Category: Book Release

Charmayne Samuelson has a Best Seller (and More!)

Posted on by Mark Davis

LCW’s very own Charmayne Samuelson is now a best seller on Amazon in the Latin American Biographies category with her new book, SPENCER MacCALLUM Memories-Mystique-Mata Ortiz. Here’s the synopsis:

Was it all destiny? The mesmerizing Spencer MacCallum story is the tale of an incurable explorer who meets his destiny! Charmayne Samuelson is an Award-Winning Author introducing this authorized and definitive biography of Spencer MacCallum, the American Princeton-educated anthropologist who discovered Juan Quezada and Mata Ortiz pottery. Buying three distressed pots in Deming, NM, he was sure they were prehistoric. When told they were not, he went on an adventure to find the potter and did not give up until he did. Praise for the book from Mata Ortiz experts hails it as “Wonderfully written!” and “An important book!” A biography in progress for many years, and after hundreds of interview hours and extensive research extracting his life story from audio and video tapes, this cross-border adventure is now available for all to enjoy. From childhood, each step of Spencer’s life seemed destined to take him to Juan Quezada and Mata Ortiz. His natural curiosity at a young age of discovering ancient relics continued on with this incredible tale of him trekking across Mexico to find one single potter, dirt-poor farmer/cowboy Juan Quezada, propelling him onto the world stage as an unlikely superstar artist. As time went on, and as Spencer’s legacy, thousands of village potters have found true artistic and monetary success in their once-dirt-poor village in Mata Ortiz,

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Desert Exposure Winners!

Posted on by Mark Davis

Southern NM’s Desert Exposure arts and culture magazine just selected LCW’s own Karen Ray for Grand Prize for her poem “Flying with Sheets” that recollects the idyll of youth growing up in the desert. It reminded me of hitching those spring winds with a sheet fashioned into a sail and attached to a ten speed, all part of my own crazy, experimental youth.

Multiple winner Efram Carrasco won Prose Honorable Mention for “The Desert Girl,” and many other local writers won awards as well.

Finally, LCW’s Charmayne Samuelson’s new biography Spencer MacCallum Memories – Mystique – Mata Ortiz is discussed in the same issue.

To check out all these great works, you can read the PDF or pick up a copy locally.…

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The Making of an Army Psychologist

Posted on by Mark Davis

Check out Bob Worthington‘s new book, The Making of an Army Psychologist. Here’s the press release:

THIRD BOOK OF VIETNAM TRILOGY PUBLISHED BY LAS CRUCES VETERAN

LAS CRUCES, NM— Las Cruces resident, writer, and Army veteran Dr. Bob Worthington has published the third book of a planned military trilogy titled “The Making of an Army Psychologist.” The book was released by McFarland Publishers on March 22, 2023, and is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other bookstores.

“This book is about my last decade in the Army,” said Worthington. “I needed money to complete graduate school and had already served one tour as a combat advisor so I returned to Vietnam as a combat advisor.” Worthington describes in this book being a graduate student earning both his master’s degree and doctorate in psychology. He depicts his clinical work with Vietnam vets, American POWs and research regarding PTSD. Also covered are his experiences as a sport psychologist with the U.S. Olympics and his work in the courtroom as a forensic psychologist.

“The Making of an Army Psychologist” is the last follow up to Worthington’s previous books, “Under Fire with the ARVN Infantry” and “Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat,” both of which were recognized with a national award for Excellence in Literature by the Military Writers Society of America. The author is now finishing the manuscript for his next book about his forty years as a pilot, aviation journalist and aviation psychologist.

Worthington is a multiple

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La Llorona – Carol Montgomery Mystery #3

Posted on by Mark Davis

Check out Fenton Kay‘s newest book in his Carol Montgomery Mystery series. Now available on Amazon.

Here’s the synopsis:

La Llorona Park is dedicated to the legend of the wailing woman. According to the legend, the apparition wanders along rivers, streams, and ponds, wailing, crying, and looking for her drowned children. A young woman is found dead in the Rio Grande in her white wedding dress at the edge of La Llorona Park. The dead woman’s fiancé had disappeared minutes before their wedding. Walkers and lovers in La Llorona Park at night are accosted by a wailing wraith wearing a white dress.

Carol Montgomery’s engineer-in-training, Roger McPherson, and Carol want to know why the old adobe beside the park has an antenna on the roof and is so clean inside. Is that connected somehow to the wraith? Detective Xochitl Sanchez is assigned to unravel the death of the young woman who died from an antidepressant overdose? Carol and Xochitl are brought together as each tries to decipher what is happening at La Llorona Park. Is there a connection between La Llorona, the wraith, and the dead women in the river? The women are unsuccessfully attacked by masked thugs, and Carol is shot at by a pair of hired killers.

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Mark William Davis Releases Entanglements

Posted on by Mark Davis

Now available in Kindle, softcover, and hardcover versions, Entanglements assembles a decade of short works by author, scientist, entrepreneur, and inventor Mark William Davis.

The fiction includes an intimate experimental triptych on the evolution of sexual identities. A genre-defying poetic meditation on creativity and environmental holocaust competes with conventional science fiction about quantum consciousness and virtual worlds. A postmodern interrogation of the intersection of storytelling and film rounds out the collected works as a counterpoint to an introductory dive into the ethics of altruism.

The nonfiction is divided into topics ranging from literary theory to philosophical concerns of religion, science, and artificial intelligence. Legal theories are magnified to examine the meaning of liberty and autonomy. A qualitative mathematics of free will is developed over the course of two essays and contextualized as part of the algorithm of evolution. What meaning really amounts to is always a central concern, whether discussing politics, culture, or ideas.

The works show the author’s own evolution in his thinking of our entanglement with reality as driven by underlying metaphors that transect science, reason, and society. For Davis, metaphors and the constellations of words that help frame them are the raw materials of thought, and their evolution and refinement is the central narrative of our growth as individuals in a webwork of societies and systems.

Entanglements is for readers who are in love with ideas and the networks of language that support and enervate them. It is a metalinguistic swim along a polychromatic reef …

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Bob Worthington Wins National Book Award

Posted on by Mark Davis

Las Cruces Writers is thrilled to announce that our very own Bob Worthington has won another book award for his new book, Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat. Below is the official press release. Congrats to Bob!

LAS CRUCES VETERAN & AUTHOR WINS NATIONAL AWARD FOR
SECOND VIETNAM BOOK

LAS CRUCES, NM — Las Cruces resident, writer, and Army veteran Dr. Bob Worthington’s book “Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat” has been awarded a silver medal from the Military Writers Society of America (MWSA). The second book of Dr. Worthington’s Vietnam military trilogy, the award was announced on August 27, 2022.

MWSA President Bob Doerr said that Dr. Worthington’s book earned the silver medal in the memoir/biography category after scoring “high enough in our rigorous evaluation process to win a medal recognizing (his) achievement.” Dr. Worthington’s “Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat” was recognized for the writing, editing, and its publication. “(He) should be very proud of (his) accomplishment,” Doerr said. “We certainly are.”

Dr. Worthington describes his second tour in Vietnam as some of the fiercest fighting of the war and tells of his experiences training South Vietnamese commandos to conduct raids in the swamps south of Saigon.

“Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat” is the follow up to Worthington’s previous book, “Under Fire with the ARVN Infantry,” which was awarded a national award for Excellence in Literature by the Military Writers Society of America. The author’s final book in the trilogy, “The Making …

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