Author Spotlight - Michael Rittenhouse

Did your parents talk to you about sex?

Mine didn’t. I remember this rising in my mind as I watched the final episode of The Wonder Years, when my hero, Kevin, revealed that his folks never talked to him, either.

That’s when I began to wonder how many others were like me, kids who came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, learning everything we could from TV, movies, music, and whatever books we could get our hands on.

Much later, as a husband and father, I started to think about my generation and how we were going to bridge the gap with our own children. I polled my friends and found that most of them never heard about sex from their folks. They were no more ready to cover this with their kids than I was.

Sex isn’t some isolated topic like IRS Form 1040EZ that you can just learn, or teach, in one sitting. Sexuality infuses our whole being (a point I grasped listening to talks by a priest). It’s part of who we are. I could no more instruct my son about healthy sexuality in a one-lesson format than I could teach him how to be a father, a gentleman, or a good listener. It’s something we build into ourselves, the result of years of good decisions and hard learning with a cultivated instinct at the bottom.

Also, as my generation discovered, there are plenty of people waiting to screw us up with bad information. Most of this takes the form of sex-oriented marketing, wishful thinking by liberation fantasists, or individuals looking to validate themselves by indoctrinating others.

So who’s giving us right answers?

I looked around for someone like me who’s sorted things out in a book, and found very few. So I took some advice I saw somewhere which said, if you can’t find the book you want, write it yourself.

I did that with Sex: What Your Parents Didn’t Tell You. Even while test-marketing that book, I started hearing from people that it would make a good presentation. I’m a fearless public speaker, so I’ve started booking live talks, taking questions and listening to real-world experiences from mothers and fathers, parents-to-be, even grandparents.

Everybody wants the right answers.

 

Michael Rittenhouse is my pen name. (My real name’s kind of bland.) I’m a University of Texas graduate with a background in writing and a long history of storytelling.

A while back, my wife and I sold our house and moved our family into an RV. We travel the country with our three children, learning all we can from real life and the Great Books.

Please have patience with this site, as I’m a WordPress noob. If you want, you can contact me at rittenhouse.michael at gmail.com.

Author Spotlight - TM Franklin

T.M. Franklin started out her career writing non-fiction in a television newsroom. Graduating with a B.A. in Communications specializing in broadcast journalism and production, she worked for nine years as a major market television news producer, and garnered two regional Emmy Awards, before she resigned to be a full-time mom and part-time freelance writer. Her first published novel, MORE, was born during National Novel Writing month, a challenge to write a novel in thirty days. MORE was well-received, being selected as a finalist in the 2013 Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Awards, as well as winning the Suspense/Thriller division of the Blogger Book Fair Reader’s Choice Awards.

In addition to MORE and its sequels, The Guardians and TWELVE, Franklin penned the Amazon best-selling short stories,Window and A Piece of Cake, as well as a quirky YA romance,How to Get Ainsley Bishop to Fall in Love with You. Ainsley is Franklin’s first love story without a paranormal or fantasy aspect, although she believes love is the best kind of magic.

Author Spotlight - Rebekah Crane

Rebekah Crane fell in love with YA literature while studying Secondary English Education at Ohio University. After having two kids, living in six different cities, and finally settling down in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, her first novel, PLAYING NICE, was published. ASPEN, her second YA novel, released in June 2014. Rebekah's other accomplishments include: World's Biggest Julie Andrews Fan and current girlfriend to Jane Austen (it's kind of a one-sided relationship). She is also widely known for singing an impeccable rendition of Janis Joplin's "Me and My Bobby McGee" and credits herself with single-handedly bringing back tie-dye. 

Rebekah now spends her day carpooling kids or tucked behind a laptop at 7,500 ft high in the Rockies, where the altitude only enhances the writing experience. 

www.rebekahcrane.com

Author Spotlight - Mary Catherine Gebhard

Mary Catherine Gebhard bites off more than she can chew and sometimes calls herself Eva Natsumi. She's lived in Salt Lake City, Utah her entire life, but occasionally goes on vacation from reality. Don't worry, she sends postcards.

www.marygebhard.com

Author Spotlight - Jacinda Buchmann

Jacinda Buchmann lives in Arizona with her husband and three children. She graduated from Carroll College, in Helena, Montana, with a B.A. in elementary education and later received a Master’s degree from Northern Arizona University, in school counseling. After spending several years as a teacher and later a school counselor, she now spends her time writing, any free chance she can get, that is, when she’s not spending time with her family or creating a new concoction in the kitchen.

www.jacindabuchmann.com

Author Spotlight - Holli Anderson

Holli Anderson has a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing--which has nothing to do with writing, except maybe by adding some pretty descriptive injury and vomit scenes to her books. She discovered her joy of writing during a very trying period in her life when escaping into make-believe saved her. She enjoys reading any book she gets her hands on, but has a particular love for anything fantasy.

Along with her husband, Steve, and their four sons, she lives in Grantsville, Utah--the same small town in which she grew up.

www.holli-anderson.com

Author Spotlight - Elaine Breson

Elaine is a Florida native who recently packed up and moved her family to Utah. She is the author of the romantic suspense novel Keep Me Safe. She is a stay at home mom to two younger children and runs a crafting business from home. When she's not cleaning up after her kiddos or using her creative mind for a customer, you can find her satisfying her need for her favorite TV series or listening to music. Though finding time to write often seems like a lost cause, she uses every free minute to work on her second novel, Out Of the Smoke.