By Mary Jane Farmer from information provided by Motina Books.

     Motina Books

Motina Books Publishing is a small, independent press located in Van Alstyne. Owner and publisher Diane J. Windsor said, “We mostly focus on bringing books written by women and mothers to life, but we do have a couple of male authors. We love to support new authors, small bookstores, and libraries.” The company will be releasing two new novels in February, both by out-of-state, prolific authors.

One can view the publisher’s Website at www.MotinaBooks.com, and can reach Windsor by E-mail at Diane@MotinaBooks.com

The Communion of Shadows

“The Communion of Shadows” by Gordon Bonnet

It’s August of 1850, deep in the bayou country of southern Louisiana. Four good friends are working in the fields harvesting the crops when a sudden thunderstorm drives them all indoors.
There’s kind, warm-hearted J. P. Ayo; eager, earnest young T-Joe Lirette; wry, hard-bitten Clovis Dantin; and gentle, easy-going Leandre Naquin.
“Hell of a night,” Leandre remarks, as they share a drink and wait for the storm to pass. “The kind of night when the ghosts walk.”
This seemingly off-hand comment is the impetus to the four men sharing their own ghost story. The tale each man tells — by turns being tragic, funny, frightening, and heartbreaking — gives them a window into their friends’ souls. When one of them confesses that his own personal ghost story isn’t over, that he’s still trapped in the middle of it, the events that follow will test the depth of their loyalty and friendship in ways that none of them could ever have dreamed.
What is certain is that after that night, none of the four will ever be the same.
Author Gordon Bonnet has been writing fiction since he was six years old, with a passion for storytelling and a deep love of the written word. He has always been fascinated with the paranormal, but his love of science, languages, and history also shows through in his writing.
“The Communion of Shadows“ is an homage to Bonner’s home, as he was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. When he’s not writing, he can usually be found running, making pottery, or playing music. He lives in rural upstate New York with his wife and two dogs. Go Online for more information at wwwGordonBonnet.com.

This new book will be released on February 21 and will be available as e-Book ISBN: 979-8-88784-002-4; Paperback and Hardcover through Amazon, and everywhere books are sold.

Home is a Made-Up Place

“Home is a Made-Up Place” by Ronit Plank
“A poignant and melancholy collection of stories about the constant search for a place to belong.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Home is a Made-Up Place“ expertly plumbs the complicated and surprising depths of motherhood and daughterhood while introducing characters who thrill and linger. A tender and exacting debut from an exciting new voice.” — Marie-Helene Bertino, author of “Parakeet”
“Stories that traverse the fraught territories between old conflicts and new starts, old patterns and uncomfortable realizations. Peopled by characters who are as complex and compromised as your own family, this is a lucid and compassionate collection by a writer to watch.” — Cate Kennedy, author of “Like a House on Fire”

“Home is a Made-Up Place“ invites readers into the lives of people grappling with emotional injuries and who are confronting the past to become who they wish to be. Set in New York City, New England, the Southwest, and rural Alaska, a single mother fights to protect her son, a daughter tries to forget her missing mother, a couple struggles to keep a marriage together and their children safe, and a family must face the truth about their father.

Bracing and intimate, “Home is a Made-Up Place” is a collection of stories about fighting for personal power, recognizing the difference between what can and cannot be changed, and the pull of familial attachments despite the toll they might take.
Author Ronit Plank is a Seattle-based writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The lowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir, “When She Comes Back,” about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation, was named a  Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the
Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Plank’s fiction and creative nonfiction
have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology,
and her short story collection “Home is a Made-up Place” won the Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award.

This book becomes available on February 28 and will be available through the publisher and everywhere books are sold, and as an eBook with ISBN: 998887840093.

Windsor said that she will also be providing copies of both books to the Van Alstyne Public Library for check-out.

“Judy (Librarian Judy Kimzey) is very supportive of my books,” Windsor said, and added that she is a member of the Library Board.

Courtesy Photo

The family of the late Canadian country legend Ian Tyson, CM AOE, has confirmed the singer-songwriter died from on-going health complications on Dec. 29, 2022, at his ranch in southern Alberta, Canada, at age 89.

Tyson was born to British immigrants in Victoria, and grew up in Duncan B.C. A rough stock rider in his late teens and early twenties, he took up the guitar while recovering from an injury he sustained in a bad fall in the rodeo.

Ian Tyson’s story from there is familiar to most. He upped stakes from Vancouver Island and hitchhiked to Toronto, where he met a young singer from small-town Ontario called Sylvia Fricker. As Ian & Sylvia, they were the Canadian stars of the early ’60s folk boom that gave the world Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, the Clancy Brothers, and the Kingston Trio.

Married in 1964, the pair made almost a dozen albums — and wrote some of Canada’s best-loved songs, including Ian’s “Four Strong Winds” and “Someday Soon,” and Sylvia’s “You Were on My Mind” — songs that have all been covered countless times by some of the most famous artists of our time, including Dylan, Neil Young, Judy Collins, and a young Canadian singer the couple mentored in his early days, Gordon Lightfoot.

During the British Invasion, Ian and Sylvia evolved into pioneers of country-rock. Their band, Great Speckled Bird, rivaled the Byrds and other groups which helped create modern country, a decade before the Urban Cowboy phase of contemporary “new traditionalists.”

After hosting a national Canadian television music show from 1970 to 1975, Tyson realized his dream of returning to the Canadian West. The music and marriage of Ian and Sylvia had ended. It was now or never. Disillusioned with the Canadian country music scene, Tyson decided the time had come to return to his first love – training horses in the ranch country of southern Alberta.

After three idyllic years cowboying in the Rockies at Pincher Creek, Tyson recorded the album Old Corrals & Sagebrush, consisting of cowboy songs, both traditional and new. “It was a kind of a musical Christmas card for my friends” he recalls. “We weren’t looking for a ‘hit’ or radio play or anything like that.” Unbeknownst to Tyson and his friends, the cowboy renaissance was about to find expression at the inaugural Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1983; a small coterie of saddle makers, rawhide braiders, cowboy poets and pickers discovered one another in a small cow town in northern Nevada. Tyson was invited to perform his “new western music”— and he’s missed only one or two gatherings in the 30-plus years since.

Bob Dylan and the Band recorded his song “One Single River” in Woodstock, New York, in 1967. The recording can be found on the unreleased Genuine Basement Tapes, vol. 1. Judy Collins recorded a version of his song “Someday Soon” in 1968.

Tyson was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989, and was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, He became a member of the Order of Canada in 1994; and in 2003, he received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award; and was inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2006.

In 1989, Tyson was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2005, CBC Radio One listeners chose his song “Four Strong Winds” as the greatest Canadian song of all time on the series 50 Tracks: The Canadian Version. with his former wife and singing partner, Sylvia, in 1992. He has been a strong influence on many Canadian artists, including Neil Young, who recorded “Four Strong Winds” for Comes a Time (1978). Johnny Cash would also record the same song for American V: A Hundred Highways (2006).

Ian Tyson sharef the Calgary Folk Festival stage with fellow-Canadian Corb Lund a few years back. Lund recorded two of Tyson’s songs, “Montana Waltz” and “Road to Las Cruces” on his latest project, “Songs My Friends Wrote.”

Life has not been without its difficulties, however. In 2006, he seriously damaged his voice after a particularly tough performance at an outdoor country music festival.

“I fought the sound system and I lost,” he said afterwards. With a virus that took months to pass, his smooth voice was now hoarse, grainy, and had lost much of its resonant bottom end. After briefly entertaining thoughts that he would never sing again, he began relearning and reworking his songs to accommodate his “new voice.” To his surprise, audiences now paid rapt attention as he half-spoke, half-sung familiar words, which seemed to reveal new depths for his listeners.

Tyson released his most recent single “You Should Have Known” in September 2017 on Stony Plain Records, the label that Tyson’s released 15 albums with since the ‘80s. The song unapologetically celebrated the hard living, hard drinking, hard loving cowboy life and joins his favorites such as hits like “Four Strong Winds,” “Someday Soon,” “Summer Wages” and more.

The family will hold a closed service and have requested privacy at this time.

Donations in Ian’s memory can be made to The Ian Tyson Legacy Fund – https://www.westernfolklife.org/donate

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