Local authors to hold event at Vita Sandusky

SANDUSKY – Five members of the Northern Ohio Writers Guild will be featured at Vita Sandusky on Saturday, May 27.

The event will open to the public and will be held from 2PM to 4PM.

Below are provided descriptions about the featured authors:

Jim Bollenbacher taught American government and American History for thirty-one years at Midview High School and Sandusky High School. For forty-one years he was also a school assistant and head football coach. He graduated from Hiram College in Ohio, majoring in political science with a minor in history. While at Hiram, he played two years of football and four of baseball. He is a member of the Hiram College Athletic Hall of Fame. Bollenbacher holds a master’s degree in education from Ashland University. He and his wife, Patty, live in Huron, on the shores of Lake Erie, and raised four adult children. When not writing historical fiction centering on the American Revolutionary period or attempting to work on his golf game, he and Patty like to play with their four grandchildren. The sequel “America at the Abyss” is going to be published soon and Bollenbacher is giving the last touches to “Liberty’s Cost: The Adventures of the Cushman Family.”

Emilia Rosa spent her childhood in Rio de Janeiro. She has always been fascinated with words and studied French, Spanish and Italian. Rosa worked in international trade shows in a multilingual capacity, and as a fashion model in Brazil, Italy, and the US. Before turning to fiction, she had poetry published, and won a library poetry contest. Her love of history and knowledge of Rio de Janeiro, decided the timeframe and setting of her first novel, which was taken to the sequel. She is doing research and starting the third sequel, which will now take readers to the south of Brazil. Her books are sold at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BAM, etc.

• Finding Cristina. In 1920s Rio de Janeiro young Cristina grapples with bills and an ailing mother after her father’s death. A mystery related to her past—of which she was unaware—will emerge. But before that, much will happen: jealousies, unrequited love, a singular duel, a riotous attempted kidnapping. And Cristina’s real story is only revealed at the very end of the novel.
• Finding Cristina: A New Life. Now married and living in the United States, Cristina travels to Rio de Janeiro with her husband and son. Since their arrival on the ship, her husband finds himself the victim of inexplicable accidents. In Rio, after a few days of blissful vacation, Cristina’s husband disappears without trace. In the quest to unveil the mystery of the disappearance the tension in the story is lightened up by a few comical incidents. Will Cristina and her husband be reunited?

Patrick Lawrence O’Keeffe spent his childhood on a rocky dairy farm near Ulster, Pennsylvania, one of nine children. For five years he studied for the priesthood at Notre Dame, followed by a forty-year stretch in Manufacturing. He resides in Port Clinton, Ohio, with his wife Karen. He is a published historian, novelist, and poet, activities he now labors at most of the time, unless he’s fixin’ things out back in the workshop.

Cold Air Return. It is the summer of 1960 in north central Pennsylvania and twelve-year-old Eugene and his friends are on the cusp of adolescence. Cigarettes are smoked. Innocence collides with responsibility. The bonds of boyhood are tested by the dimly understood forces of race and class and religion. The first twinges of love are shadowed by an adult world where evil is real. O’Keeffe builds his story deftly, each character drawn with knowledge and care. The climax is at once foreshadowed and unexpected, leaving our humanity exposed.

RJ Norgard has worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer, US Army Intelligence Officer, and private investigator. His twenty-one years in Alaska formed the basis for the characters and settings in his Sidney Reed novels and infuse them with an authenticity rarely seen in the genre novel. His hobbies are sailing, tennis, and participating in volunteer project in his hometown in northern Ohio. An avid amateur historian, he is the author of Lights at the Portage: A History of the Port Clinton Light Station, 1833-1952. He is also working on his nonfiction opus, HEART OF TEAK: The Life and Times of the Sailing Ship Success. He is currently working on WINTER KILL, the third novel in the Sidney Reed Trilogy.

Ron Rude and his wife Karen have lived in the Sandusky area for the past 35 years since he came to serve as the Executive Director of Firelands Chapter, American Red Cross. Since retiring Ron has spent his time gardening, volunteering and writing. “Daddy Good” is his first effort in publishing. You can buy it at Cold Creek Coffee House, in Castalia.

Daddy Good is a bit of a thriller as well as a study in facing fear, healing, conscientious objection, forgiveness and loving the unlovable. If you need encouragement you will find it in this book.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay

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