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And Suddenly Life Will Never Be the Same: Almost Like Praying a Contemporary Family Drama

And Suddenly Life Will Never Be the Same: Almost Like Praying a Contemporary Family Drama

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

What would happen if a suburban woman with a hard-as-nails façade and a detailed life plan was suddenly saddled with caring for a 6-year-old girl from the Bronx?

Such is the dilemma facing Dolores Farrell in Almost Like Praying, the intriguing new novel from author Joel Samberg. But the 6-year-old girl is just the tip of Dolores’ family-centered iceberg. When readers first meet her, she is a woman with a future all planned out: She’ll marry an attorney, have sons who will become attorneys, daughters who will become patrons of the arts, and live in the shadow of Harvard University, thereby continuing her privileged, purebred Irish-Catholic legacy.

Instead, Dolores must watch as each of her children adopts a lifestyle quite different from what she had envisioned. One daughter becomes a waitress, another a shock jock. One son becomes a cop (a troubled one at that), another a cartoonist. Much to his mother’s dismay, the cartoonist is also missing a leg due to a terrible childhood accident. That, of course, had not been part of Dolores’ original plan.

Almost Like Praying, which fictionalizes some real thoughts and memories, is told through a trilogy of stories reconstructed by a curious journalist who, as a boy, lived across the street from the family at the heart of the book. One day from his old bedroom window, the journalist sees Dolores on her front step hugging a dark-skinned little girl named Maria, and smiling—something he feels the grim-faced Dolores would never do. That’s what prompts him to research and write the stories.

“The novel sprung from my own roots,” Samberg said. “Growing up on Long Island, one of my best friends had a mother who to me seemed humorless and severe. I had always wondered about her. She became Dolores. Also, whenever my family drove through the Bronx, I’d look at the ramshackle apartment buildings and wonder how the kids who lived there would fare in my own middle-class neighborhood. One of them became Maria.”

Featuring flawed, relatable characters, Almost Like Praying offers a compelling message that likely will resonate with readers everywhere.

Author Joel Samberg decided to become a writer as a boy. He wrote a screenplay when he was 12 and sent it to MGM, and although the studio turned it down, an executive’s encouraging note suggested that he never give up on his dream to be a writer. Two years later, his English teacher sent a nasty note home to his parents falsely accusing him of plagiarizing a book report because she said it was too well-written for an eighth-grader. That settled it: from that point on, he has never given up.

Samberg has written for dozens of magazines and has published seven fiction and nonfiction books, including Some Kind of Lonely Clown: The Music, Memory, and Melancholy Lives of Karen Carpenter.

For more information, please visit https://almost-like-praying-new-novel.blogspot.com/, and follow the author on Twitter at @JoelSamberg.

Almost Like Praying
Publisher: Black Rose Writing (http://blackrosewriting.com)
Release Date: April 28, 2022
ISBN-10: ‎ 1685130097
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1685130091
Available from Amazon.com, Black Rose Writing and other online booksellers.

Trish Stevens
Parker Wilson
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone

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Theology and Politics Collide in Reality-Inspired Cold War Thriller

Theology and Politics Collide in Reality-Inspired Cold War Thriller

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

When Pope John Paul I died of an apparent heart attack in September 1978—just 33 days after his election—the United States and the Soviet Union went on high alert.

The United States could loosen communism’s stranglehold on Eastern Europe if a non-Italian successor is chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Conversely, the Soviets are determined to keep an Italian in the papacy. A dangerous competition ensues as the two countries aim to further their own interests while limiting those of the other party. CIA and KGB agents infiltrate the Vatican as Cold War tensions mount amid the backdrop of a hastily arranged conclave to elect a successor.

Meanwhile, back in the states, army officer Carter Caldwell is sent to persuade American cardinals to wield their influence in the conclave. He meets beautiful CIA analyst Katherine O’Connor. Carter can’t get her out of his mind, although plenty of problems demand his attention.

Before the conclave is over, the Sistine Chapel will be bugged, a spy in the Vatican’s kitchen will be murdered, and CIA and KGB operatives will exchange gunfire. As the most important figure in the Catholic world is finally chosen, one question remains: Will he survive long enough to become pope?

Conclave from Tom Davis weaves an in-depth thriller where Catholic theology and Cold War politics collide. The result is a gripping, fictionalized retelling of what might have happened as these real-world events unfolded.

Was the election of non-Italian Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in October 1978 somehow orchestrated through the US’s covert influence on the papal conclave? Today, his election is viewed as a turning point in the Cold War—just 13 years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Warsaw Pact disintegrated.

Author Tom Davis is a retired army officer and corporate executive. After graduating from West Point, he had numerous assignments and experiences in the army, including commanding an artillery battalion in Operation Desert Storm, being a key advisor to a Secretary of the Army and several Army Chiefs of Staff, and serving as an Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at West Point, where he taught International Relations, Political Science, Economics and Middle Eastern Affairs. He served a brief tour in the Department of State as part of the Palestinian Autonomy negotiating team, where he heard a story that inspired Conclave.

After retiring from the army, Davis had a successful career with General Dynamics Corpora-tion. He has written numerous articles and editorials for major newspapers on a wide range of topics, and has published major studies on federal budgeting and the management of the nation’s national security programs. His previous book, 40 Kilometers Into Lebanon, analyzes the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He holds degrees from the US Military Academy at West Point and Harvard University. He retired from General Dynamics in 2013, and is currently the Forrestal-Richardson Industry Chair at Defense Acquisition University and an adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School.

Conclave has captured the attention of an independent film company based in Germany and has been converted into a screenplay for future development into a six-episode mini-series.

For more information, please visit www.tomdavisauthor.com.

Conclave
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 1534706615
ISBN-13: 978-1534706613
Available from Amazon.com and www.tomdavisauthor.com

Trish Stevens
Anna Jones
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone
800.854.2207 Fax

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