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Reviews of Tomorrow Comes

Check out these insightful independent reviews of Tomorrow Comes.

PortlandStars


A raw, moving, emotional reading experience … Mebane’s words will stay with you long after you turn the final page …

When 19-year-old Emma wakes up one morning, she has an amazing clarity that allows her to reflect back upon her full, rewarding life. She revels in reminiscing and cherishing memories about her family and planning for her future. But when the clock doesn’t move off of 4:04 am and her long dead dog shows up at the back door, Emma begins to realize that she has begun a new chapter in her life …

This is a great read for people who have wanted to try Alice Sebold’s Lovely Bones but have been hesitant because of the violent storyline involved. The books are similar in that they both trace a family’s journey through the grief process … But Tomorrow Comes: An Emma Story has a personal touch that Lovely Bones lacks …

This is book about the death of a vibrant girl, but at its heart it is about her family’s path towards healing.

See complete Portland Review.

SanFranciscoBookReviewLogo

With its honesty, beauty, and hopeful outlook, Tomorrow Comes … will resonate with anyone who has ever lost a close friend or family member.

The book is about a 19-year-old girl named Emma. She’s spunky, vivacious, and full of life … that is, until she unexpectedly dies in her sleep …

What makes Tomorrow Comes especially heart-wrenching is that it is based on a true story. Donna Mebane, the author, had a daughter named Emma who died in the same way. The book seems to be a result of how she coped after Emma’s death: by imagining another world for Emma, one in which she can still be herself – happy, vibrant – Mebane was able to move past her grief. Despite the fictional elements of Emma’s spiritual world, only someone who has experienced loss could write such heartfelt words. It took an act of incredible bravery to publish something so personal …

See complete San Francisco Review.

BlueInkLogoThis is a compellingly written, honest book about a family undertaking the long road up from unimaginable grief to a place of some peace.

This contemporary work is part fiction, and also, sadly, the truth about the untimely death of Emma Mebane, who at age 19, went to sleep one night and never awoke …

The fictional aspect of the story describes Emma’s life in “AFTER” … Unlike biblical depictions of heaven as a place of peace, love, and light, in Emma’s AFTER, there are hovering relatives who explain “the rules,” tears, and Facebook entries that spur Emma to devise ways to communicate with those left behind. The author capably reproduces the voice of a young woman suddenly taken away.

What author Donna Mebane does exceedingly well is to create a poignant image of an extraordinarily close and loving family, and she brings Emma alive for those who never knew her … Tears are inevitable for any reader, but comfort and encouragement, too, may be found here for those who share a similar loss.

See complete BlueInk Review.

KirkusLogo

An emotional novel about grief and the enduring power of love after death …

Nineteen-year-old Emma Mebane is a bubbly, well-liked college student … home from school for the summer when the unthinkable happens: She dies suddenly in her sleep. However … she awakens … in a place that she calls “After” …

With help from her late relatives and other old and new friends, Emma learns that love doesn’t end when life does but in fact grows stronger …

Each family member offers a different perspective on the process of mourning … The stirring moral of each journey remains the same: It will all be OK …

See complete Kirkus Review.

Amazon ReviewsTomorrow Comes is an emotionally visceral masterpiece … Move over Harry Potter!

If you are a fan of YA serials like Harry Potter, the Hunger Games and Sweet Valley High, then you simply must meet Emma, the heroine of Tomorrow Comes: An Emma Story. The best part of this debut novel is Emma’s voice: bubbly, funny, likable and infinitely relatable, Emma is destined to become one of your best literary girlfriends along with Hermione and Katniss …

A must have for any middle school classroom library.

See complete Amazon Reviews.

BloggerNewsLogoA celebration of a young life and a peek into one possibility of what the ‘next life’ might be like …

The approach Donna Mebane has taken … is a style that I am not sure that I have seen before. Part of the book is factual, the events, the aftermath, and how people reacted … The other side of the story is told by Emma herself … It does not take Emma long to discover that she can look down on the ‘before’, she can even read Facebook posts …

I am greatly impressed by Donna Mebane. Her writing is from the heart …

See complete BloggerNews Review.

SEEK TO FIND

AMAZON REVIEW OF ‘COMMON GOSPEL’

AMAZON REVIEW OF ‘COMMON GOSPEL’

First Amazon Review of 'The Common Gospel: The Ultimate Testament to Jesus the Messiah'

WORDSMITH ASSOCIATES NEWS

WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
Your life is made up of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.

Make the most of your life - your dash! - and share what you learn with others.

The kingdom of God does not come with observation ... for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. -Jesus the Messiah. The Common Gospel ("Final Journey)

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LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

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