Call My Name by Jenni Ogden Book Tour, Guest Post, Audio Review + Giveaway! {Ends 9/21/22}

Aug 18, 2022 | 2 comments

From Jenni Ogden, author of bestselling novel A Drop in the Ocean (Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction) comes a compelling family saga set in the Australian Tropics and spanning the 1960s to 1990s.

Book Details:

Call My Name: A Novel by Jenni Ogden
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 384 pages
Genre: Literary/Women’s/Bookclub Fiction
Publisher: Sea Dragon Press
Release date: April 2020
Formats Available for Review: print, ebook, audiobook (Findaway download, NetGalley download)
Tour dates: Aug 18 to Sep 14, 2022
Content Rating: PG-13 + M:

Has childbirth/abortion/adoption/surrogacy themes, the brief description of a rape in the past by a Japanese guard of a prisoner in a POW camp in Sumatra in WWII (not explicit but of course disturbing and violent). A mention of cannabis smoking when characters are young, mild in-context use of f-word and other expletives.

Book Description:

Two women, bound together by opposite personalities, friendship, love and family—until motherhood rips them apart.

Her mother dead from a drug overdose, thirteen-year-old Olivia is rescued by Cathie Tulloch, her mother’s friend throughout the years they were held captive in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra in WWII. Welcomed into the Tulloch’s remote family home in the Australian tropics, introverted Olivia is claimed by dramatic, generous, controlling Cassandra Tulloch as her sister and best friend. Moving to the UK at 18, Olivia finds her independence, and partner Ben. But in 1970, after five years away, she is homesick, and ready to fulfill her long-held dream: to make a family of her own. In Brisbane she and Ben share a hippie lifestyle with Cassandra and husband, Sebastian. But while earth-mother Cassandra effortlessly produces beautiful babies, for Olivia, becoming a mother is hard. Even harder is discovering the truth about her own mother. And when the unimaginable happens, destroying the friendship with Cassandra that has been her bedrock for so long, Olivia tells herself that she doesn’t deserve a family, nor a place to call home.

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Review By LAWonder10:

Call My Name is a poignant tale of unlikely best friends and a possible end to their close friendship, It is about a secret that will eventually tear lives apart if it is ever discovered.

The story begins with two unlikely best friends, a college age romance, and a new beginning. The story continues on for decades later. 

Two people in love desperately wanting children, the devastation they are  called on to bear. 

The characters were developed very well. They seem like actual people. The scenes are portrayed in a way they are easily visualized. The Title is slightly unclear nut the Cover Image is okay.

The drama of this one young woman’s life is very interesting, possible and profound. It is truly a bittersweet story.

It was well-written and very realistic. What I didn’t like was the profanity and sexual references, although they were few. The sex scenes were done tastefully and did not go into explicit detail. Also it was slightly repetitive and drawn out.

The Narrator, Naomi Barton, did a very good job narrating. The emotions, energy, and consistency were evident in her voice, and the ephasis were all in the right places.

Overall, I offer a solid Four Stars rating.
This audio book was gifted me with no pressure to post a positive review. This is my honest review.

Guest Post:

Showing Not Telling by Jenni Ogden

As a neuroscientist I know that the human brain is wired for empathy; we have neurons that fire in our brains in concert with the emotions others are expressing. Perhaps we are
watching the news and are riveted by a story about a brave 10-year-old who is dying. She is
pluckily explaining to the interviewer how happy she was yesterday when she had her
birthday, and all her friends came to her bedside party in the hospital. The only thing that really makes her sad now is that her mummy can’t stop crying when she kisses her
goodnight.

We’ve never heard of this family before, but even if we’ve not experienced a situation anything like this ourselves, we find ourselves choking up. And it is not necessarily because we are imagining how we would feel if this were our daughter, but we’re fighting tears for this particular little girl and her mother. It takes more skill to bring out that empathy when you only have words on a page, but that is the most important task of the novelist. And showing from the point-of-view of the character how she is responding to whatever is going on—her body sensations, her private thoughts—is more likely to draw the reader inside the character, or connect the reader to the character in that same way we experience when we see the little girl on television, than using a cliché to tell the reader
what our character is feeling.

It took me a long time to understand the power of going into my own body when I couldn’t
find the right words to show rather than tell. My editor explained that I was telling when I
wrote sentences like this: I was so upset the very thought of breakfast made me gag. So I
would try and imagine being the character in that situation and notice my own bodily
sensations. Then I rewrote it to read: I swallowed, but the aching tightness in my throat didn’t go away and I shoved my muesli aside.

If I find it difficult to become the character, I try to go back to an experience of my own that
resulted in a similar emotion. For example, if my character is choked up with emotion, I
might sit quietly and try to re-experience picking up the phone very early one morning and hearing my daughter’s voice, usually strong and assertive and now sounding like a little girl
herself. “Mummy” she said—she hadn’t called me that since she was five—“I’ve just had a
little girl and she’s so beautiful.”

If I can’t come up with an experience of my own I’ll find a scenario that is so strong that anyone can insert themselves into it. If my character is feeling revulsion I might imagine myself being forced to drink a glass of warm fat (this was one of the tasks research participants were given in a psychological study on disgust years ago!)  And then of course I need to work on describing what I am experiencing without using cliches, and see if that description makes sense for my character.

And if you are intending to turn your book into an audiobook, remember that if you can show your character’s deepest feelings on the page, your narrator will have a much easier task expressing those tears and anger and laughter in her voice. Magic!

For posts on all sorts of things, go to my Psychology Today blog:

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Meet the Author:

Jenni Ogden and her husband live off-grid on spectacular Great Barrier Island, 100 kms off the coast of New Zealand, a perfect place to write and for grandchildren to spend their holidays. Winters are often spent in Far North Tropical Queensland, close to Killara, the fictional home in Call My Name, her third novel.

Her debut novel published in 2016, A Drop in the Ocean, was an Amazon bestseller and won multiple awards including the 2016 Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction, Large Publisher.

Her second novel, The Moon is Missing, was published in 2020 and is set on London, New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and Great Barrier Island, NZ.

​Jenni, who holds a PhD in Clinical Neuropsychology and was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the International Neuropsychological Society in 2015, is well-known for her books featuring her patients’ moving stories: Fractured Minds: A Case-Study Approach to Clinical Neuropsychology, and Trouble In Mind: Stories from a Neuropsychologist’s Casebook.

Connect with the Author:  website  ~ facebook  ~ twitter ~ instagram ~ pinterest ~ goodreads

Meet the Narrator:

Expressive, engaged and imaginative
Until recently I travelled the world as an International School Drama teacher with my husband and two daughters. This enabled me to collect many stories, accents and adventures. As well as listening to audio, I love to groom my Ragdoll cats, play with watercolour paints and support my teenage daughters to be the most amazing young women they can be. My interpretive skills combined with my passion for voice work is just part of what I bring to audiobook narration. Storytelling is my passion and it’s my mission to bring more NZ stories to the wonderful world of audio.

Facebook ~ Website ~

The Tour Schedule:

Aug 18 – Rockin’ Book Reviews – audiobook review / guest post / giveaway
Aug 18 – Literary Flits – book review / giveaway
Aug 19 – Novels Alive – book review / giveaway
Aug 19 – Book Reviews by Linda Moore – book review / giveaway
Aug 19
– Bookish Trisha – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Aug 22 – Leels Loves Books – book review / giveaway
Aug 23 – Leanne bookstagram – book review
Aug 24 – Authors on iTours: Let’s Talk Books – audiobook review / giveaway
Aug 25 – Jazzy Book Reviews – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Aug 26 – Stephanie Jane – book review / giveaway
Aug 29 – FUONLYKNEW – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Aug 30 – A Mama’s Corner of the World – book review / giveaway
Aug 31 – fundinmental – book spotlight / giveaway
Sep 1 – She Just Loves Books – audiobook review / giveaway
Sep 2 – Paws.Read.Repeat – audiobook review / giveway
Sep 6 – Splashes of Joy – audiobook review / giveaway
Sep 7 – Cover Lover Book Review – book spotlight / guest post / giveaway
Sep 8
– Celticlady’s Reviews – book spotlight / giveaway
Sep 8 – Locks, Hooks and Books – audiobook review / guest post / giveaway
Sep 9 – Books Are a Blessing – book review / giveaway
Sep 12 – I’m Into Books – book spotlight / giveaway
Sep 12
– Geaux Get Lit – audiobook review / giveaway
Sep 13 – Books for Books – book spotlight
Sep 13
– The Garden of Reading – book review 
Sep 14 – Pick a Good Book – book review / author interview / giveaway

Giveaway Details:

Win a copy of CALL MY NAME: A NOVEL (winner’s choice of audiobook or ebook)(20 winners) or print advanced review copy (2 winners/USA only) (ends Sep 21)

To Enter the Giveaway click on the Rafflecopter below:

CALL MY NAME: A Novel Book Tour Giveaway

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2 Comments
  1. Jenni Ogden

    Thank you Lu for your post and your Rockin’ Book Review of the audiobook! So glad you enjoyed it and I was very lucky to ind such a perfect narrator in Naomi; she gave my characters a whole new dimension!

    • lawonder10

      Jenni,
      You built your characters well, but yes, she did enhanse the story, too.
      Best of Success!
      Lu Ann

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