘Finding Emmaus’, book one of The Lodestarre Series.

Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved

Manure, Money and Mental Health - The Essentials of Life

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

All are invited to an exhilarating afternoon of humor and seriousness as three dynamic women speak about three completely different yet surprisingly interrelated — and vitally important — aspects of life.

The event will take place at the Acton Library on Saturday, February 20th, at 2:00PM (That's New York City time)

The library is located at 60 Old Boston Post Road, Old Saybrook, Connecticut (USA). Please call 860-395-3184 for additional information.

Manure:
Maureen Haseley-Jones, aka The English Lady, is a much sought-after and highly respected lecturer, writer and radio gardening expert. In her talk entitled “Garden Earth”, she will speak to us about creating a beautiful organic garden without using the harmful chemicals that pollute the air, water, plants and indeed, our lives. Healing our planet, one garden at a time.

Money:
Diana Melville, CLU, ChFC, veteran financial planner and investment advisor with the Barnum Financial Group, lectures on a regular basis throughout the state of Connecticut. She sits on several boards and is currently president of the Old Saybrook Chamber of Commerce. Ms. Melville will speak on "The 10 Most Common Money Mistakes." This is must-hear information due to the very serious financial environment we are in today.

Mental Health:
Author and social advocate, Pamela S. K. Glasner will discuss her newly-published dark historical 350-year fictional yet factually-based journey through the history of treatment for the mentally ill and the intolerances of society for anything that is perceived as different, the disturbing contemporary trend of misdiagnosis and overmedication, spirituality and the ardent desire to lead a life that matters, and the indisputable human right of free will.

Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved

"...written with an assurance and style that seem like the product of years of published writing experience"

“I find it hard to believe that this is Glasner’s first novel; it’s written with an assurance and style that seem like the product of years of published writing experience–far removed from so many first novels.”

~~A Review of Finding Emmaus by Hugh Ashton, December 5th, 2009~~

A book review that started through Twitter. A fellow-tweeter and author (who happens to live only two stations up the line from me here in Japan), Christopher Belton, wrote a review of a first novel by Pamela Glasner that piqued my curiosity and, thanks to his review, I ordered it from Amazon. He has since interviewed Glasner, who talks more about the book here.

Described as a “dark historic fantasy” on the book’s Web site, Finding Emmaus is far removed from the “sword and sorcery” type genre (Glasner complains that she is often asked if her books are “like Harry Potter”. They’re not.). It actually tells the stories of two lives, running in parallel, but separated by several hundred years. Francis (”Frank”) Nettleton, scion of a wealthy 17th-century Colonial family, discovers the truth about his fits of seeming depression (his “dark days”) which, as he finds out more, turns out also to be the truth about a surprising number of people, who go about their lives in a state of terror–the terror that comes from the results of being diagnosed as insane or possessed by the devil; torture or death at the hands of the self-appointed cleansers of society.

Katherine Spencer, a 21st-century property developer, finds herself troubled by the many of the same fears as Frank, and finds herself being drawn closer and closer to him as she flees from the 21st century’s equivalent of Bedlam–the psychotropic drugs overprescribed by doctors in an attempt to cure what is seen by the medical industry as mental illness.

As the story progresses, the results of Frank’s life work, his Lodestarre (guide) to aid those who are cursed or blessed with the special gift of Empathy, becomes a near-obsession with Katherine and those around her as she settles into the house where Frank lived and worked centuries before.

The plot twists and turns through the lives of Katherine and those around her, taking in the lives and passions of her friends, the bombshell she explodes under the US pharmaceutical industry, and the diagnosis and treatment of mental patients. Since Glasner has described Finding Emmaus as the first of a trilogy, I did discover that the end of the book leaves a number of loose ends untied (good – it makes me want to read the rest of the series) but rushes somewhat to tie up others, compared with the more leisurely pace of the rest of the book.

When I first started reading, I found the style a little difficult to get into – not that it’s self-consciously literary, but it’s very much more concerned with characters’ interior thoughts and feelings than my usual reading fare. On reading further, it’s obvious why this is so–the plot is so concerned with characters’ interior lives that the story had to be told from the inside.

Although I do understand why this has to be the case, I found Frank’s 17th-century persona to be too 21st-century, and his language to be too close to our own present-day dialect for my taste, at least. Although it’s hard to read, and harder to write, in a style similar to (say) Pepys or Defoe for extended periods, Frank’s language, as well as his 21st-century sensibilities and reactions, jarred at times with the little I know of that period of American history and society.

One writer’s works with which I might compare Finding Emmaus are those of Robertson Davies; in its historical sweep, involving a broad cast of characters spanning different periods, and with an emphasis on the spiritual, books such as Murther and Walking Spirits come to mind. I find it hard to believe that this is Glasner’s first novel; it’s written with an assurance and style that seem like the product of years of published writing experience–far removed from so many first novels.

The physical book itself caught my eye as an example of the bookmaker’s art. Glasner apparently chose many of the design features herself; for example, the chapter headings are backed by a faint underprinting of a 17th-century manuscript. The typeface is clear and adds a classic feeling without being self-consciously Olde Worlde (and the dreaded fake deckle edge has been avoided). Maybe book design doesn’t mean that much when ebooks seem poised to take over the world, but for those of us who grew up with sliced dead trees, this is a good example of what can and should be done to match the physical book with the contents.

So, my main question now is: when are the next two volumes coming out? I know that Glasner has another project bubbling away, but I hope that Katherine and Frank aren’t being pushed too far onto the back burner. I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next (and isn’t that the ultimate test of what makes a good book?).

~~Hugh Ashton, author of Beneath Gray Skies~~