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Ralph Bland's fourth novel, ACE, follows the flights, fancies, and comic pratfalls of John (Ace) Hardaway as he navigates eight months of life in 2005 Nashville, Tennessee. Ace, former pitching phenomenon and athlete extraordinaire, is suddenly 55 years old and attempting to weather the midlife crisis threatening to envelop him--sexual temptations, ghostly visitations, Burmese Pythons beneath his porch, even a mysterious stalker who wants him dead-- but through it all, Ace, unflappable and oft-poetic, continues to seek answers for the overwhelming questions swirling about him, while also learning a few things about baseball, women, and why sometimes a fellow's talents absolutely refuse to stay buried in the ground.
Southern Fiction, serious and sometimes slapstick, is what Ralph Bland serves up in his Music City, USA-based novels. This review is from: ACE (Kindle Edition) Once again Ralph Bland has told a story about a person with real feelings and thoughts. He has a unique way of telling how some men--not all men--experience life. Lots of smiles and laughs, and not a few moments of "that's the way life is." JRH AVAILABLE AT DPDOTCOM.Com, Amazon, and Createspace.com |
Once in Love with Amy
Ralph Bland's first novel is the story of the effects of one woman's life and death on five of her former friends and lovers and even herself. Told in first person narrative from each character's particular view, the novel tells how the recently deceased Amy Martin is nowhere close to dead and gone in the hearts and minds of the people she's known in her time. Spanning Amy's life, this nove is a slapstick tragedy and a bittersweet hike into the past, present, and future psyches of a group of grownups from the 60's still struggling to get their acts together.
"What it does leave the reader with is a sense of the power of friendship and that friendship can transcend the boundaries of death."
-- Brian Cox
The Mountain Press
Find ONCE IN LOVE WITH AMY at:
Amazon
Available in hardback, paper, or Ebook
"What it does leave the reader with is a sense of the power of friendship and that friendship can transcend the boundaries of death."
-- Brian Cox
The Mountain Press
Find ONCE IN LOVE WITH AMY at:
Amazon
Available in hardback, paper, or Ebook
WHERE OR WHEN
Life is a constant struggle for Emily Hughes. Whether she's all in a dither over the recent weird behavior of her eighty-nine-year-old organ-playing mother or fretting over the fact her grown son, Thomas, is dallying with a woman down at the health department or just in a lather that her daughter, Ruthanna, is openly cavorting with the son of her worst enemy, there's always a crisis in view. Add all that to the fact the new minister of music down at the Maxwell Street Baptist Church looks an awful lot like Paul Newman, and suddenly Emily is confronted with an entire hymnal full of rampaging hormones herself. And with Nashville,Tennessee fast becoming a nesting ground for sin and wickedness there's simply no time for a good Christian woman to get any rest at all.
Where Or When is Ralph Bland's second novel.
Available at:
AMAZON
Create Space.com
Available in paper and Ebook
Where Or When is Ralph Bland's second novel.
Available at:
AMAZON
Create Space.com
Available in paper and Ebook
PAST PERFECT
It's May of 1972 in Nashville, Tennessee, and Ken Chaney is experiencing quite the rollercoaster ride during his last week as a student at starchy Southern-Baptist affiliated Ward College. He's having an affair with his faculty advisor, final exams and an honors presentation loom menacingly in his path, his car is dying and he's losing his job, and in between a lion's share of beer and pot he's also up to his neck trying to prevent the love of his fractured life from marrying another man. Lesser fellows might crumble under such pressure, but Ken Chaney can take a licking like this and keep on ticking. After all, He was born and raised in mean and wicked East Nashville, so he's seen all sorts of tough in his time. He knows what a guy has to do when the Hounds of Hell start nipping at his heels, and he's just waiting for the golden day when he triumphs over the world of long odds and windmills evermore doing their best not to tilt.
Available in paper and Ebook.
Find Past Perfect at:
Amazon and Create Space.com
Available in paper and Ebook.
Find Past Perfect at:
Amazon and Create Space.com
NOT DEAD AGAIN: STORIES BY RALPH BLAND
It is Ralph Bland's love for his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, that connects each of the stories in NOT DEAD AGAIN. Whether the setting is occupied by an adolescent girl pondering the effects her parents' divorce will have on her life or a fifty-five year-old- man realizing death comes for everyone, the scene is always surrounded by Nashville with its gleanings of the past, present, and a foreboding sense of what the future might bring.
These are Southern people whose lives collide with love and death, rememberances both bittersweet and harrowing, and the everyday moments of existence that suddenly gallop off into the world of the past, where events were something else, something else indeed. The stories in this book- some funny, some sad, some filled with the ridiculousness that is life itself, suggest there is a tale to be told by everyone, no matter their station on the planet.
These are Southern people whose lives collide with love and death, rememberances both bittersweet and harrowing, and the everyday moments of existence that suddenly gallop off into the world of the past, where events were something else, something else indeed. The stories in this book- some funny, some sad, some filled with the ridiculousness that is life itself, suggest there is a tale to be told by everyone, no matter their station on the planet.
Short Stories
Find this book at AMAZON.COM ANTICIPATION: New in June
Ralph Bland's eleventh novel, Lockhart, is the picaresque tale of Thomas Lockhart from his college days in the 1970s to his landing spot thirty years later in his hometown of Rhodes, Tennessee. Escaping from a dark past and a disreputable present, Tom Lockhart returns to Rhodes to confront the ghosts and demons of his past and somehow carve out a place to stand his ground against age, time, and the worst of all his enemies: himself. From a haunted incident to a shattered romance and the promise of a happy ending, Lockhart walks, runs, and shapeshifts himself through the labyrinthian corridors of the magically realistic world in his path.
Montague Circle (2023) A young, upcoming sportscaster at a TV station in St. Louis has been laid off, losing not only his status as a local celebrity but also the woman of his dreams. Things seem to look up when he lands a similar position at a TV station in Nashville, aka Music City USA. He rents a house there, sight unseen, loads up his pickup and heads in that direction—only to find that his new job is not at all what he’d hoped for, and his neighbors on Montague Circle are a bizarre mixed bag of eccentric characters. One of them, however, might easily measure up to the love he left behind, but unfortunately, she already has a live-in boyfriend. Will he be able to move on from his lost love, and will he find a job that measures up to the one he left behind? Only time will tell, but if he is not successful, it won’t be because he didn’t give it the good old college try.
Montague Circle (2023) A young, upcoming sportscaster at a TV station in St. Louis has been laid off, losing not only his status as a local celebrity but also the woman of his dreams. Things seem to look up when he lands a similar position at a TV station in Nashville, aka Music City USA. He rents a house there, sight unseen, loads up his pickup and heads in that direction—only to find that his new job is not at all what he’d hoped for, and his neighbors on Montague Circle are a bizarre mixed bag of eccentric characters. One of them, however, might easily measure up to the love he left behind, but unfortunately, she already has a live-in boyfriend. Will he be able to move on from his lost love, and will he find a job that measures up to the one he left behind? Only time will tell, but if he is not successful, it won’t be because he didn’t give it the good old college try.
