Jim Engster Show & Free Book on Friday

A Good Book is Easy to Find

On Friday, November 14, from 5-6 PM, Dayne will be on the Jim Engster Show on 107.3 FM in Baton Rouge and elsewhere through the Louisiana Radio Network. Jim is one of the best interviewers in the business. Please call in (1-877-217-5757 -or- jim@engstershow.com).
The topic: Louisiana politics. Here's the link to the show:
http://www.talk1073.com/…/…/185618-The-Jim-Engster-Show.html

And Zion, a Louisiana mystery, will be free all day on Nov. 14th:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OWN9S5Y/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_LIwzub0AZAFCN

A recent review of Zion:
Jam-packed with local color, Dayne Sherman strives to continue the tradition of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and other writers who rooted their human dramas in the soil of rural America. Zion paints a vivid picture of the rural South of another era. Sherman shows readers the dark side of rural southern life: the small town corruption and cronyism, the racism, and the religious hypocrisy, but, thankfully, he does not stop there. Nobility is there too, and that is one of this novel's strengths. It avoids the extremes of demonizing the rural southerners (a popular pastime these days) and excessive romanticizing of the "good old days." Not all of his "bumpkins" are stupid. Tom, his main character, is a self-educated scholar even though his intelligence might not be obvious to outside observers. (My great-grandfather was that kind of rural intellectual. He was a mailman and subsistence farmer, but he read history books for fun.) I confess it took me a couple of chapters to really warm up to the characters, but once the story started moving, it was worth the wait. --Dr. Timothy D. Wise

Thanks, Dr. Timothy D. Wise

--Dayne Sherman is the author of Zion: A Novel, released on October 30th. His website is daynesherman.com.
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Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker
Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com/
Talk About the South Blog: http://daynesherman.blogspot.com/
Tweet the South - Twitter: http://twitter.com/TweettheSouth/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/dayneshermanauthor

Zion: A Louisiana Mystery Novel Free Oct. 30-Nov. 1

Is anything better than a good mystery?

Dayne Sherman
October 30, 2014

I'm excited. Today is the release date for Zion, my Louisiana mystery novel. Seven year's work now in print. And it's free for three days as an ebook. Please download it, read, and let me know what you think. Sharing is appreciated.

Just click below: 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OWN9S5Y/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_IDzuub0M6B8EY

About the Book: From Dayne Sherman, the critically-acclaimed author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise, comes a gothic treatment of the American South: a hard-charging depiction of religion, family, friendship, deception, and evil. Zion is a mystery set in the rural South, the story of a war fought over the killing of hardwoods in Baxter Parish, Louisiana. The tale begins in 1964 and ends a decade later, but the Hardin family, faithful members of Little Zion Methodist Church, will carry the scars for life.

This edition of Zion includes a Reader's Guide for Book Clubs and Author Q and A.

Praise for Dayne Sherman and his work:

“Dayne Sherman writes like I wish I could if I was still young enough to change.” --Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story

“Sherman’s promising debut chronicles a young man’s thorny return to his Louisiana hometown… Sherman brilliantly reunites a land with its own set of vicious rules with a native of that land who, as a changed man, simply wants peace. Weaving his way through a series of complex characters and a terrain fertilized with a proud but bloody history, Sherman tells a spirited and engaging tale.” --Publishers Weekly

“Zion begins ballistic, turns tectonic and ends gothic. The people of this fraught Louisiana town suffer both the shifts of history and the tribulations of their pasts. In Sherman’s dark vision, wood kin burn and kin make hay, setting these troubled characters searching in a spiritual, and sometimes literal, wilderness to find and make right what they can. Get ready for a thrill ride that slams into modernity with Old Testament inevitability.” 
--Tim Parrish, author of Fear and What Follows & The Jumper

Thanks for reading.

--Dayne Sherman is the author of Zion: A Novel, released on October 30th. His website is daynesherman.com.
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Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker
Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com/
Talk About the South Blog: http://daynesherman.blogspot.com/
Tweet the South - Twitter: http://twitter.com/TweettheSouth/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/dayneshermanauthor

Writing about Louisiana

Dayne Sherman

Column

October 26, 2014

550 Words

The Richest Place on Earth

Seven years ago I was chatting with one of my distant cousins on the corner of North Magnolia and West Thomas in Hammond. Many readers will know the location as PJ’s Coffee, a place where I have written large sections of my books.

On this particular day I was given a great gift, the tale of a local conflict fought between hunters and a timber company. The timber company was killing hardwoods to make room for more valuable pine trees, and the local men used fire to even the score, burning hundreds of acres of young pines to protest the destruction of good hunting land.

The slogan back in the 1960s was catchy: “For every oak a pine!”

I went home and wrote 40 pages in a day or two, caught up in the spirit of a tale that I turned into fiction, setting it in “Baxter Parish,” a region all my own. Though it only took a few days to write the first section of my novel titled Zion, named for a little community surrounding Little Zion Methodist Church, it took seven years to write the rest of the book and to give the story adequate justice.

The key to writing is finishing a project. I never gave up on the long and complex mystery novel, and now I am proud that it will soon be available to readers.

Seven years ago I couldn’t have known that there would be a hotly contested marshal’s race in the 7th Ward. One of my main characters is Donald Brownlow, the marshal, and a decent guide for any of the candidates vying for the position on November 4. Some early readers have sent questions about the strange office of the marshal in my book. I tell them to drive down a street in South Tangipahoa, and let me know if there are more yard signs advertising candidates than people. We do have a marshal, and plenty of folks want to win the race.

There is no place more interesting as a subject than Tangipahoa Parish, a place so dangerous it was once called “Bloody Tangipahoa.”

I tend to think the stress and strain of the area is enormous, the transitory nature of a place near two interstates, the “Crosshairs of the South,” as I call it. This past week there was a horrifying story of a woman trying to sell her ten-year-old daughter to strangers at a gas station near I-55. You can’t make up stories like this.

All of the horror aside, our region is the richest place on earth for a fiction writer. You can bet on it.

I write to meet readers. I’d like to invite my readers to the national book launch for Zion, my latest novel, on October 30. The event will be held at the Hammond Regional Arts Center, 217 E. Thomas St. There will be a signing and reading from 4-6:30 PM. I'll read from 5:30-6 PM, and we’ll be done in time for the Saints game. Come and go as you please. Books will be available for purchase.

I hope to see you there.

--Dayne Sherman is the author of Zion: A Novel, which will be released on October 30th. His website is daynesherman.com.
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Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker
Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com/
Talk About the South Blog: http://daynesherman.blogspot.com/
Tweet the South - Twitter: http://twitter.com/TweettheSouth/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/dayneshermanauthor

A Nightmare Called “Bobbycare”

Dayne Sherman

Column

September 27, 2014

600 Words

The End of Louisiana State Insurance

On Tuesday, September 23, our school-aged son was given a commonly prescribed medication by his physician. My wife attempted to get the pharmacy to fill it. We were shocked and horrified to find that it was rejected by our health insurance: Office of Group Benefits HMO Plan through BlueCross, a health insurance plan for Louisiana public employees.

For almost 16 years I have been a member of OGB, and my wife, a teacher, has been a member for 25 years. This is the second rejection we have received this year through MedImpact.  Rejecting my medicine is one thing, but rejecting our son's is another. We have never seen anything like this in our years with OGB.

You will recall that OGB was privatized under Gov. Bobby Jindal, and nearly all of the $500,000,000 trust fund has been stolen. Soon, all money dedicated to funding state workers’ insurance will be gone. The money was pilfered by Jindal in an effort to fill holes in his economically disastrous state budget. But this will mean 230,000 Louisiana citizens are about to lose all semblances of health coverage on January 1.

Earlier on Tuesday, the former Health and Hospitals head, Bruce Greenstein, was indicted, and the state attorney general declared the new state health insurance changes illegal through an opinion solicited by Rep. John Bel Edwards of Amite. I thought this might stop the train wreck.

But later in the day I had to fight tooth and nail to get our child’s medicine. I had to contact state representatives and the media. We were finally able to get the meds filled on Friday afternoon. I wasn’t looking for a freebie. We pay hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance, have co-pays for everything, and we paid $55 for the prescription. We just wanted the doctor-prescribed medication. Not the insurance-mandated meds.

Most employees and retirees will not be so lucky. Louisiana state employees and retirees need to understand one fact. If all of the proposed OGB changes go through as Gov. Jindal plans, they are effectively uninsured. Health coverage is over, and it will not be coming back.

Sure, Kristy Nichols, Jindal’s spokesperson, says the OGB trust fund was too big (Insanity!), that they are “right-sizing” the insurance plans (Destroying them!), and they’re now offering better options called Pelican HRA 1000, Pelican HSA 775, Magnolia Local, and other names worthy of George Orwell’s 1984. According to Nichols, the new plans will be pure utopia. But when an OGB member gets a letter from MedImpact of San Diego, California, a cold memo rejecting a medication prescribed by a doctor here in Louisiana, let’s call it what it is: a “death panel” letter.

As one person put it, “Bobbycare” is health care without any care at all. How true.

While our governor flits from Iowa to New Hampshire playing presidential candidate, a delusional quest to anyone but himself, Louisiana goes the way of Rome on fire, burning, burning, burning. Jindal is like a hummingbird on crystal meth. The wings are moving at a blinding pace, but the overall flight is completely doomed.

I have three questions about the OGB privatization and the missing half billion dollars: Who will go to prison for stealing state funds through a scheme worthy of a bank heist? Will the FBI investigate the theft of public money? And will the legislators stop the train wreck?

Let’s all hope and pray that the FBI, the courts, or the Louisiana Legislature will prevent Jindal from destroying one more area of Louisiana that worked before he came into office: the Office of Group Benefits.

Dayne Sherman, author of Zion: A Novel by Accendo Books, to be released on October 30th. His website is daynesherman.com.

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Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker
Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com/
Talk About the South Blog: http://daynesherman.blogspot.com/
Tweet the South - Twitter: http://twitter.com/TweettheSouth/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/dayneshermanauthor

***This message speaks only for the writer, a citizen, not for any present or past employer.***