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Volume 7 Issue 2
JANUARY 5, 2017
Hispanic Household Radio Tune in
WHIW 101.3 FM
Harvard Community Radio
Starts January 12th, 6pm-7pm Every 2nd & 4th Thursday of each month, 6pm Carlos Chacon of Marengo is a Hispanic American Community Volunteer, International Conference Speaker, Itinerant Baptist Minister, Family and Youth Counselor, Bilingual Spanish Interpreter. Tune in and hear about social and cultural issues within the Hispanic Population. Everything from topics such as parenting, troubled teens, identity, culture, values, work ethic, jobs, the American dream, the whole enchilada! For more information call (815) 394-9096 268721
Author signing at Read Between the Lynes By Anne Eickstadt CORRESPONDENT
On Wednesday, December 28, Susan Mullen, co-author of “We Are Still Tornadoes,” visited Between the Lynes independent bookstore in Woodstock for a book signing. Arlene Lynes went to school with Mullen’s co-author Michael Kun. Kun is an attorney and published author of several novels. He could not be at the signing due to his legal responsibilities in California. “Michael and I met in our first year of law school. He was outside class one day, looking dejected. I stopped to ask him why. He told me about a friend who had lost a loved one. ‘I’m a writer,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be good with words and I failed. I didn’t know what to say.’ That incident helped solidify our friendship.” “I haven’t always wanted to write. Michael thought it would be a stronger story if a female wrote the girl’s letters. We are both attorneys. We are both married. I live in Virginia and Michael lives in California. We sent the manuscript back and forth. The book took three years to write.” “If I received an email, even at work, I would open it. I would print out the last eight or nine letters to refresh my memory of their current events. At lunch, I would read them over to see if I needed to ask about friends and other people. I would try to figure out how to progress the story forward in a believable way in writing the reply.” “We scripted a couple of plot points but the story just came along. It ended in a different way than we expected it to. The editor felt very strongly about a crisp, clear ending. We had left it fairly open-ended.” “It’s a unique experience and I am enjoying it for what it is. People ask me how to get a first novel published. I tell them, ‘write it with a published author.’ I have a few ideas about writing my own novel but it would be a far greater endeavor.” “The book is placed in the school year of 1982-83. Cath goes off to college. Scott stays home and works in his father’s clothing store while trying to get his band off the ground. The 1980s was one of the last time periods when people actually wrote letters. Texting and emailing just doesn’t have the same feeling.” “Kirkus Reviews has listed the book as a historical novel. We did reference actual events and researched what the weather was on any particular day.” “The music in the story was very natural to us. We grew up with it. There were some songs I really wanted to use in the book. I would be heartbroken to find out that they were not written until after the end of the story so I had to find other songs instead.” “My daughter and her boyfriend have read the book and it has inspired them to pledge to write letters at least once a week. In the future they will have a record of their relationship.” Read Between the Lynes bookstore holds children’s storytimes on Tuesdays and Saturdays at 10:30 am. They also have three book clubs which meet regularly. To find out more about their upcoming events, visit them online at www.readbetweenthelynes.com or visit them on Facebook
PHOTO BY ANNE EICKSTADT McHenry County News
Susan Mullen co-author of ‘We Are Still Tornadoes’ visits Read Between the Lynes independent bookstore for a book signing.