CONTACT INFORMATION FOR LORI L. SCHAFER, AUTHOR

Email is the best way to reach me: lorilschafer(at)outlook(dot)com

You are also welcome to connect with me through my various social media profiles:

Website: https://lorilschafer.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LoriLSchafer/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/lorilschafer/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lorilschafer/
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lori-schafer/67/30a/b64/
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/u/0/105878636247618615880/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4392104.Lori_Schafer/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb5RugrJMSHh6_4hkgHmkMA/

AUTHOR BIOS

2-line bio:

Writer of serious prose, humorous erotica and romance, and everything in between.

Short Bio:

Lori Schafer is a writer of serious prose and humorous erotica and romance. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous print and online publications, and her first book, On Hearing of My Mother’s Death Six Years After It Happened: A Daughter’s Memoir of Mental Illness, was published in 2014.

Medium Bio:

Lori Schafer is a writer of serious prose, humorous erotica and romance, and everything in between. More than thirty of her short stories and essays have appeared in a variety of print and online publications. Her first book, On Hearing of My Mother’s Death Six Years After It Happened: A Daughter’s Memoir of Mental Illness, which commemorates Lori’s terrifying adolescent experience of her mother’s psychosis, was published in November 2014. You can learn more about Lori and her upcoming projects by visiting her website at https://lorilschafer.com/. You are also welcome to email her directly at lorilschafer(at)outlook(dot)com.

Long Bio:

Lori Schafer is a writer of serious prose, humorous erotica and romance, and everything in between. More than thirty of her short stories and essays have appeared in a variety of print and online publications, and she was a finalist in the 2012 River Styx Micro-Fiction Contest and for the 2013 Able Muse Write Prize for Prose.

Lori’s first two books were published in November 2014. On Hearing of My Mother’s Death Six Years After It Happened: A Daughter’s Memoir of Mental Illness commemorates Lori’s terrifying adolescent experience of her mother’s psychosis, while Stories from My Memory-Shelf: Fiction and Essays from My Past is an autobiographical collection featuring stories and essays inspired by other events from Lori’s own life. In the summer of 2014, Lori began work on a second memoir, The Long Road Home, during the course of a two-month-long journey across the United States and Canada. She anticipates that it will be ready for publication late in 2015.

Lori’s first two novels, My Life with Michael: A Story of Sex and Beer for the Middle-Aged and Just the Three of Us: An Erotic Romantic Comedy for the Commitment-Challenged, will be released early in 2015. She is currently at work on a third novel, a sequel to Just the Three of Us. When she isn’t writing (which isn’t often), Lori enjoys playing ice hockey, attending beer festivals, and spending long afternoons reading at the beach in the sunshine.

For further information on Lori’s upcoming projects, please visit her website at http://lorilschafer.com, where you may subscribe to her newsletter or follow her blog for the most current updates on her cross-country travels. You are also welcome to email her directly at lorilschafer(at)outlook(dot)com with any comments, questions, or suggestions you may have. No requests for advice on your love life, though. She’ll give it to you, but you probably won’t be thrilled with the results.

Slogan:

“We Are All Miss America”

5 Fun Facts You Didn’t Know About Me:

1. 1. I was born in a small town in the Berkshires called Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Really. Pittsfield.

2. I can’t stand to have my feet touched. No, don’t even look at them! They know what you’re thinking, and they don’t like it.

3. I was on the math team for several years in junior high and high school. I’m still jealous of the people who were better at it than me.

4. I won’t tolerate ketchup on any kind of potatoes. Not French fries, not hashbrowns, not Potatoes Lisette or O’Brien – no ketchup, ever. If I see you ruining perfectly good salted potatoes with ketchup, I will make bleah! faces at you until you either stop, take them out of my sight, or admit that you were adopted by wolves as a baby and this is the only way you can recreate the look and feel of the bloody meals on which you were raised.

5. When I was twelve years old, I wanted to be a marine biologist. That was the last time I really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

AUTHOR HEADSHOTS

    

    

 

BOOK INFORMATION FOR ON HEARING OF MY MOTHER’S DEATH SIX YEARS AFTER IT HAPPENED: A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Author: Lori L. Schafer

Available for sale in eBook exclusively at Amazon.com, and in paperback (both standard and LARGE PRINT sizes) at online retailers worldwide.

Amazon (Universal Link)

Barnes and Noble (Paperback only)

Retail Price for Print (standard size): $6.99
Print ISBN: 978-1-942170-03-7
Retail Price for Print (large print size): $7.99
Large Print Edition ISBN: 978-1-942170-22-8
Retail Price for eBook: $2.99
eBook ISBN: 978-1-942170-04-4

Author Website: https://lorilschafer.com/

 

SYNOPSES FOR ON HEARING OF MY MOTHER’S DEATH SIX YEARS AFTER IT HAPPENED: A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR OF MENTAL ILLNESS

2-line Summary:

“Last year I learned that my mother had died. No one will ever know her side of the story now. But maybe it’s time for me to tell mine.”

Short Synopsis:

“I was sixteen when my mother succumbed to psychosis. I was seventeen when I fled from our home. Last year I learned that she had died – in 2007. No one will ever know her side of the story now. But perhaps, at last, it’s time for me to tell mine.”

Medium Synopsis:

I was sixteen at the onset of my mother’s psychosis. I experienced first-hand the terror of watching someone I loved transform into a monster, the terror of discovering that I was to be her primary victim. For years I’ve lived with the sadness of knowing that she, too, was a helpless victim – a victim of a terrible disease that consumed and destroyed the woman I had once called Mom.

Last year I learned that she had died – in 2007. No one will ever know her side of the story now. But perhaps, at last, it’s time for me to tell mine.

Long Synopsis:

“Hey, aren’t you that girl whose mother has green hair and comes to school with her?”

Imagine hearing that over and over at the tender age of sixteen. Imagine knowing that it was true. Imagine the daily humiliation being the least of your troubles.

I don’t have to imagine it. I lived it.

It was the spring of 1989. I had what every teenager wants: a stable family, a nice home in the suburbs, a great group of friends, big plans for my future, and no reason to believe that any of that would ever change.

Then came my mother’s psychosis.

I was a junior in high school at the onset of my mother’s mental illness. An only child without a father to whom I could turn for help, I could only watch in horror as she descended into the grip of an impenetrable madness, falling further and further under the spell of paranoid delusions it was not in my power to dispel. I couldn’t combat her fear of unseen and imaginary enemies; at times I couldn’t even convince her that I was not one of them. As a minor, I was nearly as helpless as a child, with no means of support and no means of escape. I had no choice but to obey when she removed me from school; no choice but to let her accompany me when she finally agreed to let me go back. I could only submit to her violent beatings, her wild accusations, and her murderous threats. I couldn’t have stopped her from taking me away. How often I feared that one day she would.

I experienced first-hand the terror of watching someone I loved transform into a monster, the terror of discovering that I was to be her primary victim. For years I’ve lived with the sadness of knowing that she, too, was a helpless victim – a victim of a terrible disease that consumed and destroyed the strong and caring woman I had once called Mom.

My mother’s illness took everything. My family, my home, my friends, my future. A year and a half later I would be living alone on the street on the other side of the country, wondering whether I could even survive on my own.

But I did. That was how my mother – my real mother – raised me. To survive.

She, too, was a survivor. It wasn’t until last year that I learned that she had died – in 2007. No one will ever know her side of the story now. But perhaps, at last, it’s time for me to tell mine.

 

PRAISE FOR ON HEARING OF MY MOTHER’S DEATH SIX YEARS AFTER IT HAPPENED

“Lori tells her story… in a straightforward style that broke my heart with its poignance. [It] is a tale of resilience and strength in the face of overwhelming odds.”
-Elizabeth Hein, Author of How to Climb the Eiffel Tower, Elizabethhein.com

“It touches you, and it moves you. It makes you angry, and hopeful. You do not feel sorry for the main character, you just feel sad. A must read!”
-Angela Gibbs, Reviewer, Booksandopinions.com

“This story touches the heart with its haunting, straight-forward intimacy. While easily read in a couple of hours, its echo will linger much longer in the mind.”
-L.F. Falconer, Author of The Vagabond’s Son, Goodreads.com

“The problem in writing about an experience so devastating is in conveying what it is like to not feel…That Schafer recounts such tragic moments and does so without once evoking sentimentality or bathos demonstrates her power as a writer.”
-Charlene Diane Jones, Author of The Stain: A Book of Reincarnation, Karma and the Release from Suffering, Charlenediane.com

“This true account of a girl’s struggle is nothing but inspiring.”
-Kat Green, Author of Strings, Insidethemindofkatgreen.wordpress.com