Category: Overlook

WFWA Online Book Launch Party

Published on by Elizabeth Hein1 Comment

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On May 10th, I will be part of the WFWA’s Online Book Launch Party. The quarterly Facebook parties are always lively and attended by an awesome group of authors. This event will be extra special for me because my buddy, Samantha Bryant, is celebrating a book launch as well.

Drop by the  Women’s Fiction Online Book Launch Party  on Tuesday afternoon and chat with me from 4:00 – 4:30.

Check out the impressive line-up of amazing authors:

May 10th from 1:00 – 6:00

1:00 — Kristy Harvey — Lies and Other Acts of Love

1:30 — Aimie Runyan — Promised to the Crown

2:00 — Weina Randel — The Empress of Bright Moon

2:30 –Cara Achterberg — Girls’ Weekend

3:00 — Nicole Meier — The House of Bradbury

3:30 — Alessandra Harris — Blaming the Wind

4:00 — Elizabeth Hein — Escape Plan

4:30 — Cynthia Ruchti — Song of Silence

5:00 — Samantha Bryant — Change of Life

5:30  — Camille Di Maio — The Memory of Us

 

 

Call for Beta Readers

Published on by Elizabeth Hein4 Comments

I am in the final stretch of getting the sequel to Overlook (tentatively called Escape Plan) published. Before I send it off to the editor, I would like a few of my wonderful readers take a look at a draft and give me some feedback.

This novel has a bit more suspense than my other novels, so I don’t want to give too much away here, however, here is a sufficiently vague blurb:

After rashly getting rid of her husband, Kitty Haskell has to deal with the consequences of her actions. With the help of her good friend, Stacia, Kitty is finding her way to a new life post-Seth. However, Stacia’s help comes with a heavy dose of obligation. When Stacia discovers that her childhood friend and adult rival, Bitsy Magnuson-Evans, is in serious trouble as well, she asks Kitty to take Bitsy in and keep her secret. The situation gets increasingly complicated as Kitty is forced to deal with her husband’s mistress showing up with a baby in tow, supporting her own children, and the intriguing young artist that makes her weak in the knees.

If you are interested in receiving a draft of the novel, please reply to this post. Also, tell me if you would like a free copy of the first book, Overlook, for reference.

Jackson Katz Video

Published on by Elizabeth Hein3 Comments

While researching the topic of domestic violence for an upcoming book, I came across this interesting TED talk from last year and wanted to share it with my readers. I am considering introducing the topic of domestic violence into the second book in my Overlook series, but it is a complex subject and I want to get it right. Also, that series takes place in 1976, so I have to be clear about how domestic abuse was treated then by the police and by society.

Anyway, I liked the connections Jackson Katz makes in this video between people’s attitudes towards domestic violence and society’s need to maintain the status quo. He also stresses the need for men to speak out against violence of all sorts as bystanders and peers. It’s worth watching.

What Does Happy Look Like

Published on by Elizabeth Hein4 Comments

Emotional intelligence needs to be developed in order for a person to successfully navigate the social world. I find that many parents don’t think to talk to their children about their emotional lives. We assume that kids can and do correctly identify what they are feeling. This is not always the case. Unless we talk to our children and help them identify what they are feeling in a situation and how to express that, they may grow up to be emotionally stifled adults.

In my writing, I spend quite a bit of time with some seriously stifled people. Lately, I have been exploring what happens when a woman can’t express anger and resentment on a day-to-day basis. The results end up being explosive and fatal for her relationships. I am also interested in how a lack of emotional self awareness could contribute to bullying behavior, especially in girls. Could a better sense of appropriate and inappropriate ways to express negative emotions lessen bullying behavior? Could children and adults live more satisfying lives if they had a better sense of what happy looked like? What do you think?

Being Kind In a Bullying Situation

Published on by Elizabeth Hein1 Comment

I stumbled across this clip while researching bullying for the third book in the Overlook series. I appreciate the speaker’s sensitivity to how difficult it is to act in the moment when another child is being bullied. It is still meaningful to the bullied child if another kid says something kind  at a safer time.