It’s Mother’s Day month eve!
And today is the kick-off of the Writer Mama Every Day In May Book Giveaway for 2013.
Before we begin, I just want to thank everyone who is participating. This giveaway is a group effort and I am so thrilled to be able to host.
Thank you for participating and for spreading the word! Let’s do our best to tell everyone we know about all these amazing authors and all of these great books!
And now without further ado…let the giveaways begin!
Our First Author is Julie Kibler
Julie Kibler began writing Calling Me Home after learning a bit of family lore: As a young woman, her grandmother fell in love with a young black man in an era and locale that made the relationship impossible. When not writing, she enjoys travel, independent films, music, photography, and corralling her teenagers and rescue dogs. She lives in Arlington, Texas. Calling Me Home is her debut. You can find her online at juliekibler.com and What Women Write http://whatwomenwritetx.blogspot.com/.
Learn about Calling Me Home, a novel, St. Martin’s Press, February 2013
Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It’s a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow.
Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle’s guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives.
Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son’s irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her.
Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family’s housekeeper–in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle’s first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.
See reviews of Calling Me Home. LINK
I asked Julie three questions about our giveaway’s theme topic, self-expression:
1. Is self-expression an important part of your life today, why or why not?
Self-expression is the way I process my experiences, my thoughts, my beliefs, my questions, and my emotions—rather them letting them stagnate or overflow the already messy closet of my mind.
2. What does self-expression mean to you and how do you do it in the world?
It means taking the swirling mass of inputs entering my brain and organizing them into something creative that makes sense of them, such as an essay, or (very rarely) a craft, or (so rarely, I’m struggling to remember the last time) a fancy cooking or baking experiment. Most often, it means working on a novel, because the novel is my favorite creative “child.”
3. How does your self-expression impact the world—your family, your friends, your readers, and everyone else?
In the case of my novels, I hope they might not only entertain, but also facilitate the reader to think about the issues inside the story, and perhaps also to talk about them, and maybe even to make some change or take some action, big or small, that could have a lasting impact somewhere down the road.
On a more personal level, I have seen the pride my kids take in telling their friends about their mother’s work. I hope they’ve observed and learned that they, too, can take their gifts of self-expression and use them for good.
And Now, Your Turn…
You remember how this works right?
Please read the complete rules at least once!
I ask you a question.
You answer in the comments for your chance to win a book each day.
Please just respond once, even if you make a typo. 
Answer in the comments in 50-200 words (no less and no more to qualify to win one of today’s books).
Tell us a story about your name. Is your name right for you? Would you change your name if you could? Why or why not?
Ready, set, comment! I will hold the drawing tomorrow and post the results here in my blog.
Thanks for participating in the Writer Mama Every-Day-In-May Book Giveaway!
And thanks for spreading the word. We will be giving away great books by wonderful women authors all month.
View the complete list of authors and books.
View the giveaway Pinterest board.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Julie’s book sounds fascinating, and one I’d like to read.
To answer your question: According to my mom, my dad was hoping for a son (I was the fourth girl) so they didn’t have any girl names picked out. Dad left the name selection to Mom, who named me after a nun in the hospital where I was born. Growing up I didn’t like my name because, unlike my four sisters and two brothers — Dad eventually got two sons — my name wasn’t Irish-sounding enough. Now, I love my name.
Growing up the late sixties, I was teased about being “a boy named Sue,” thanks to the popularity of the Johnny Cash song. Yet I loved my name because I was just Sue, not Susan or Suzanne like so many others I met along the way. So while others might have said, “that cannot be your name, it’s a nickname,” I relished the fact that I was somewhat different than the masses.
I go back and forth on whether or not I think my name suits me. I don’t mind my first name, Renee, that much, although it seems to be a more common middle name for women. Also, most people spell it when an accent at the end of the name, but I like to joke that my mother forgot that part when she filled out my birth certificate. I never cared for my first name paired with my middle name, Lee, because there are just too many “e”s in that combination! My mother did tell me once that she thought about naming me Heather, and I’m glad she changed her mind because while it is a pretty name, there were several Heathers in my class growing up, and it would have been too much like that popular cult-classic movie starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater.
I loved my maiden name. It was unusual, hard to spell, hard to read, and got lots of comments. Like my first name, it had four letters. Like my first name, the third letter was an R sandwiched between matching vowels, A in my first name, Y in my last name. I loved the balance and symmetry of it—and it was mine. When I got married, I struggled with the idea of changing my name. I
toyed with the idea of just adding my new name to my existing name, a practice that made sense to me, but not to the forms town hall makes you fill out. I ended up as Sara Barry, but I kept my maiden name floating around for a while to help old friends and colleagues find me. I put off getting new checks made because I knew I’d need to change my name on them. I eventually got used to saying my new name, signing my new signature, filling in those five letters on forms. I’ve lived as Sara Barry for almost eight years now, years of major change. I’ve grown into this name.
My mother loved the book Little Women and named me Amy, the “pretty” one.
Growing up, I was called several versions of my given name Kathryn – Kath, Kathy, Kat. I’ve never especially liked my first name, but never hated it either. I just went with it because it would have been too much of a hassle to change. But I’ve had enough variety in my life not to get bored with it. I was called by my last name in the military for six years, changed names because of marriage, then became Mommy and Mom. My second husband calls me Katie. Last year I decided to use a pen name for a memoir I wrote. What did I choose to put on the cover of my first book? Cate. I guess it’s become a part of me that won’t let go.
I was named after a typhoon that hit Asia in 1955. (I was born in Okinawa.) No kidding! I never really ever liked it, at various points changing the spelling of it (two words instead of one, dropped the E, added an accent) but eventually I gave up and went back to the way it was spelled. It rather fit me though, because I have a rather explosive and emotional personality, just like a typhoon, full of wind and tears. Just recently I learned that the typhoon in question was spelled JOAN, so my mother misspelled it! And no, I wouldn’t change it EVER.
My full name is Sandra Colette which I think is pretty but a little formal. I’ve always been known as Sandi — not just any Sandy — “Sandi with an i” Sandi. Whenever someone spells my name with a y, a different person with a different personality pops up in my head. An everyday Sandy, not “Sandi with an i” who loves to sing and to express herself in words, who’s lived in Africa and speaks two foreign languages, and who grew up in small-town Arkansas but has friends all over the world.
Growing up, I hated my surname. It was Russian, and my hometown contained a lot of immigrants from a Russian sect called Doukhobours that immigrated to Canada due to persecution in Russia. My grandparents also escaped cultural persecution but they didn’t belong to the Doukhobour sect. My Russian name wasn’t Doukhobour and I went through school feeling like I didn’t fit in with my peers and I hated constantly spelling my weird surname out to other people. Eventually I wanted to find out the origins of my surname but my research hit a huge dead end because my family wasn’t even sure whether the spelling we used in our name was even the correct one. My illiterate ancestors, when they immigrated from Russia, spelled it the best they could when the entered the new world and however the government officers spelled it, that’s how it remained. I grew up feeling kind of rootless, and an outcast. I was relieved when I married my British husband and shed my maiden name. My married name was still “weird” but at least it was short and easy to spell (although it still gets constantly mispronounced). Through the stories I heard from his family about their history–that of working in Lancashire’s cotton mills and doing whatever they could do get by–I began to see my maiden name in a different light and started to be proud of it. From both my maiden name and my married name, I related to the identity of hard work, resourcefulness and uniqueness, something that definitely is serving me well as I take the first steps learning to be a writer.
Awesome Julie! As a former history teacher and author from Arlington, Texas (shout out), I am intrigued by your story. Your books seems to still hold lessons for us even today. Congrats!
To answer the question 🙂
My legal name is Cholia and its pronounced (Show-Leah). No one pronounces it correctly at first sight most of the time. I’ve always liked my name (even when I would get annoyed by my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Collins saying “Oh, Che-li-tah what’s 2X2?”) because it’s so, totally, me.
My mom worked in insurance when she was pregnant with and the name just appeared in one of her case files. She admits that she doesn’t know if she herself pronounced it as the claimant would, but she figured, this is my baby, and I love the sound of Show-Leah for Cholia!
Today, I go by CJ, my initials cause its easy to remember and I like that its unisex. You never know what will walk through the door if your meeting me for the first time and you’ve only got CJ to hang on to.
However, Cholia, is what my family and beloved call me. It will always be my identity. I’ve always went to the beat of my own drum, I hate convention, and love being an entrepreneur.
Cholia spells Authentic, and I wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂
I liked my name, Barbara Sprunger McDowell, at the time I met my husband, Bill Whitt, so much so that I am now Barbara Whitt or Barb Whitt to my friends and relatives. However, since I spent 29 years of my life as Barbara McDowell, I decided to have my user name be Barbara McDowell Whitt when I established myself online. I like that.
I always found my name dull and wished for something more exotic. There were three, I think, other Heather’s in my highschool class of about 100. They each had Lee as middle name, which was my last name. I remember one of my brothers saying, “How many times did you graduate, anyway? They kept calling your name!” I was always disappointed that my mother’s reason for choosing my name was that she “liked it.” I wanted it to have more significance. I always despised my middle name and was glad to let it go when I took my husband and children’s last name.
I love my name, Joelle. I’m glad my parents didn’t name me Babyface, which, legend has it, my dad wanted. The story goes: the choice was between Babyface and Noel or Jo Lea (pronounced Lee). After they took Babyface out of the running, they combined the other two for Joelle. It’s just different enough to be unique most places without being so different that no one can say or remember it (although I’ve heard plenty of variations in pronunciation and spelling). It has a lyrical lilt that just makes me happy. I tried to give my kids names that they would feel the same about. I think we did alright, but only time will tell if they feel the same.
My parents named me Heidi after the protagonist in the book by the same name, written by Swiss author Johanna Spyri. I loved to read the book with my mother when I was a child and have collected several antique copies that are displayed in my living room as conversation pieces. Their pictures are gorgeous and the story is sweet. I don’t often wish I had another name, except when I travel to Germany and people assume I must speak German, since I have a Germans first (and now, by marriage) last name. But it doesn’t take them long to figure out that German is NOT my mother tongue! 🙂
My legal name is Cholia and its pronounced (Show-Leah). No one pronounces it correctly at first sight most of the time. I’ve always liked my name (even when I would get annoyed by my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Collins saying “Oh, Che-li-tah what’s 2X2?”) because it’s so, totally, me.
My mom worked in insurance when she was pregnant with and the name just appeared in one of her case files. She admits that she doesn’t know if she herself pronounced it as the claimant would, but she figured, this is my baby, and I love the sound of Show-Leah for Cholia!
Today, I go by CJ, my initials cause its easy to remember and I like that its unisex. You never know what will walk through the door if your meeting me for the first time and you’ve only got CJ to hang on to.
However, Cholia, is what my family and beloved call me. It will always be my identity. I’ve always went to the beat of my own drum, I hate convention, and love being an entrepreneur.
Cholia spells Authentic, and I wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂
I like my name – Gayla Grace. When I meet new people, they often comment on my name. But the reason I really like it is because my last name is a married name from my second marriage and indicates the Grace I was shown after going through a nasty divorce and finding a second husband who means more to me than I can describe. 🙂
I never thought much about my name until my senior year, and
then I hated my parents. I had gotten a senior necklace with my initials engraved on the back. Which is fine, most of my class had the same thing. Theyjust didn’t have my initials. The back of the necklace looked like a tombstone with a cross on top, my initials? D.E.D.
Thankfully, I grew up and got over my grudge. Now I appreciate how my mother named my older sister and I. My older sister’s first name is my aunt’s first name (my mother’s sister) and her middle name is my mother’s middle name. My first name is my aunt’s middle name and my middle name is my mother’s first name. I like the bond my mother has with her sister and it shines through in how she chose to name us.
My parents are serious anglophiles. They named me Elizabeth Katherine. My Mother would always accompany me on the first day of school to ensure that the teacher understood my name was Elizabeth. No nicknames were acceptable. I feel my name captures my character very well. Long curly hair and a love of literature! I do feel like a queen!
Thank you for the chance to win the book!
Oh, I how want to read this book! My name has been a source
of trial for me since as long as I can remember: Jude the Prude; Judy-Booty; Judy, Judy, Judy; Hey, Jude. Yeah, all so original (NOT) and I’ve heard them all, more than I can remember. Sometimes people STILL can’t help themselves. My father named me. The full name is Judith, and I think of a wizened prune whenever
anyone slips up and uses it. I wish my mom had stuck to her guns, as I would have been named some other “J” name. As much as I complain I do like and prefer my nicknames: Jude and Judes, so I guess I’ve come to terms with my dad’s poor taste. Don’t even get me going on my maiden name. That’s a personal essay about
angst… 😉
My older step-sister was named after a movie star. I feel sorry
for her because of that. I mean, who names their precious baby, the creation of their love for each other, after someone that dad thought was a hot babe on the big screen?
I was named after my mother’s baby sister that died from falling into a tub of scalding water. At least I was named after someone the family loved and cared about, another child. But that is not the only significance of my name.
Frequently, I struggle to be joyous, to whistle while I work, to smile. Yet my name means “Song of Joy.” That motivates me to radiate joy whether I feel it or not. I would never change my name because I want to be a Song of Joy to others.
Also, I never would change my name because my daddy used it
to fashion a pet name for me—CJ. He even named his boat after me—Sea Jay. My step-sister thinks he wasn’t my ‘real’ father; that I share her father. I don’t care; for I am Sea Jay: Song of Joy.
My first name is Eva but I have always been known as Maureen. It has always been awkward whenever I go to the doctors or government office because they will call me Eva and I will naturally have to correct. I married a man named Philip Jeffrey and it just so happens that he too goes by his second name too.
Both my maiden name (Hall) and my married name (Saunders) were changed at some point in the past, one at Ellis Island and one because of family issues. I use them both as an expression of the fact that I am a combination of both of those histories. I am both a name that I inherit and a name that I mold to my own purpose. My husband and I gave both of those names to our children too so they always know they come from both families.
The story of my name is I could have been Gary Wayne. That is, if I’d been a boy. My mom liked to tell that story over and over, and sometimes I wondered if she’d rather had a boy instead of me, her first-born daughter, Debra Lynn.
Growing up, I was Debbie to family and friends, all the way through high school and college. The story goes that I was named after Debbie Reynolds, but I don’t remember seeing that she was ever a Debra too. I remained Debbie until I became a professional. I took my formal name, Debra, because I liked the way it looked as my signature, mainly.
And truth be told, I’ve never NOT liked Debra Lynn. Especially when I recall my mom’s voice from the distant past say my name as she did when I was a child: Deberlyn. Kinda hillbilly. And wholly mine.
As a child I wanted to change my name because it wasn’t the usual “Laura” (I hoped for a more American or British sounding name). But it is a name with a story: my parents went to see the movie Dr. Zhivago on their first date and Lara’s Theme became their song. So it was only natural that they name their first child after Pasternak’s female protagonist, Lara. The funny thing is, when I visited Russia as a young adult I expected people there to finally get my name correct. Instead they called me “Laura” because they thought as an American that’s what my name should be. Ah well, my name suits me now and I have the satisfaction on occasion of hearing a Laura accidentally called “Lara” by those who know me.
It’s wonderful to be back. Thank you Christina! You are my Mother’s Day present . . .all month long. I’m spreading the word to every writer I know, reminding them of your generosity and support of women writers, even if it does decrease my odds of winning. Actually, I can’t wait to read their posts. It makes it more fun.
My name is amazing. “Mar” means sea in Spanish and snake in Arabic, or so I’m told. This year, the Chinese year of the Snake, is tied to my birth year (1953). So I consider it fortuitous.
Actually, Mar is short for Martha Frances — a good Catholic name. I started using Mar when I was in college because the engineers I needed to interview for my tech articles wouldn’t return calls to Martha, but called Mar back within hours. Plus editors remembered me.
Oh my . . . it’s 12:34. I guess I took to long to figure out where to post comments. Does it count if I started before midnight, then got distracted?
In any case, it’s a pleasure to be back for my SIXTH year. And best of all, I’ve saved every year’s entries to keep track of my progress.
Good luck to all my fellow Writer Mamas!
Christina,
Thank you so much for letting me participate in this fun giveaway! I hope anyone who picks up Calling Me Home will enjoy it! Congrats to Lara for winning this round!
My name is Julie because our cousins’ last name was Schooley, and they loved the name, but obviously couldn’t use it for their own daughter (Julie Schooley?!). I was named in their honor. I am quite happy about that because the name they picked out originally was Timberly. We figure it would have been shortened to Timber, and my mom would have always been scaring people when she yelled my name. 🙂