Coming of Age With Room Service Please unknown. I won’t say that this motion is an easy one, but one iveting green eyes to behold for it happens to us stare back at the reader all. We go through this door from the cover of ushered in by only our absurd Alicia Cahalane Lewis’ sense of self, our darn attitude, newly published coming-of-age and our attempt at something novella, Room Service Please. reasonable, yet uncertain.” The startling eyes are those Lewis says she can relate to of the book’s heroine, Miss the character she created in Edie May, whose story traces Edie May and she intended to the momentous day of June 18, have her book serve as a voice 1922 in the life of a young girl for young women. The novella’s who became a “modern” woman heroine puts a contemporary during the Roaring ‘20s. voice to an age-old problem— Mistaken for a movie starlet young women struggling while attending a party at the with self worth and possibly Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New depression. Author Alicia Cahalane Lewis York, Edie May struggles with The book came to life fifteen what life has suddenly handed years ago. It started as a novel her. She uses her ingenuity and ability to cope with before eventually emerging as a 137-page novella, what comes her way to “keep dancing” and stay allowing Edie May to face her struggles over the course ahead of her past and present situation. of one day, thus releasing her character from a longer The heroine’s words speak to the reader from the tenure at the hotel that a novel would create. novella’s prologue: A prolific writer, Lewis holds an MFA in creative “Sometime in that moment when life takes your writing from Naropa University in Colorado, and her hand and ushers you through a door, the door revolves, talents include the publication of poetry and chapbooks, your hand gets pulled, and you step eagerly into an as well as other books. The Intrepid Meditator, which By Linda Roberts
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invites readers to tear up their own script and start anew much as she did, is the companion book to Room Service Please published last year. In it, Lewis shares her spiritual journey and heartfelt strategies on what it means to live in balance. “It was a happy accident that I couldn’t find an agent (for her first book),” said Lewis, who started her own publishing company, Tattered Script Publishing, as the result. With Tattered Script, she is building a platform to launch her own work and feels that she can also help others with their writing. “Writing to me is about vision—looking out and then bringing that awareness inside the self,” she said. A Frederick County resident and a ninthgeneration descendant of the Shenandoah Valley Quakers, Lewis grew up independent and devoted to reading and writing. She said she gained inner strength from her mother and grandmothers, all of whom tried their hand at acting. Her two daughters taught her to be true to herself. Room Service Please offers much insight into issues that challenge women to trust in themselves, while at the same time providing “a fun read.” Second Chapter Books in Middleburg and the Winchester Book Gallery carry copies of Room Service Please. Details tatteredscript.com and aliciaxahalanelewis.com.
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