Whimsey News and A Give-Away

The winner is Pat Browning.  

Thanks everyone for your interest.  I hope you'll all give Whimsey a try and I hope you enjoy it.
Stop back from time to time to keep up with Whimsey news.  Once the print copies are available, I'll be having another give-away.



I'm having a Whimsey Give-Away in honor of Valentine's Day.

This is for an electronic version.  The print version isn't ready yet, but we'll have another drawing for it at a later date.

But DON'T leave your comment here!!!!!! 

You'll have to go to the Whimsey Web Page - http://www.kayewilkinsonbarley.com/  and leave a comment and I'll toss your name into my Willie Nelson Baseball Cap (you know, Willie has a soft spot for Whimsey in his heart - he even showed up there one time for a party!  It's true!  Well, true in Whimsey fiction).  But, you'll have to read WHIMSEY: A NOVEL to learn the whole story.

And now's your chance.  For Free!

So, leave a comment and then check back here the morning of Feb. 15 to see who the winner is.

And I'm tickled pink to share these two reviews which have been posted at amazon.com - - -

"Whimsey, A Novel has a cast of unforgettable characters. The Wicked Women of Whimsey, a naughty little pixie, kindly ghosts and, notably, Aunt Zoe. Romance abounds and secrets are afoot. I found this novel enchanting, entrancing and absolutely delightful. I was sorry when it ended and I'm hoping for a sequel. A wonderful read."



Dean Koontz said, in a recent article where he gives seven tips to new writers: "Minimalist writing, in the tradition of Hemingway, has been taught for so many decades that much of what is published these days lacks character and color. Metaphor, simile, all kinds of figures of speech have evaporated from much modern fiction, and many new writers have no interest in using the language in vivid and inventive ways."

Well now, hold the phone!!! There's a new kid on the block who has successfully ignored all the old rules about Keeping It Simple, and for her debut book takes us back to a time and a place that actually, like Brigadoon, never really completely existed except in some minds, but is wonderful to think about and write about and read about. You can definitely see Kaye Wilkinson Barley in every sweet and reminiscent sentence. She had fun writing this book--my criteria to keep reading when I just want to have fun reading a book, and I did.

The world she has created is so much more than it looks like at first glance because it is a world we wish we could all live in, where days are slow, you have time to sit on the front porch and watch the sunrise over the ocean in the morning, and almost everybody loves everybody. In Whimsey, there is no street crime and the folks all actually take the time to speak in complete, long, complex sentences, because in Whimsey, there's no reason to speak a five word sentence when twenty will do. This is, they tell us, the world of the Old South and it all rings true.

Rather than take you through the whole plot, I'm going to tell you about some of the things that charmed me, once I got the hang of the slower manner of the Whimsey folk and began to love them for it. That would be about three or four pages in, when I was hooked for life and sat back to enjoy this read.

First, shortly into the book Barley takes us back to the mid forties, when one woman, Emma's ancestor, who was pretty sharp with her money, decided to buy this island which was named Whimsey, and build a self-sustaining colony where struggling artists of all types could live and work advancing their talents. This island has pixies that only the town folk can see, particularly one fairly racy one (for this gentle group of women) named Earlene who goes around hiding Emma's shoes and making fairy dust fly off of Emma as she moves. We first meet Emma as a young woman, and then an older one with a bad marriage in the past, which she refuses to discuss with anyone, even her cadre of oldest and best school buddies. We have an old love affair, wrecked by misconception, and we have The Bad Person Who Does Nefarious Things. Yes! Even in Whimsey!

One of the big things about this book, which is also true of its author, is its charm. It has everything, beautifully punctuated by Old South Dialogue that is still indulged in today in some locations, even though the pace is much faster now. This is Barley's fairy tale to share with us, her dream of a kinder, gentler time and place. Her lush and detailed descriptions of just about everything in and around Whimsey evokes beauty in the reader's mind. You can feel the breeze through the window and see the curtains on the second floor billowing gently in the wind. You can taste the chocolate ganache cake she had at a very important dinner for two. You can palpably feel the love between all of these people, except for one. And Bless Kaye's Heart, she even adds in three mouth-watering recipes at the end, all of which are probably fattening. ;-)

This is a great book to take your time reading because you want to just sit back and grin and giggle at the girlfriends, especially Earlene. If I were an imaginary fairy, I would want to be Earlene, for sure, and fly around in Louboutin signature red leather-soled high heels.

I loved this book and I loved the people in it and I loved the ending.