Children's Writer Publishes Her First
Adult Book and Finds Readers Enthralled With Letter 16, Her Tome About a Floating Bottle
By Diana L. Chapman
Having twin boys, a daughter and a life
wound tautly around children, children's author E.G. Ryan took a leap of faith
and published her first adult novel -- Letter 16, released this spring. The
story converges around two strong, suffering women, walks us through World War
II and follows a floating bottle around the world.
Mostly, Elisabeth says, it's a story
about karma and faith.
"The bottle is full of karma,"
she explains over coffee as her three children play by her side. "People
are reading it in two days. My friend, a teacher, called me crying, saying she
loved it. It's been a whole different response from my children's books.
Literally, everyone is loving it."
As she nears the 1,000 mark of her
novel's sales, Elisabeth, a former defense analyst for the U.S. Government, can't
help but be thrilled that she didn't wait for traditional publishers to cast
their eyes her way. As soon as she did two readings at the local Corner Store,
she sold 200 books. She also didn't wait
for publishers when it came to her ten children's books, all of which she wrote
and illustrated.
Her children's works have caught on at
schools, book fairs and book clubs and have begun to sell well on line with her
strong marketing skills. Those include books such as Spunky the Dog, who
doesn't want to live with his family anymore and The Collect-Its, two creatures
living under a girl's bed who take her things when she leaves them out. All the
stories are based on her mothering experiences with her twins, Nick and
Maximillan, 9, who she home schools, and her daughter, Alexa Rose, 5.
As if she wasn't busy enough, Elisabeth
plunged into writing novels, such as Irish Eyes and Five, both of which will be
published possibly next year.
Her recent novel reflects a lot about
the striking, six foot tall woman who often doesn't even begin to write until
11 at night. It shows she's highly prolific (she's working on another set of
preteen stories) and that she detests rules. It irritates her inner-spirit so
much that she tossed publishers rules out the doors.
Those include: don't both draw and write
your own children's books, don't
self-publish and don't change genres. In other words, don't explore.
But Elisabeth is all about adventure and
decided quickly on she would write novels while she continued penning her
children's books. "It fuels my fire," she said. "It just gives
me more drive to prove them wrong and I do like the challenge."
Her first published novel establishes
the love a young woman named, Anna, a daughter of a Baron, has for her Jewish
lover, named Jakub, during World War II and how their romance was pulled out
from underneath them by the gathering storm of Jewish hostiles under Adolf
Hitler.
Anna then writes letters to her love who
vanished suddenly from her home in Poland, and tucks them carefully into a
bottle, sending them away with dreams that sometime she will meet Jakub again
and reignite their love.
The 16 bottles -- most of which she
sends out on streams and rivers, disappear-- but carry an abundance of amour, but only one carries what the author calls "Lissie's
justice," and holds karma that will touch other people's lives all over
the world like a jigsaw puzzle.
The story entwines with a contemporary
woman named Diana, who has suffered hew own tragedy, when she finds the bottle
"a world away." Distraught by her loss, but encouraged by the
dramatic romance she finds in the letter despite the caverns of war and time, Diana
finds a life mission: to return the letter to Anna.
"It speaks to a lot of people
because of the cross-culture and the different experiences in their
lives," the author said, adding she is Swiss-German. "My grandfather
hid two seasonal Polish farm workers" during the war.
He did it in haystacks, cutting out
sections in the hay bales where his farm workers could hide, she added. She
used this same imagery in her book along with many others she gathered as she
traveled the world in her federal job.
One minute a reader can be in Japan where a wife has suffered a severe and deep
humiliation from her husband and mother-in-law to a space in the expansive ocean where a man who is
about as cute Star War's Jaba the Hut engages in human trafficking of young
girls.
Her characters, she said, are "a
compilation of humanity."
She calls her work "Lissie's
justices," she said, because "in my world, if you do bad, bad will
come to you."
Advice she has to other writers:
"People say they are always going
to write a book," she said. "Write it. Don't share it with anyone
until you are done. Who cares who the audience is? You are writing the book
because you want to write it. They say every 1,000 words makes you a better
writer.
"Write the book for you."
To order E.G. Ryan's books, visit
www.EGRyan.com. Her books are also available on Amazon, at The Corner Store at
1118 W. 37th Street, Crafted, 112 E.
22nd Street or Rok'n'Ell, 1438 W. 8th Street, all in San Pedro. She can be reached at EGRyanEnterprises.com@gmail.com.
