Exciting News

On a one-time trial basis, F+W Media (a buyers catalog) is providing website space to showcase a catalog of Abbott Press titles. Abbott Press has chosen Saint Sullivan's Daughter along with only 33 other titles from it's corral of hundreds of books. There are ways my readers can widen this opportunity.

I'm sending them information for the F-W Media catalog which, among other things, includes links to this blog, the book's facebook page, etc.  Books that have social media interest are books that catch the attention of buyers.

Something exciting could be happening for Saint Sullivan's Daughter, thanks to Abbott Press believing it is quality. Will you join in the fun? Please, invite more followers for the blog (I promise I'll post more if I get more followers). Share this blog with your friends, and recommend Saint Sullivan's Daughter's page on Facebook. Also, it would be great, if you're on facebook to friend my personal page there.

Thank you so much, friends!

Claire Germain Nail

Read Across America Day!

Saint David (Dewi Sant) is the Patron Saint of Wales. March first begins a celebration that lasts through the weekend in that misty, musical land. On Saint David's Day, Welsh people will don traditional costumes, carry bouquets of leeks and daffodils, and congregate for celebrations of poetry and song called eisteddfodau. The Welsh everywhere will honor Dewi Sant with poetry and song, even in Los Angeles, California, near the barrio where Saint  Sullivan's Daughter takes place. If you see anyone wearing a daffodil or leek on their lapel today, chances are they're Welsh, no matter where in the world they're wandering.

We proudly call our American culture a melting pot. One theme of Saint Sullivan's Daughter is how this cultural melange is a positive and negative aspect of growing up in a melting pot. Positive, because we have so much to celebrate -- and negative because we come to mistrust our own cultures of origin while trying to assimilate. A mixed-ethnic American can feel rootless. We are wise to create new, common American traditions, like Read Across America Day, which is today, March first, this year!

I began celebrating Read Across America Day this week by reading to a group at Springwater Presbyterian Church way out in Estacada, Oregon.  Women had gathered to knit together, and greeted me enthusiatically, showing me their lovely projects. I read passages from Saint Sullivan's Daughter and even sold a book to lovely Wilma. I hadn't planned it as a selling day, so that was a perk. Celebrate Read Across America with me by buying a book at an independent bookstore, rather than a big corporate bookseller, and read it to yourself or a child. You might even give a friend a book today.

A personal holiday I'll be celebrating is our thirty-eighth anniversary. James Nail and I were married, in America, on March first, nineteen hundred and seventy-five. A very good reason to wear a daffodil, but not a leek. I prefer leeks in soup. 

Happy Advent Season. To celebrate here is an excerpt for you from Part One. The passage is referring to Angel's Gate lighthouse in San Pedro, California.

Mama shrugged away, "You love the clarinet more than me."

Daddy didn't speak. Ceci wanted him to tell Mama that it wasn't true, that he loved them both more than the clarinet. Holding her breath, she peered up through the oval rear window: black clouds blowing in like ghosts from the sea. The lighthouse circled its green lights and sounded its horn.

The lighthouse, like an angel guardian, wings of white cloud, had held up her green lantern over the harbor for as long as Ceci could remember.  She had learned to count by it.  The rhythm, one to thirty, and then the warning horn. One to thirty again, and the sad horn once more.  The foghorn drummed the heartbeat of this sailor town--the music under everything.

"Saint Sullivan's Daughter," my new novel

Welcome to Saint Sullivan's Daughter's brand new blog.  I am the author and blogger, Claire Germain Nail. This is my first novel.  Before writing this book, I have concentrated on poetry and essay writing. This novel is straight from my heart, but it's also a culmination of years of research and learning.  To write it, I ended up studying alongside a Mexican-American curandero, as well as retracing some of my childhood excursions throughout Southern California, and reenvisioning my own childhood during the 1960's.

A self-published novel through a small press, Saint Sullivan's Daughter is available autographed by the author if you live in the Portland, Oregon metro area or nearby. Just contact me at claire.nail@gmail.com. 
Out of my local area, it can be purchased from Abbott Press Bookstore, in paperback, hardbound or as an ebook. This small press is preferable to the larger online vendors, which also carry the book and are well-known to most everyone.

Here is a brief synopsis of the story. In the weeks to come I will be sharing excerpts from the story as well as some stories regarding my journey to self-publishing. 

Barry “Saint” Sullivan is a talented jazz musician, yet something of his soul is disappearing, he knows he drinks far too much, and his career is going nowhere.  If he doesn’t get a paying gig soon, his beautiful but tempestuous wife threatens to leave for Mexico. He's just quit his job as a band music salesman.

Ceci Sullivan is their lonely six-year-old daughter, who dreams in Technicolor, converses with long-dead ancestors, and has plaster saints for playmates.  Her parents' problems taking center stage, she watches from the shadows, until a tragic accident threatens her body and soul.

A traditional Mexican healer, a curandera, knows how to help Ceci, but will her father accept the healer’s unconventional methods? The curandera asks a sacrifice that few men of this era were prepared to make.

Set primarily in Los Angeles in the summer of 1960, Saint Sullivan’s Daughter is story of the Irish-Mexican family’s journey from the rusty harbor of San Pedro, to the colorful streets, and dangerous alleys of the Latino Barrio.  There, St. Sullivan will face dangers that could end his dreams forever.