The Incredible Transformations of Alice Hollywood

The Incredible Transformations of Alice Hollywood
Author: Djuna Shellam
Publisher: Magnhild Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2013-11-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0971052727

Alice Hollywell, the young spitfire from Hollywood, and her best friend, the poor little rich girl Em Martín from nearby Bel Air, CA, are stationed on a remote military base in West Texas in the mid-1970s. Worldly Alice "Hollywood" Hollywell is notorious for changing "teams" without notice. Em is shy and seemingly sheltered and has a secret. Despite their differences, their friendship blossoms into something they never imagined. The arrest of their friend Whitey, and rumors about an investigation into his friends and associates creates a frightening environment, complicating everything. On base, and particularly within their inner circle, the atmosphere is rife with suspicion and fear. Alice and Em realize the military is a very dangerous place for them, and quickly find themselves in the middle of a rabid witch-hunt. Decisions are made with disastrous consequences. Alice Hollywood is a bonafide page-turner, leading the reader down a road of what's next and through myriad subplots, making this multi-dimensional story and its equally dimensional characters a reader's delight. Once you start reading, you won't want to stop, even when you read the last line. But don't worry, because there's much more to come. Alice Hollywood is Book One of The Em Suite Series.

A Woman Like Eve

A Woman Like Eve
Author: Djuna Shellam
Publisher: Magnhild Press
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2023-10-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1953819036

All is well with Em Martín and her alternative family circle. In fact, things couldn't be better. She and her partner are back at home in Bel Air, CA after helping Dot Baverstock get back on her feet in Palm Springs, and have fully embraced their new roles. Em is happy and beyond content, feeling lucky she's found "the one." Life is really good. Until... it's not. As if on cue, Eve Magnussen's past, one she's kept buried for two decades, has suddenly bubbled to the surface. A past, that when fully revealed, has the potential to blow up her perfect life. Prairie Vaughn's Montana family suffers a health crisis, and Dot encounters danger and experiences a devastating loss. And, in the blink of an eye, everyone's favorite and seemingly unbreakable couple is on the verge of broken. What is the line that cannot be crossed... the bridge too far... the things that cannot be undone and threaten to unravel a solid relationship? Will Eve's past prove too terrible, sordid, and unforgivable? Will love win? In Book 5 of The Em Suite Series, A Woman Like Eve, Eve reveals her painful and sordid history, taking readers on a not-so-nostalgic trip back to the hedonistic Seventies and Eighties. Meanwhile, Em seeks to relocate and create the perfect domain for her growing family.

Mackenna on the Edge

Mackenna on the Edge
Author: Djuna Shellam
Publisher: Magnhild Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2017-07-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0971052751

In this sequel/prequel to The Incredible Transformations of Alice Hollywood, nearly twenty years have passed since a fiery crash changed Em Martín’s life. Now living in Los Angeles, and known professionally as Mackenna, a recent life-altering tragedy has her in an emotional tailspin. Memories and regrets previously buried and ignored have been churned up. In a desperate effort to stop her downward spiral into melancholy, Mackenna turns to her writing for emotional support; as well as a vehicle for getting to the root cause of her current mental and emotional frailty. While culling through her life for clues, the Southland is rocked by a devastating earthquake, further complicating Mackenna’s difficult self-exploration. Enter Eve, an earthquake refugee and an uncomfortable reminder of a past Mackenna has spent many years trying to ignore—and forget. A delicate dance of avoidance ensues until a devastating secret is exposed, driving Mackenna to the edge of disaster. Will Eve be the last straw, and push Mackenna over the edge? Or will she be the one to save Mackenna from the lower depths? In a departure from her first novel, Alice Hollywood, Djuna Shellam takes us back and forth in time in a seamless fashion to tell the story in a story. Prepare yourself for a stunning twist that will take your breath away.

Nom de Plume

Nom de Plume
Author: Djuna Shellam
Publisher: Magnhild Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2020-10-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 195381901X

For as many reasons as there are days in a year... a century... or millennia, some novelists choose to write incognito. By using an alias, pen name; or, as the French so beautifully say, nom de plume, they'll cloak their true identities. The nom de plume, while convenient, does present a bit of a conundrum for the writer. Whose backstory or biography should an author employ introducing themselves to their reading public? Their own, or their literary double's. Enter the creative mind. The very nature of a fiction writer is to write fiction, is it not? Indeed, it is. And, so... Shellam's story begins in Australia as Siobhán Aoife O'Shea, the only child of Irish-born parents. Growing up on a remote farm, her young life is idyllic. Though isolated from everything beyond the farm, Siobhán's life is filled with work, her books, and her parents' love. As a young teen, tragedy ensues, forcing her to survive on her own and learn to live in a strange and mysterious world. In this coming-of-age story, Djuna Shellam—nom de plume—author of The Em Suite Series, shares the early years of an unconventional life in Vol 1 of her memoir series, The True-Life Adventures of Djuna Shellam. Beginning in the Victoria countryside, her story continues to Melbourne, VIC. Siobhán enters uncharted territory that's fraught with challenges, discoveries, love, and heartache. As she gains a footing in her new world, solved mysteries and shared secrets create lifelong bonds in the gripping story of an extraordinary life.

Faith, God & Rock 'n' Roll

Faith, God & Rock 'n' Roll
Author: Mark Joseph
Publisher: Bobcat Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2011-08-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0857124536

God Rocks! Or at least for an increasing fraction of the global population he does. No longer associated with evangelical 'happy clappers' sporting tambourines and sandals, these days the Christian message is being delivered by a swelling number of faithful musicians from every genre - rock, pop, R&B, dance and country. Of course, the real aim to promote God remains, but at least it's not so cringeworthy anymore.

Dreamtime Alice

Dreamtime Alice
Author: Mandy Sayer
Publisher: House of Books
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2012
Genre: Australians
ISBN: 9781743314708

'I danced and danced because the neon light across the road had just blinked on, because it was the middle of spring, because I was twenty-one, because my father was playing beside me. . . .' In this vivid, seductive, gorgeously written memoir, Mandy Sayer recounts the fascinating years she spent performing on the streets of New York and New Orleans with her father. Gerry Sayer was a jazz drummer, a beguiling Irish charmer with a million stories and an insatiable love for jam sessions and all-night parties. Mandy grew up captivated by his outrageous tales even after he left the family for good and her mother descended into the distance of drink. When her siblings failed him by rejecting the bohemian performing life, Mandy saw her chance to become a character in his stories, part of the only life he really loved. So she learned to tap-dance, and they set off together to satisfy their grand ambitions on the toughest stage in the world - New York. Driven by their dream of making it big, Mandy and Gerry arrived in the city with no place to stay and only costumes to their names. They became part of the thrilling, precarious world of street performers - jugglers, magicians, fire-eaters, dancers - who eked out their livings at the mercy of the elements, the cops, complaining neighbors, and lurking thieves.

Hollywood's Silent Closet

Hollywood's Silent Closet
Author: Darwin Porter
Publisher: Blood Moon Productions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 764
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780966803020

Hollywood's Silent Closet provides a banquet of information about the pansexual intrigues of Hollywood between 1919 and 1926, compiled from eyewitness interviews with men and women, all of them insiders, who flourished in its midst. Not for the timid, it names names and doesn't spare the guilty. If you believe, like Truman Capote, that the literary treatment of gossip will become the literature of the 21st century, then you will love Hollywood's Silent Closet. Hollywood's Silent Closet is a vivid portrait of the decadent, homosexual, and gossipy world of pre-talkie Hollywood. It's an Info-Novel where 90% of everything in it is true. It represents the greatest collection of star-studded scandal ever assembled on the film stars of Hollywood's Silent Era. Valentino, Ramon Novarro, Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Pola Negri, Nazimova, and many others figure into eyewitness accounts of the debauched excesses that went on behind closed doors. It also documents the often tragic endings of America's first screen idols, some of whom admitted to being more famous than the monarchs of England and Jesus Christ combined. Many of the interviews that went into the compilation of this book were conducted between 1940 and 1974, as the subjects were nearing the end of their lives and were willing, at last, to reveal scandals and insights that had previously been repressed by their own fears and by the media machines of the studio system. Marriages of convenience are the norm as intra-male peccadillos (and lots of lesbian love, too) are swept under the potted palms of the Edwardian age. The hero of this tale is the amiably cross-dressing Durango Jones, a wide-eyed neophyte from Kansas, circa 1919, who hits Hollywood during its Pre-Code excesses, and stays for a sexual feast wherein the banquet consists of many of the era's most flamboyant sex symbols. And although technically, this title has been formatted as a novel rather than a straight-line biography, there's the sometimes disturbing sense that this book is genuinely historical as well as being a jolly and rollicking piece of very savvy entertainment. This is high-testosterone Hollywood at its most compulsively readable. The 60s didn't invent sex-the stars of the Silent Screen did. --Cruiser. Who slept with Mary Pickford's three husbands, her two brothers-in-law, and even her brother? The hero of Hollywood's Silent Closet, that's who! --Trova Roma.

Hollywood's Copyright Wars

Hollywood's Copyright Wars
Author: Peter Decherney
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2013-09-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0231159471

Beginning with Thomas Edison's aggressive copyright disputes and concluding with recent lawsuits against YouTube, Hollywood's Copyright Wars follows the struggle of the film, television, and digital media industries to influence and adapt to copyright law. Though much of Hollywood's engagement with the law occurs offstage, in the larger theater of copyright, many of Hollywood's most valued treasures, from Modern Times (1936) to Star Wars (1977), cannot be fully understood without appreciating their legal controversies. Peter Decherney shows that the history of intellectual property in Hollywood has not always mirrored the evolution of the law and recounts these extralegal solutions and their impact on American media and culture.

Hollywood Hellraisers

Hollywood Hellraisers
Author: Robert Sellers
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2009-10-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 162873146X

“I don’t know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I’m going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.”—Marlon Brando “I should have been dead ten times over. I believe in miracles. It’s an absolute miracle that I’m still around.”—Dennis Hopper “You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police.”—Jack Nicholson “The best time to get married is noon. That way, if things don’t work out, you haven’t blown the whole day.”—Warren Beatty They’re the baddest bad-asses Hollywood as ever seen: Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson. They are men to whom rules did not apply; normal standards of behavior were simply too wearisome to worry about. These are men who brawled, boozed, snorted, and screwed their way into legendhood—but along the way they changed acting and the way movies were made forever. Hollywood Hellraisers is a whistle-stop tour of jaw-dropping sexual activity, misbehavior of an Olympic standard, all-out excess, and genuine madness. It’s a wonder Hollywood survived.

Sleepless in Hollywood

Sleepless in Hollywood
Author: Lynda Obst
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-06-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1476727767

The veteran producer and author of the bestseller Hello, He Lied takes a witty and critical look at the new Hollywood. Over the past decade, producer Lynda Obst gradually realized she was working in a Hollywood that was undergoing a drastic transformation. The industry where everything had once been familiar to her was suddenly disturbingly strange. Combining her own industry experience and interviews with the brightest minds in the business, Obst explains what has stalled the vast moviemaking machine. The calamitous DVD collapse helped usher in what she calls the New Abnormal (because Hollywood was never normal to begin with), where studios are now heavily dependent on foreign markets for profit, a situation which directly impacts the kind of entertainment we get to see. Can comedy survive if they don’t get our jokes in Seoul or allow them in China? Why are studios making fewer movies than ever—and why are they bigger, more expensive and nearly always sequels or recycled ideas? Obst writes with affection, regret, humor and hope, and her behind-the-scenes vantage point allows her to explore what has changed in Hollywood like no one else has. This candid, insightful account explains what has happened to the movie business and explores whether it’ll ever return to making the movies we love—the classics that make us laugh or cry, or that we just can’t stop talking about.