Approaching forty, unemployed but well-off, talented but unknown, functional but depressed, former musical actress Cecilia Morrison reluctantly seeks therapy, but it takes a runaway teenager to change her life when he cons her out of sixty bucks. Although she once won leading roles, Cecilia now can’t bring herself to audition for parts, and her therapist, an amateur sculptor, can’t take the first swing at a hunk of marble his wife gave him before she died.
Whether at the apex of one’s success or just starting out, Warming Up speaks to everyone who’s ever wondered, “what’s it all about?” or who finds themselves doing something they never thought they’d do, whether it’s singing in a subway to earn some “dough-re-me” or running out of an important audition, chased by a ghost. Reed offers a unique perspective on a homeless teen using his innate abilities as a con man to help his sister and her baby escape their damaged childhoods, and sympathizes with a perfectionist’s struggle to express himself creatively in a medium in which he is a mere amateur.
Warming Up was a short list finalist for the 2011 William Wisdom-William Faulkner Prize for the Novel and Honorable Mention in the 2013 Writers Digest Self-Published Book Awards. It was named to the top 15 in the IndieFab Book of the Year Awards by ForeWord Reviews, a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards and a runner-up for the Illinois Soon To Be Famous Author Project of the Illinois Library Association.
Also available at: Women and Children First and She Writes Press.