Deanna Roy writes conclusion to her USA Today bestselling Forever series

Only when you let go of yesterday can you find yourself in forever…

This USA Today bestselling series takes you through the lives of couples with tragic pasts, who must find a way to put their tragedies behind them to find the love of their life.

Forever Innocent
The book that started it all. 
A young couple in college reunites four years after the death of their newborndrove them apart.
Amazon ~ Amazon UK ~ BN ~ Kobo ~ Google Play ~ iBooks

Forever LovedThe shattering sequel to Forever Innocent that all the fans asked for.
Gavin and Corabelle discover one last secret from their past.
Amazon ~ Amazon UK ~ BN ~ Kobo ~ Google Play ~ iBooks

 Forever ShelteredHospital art therapist Tina is quite positive that she doesn’t need stony Dr. Darion in her life. What she doesn’t count on is that maybe he needs her.
Amazon ~ BN ~ Kobo ~ Google Play ~ iBooks 

Forever Bound
A hitchhiking musician running from his past and singing for tips across the US spends a single night with a spunky pink-haired girl, only to discover that sometimes, one night can be the beginning of forever.
Amazon ~ BN ~ Kobo ~ Google Play ~ iBooks 

 Forever Family
The final book in the Forever series takes our three couples on their journey into trying once more for the family that will heal their hearts.Amazon ~ BN ~ Kobo ~ Google Play ~ iBooks

The 2016 winner of the Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize is out -- Take Wing

The newest winner of our poetry chapbook competition has arrived!

 From the sweetness of picking blackberries while one is dying to witnessing how cancer "hollows bones," the poems in Take Wing speak lyrically of the process of letting go.

Photo by Jules Barivan

When poet David Allen Sullivan first started scribbling down his emotions surrounding the impending loss of his mother-in-law, he didn't know these fragments would become poetry.

"I started writing notes as the events unfolded," Sullivan said. "Sometimes they would be close to poems, and few came out fully formed."

From those notes and pieces came Take Wing, a collection of poetry that was recently named the winner of the 2016 Mary Ballard Poetry Prize.

Rosemary Catacalos, former Poet Laureate of Texas and author of Again for the First Time, judged the contest. "The loss of loved ones is central to our shared humanity," Catacalos said. "With Take Wing, David Allen Sullivan has given us poems that confront death with the mineral strength of a spiritual warrior."

The poems create snapshots of the life of a dying woman as viewed by her family. Danusha Lameris, author of The Moons of August, called the poems "Beacons lighting the liminal space between the body's heat and its inevitable decline."

Sullivan, who teaches at Cabrillo College, said the poetry helped him connect the death of his mother-in-law Mary with his own mortality. "I think every writer -- no matter how far away from the subject matter -- is pulling from their life," he said.

Sullivan said he hopes readers will remember to face grief "head on" after reading the collection. "Return to your own life chastened, renewed, and more committed to live ferociously, hungrily, and without holding back."

Pick up the chapbook at:

Amazon
Books A Million 
Barnes and Noble
iBooks
Nook
Kobo
Google Play

Introducing the winner of the 2016 Mary Ballard Poetry Prize

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2016 Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook prize -- David Allen Sullivan's book Take Wing.

Photo by Jules Barivan

David Allen Sullivan is a former Fullbright scholar who has written a number of poetry books on topics ranging from the Iraq war to his father's dementia. His poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac.

He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Mina Barivan.

Our 2016 judge was Rosemary Catacalos. Catacalos was the 2013 Poet Laureate of Texas, a Paisano fellow, National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and her poetry has been nominated for many Pushcart prizes and included in poetry anthologies.

Catacalos said that Sullivan's depiction of the loss of loved ones was "central to our shared humanity. Take Wing has given us poems that confront death with the mineral strength of a spiritual warrior."

She praised the language in the collection, calling it "useful, spare, washed clean: bones that play an essential music."

Take Wing will be released in April 2016 as both a paperback and digital edition.