About
Born in Richmond, Virginia, and carted back and forth between Virginia and Baltimore, I blame my rootless, restless personality on my father. He was and is a traveling salesman with a keen gift of gab, great wit, a ready joke, and could sell white tennis shoes to coal miners.
It was during these sojourns up and down the east coast I soaked up the stories that would later be Tobacco Sticks and Mica Highways. I think authors should exploit their family history before raping the rest of the culture for material.
Dad finally got tired of the east and moved to the Midwest when I was fourteen. We settled outside of Chicago. It is here I came of age and went off to college for seven years -- two degrees and one novel later I returned to Chicago and lived in many different apartments, trying to get a little two hundred page manuscript called Ripples published.
When a local printer said he would take a chance on my book, I jumped and had my first novel published by a man who had never published anything. Great reviews and moderate sales put me back to my jobs as a janitor, baker, waiter, construction worker, teacher, real estate tycoon, mortgage broker, professor, security guard, salesman -- anything to make a buck and keep writing. The printer lost his mind and published my second novel, too. That landed me with Bantam after some rave reviews and a paperback auction for my second novel, Tobacco Sticks.
A third novel, Mica Highways, was sold on less than one hundred and fifty pages to Bantam and then I did a strange thing -- I settled down to writing in Ernest Hemingway's birthplace in Oak Park, Illinois. I have since been looking for the Great American Novel up in the old red oak rafters and I think I might have finally found one... we'll see.
A Penny for Your Thoughts
Description
<p>Have you ever loved, been loved, been confused about love, or suffered from loss of love? All these feelings have been captured and shared in the words of heartfelt poems, compiled over many years by a former teacher and award-winning author.</p><p>Sherrill S. Cannon now shares her thoughts in this book of feelings. "As a teacher, I used poetry to help counsel many troubled teens and friends, and have continued this pattern throughout the years."</p><p>There are three sections in her book: Heads, Spinning, and Tails ... (Love & Loss: Coin Toss?). The variety of lyrical poetry forms include free verse, blank verse, haiku, and sonnets. Some poems are simply plays on words.</p><p><strong>A Sign</strong></p><p>In the depths of my winter</p><p>I heard a small bird -</p><p>Braving the cold,</p><p>Bringing the word.</p><p>He gave my heart hope</p><p>As I heard him sing -</p><p>Three little notes</p><p>Promising spring.</p><p>Sherrill S. Cannon, a former teacher and grandmother of 10, is the author of nine acclaimed rhymed children's stories that have received 48 national and international book awards between 2011 and 2017. Also a playwright with seven published plays for elementary school children, her works have been performed internationally in over 20 countries. Most of her children's books try to teach something, such as good manners and caring for others. Married for 57 years, she and her spouse are now retired, live in Pennsylvania, and travel in their RV from coast to coast, spending time with their children and grandchildren.</p><p><strong>Publisher's website: </strong> http: //sbprabooks.com/SherrillSCannon</p><p> </p>
Story Behind The Book
Rocket Man was written after I moved to the suburbs from the city. I looked around and found myself and others unable to keep up with what had become the American Dream...the big car, house, bascially the overheated middle class life that had become the American nightmare. When I became the Rocket Man for my son's Scout Troop I knew I had a motif to write this novel of a man isolated in a world rapidly spinning out of control. Rocket Man is a story of our time. A man about to lose his home, trying desperately to hang to what really matters in life. In this way, Rocket Man, is really about us.
Reviews
Best Books of the Year...San Antonoio Express<br />Funniest Novel since Richard Russo's Straight Man...Chicago Sun Times<br />THE FUNNIEST NOVEL OF THE ELECTION YEAR. William Elliott Hazelgrove’s Rocket Man is in the tradition of Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool, Richard Ford’s Independence Day and Tom Poratta‘s Election; all three writers coming to grips with contemporary life in the suburbs. Rocket Man is a satire of life today...Chicago Tribune
