Friday, March 30, 2007

my first review for my first novel

Peter Swanson's Hollywood Sinners is a loopy "Wizard of Oz" where assorted down-at-heel characters, all of them of questionable virtue, cross paths in 1930's Hollywood -- specifically and tellingly, in 1939 when "The Wizard of Oz" was filmed. Farm girl Karin Panotchitch is journeying to Oz -- or rather, Hollywood -- to become a big star, but instead of munchkins to lead her down the yellow brick road, she meets sinners with delusions of grandeur who make up Hollywood's underbelly. Swanson's writing is off-the-wall and irreverent, speckled with period slang, and characters with names like "Mama Gravy," reminiscent of Ronald Firbank ("The Flower Beneath the Foot") whose work, although dubbed a "specialized taste" (and often published at his own expense), has gained recognition and its own cult following. The first in a Tinseltown trilogy, Hollywood Sinners shows a deranged sense of humor and love of Old Hollywood, portraying a city with more sinners than saints, by far. But the "angels" are there, too, in the form of nuns who are shaping eyebrows as much as saving souls. - d. nowak

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Hollywood Sinners



my new book blurb written by Tracy Hamby:

Karin Panotchitch, raised on a sheep farm and then married off to a drunken loser, finds her way to 1939 Hollywood at the tender age of sixteen, determined to be a star. Along the way, she meets up with Ramon Classic, who with his many brothers is ready for a hostile takeover of MGM, Mama Gravy, the colorful and opinionated proprietor of the run-down Gold Rush brothel, and Sister Agatha, the mysterious nun who seems to turn up every time Karin (now Carol Pan) rides the trolley. Hollywood history, flying bullets, and big dreams make for a lively story about what happens when a sheep farmer's daughter tries to make her dream come true. First in Swanson's Tinseltown Trilogy.

check it out at:

http://stonegarden.net/



see below for book cover!