Somewhere Over the Sun

Just wanted to give a quick update, dear readers. I won’t have much of an online presence for the next week as I am busy being a master bed sheet salesman at a Christmas bazaar here in Mexico City. Kafka sold insurance, I sell bed sheets.

During downtime, I’ll be working on reaching my goal of 50 books read this year (only two to go!), as well as hand-writing a short story that, I regret to inform you, will not be going up on this site. I’ll be aiming to submit it to publications, which is just one more way I’m trying to become a well-known author. 

So, yes. You won’t be hearing much from me, so I wanted to take one more chance to remind you that, if you’re racking your brains for what to give as Christmas presents to friends, family, everyone you know, please consider giving a copy of Somewhere Over the Sun. It received honorable mention at this year’s Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards for Literary Fiction, has an average Amazon rating of 4.8 stars out of 5, and yadda, yadda, yadda. Or buy some bed sheets. 

My offer to send out postcards still stands. Just message me with your address and a one-word writing prompt.

If you want to read a feel good book about happiness, then this is your go-to book. From characterization to plot to overall tone, I feel like this would be a wonderful book to really get yourself re-inspired in life in regards to your outlook on happiness. I think the only people who won’t like this book at all are those Debbie Downers (and no offense to those named Debbie). 

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If you’re at that point in your life where you feel like you need just a good, happy book to read that doesn’t sound like it’s too preachy, then I would suggest this book. Plus, it has lots of great quotes, which is what I’ll leave off this review with. 

“We met at a coffee shop. Coffee shops are places people go to so they can feel like there may be someone out there for them to fall in love with. Everyone huddled around their steaming paper cups and conversations, looking across the room and convinced that if romance happens anywhere, it happens here.” 

“Even people who have lived by oceans their entire lives can still just stand there and stare, and I don’t think the sense of wonder ever goes away.” 

-from a reader’s review of Somewhere Over the Sun on Goodreads. 

If that doesn’t sound like a perfect holiday gift for someone you know, look how happy my friend was while reading it. 

Lyrical and beautiful expression of love between a father and a son. Perfectly captures my sentiments of words, and feeling a natural calling, a pull to words, experienced by writers and editors and others who work with and toy with language as a way of life. 

The storyline is witty, smart, funny, entertaining, warm, deep, and heartfelt. It is completely accessible, and the story is told effortlessly, transitioning with flashbacks and from one point of view to another with characters’ voices distinct and clear. This is rare for any book, but especially for a new writer, I think. 

By page 5, I was hooked. By Chapter 3, I was in love. By the end, I had decided to recommend the book to every reader I knew.

-Stefanie Siefert, 5-star review via Amazon

Somewhere Over the Sun sales figures are almost the same as all Stieg Larsson novels combined, give or take 27 million copies.