Clifton Edwin Publishing Receives 2011 Best of Santa Barbara Award

U.S. Commerce Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement

NEW YORK, NY, December 9, 2011 -- Clifton Edwin Publishing has been selected for the 2011 Best of Santa Barbara Award in the Book Publishers category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA).

The USCA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2011 USCA Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

About U.S. Commerce Association (USCA)

U.S. Commerce Association (USCA) is a New York City based organization funded by local businesses operating in towns, large and small, across America. The purpose of USCA is to promote local business through public relations, marketing and advertising.

The USCA was established to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to be an advocate for small and medium size businesses and business entrepreneurs across America.

SOURCE: U.S. Commerce Association

CONTACT:
U.S. Commerce Association
Email: PublicRelations@uscaaward.com
URL: http://www.uscaaward.com

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I loved Terry's book!

Here is a message I received on Friday from a reader, Marlow Fisher.

Terry

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I read Phyllis Marie, by Terry Row, in three days and I absolutely loved it.

It is a very beautiful, loving, respectful account of his parents, grand-parents and great-grand-parents. He honors them. And he brings them vividly to life.

He describes the full range of human experience. They lived through world wars, floods in Kansas, homestead land runs in Oklahoma, the introduction of the telephone and electricity and indoor plumbing, and there were childhood passions for the printing press, for airplanes, for photography.

It is a love story overall, Terry's love for his family. His affection for his characters warmed me like a crackling fire on a chilly night.

I have visited the Library of Congress website to read the letters of Aaron Copland, both the transcripts and the images of the actual letters in his handwriting. In one of the earliest letters he is on a ship bound for France. He is about twenty years old. Copland's role could be played by Jimmy Stewart in a Capra film. His tone is so sweet, so "aw shucks," "ma and pa," Americana. A few years later when he wrote Appalachian Spring, that gorgeous Americana ambiance was not a stretch for him, that was his true voice.

While reading Phyllis Marie, I was infused with that same beautiful, gorgeous, authentic, affectionate aura of Americana.

I assume the skeleton of the story is true, that those are the author's family members and that they lived in those places and that they led, more or less, those lives: aviation, photography, printing press, Society of Friends, etc. I assume that what is fiction is the particulars of dialogue that he was not present to hear.

In any case, what is important to me is that there is a strong point of view expressed: the characters are loved by their author.

Congratulations! And thank you.

Clifton Edwin Publishing releases Terry Row's backlist in Kindle and Epub formats

Keeping up with the trend toward books in electronic format, Clifton Edwin Publishing has released Summer Capricorn (2006) and Untarnished Reputation (2009) in both the Kindle and Epub formats. Kindle books are available at Amazon.com, whereas Epub books are available through the ebookstore.sony.com and itunes.apple.com websites.

Each electronic edition, including Phyllis Marie (2011), sells for $2.99. All three books by Terry Row remain available in the traditional perfect paperback size: 5.5” by 8.5.”

Phyllis Marie Garners a San Francisco Book Review

Phyllis Marie

By Terry Row

Clifton Edwin Publishing, $17.95, 380 pages

Amazon Star Rating: 5 out of 5

“Finally it was their turn to take off. The instructor turned, came to a complete stop, waited one extra second, and then pulled back on the stick. Perry felt only a small increase in prop wash, but the volume of noise seemed to drill into his ear canals. Come on, buddy, he thought as the airplane rumbled down the runway. You’re never going to lift this thing off the ground if you don’t give it more juice. At what felt like the last possible moment, the ship lifted off the runway, to Perry’s surprise, reducing the vibrations by seventy-five percent. He flew, for the very first time.”

Perry Row was born to fly, and he gets his chance after the infamously disastrous day of December 7, 1941. Through trial and persistence, struggle and gain, Perry, along with the vast cast of characters shared throughout, reveals a passion and thirst fueling not only his life, but, indeed, that of a universal proportion.

Terry Row has a mesmerizing voice, transporting his readers on a flight of family ties, determination, honor, allegiance and, starkly evident, love. His story of Phyllis Marie spans a multi-generational territory, taking its readers from a warm bedroom shared by a timeless love to 1941 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the desire of young men lining up to defend their freedom and privilege, to the Great Salt Plain, traveling by wagon and horse; we are threaded through time, terrain and theme. Each chapter flips through a different family and their heartfelt predicaments and joys, culminating into one immensely solid family tree.

Although this is a work of fiction, based on a true story, Row has captured every bit of reality onto his worn pages. This story has every bit of blood, sweat, tears, and heart imaginable poured into it. Through an exact execution of detail, character development and story, Row has catapulted himself; he, too, has flown, and hopefully not for the last time.

Phyllis Marie wins Best Fiction Award

Phyllis Marie has won a Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, Best Book in the Category of Fiction, Spring of 2011, presented by the North American Booksellers Exchange (NABE).

Phyllis Marie Stanton Row Byers, 91, a Santa Barbara resident for over 20 years, is the subject of the book named for her, a name she also shared with a Boeing B-17 bomber after her husband, a young pilot, christened it.

The pilot, Perry V. Row, had been a resident of Santa Barbara from 1989 until his death in 1997. Phyllis Marie remembers vividly the day Pearl Harbor was attacked—seventy years ago this year—the day she knew her husband of sixteen months would enlist, fulfilling his dream to fly. “We were working in my father’s photography studio in Caldwell, Idaho, when the announcement came over the radio. I looked over at him and I could see it in his face that he would be going to war.”

The book, a novel based on the true story and written by her son, Santa Barbara County author, Terry Row, combines his parents’ love story with his mother’s life on the home front, his father’s experiences while stationed at Framlingham AFB in England with the 390th Bombardment Group, as well as the histories of their parents and their families. The families were members of the Society of Friends, known also as the Quakers, and at one time during the last decade of the nineteenth century all the families lived in Oklahoma without knowing each other. Further, they all migrated to Wichita, Kansas—an important cultural center for the Society of Friends—in the first two decades of the twentieth century. “I had a richness of resources for this book,” the author said, “from recorded interviews with Phyllis Marie herself to my father’s wartime diary and the letters he wrote to her, and the extensive photographic record left behind by my grandfather, a professional photographer.”

The creation of the book has been a family affair in many ways. C. Russell Byers, served as technical and military advisor, having also flown B-17s over Europe during World War II. Michael Row, a Santa Barbara resident since 1964 and the author’s brother, created the book’s cover art. And a cousin, the late Ann Fuqua of Wichita, provided background information about the Society of Friends.