Donna LeClair for The PROPRIETOR of the THEATRE of LIFE
A MANUSCRIPT
This is no ordinary book and the word “extraordinary” can’t begin to do it justice. It’s a gift for anyone fortunate enough to read it and libraries around the globe should add it to their collections. It should be available to everyone. Emma is a highly sympathetic character, an everywoman, in need of answers. The reader learns as much as she does about individual and universal struggles on earth, the lessons to be gleaned from suffering, and the value of sharing our stories. ~ Carrie M., Chanticleer Editorial Team
The 2019 Somerset First in Category Winners are:
Carl RobertsforThe Trial of ConnorPadget
Judith Kirscht forEnd of the Race
Patrick Finegan forCooperative Lives
Santiago Xaman forAfter Olympus
Claire Fullerton forLittle Tea
Maggie St. Claire forMartha
Jamie Zerndt forJerkwater
R. Barber Anderson forThe Sunken Forest, Where the Forest Came out of the Earth
Here is a listing of the Somerset Book Awards Hall of Fame Grand Prize winners!
Stay at home mom turns entrepreneur, but without her husband’s support, and continunually needing to manage her three adult sons, Abbie Rose Stone’s dream of producing her own craft hard apple cider faces a world of adversity in Barbara A. Stark-Nemon’s Hard Cider.
Babylonian astrology and Jewish mysticism combine with Roman history to create a timeless story of passion and fate in Chuck Gould’s The Rabbi’s Gift. Babylonian astrology and Jewish mysticism combine with Roman history to create a timeless story of passion and fate in Chuck Gould’s The Rabbi’s Gift.
Words thrown as hard as boulders are easy to catch – if you’ve had practice. Just ask our hero, Muzhduk the Ugli the Fourth…In the great tradition of existentialism, Boldizar brings us a book that is hard to classify. It has aspects of the existential with a fair amount of satirical wordplay and a bit of theater of the absurd thrown in.
With a fast-paced storyline and a rich cast of characters, this award-winning winning novel offers a uniquely hilarious, but scary, perspective on the how the businesses of public relations and marketing can take technology to its precipice to take advantage of a media addicted public.
Individually Wrapped tells us the bizarre tale of Sam Gregory’s descent over the condensed course of a couple of days. Set in a 21st-century futuristic city, technology has permeated every aspect of the city dwellers’ lives… Self-delusion is an interesting state of mind because everyone can see it except yourself, as it propels you ever deeper into oblivion, where not even technology can save you.
We would be amiss by not featuring and recognizing Judith Kirscht, our very own Pacific Northwest Somerset inspired author. Judith specializes in family sagas and societal issues.
Judith Kirscht – Somerset Hall of Fame Author
Judith was born and educated in Chicago during the Great Depression and then WWII. She taught school during the upheavals of the Vietnam protests and the Civil Rights movement. Later in life, she found herself in California, divorced and with two daughters. Judith taught creative writing at universities of very different cultures: University of Michigan and U of California, Santa Monica. Her novels continuously are awarded CIBA First Place Category ribbons for the Somerset Book Awards for Literary and Contemporary Fiction.
In a world where too many rocks are thrown at those who represent anything other than the norm in middle-class white America, two friends decide to take matters into their own hands and stand up to the hatred with which they are targeted in order to save their home and ultimately their lives.
Hawkins Lane is excellent and, ultimately, a redemptive story about the heart-wrenching tragedies a family can survive, and about the healing powers of nature and friendship. The characters and the story will linger long after the last page is read and you will be captivated from the first page.
“The Inheritors” by Judith Kirscht is a novel of one woman grappling to find her cultural and personal identity. Tolerance of others and the need for communication is required from each of us is an overriding theme in this latest work of Kirscht that explores the complexities of human nature and family bonds.
“Home Fires” is an intelligently written, fast-paced family drama that unfolds into a suspenseful page-turner. Although this novel masterfully renders the emotional hardships and tragedies that are sometimes part of dysfunctional relationships, it is not a depressing read.
The last day to submit your work is November 30, 2020. We invite you to join us, to tell us your stories, and to find out who will take home the prize at CAC21 in April.
As our deadline draws near, don’t miss this opportunity to earn the distinction your literary novel deserves! Enter today!
The winners will be announced at the CIBA Awards Ceremony on April 19, 2021, that will take place during the 2021 Chanticleer Authors Conference. All Semi-Finalists and Finalists will be recognized. The first place winners will be recognized and receive their custom ribbon, and then we will see who among them will take home the Grand Prize. It’s an exciting evening of networking and celebration!
CIBA Ribbons!
First Place category winners and Grand Prize winners will each receive an awards package. Whose works will be chosen? The excitement builds for the 2020 SOMERSET Book Awards competitions and now for the Mark Twain Book Awards.
Our Chanticleer Review Writing Contests feature more than $30,000.00 worth of cash and prizes each year!
~$1000 Overall Grand Prize Winner ~$30,000views, prizes, and promotional opportunities awarded to Category Winners
In our last Somerset Hall of Fame, we discussed the origin of the contest’s name, and mentioned the success of William Somerset Maugham’s first book Liza of Lambeth, (published 1897) which propelled him to become one of the highest paid authors of his time, but not without first finding himself struggling with poverty after leaving the medical profession as a fully qualified doctor. Somerset wrote the story while working as a medical student and obstetric clerk in working class London.
W. Somerset Maugham (1897 – age 23 years)
In the publication of this book, Somerset joined an extensivebody of work in line with manyfin de siècle authors such as Wilkie Collins, Richard Marsh, Matthew “Monk” Lewis, Bram Stoker, and Charles Dickens.
In Somerset Maugham’s story, Liza, like many women in novels of this era, has her life dictated by the men who surround her, unable to break free of the desires and expectations that surround her, ultimately leading to her death. This examination of consent and the harmfulness of denying women agency can be seen reflected in the urgency of the suffrage movement, which passed its 100 year anniversary in August 18, 2020.
Women’s Suffragette Movement in the USA – more than 100 years in the making. The 19th Amendment was finally ratified on August 18, 1920 (at the end of WWI – 1914 – 1918)
It bears mentioning that women’s suffrage started out as only being accessible for white women, with Chinese-American women not being able to vote until 1943, native-American women until 1948, Japanese-American women until 1952, and African Americans until 1964—though the 19th Amendment wasn’t even ratified by all states until 1984! To this day, voting and voter suppression remains a contentious issue in the United States.Stories like Somerset’s showed the tension and the injustice taking place at the turn of the century in a way that made it real, accessible, and relevant to the literature published at the time and today.
Wells & Squire marching in 1913 For more information, please click here
Anyone who studies the right of women to vote and writing has to come across Virginia Woolf (born January 25, 1882, London England) with her book A Room of One’s Own. (Published September 1929) In this, she talks about where do we, as authors, have space to write. What do our room’s look like, and is there even a writing room in our house? I always think of Stephen King writing in his laundry room when I first think of trying to find a space to write. Naturally, like voting, this becomes more complicated when you overlay things like ender identity, race, and orientation, causing further variation in the kinds of rooms that are allowed to be called one’s own.
In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Woolf blamed women’s absence from history not on their lack of brains and talent but on their poverty. For her 1931 talk “Professions for Women,” Woolf studied the history of women’s education and employment and argued that unequal opportunities for women negatively affect all of society. Click here to read Britannica’s biography of this extraordinary author.
Virginia Woolf, photographed by Gisele Freund, 1933
In the building of literary fiction, we reflect the world as we see it. Woolf, in her book,follows the fictional Judith Shakespeare, sister of the famous William, and his equal in terms of writing and genius. Like Somerset’s Liza, Judith finds herself beset in a world where her agency is constantly overruled by the masculine presences in her life. In the end, Shakespeare’s sister dies by suicide. In both these narratives, the death of the women provides an implicit critique of the way society tries to control them.
Today, that critique and commentary still resonate. In the last ten years we have had the first Black president ever in the United States, and now we are set to inaugurate the first woman vice president who is also the first Black, south Asian, and Caribbean vice president. This doesn’t mean that discrimination and all the problems faced by Somerset’s Liza have vanished from the world, but it does run in cultural tandem with the mood of publishing seen at the end of the 19th century. It is a longstanding tradition that we continue culturally and politically in the stories we tell.
It is with great pride, in the tradition of uplifting and supporting women and the oppressed, that we award Donna LeClair’s manuscript,The Proprietor of the Theatre of Life, The Somerset Book Awards 2019 Grand Prize Award. LeClair is the first author in the Somerset Awards to have a manuscript win the Grand Prize in this highly competitive division. Huge congratulations!
Below is what our editor had to say about The Proprietor of the Theatre of Life by Donna LeClair (manuscript overview)
This is no ordinary book and the word “extraordinary” can’t begin to do it justice. It’s a gift for anyone fortunate enough to read it and libraries around the globe should add it to their collections. It should be available to everyone. Emma is a highly sympathetic character, an everywoman, in need of answers. The reader learns as much as she does about individual and universal struggles on earth, the lessons to be gleaned from suffering, and the value of sharing our stories.
Presenting these lessons in the format of a novel is ingenious; they’ll be accessible to readers who might not have had a clue how to compile, organize, and synthesize so much historical and spiritual scholarship. So many, too many, are suffering from grave, debilitating effects of PTSD; I wish this book could be gifted to them. It is literary balm. – Carrie M. Chanticleer Editorial Team
Journey as Emma does, through multiple eras, continents, and thresholds embracing the authenticity of diverse ethnicities, life conditions, and testimonies. Entrusted intuition guides storylines plaguing the world today. She encounters visionaries of faith who elevate sensibility while gifting their existence to the survival of this illusion that we call home.
Join her on an exploration of the wisdom bestowed by the existence of those who brought humankind closer to understanding one another and the sacredness of our broader story.
Donna LeClair, award-winning author, mother and grandmother, friend to the Dalai Lama, and amazing woman.
We look forward to joining LeClair on her on an exploration of the wisdom bestowed by the existence of those who brought humankind closer to understanding one another and the sacredness of our broader story. This phenomenal story is in the process of seeking representation.
Want more LeClair?
To discover more of Donna LeClair’s award-winning works, please click on the links below that will take you to our reviews:
Immunity,the latest offering by award-winning author Donna LeClair, recounts one woman’s struggles to maintain her sanity during a long nightmarish sojourn among the wealthy and powerful.
LeClair is a prodigious wordsmith who uses the writing craft to good effect. Whether it is a drug-induced temper flare-up, the destruction of a motel room, or a brief erotic interlude, the author weaves a rich tapestry. She has made fiction, it seems, of a painfully recalled set of reminiscences, changing the names to protect the innocent and avoid the wrath of the guilty. She examines the word “immunity” in its many guises: protection from penalty, entitlement of the very wealthy and well-connected, exemption from “an old love,” denial of responsibility, and “declaration protecting honorably truth.”
Very engrossing, well-written, engaging, suspenseful and honest. Waking Reality is recommended reading for anyone looking for an engrossing account of a woman’s courageous story growing up in the 1960s. You will want to see that she emerges through the dark tunnel of abuse.
Through engaging and well-written prose, LeClair relates the 1963 murder trial known as State of Ohio v. Bill Bush, a police sergeant who murdered three members of one family. Bush happened to be her uncle and the family he tore apart, hers. Due to the circumstances of the trial, LeClair and her sisters were in protective custody. Chanticleer Review
Three children, five lives, five stories, five human beings whose lives exploded with a pull of a trigger because of a little black book of secrets, lies, and destructions…
One thing I know for sure, for the safety of your own sanity, you must close the haunting of one chapter before you can open the infinite possibilities of another. –Donna LeClair
Want More Somerset Award Winning Novels?
Congratulations to all our 2019 first place category winners for Somerset. You can see some of the reviews for those books below.
…Rarely does a book about the law take you this close into the mindset of an attorney. Carney isn’t a criminal attorney but his ability to think “legal” demonstrates how a well-trained mind can work even in a foreign territory like criminal law. His familiarity becomes our familiarity. This is not a blockbuster case; no mob bosses will fall; no bombastic courtroom duels await. What is showcased here, however, is good lawyering, legal competence, and a writer’s commitment to sharing his love of the law with his readers. – Chanticleer Reviews
How well do people really know their neighbors? More importantly, or perhaps more sinisterly, how well do those neighbors know each other – and each other’s secrets?…this character-driven story is most definitely a work of exquisite literary fiction that uses the exploration of its characters to drive the narrative.
…Finegan does an excellent job of drawing us inside these seemingly tiny lives, and the deeper we go, the more significant these lives seem, and the greater the impact they have on each other as well as those who have been drawn into their well-written and extremely sticky web. – Chanticleer Reviews
Fantastic magic realism, uncaged and wild, and brilliant in every way! Highly recommended.
In this groundbreaking novel, what is real – and what isn’t – is always the heart of the matter. There are elements of reality in the fantastical, and there are elements of magic realism in the rather ordinary. After Olympus is a novel about characters who don’t just think outside the box; they are outside the box.
Intrigued? You should be. We don’t see novels like this every day, but this one will find its way into the hands of the most discerning readers. – Chanticleer Reviews
A captivating tale of Industrial Greed and Forest Conservation set against a thrilling backdrop of primeval forest, violence, and sex, international intrigue where one misstep may very well cost you your life.
With these award-winning titles, you will understand why the Somerset Book Awards is one of the most competitive divisions in the Chanticleer International Book Awards.
Look for the Chanticleer Reviews of these 2019 Somerset Book Awards Blue Ribbon Winners.
Judith Kirscht forEnd of the Race
Claire Fullerton forLittle Tea
Maggie St. Claire forMartha
Jamie Zerndt forJerkwater
But Wait! Where’s Satire?
Introducing the Mark Twain Book Awards for Satirical and Allegorical Fiction, a new (2020) fiction division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).
As a well-known humorist, Mark Twain employed satire to gently rib his audience and point out inconsistencies in the world as it appeared then, such as when Huck wonders why he would go to Hell for helping his friend Jim escape slavery.
Due to the huge popularity of the Somerset Awards, we’ve had to break Satirical and Allegorical fiction off into a separate division that titled The Mark Twain Book Awards.Keep an eye out on our website for our upcoming spotlight on this new Awards category and why we chose Twain!
Also, click on the Mark Twain Book Awards for classic works in Satire and Allegorical Fiction.
The last day to submit your work is November 30, 2018. We invite you to join us, to tell us your stories, and to find out who will take home the prize at CAC21 in April.
As our deadline draws near, don’t miss this opportunity to earn the distinction your literary novel deserves! Enter today!
The winners will be announced at the CIBA Awards Ceremony on April 19, 2021, that will take place during the 2021 Chanticleer Authors Conference. All Semi-Finalists and Finalists will be recognized. The first place winners will be recognized and receive their custom ribbon, and then we will see who among them will take home the Grand Prize. It’s an exciting evening of networking and celebration!
CIBA Ribbons!
First Place category winners and Grand Prize winners will each receive an awards package. Whose works will be chosen? The excitement builds for the 2020 SOMERSET Book Awards competitions and now for the Mark Twain Book Awards.
Our Chanticleer Review Writing Contests feature more than $30,000.00 worth of cash and prizes each year!
~$1000 Overall Grand Prize Winner ~$30,000views, prizes, and promotional opportunities awarded to Category Winners
Congratulations to the First Place Category Winners and the Grand Prize Winner of the Somerset Book Awards for Contemporary and Literary Novels, a division of the 2019 CIBAs.
The CIBAs Search for the Best in the Somerset Book Awards!
Chanticleer Book Reviews is celebrating the best books featuring contemporary stories, literary themes, adventure, satire, humor, magic realism, or women and family themes. We love them all.
The 2019 Somerset Book Awards First Place Category Winners and the Somerset Grand Prize Winner were announced at the Virtual Chanticleer Authors Conference that was broadcast via ZOOM webinar the week of September 8-13, 2020 from the Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Washington.
Michelle Rene, author of Hour Glass, Previous Laramie Grand Prize Winner and Overall Best Book Award Winner in 2017 announced the 2019 Somerset Book Award Winners.
This is the OFFICIAL 2019 LIST of the Somerset Book Awards First Place Category Winners and the Somerset Grand Prize Winner.
Congratulations to All!
Donna LeClair – The Proprietor of the Theatre of Life
Carl Roberts – The Trial of Connor Padget
Judith Kirscht – End of the Race
Patrick Finegan – Cooperative Lives
Santiago Xaman – After Olympus
Claire Fullerton – Little Tea
Maggie St. Claire – Martha
Jamie Zerndt – Jerkwater
R. Barber Anderson – The Sunken Forest, Where the Forest Came out of the Earth
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Beth Burgmeyer – The Broken Road, ms
Bob Holt – Firebird, ms
The Somerset Book Awards
2019 Grand Prize Winner is a manuscript: The Proprietor of Theatre Life by Donna LeClair
The Somerset Grand Prize for the 2019 Award Winner.
This is the original badge for the 2018 Somerset Grand Prize Winner – Hard Ciderby Barbara A. Stark-Nemon.
How to Enter the Somerset Book Awards?
We are accepting submissions into the2020 Somerset Book Awardsuntil November 30, 2020. All submissions into this category after November 30, 2020, will automatically be entered into the 2021 Somerset Book Awards
The 2020 Somerset Book Awards winners will be announced at CAC 21 on April 17, 2021.
A Note to ALL the WINNERS: The coveted CIBA Blue Ribbons will be mailed out starting in October. We will contact you with an email to verify your mailing address and other items. We thank you for your patience and understanding.
If you have any questions, please email info@ChantiReviews.com == we will try our best to reply in 3 or 4 business days.
Reviewers note: Consider the term, “quasi-fiction” in the subtitle of this novel by Santiago Xaman. It’s key to reading and understanding this deeply compelling and innovative work. The book begins with two definitions of quasi-fiction: 1. A narrative combining fictional characters with published facts of minor historical significance. 2. The form of realism evoked by quasi-fictional content. Having completed the book, I find I must smile at the term, “realism,” as used in the second definition.
In this groundbreaking novel, what is real – and what isn’t – is always the heart of the matter. There are elements of reality in the fantastical, and there are elements of magic realism in the rather ordinary. After Olympus is a novel about characters who don’t just think outside the box; they are outside the box.
Intrigued? You should be. We don’t see novels like this every day, but this one will find its way into the hands of the most discerning readers.
After Olympus is arranged into six sections: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delton, Epsilon, and Omega. Yes, Greek letters, very appropriate for a work laced with mythic associations, associations that will take the reader, as the title notes. Santiago Xaman tells his story via a manuscript found on his property in California. We learn of his childhood in Guatemala in the 1950s and early 1960s, his plea to Xaman Ek, the North Star, for the power of invisibility. We meet his sister who wants to fly like the Mancho bird that nests where the rainbow ends. A fire will change the tide of Santiago’s life, eventually bringing him to the United States, where adoptive American parents raise him.
Throughout his adult life, he will live with a Russian woman raised in the communist Soviet Union and who has burdensome secrets that will impact Santiago’s life in ordinary and extraordinary ways. One night, Santiago witnesses what he thinks is a falling star but is fuselage falling from a Soviet spacecraft. The event brings two international Stanford scientists to his door and a puzzle of a quest begins, one that will encompass the themes of schism and reconciliation, myopia and sight, and inequity and prosperity.
Gus, a businessman with a dream to be the “Yahoo of the medical world,” will join this group that Santiago comes to refer to as “magicians.” They will accomplish things that might seem magical, but just as one must carefully observe a magician for sleight of hand, the reader should follow the words of this enigmatic narrative with complete focus.
The magicians’ projects include designing new frameworks to analyze and make use of neuropsychological testing, intersections of social and political media, employment opportunities for young women with small children, and a gamut of concepts intended to make the world a better place through the removal of hurdles and the dissolving of problems. If technical innovation can be decapitalized and the profits realized by those most deserving of them, the economy can be reinvented. But there are villains on the scene as well and what they do to counter the magicians’ is astounding.
The ultimate triumph of After Olympus is that it’s not just one book. It will be different books for different people. Included in it is the old and classic story of the blind men who describe an elephant in entirely different ways. What one brings to this book may influence what one thinks they’re reading. The ending alone will make readers wonder if they really know the difference between tusk and tail.
After Olympus is a superb selection for any book group interested in a novel that is so thoroughly outside the box, so uncaged, that it’s a bit wild, in the best of ways.
The Rabbi’s Gift by Chuck Gould
The Ugly by Alexander Boldizar 
The Alexandrite
The Manipulator by Steve Lundin
Individually Wrapped by Jeremy Bullian
The Camera’s Eye by Judith Kirscht
