Pump Up Your Book Presents The Sense of Touch Virtual Book Publicity Tour

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Pump Up Your Book is pleased to bring you Ron Parsons’ The Sense of Touch virtual book tour May 5 – July 31!

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PUYB Inside the Book

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The Sense of Touch Title: The Sense of Touch
Author: Ron Parsons
Publisher: Aqueous Books
Pages: 252
Genre: Short Story/Literary Fiction
Format: Paperback; Kindle

Old friends uncomfortably reunited and lovers who cling to their distance from one another; disappearing fathers, fiercely loving grandfathers, and strangers who pass through and radically change lives…These are among the characters who populate the rugged Midwestern landscapes of the mesmerizing fiction world of Ron Parsons. In his debut collection, THE SENSE OF TOUCH (Aqueous Books; May 1, 2013), Parsons captures people of various ages in the act of searching for meaning and connection and themselves. Firmly set in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan, the lush but often brutally cold heartland of America, the eight stories explore universal themes–loneliness, betrayal, transformation, hope–in fresh, sometimes fanciful, sometimes comical, sometimes jarring, and always moving and memorable ways.

In THE SENSE OF TOUCH, readers will meet:

* Naseem Sayem, the brilliant, troubled, and mystifying young man at the center of “Hezekiah Number Three.” A native of Bangladesh abruptly transplanted to the stark white suburbs of Rapid City at age nine, Naseem never fit in and eventually moved on to study physics at MIT–where, shortly before graduation and after shocking news of his father’s infidelity and abandonment, he apparently unraveled and vanished. Three months later, he reappeared out of the blue on his stepmom’s doorstep, holding a three-legged cat. Naseem’s long search for belonging reaches its apex in a hot air balloon floating over the Crazy Horse Monument.

* Waylon Baker, wheat farmer from birth, and Evie Lund, his wife of twenty-four years and counting, even though she had chosen to live far away–in the alien world of the Twin Cities–for eight years. The odd couple at the heart of “Beginning with Minneapolis,” Waylon and Evie can’t bear to live together or to divorce because they still love each other with a passion, reignited when they find themselves deep in the dirt, in a hole Waylon dug in his wheat field to serve as Evie’s grave.

* The nameless narrator of “The Sense of Touch,” a serious, young freshman at the University of Minnesota, fleeing yet still attached to his youth in Texas, haunted both by its predatory demons and its romantic dreams. His liberation comes through an alluring muse: his fiction-writing teacher. A ravishing, wild-haired, Memphis-born African-American graduate student, Vonda speaks directly to him when she makes her dramatic pronouncements. Like, “Our masks are not worn, people. They’re grown, day by day.” And “Never trust anything, not until you can touch it. With touch, you know you know.”

The old friends in “The Black Hills,” long separated by distance and tragedy, who unexpectedly compete for the affections of a lovely, vulnerable, and married Lakota woman…the young woman who, in the midst of a Halloween blizzard, stumbles into saving an elderly piano teacher’s life and faces hard facts about her own snow-bound relationships and emotions in “As Her Heart Is Navigated”…the exceptional grandfather in “Big Blue” and the playboy reformed by someone else’s grandson in “Moonlight Bowling”…and the professor of dead languages facing the mysteries of mortality in “Be Not Afraid of the Universe”… Through Ron Parsons, they all come to life, vividly and with emotional resonance, and work their way into the minds and hearts of readers.

Book Excerpt:

They were relaxing at the top of a waterfall, in a small, still pool where the mountain waters hit an upward slope of folded granite. It was sort of a rounded bathtub, carved out of the rock throughout the centuries by the rushing river, a river so hidden that it was without a name. Just below were the falls, about a 30-foot drop into another, much larger pool of clearest water that was gathered for a respite, a compromise in the river’s relentless schedule downward, between split-level decks of flat rock. Further on, the river reanimated and released into a sharp ravine, pulling westward, down through the rugged mountains and faceless forest–the Black Hills National Forest–gaining force until it joined with the rush of the Castle River, near the old Custer Trail, and was swallowed into the Deerfield Reservoir to collect and prepare for the touch of man.

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Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE

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PUYB Meet the Author

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Ron Parsons 2 RON PARSONS is a writer living in Sioux Falls. Born in Michigan and raised in South Dakota, he was inspired to begin writing fiction in Minneapolis while attending the University of Minnesota. His short stories have appeared in many literary magazines and venues, including The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, Storyville App, The Briar Cliff Review, Flyway, and The Onion. His debut collection of stories, THE SENSE OF TOUCH, was released by Aqueous Books in 2013.

You can visit his website at http://ronparsonswriter.com/ or  http://www.aqueousbooks.com/author_pages/24_parsons.htm.

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PUYB Tour Schedule A
Divider 9 Monday, May 5

Interview at PUYB Virtual Book Club

Tuesday, May 6

Book Featured at Examiner

Wednesday, May 7

Book Featured at As the Pages Turn

Thursday, May 8

Interview at Blogcritics

Friday, May 9

Book Featured at Bound 2 Escape

Monday, May 12

Book Featured at Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews

Tuesday, May 13

Guest Blogging at Lori’s Reading Corner

Thursday, May 15

Interview at The Book Connection

Monday, May 19

Book Review at Deal Sharing Aunt

Tuesday, May 20

Book Featured at Confessions of a Reader

Wednesday, May 21

Gust Blogging at Carol’s Notebook

Monday, May 26

Book Featured at The Writer’s Life

Tuesday, May 27

Book Featured at Book Munchies

Wednesday, May 28

Guest Blogging at Aja Hannah

Friday, May 30

Interview at Between the Covers

Tuesday, June 3

Guest Blogging at Bookingly Yours

Wednesday, June 4

Book Review at Lost in a Good Book

Friday, June 6

Guest Blogging at Mina’s Bookshelf

Monday, June 9

Book Featured at Literal Exposure

Tuesday, June 10

Guest Blogging at The Book Faery Reviews

Thursday, June 12

Book Featured at Maureen’s Musings

Monday, June 16

Book Featured at The Literary Nook

Wednesday, June 18

Book Featured at Review From Here

Thursday, June 19

Interview at CBY Book Club

Monday, June 23

Book Featured at I’m Shelf-ish

Wednesday, June 25

Book Featured at Sweeping Me

Friday, June 27

Book Review at Our Families Adventure

Tuesday, July 8

Book Review at I’d Rather Be at the Beach

Wednesday, July 16

Guest Blogging at The Story Behind the Book

Friday, July 18

Book Trivia Interview at As the Page Turns

Monday, July 21

Book Featured at Margay Leah Justice

Book Featured at Booklover Sue

Tuesday, July 22

Interview at Examiner

Wednesday, July 23

Interview at Beyond the Books

Thursday, July 24

Character Interview at The Literary Nook

Monday, July 28

Book Featured at Plug Your Book

Tuesday, July 29

Interview at Review From Here

Wednesday, July 30

Book Review at Sevetlana’s Reads and Views

Thursday, July 31

Book Tour Highlights at PUYB Virtual Book Club

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