Cover Reveal and Q&A for Fire Season by Hollye Dexter!

Fire Season by Hollye Dexter will be released April 15.  Below is the cover reveal for the book plus a Q&A with the author!  Make sure to check out the book trailer for the book.  We will have  a review up on Thursday, April 23!  Can't wait to dig in! :)

About the book:
Awakened by her husband’s yells of panic, Hollye Dexter found herself in bed with her toddler son asleep next to her, and their home set ablaze. Hollye and her family had no choice but to leap out of a second-story window on to the concrete below and watch as everything they owned burned to the ground. Homeless and jobless, Hollye began to unravel emotionally, struggling to hold on to her identity and her marriage. Determined to save her family from destruction, Hollye decided to pull herself together and focus on starting anew. Hollye Dexter soon realizes that when everything you identify with is gone; you are free to discover who you really are. 

Poignant and breathtaking, Holly Dexter tells a beautifully uplifting story that pulls readers out of the ashes and into the sun. Fire Season is an unforgettable true-life tale that provides hope for people who have lost everything and have no choice but to start again.

Fire Season Book Trailer: http://bit.ly/1EO745R

Q&A with Hollye Dexter:

What gave you the courage to write such a raw and emotional memoir?

I wish I could say it was courage that motivated me to write Fire Season, but the truth is it was pain. I was in another “season” of loss in my life where I felt I was spiraling downward and everything was falling apart. It was my friend, author Amy Friedman, who told me that I needed to write this book in order to face everything that happened in the aftermath of the fire, that if I didn’t figure out the lessons, I would stay stuck in the pattern. Wanting only to climb out of the desperate hole I was in, I began the painful process of writing. Fifteen years had passed since the fire and I still couldn’t talk about it, let alone write about it. There was a lot of truth I needed to confront, and I really did not want to. I cried a lot during those two years of writing Fire Season. It took me another two years to edit and rewrite it. Maybe by the end of the writing, it became courage, but it didn’t come easily.

   

What’s the biggest lesson you learned while working on this book?

The biggest lesson was to stay centered in love. Fear is a dangerous neighborhood that I need to stay out of at all costs. I saw, in writing the book, that every time I made a decision to stay in a place of love, everything fell into place. Fear is what tore my life and marriage apart. Love healed it.

Where do you do most of your writing?

I have friends who go away on retreat to write books, or they book hotels or stay in mountain cabins. I didn’t have that luxury, so I did my writing at home during the hours my youngest son Evan was in school. When I am writing, I do not answer the phone, or the door and anyone’s requests of me. Dishes pile up in the sink. Dust bunnies accumulate. If my cat pukes on the carpet, it stays there until 2pm when I have to get ready to pick my son up from school. Because solitude is so scarce in a mom’s life, my writing time is sacred to me.

What books are you currently reading?

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, As Good As She Imagined by my friend Roxanna Green, Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women by Nina Gaby, Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping and The 8 Habits of Love by Reverend Ed Bacon. I am also “listening” to Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd on Audible, whenever I drive, cook or do dishes.

What is your favorite motivational saying?

I have a million, but here are three:

“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” – Rumi

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“Everything is going to be okay in the end. If it isn’t okay, it isn’t the end.”- Unknown

 About the Author: Hollye Dexter is the author of two memoirs and co-editor of Dancing at the Shame Prom (Seal Press), praised by best-selling author Gloria Feldt (former CEO of Planned Parenthood) as “a brilliant book that just might change your life.” Her essays and articles about women’s issues, activism, and politics have been widely published in anthologies, as well as in Maria Shriver’s Architects of Change, Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, and more. She teaches writing workshops internationally and for at-risk youth in LA, where she lives with her husband and a houseful of kids and pets. Learn more about Dexter at www.hollyedexter.net. Connect with Hollye on Twitter at twitter.com/hollyedexter.