EMERGING NEW ORLEANS AUTHOR RELEASES 6TH BOOK SINCE STORM

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(Free-Press-Release.com) August 24, 2010 -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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EMERGING NEW ORLEANS AUTHOR RELEASES 6TH BOOK SINCE STORM

NEW ORLEANS, LA –- August 24, 2010 –- Robert Smallwood, the New Orleans writer who penned the first published personal account of Hurricane Katrina, “The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina,” has been writing at a blistering pace since The Great Storm hit five years ago, publishing six books in four distinct genres.

He just released “New Orleans Trilogy,” a compilation of Smallwood’s Katrina book, his debut novel, “Jackson Squared” and his debut play, “Brando, Tennessee & Me,” all set primarily in New Orleans.

Why the prodigious literary output? “Hurricane Katrina showed me life is precious and precarious and there is no time to waste—things can be over in an instant,” Smallwood said.

“The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina” is an exciting eyewitness story of Hurricane Katrina and the hellish aftermath in downtown New Orleans. Smallwood survived it with gallows humor in the French Quarter, scavenging and looting to defend and find food for his elderly neighbors amidst the chaos. When he finally evacuated, he penned the book in just three weeks, writing feverishly night and day. Critic Rex Reed stated, “Robert Smallwood writes with a feral style and knowledgeable passion that blows the reader into the eye of the storm with gale force.”

Smallwood also edited and published, “Prisoners of Katrina: Stranded at Work in New Orleans Parish Prison,” by Gavin Johnson. Johnson, a psychiatric nurse, survived the storm in the notorious prison with his aging father, who had come to escape the flood waters and be with his son. The prison evacuation was the largest in the history of the United States.

Smallwood’s novel, “Jackson Squared,” is a comedic murder mystery about a man who makes it to New Orleans to pursue his artistic dreams but gets entangled in a series of mysterious voodoo murders instead. With its goofy characters and hilarious scenes it has been likened to the madcap Pulitzer-winning novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole.

“Brando, Tennessee & Me,” is a play about paths of Marlon Brando, Tennessee Williams, James Dean and Truman Capote converging in New York and Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s. It is a story told by an aging “B” actor from New Orleans, and most scenes are set at the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. It was performed as a staged reading in New Orleans in 2005, and then Hurricane Katrina hit. Smallwood is looking to have the drama produced at regional theatres and has hopes for Broadway. Currently a major New York agency is reviewing the play.

Smallwood, also a tech writer, published, “Taming the E-Mail Tiger,” in 2008, a guide to compliance and governance for email archiving.


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More information can be found online at http://www.robertsmallwood.info

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