Tom's Wife by Alana Cash - Virtual Tour and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Alana will be awarding the winner's choice of a Screenprinted Camisole - "What Happens in the Bedroom Stays in the Bedroom" or a Brass Nuts T-Shirt - screenprinted "Brass" with 2 brass hex-nuts sewn to collar, to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour. (US ONLY)

We'll turn the blog over to Alana now...

I have only been in love a couple of times in my life and one of those times was with a drummer in a Latin band. He played with different groups and I got to know all kinds of Latin music – salsa, meringue, cumbia, bosa nova and more. I went to the different venues where he played and made a few friends. From the friends I learned to cook different types of food and learned the different types of dances. I got invited to visit a family in Puerto Rico where I studied Spanish for a week. Returning from my vacation, I decided I wanted to learn play percussion. So I took lessons in bongos and castanets. A few times – very few – I was invited to play with the professional musicians in front of an audience. It was quite unusual to see a female bongo player and the musicians got tips for that and got invited back, but I didn’t think I was good enough, so eventually I stopped accepting the invitations. And the relationship with the drummer didn’t work out very well, but it was a great time in my life. A really great time.

I gave the bongos away, but I kept the castanets and I used to play them sometimes at home listening to the Gypsy Kings. One evening I was playing with the windows open and a man came to my door explaining that his wife was a flamenco dancer in Spain and he asked if I happened to be a flamenco dancer as well. That was pretty flattering since I wasn’t sure I played well at all, but apparently I played well enough to attract strangers off the street. I did play castanets once with a band on my birthday – and once under the table at a restaurant in Serbia. I was in Novi Sad doing some research for a project and the family I was staying with invited me to dinner at the restaurant (steak dinner for five people with wine was a total of $22). A gypsy band was playing and singing. They had five-string guitars and sang in seven different languages. I had the castanets under the table and played along with them. No one complained, but I did stop after a couple of songs.

Honestly, I would have preferred to have music as my art form over writing and when I was a child I begged for a guitar, but didn’t ever get that for Christmas. I took piano lessons for a few weeks, but the teacher moved away, and anyway I didn’t enjoy playing piano.

It’s the Great Depression and 19-year-old Annie Huckaby is almost resigned to marriage with Tom. He works at a coal mine during the week, leaving Annie to take care of the house and their infant son. Tom’s Native American friend Jim takes care of the farm. Her best friend, Twila, visits every day and helps Annie make a little money selling eggs to the café on the highway. And there’s church on Sunday. Annie’s not always alone, but most times she feels like it…until one afternoon a peddler named Jake Stern steps onto the porch, tips his hat, and starts a world of trouble.

Now enjoy an excerpt:

The first time Annie ever saw Jake Stern, she was sitting with Twila on the porch after dinner. They’d been watching the men working on the new barn and they heard Butch growling and turned around and saw him. It was peculiar to see a fellow in a white shirt on a weekday, and she had to look away behind him, at the big oak tree.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alana Cash is an award-winning author and filmmaker who used to spend summers on her grandparents farm at the foot of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. When she was ten, a red-headed stranger rode up on horseback asking her grandfather if there were horses needing to be broken. The cowboy wore spurs and a cowboy hat and was pretty exciting. Decades later, Alana wondered if any of the women living in that farming community got a crush on that wandering cowboy, and intending to write a short story about that romantic day, Alana ended up writing the novel TOM’S WIFE.

Website: www.alanacash.com

Blog: howyoulovetexas.blogspot.com

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toms-wife-alana-cash/1100486164?ean=9781449996321

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Alana-Cash/e/B0058DLGXO

How You Leave Texas by Alana Cash -- Book Review and Giveaway

(Chick-Lit/Women's Fiction/Short Stories)

This review is in conjunction with a Virtual Book Tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Alana will be awarding a screen printed camisole (What Happens in the Bedroom Stays in the Bedroom) to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour as well as a screen printed Brass Nuts t-shirt to another commenter. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.




How You Leave Texas is a volume of three short stories and a novella about four young women who leave Midland, Austin, Fort Worth and Mayville, Texas for New York, California, Jakarta, and in one instance, jail. They seek escape from boredom and sorrow and find it. The stories are hilarious, tragic, revelatory.

"Dam Broke" – after high school graduation, two quirky best friends reveal big secrets.

In sixth grade, I abandoned the reading glasses for a blond wig and a fake mole above my top lip. Mickey started wearing sunglasses indoors and carrying business cards.

"Camille’s Net Worth" – on her 40th birthday, Camille’s life falls apart in uncontrolled demolition. Life improves when she gets a job creating art paper and returns to painting. But the plot twists and she ends up in jail, laughing.

“I’m not going to spend much time repeating myself,” Camille said, “I want you to remove whatever you want to keep from this house. You can store your stuff in a rental truck if you need to until you find a new home, but you will be gone from here by midnight and never return.”

“You can’t do that!”

“If you are not gone by midnight, I will set fire to the house.”

"Krystal’s Wedding" – Heading for New York, Krystal leaves behind her shoddy family in Midland, Texas. Ill-prepared for the culture shock and expense, she takes a few slippery steps before she finds true independence.

Krystal’s family wasn’t an American success story. Mom felt like life had cheated her since Daddy never made any real money and spent most nights getting drunk at the Welcome Inn. Erin never finished beauty school and worked at a donut shop. Bethany worked as a bar-back at the Rusty Nail and was turning out like Daddy. Alcoholic, back-slapping, charming. Eddie Garthwaite, owner of Garthwaite Used Cars located on Interstate 20 between Midland and Odessa. Eddie Garthwaite who currently had his driver’s license suspended because of a DUI.

Frying Your Burger (based on a true story) – Nicky and her friends spend mornings slinging repartee in a coffee shop. While paying a traffic fine, she meets a director and soon finds herself a pawn for two directors trying to ruin each others careers.

I went into the room marked Cashier and got into a long line. And there he was. Grinning that grin. He should have had a license for it. It was that bright. I stood next to him in my white t-shirt and white pants looking like someone straight out of the “hospital orderly fashion catalogue.” It was all I had clean that day.



Step into this short volume to meet some of the quirkiest characters you ever want to meet. One of the stories, "Krystal's Wedding," broke my heart--and made me so thankful for my own family. Loved the character in "Camille's Net Worth"--maybe because we are closer in age and I could really identify with her and what she went through. In reading "Dam Broke" I was able to relive some of my own emotions of long-term friendship. And, in the novella Frying Your Burger you will meet a cast of characters that wouldn't be out of place in a TV sit-com. Think of a combination of Friends and Cheers set in Hollywood.

I would love to see all these characters again in longer works. The short stories and the novella both felt like they might be a part of something bigger--and I would really like to be able to revisit them and hear more of their stories.

They are all quick reads.. perfect for a lunch break or an afternoon by the pool. 4 Stars.




About the Author:

Alana Cash is an adventurer. She’s trekked alone through war-torn Serbia and has slept in a KGB interrogation room in Prague. She’s been to a gypsy fair in rural England, a bullfight in Laredo, and parasailing in Acapulco. She’s been inside the New York Stock Exchange and eaten in J. Pierpont Morgan’s home dining room. She's gone on a ride-along in a New York City patrol car and kissed a man inside the Norman Bates Psycho house at Universal Studios. She’s been a lifeguard, legal secretary, accountant, writer, teacher, filmmaker and artist.

Her experiences are inspiration for her work as an acclaimed writer and filmmaker.

• She was one of 60 US teachers profiled on the PBS series, "A Writer's Exchange," for her talent as a teacher at the University of Texas Informal Classes - many of her students published and won writing awards • Her feature film, "Tom's Wife," based on her novel of the same name, won awards all over the world • Her documentary "Anna Freud: Under Analysis," part of documentary trilogy on women in science, was translated into German for broadcast in Austria, Germany & Switzerland