My first Novel

You can purchase CENTER OF GRAVITY online at any of the prime booksellers below.

Center of Gravity - Synopsis

From bebop to ballads, ragtime to rock n’ roll: often, the many rhythms of music mirror the vicissitudes of our own lives. Spanning three decades of the diverse musical history in America, together two motherless boys, Nate Royce and Gregory Solomon, grow, desire, succeed, grieve and love the same woman.

Jointly, they also conquer Tin Pan Alley, struggle through the Great Depression, celebrate birth, mourn the dead and allow the technological leaps of radio, records, 8-tracks and cassettes to unravel their once shared musical cosmology. Along the way they encounter Irving Berlin, whose piano has a lever to change keys, Duke Ellington, who bemoans the paralysis of his entire band due to stage fright, Count Basie, who has a knack for swindling contracts and the Sex Pistols, who have a knack for swindling record labels.

Through the culture-shaping transitions of music, Nate’s son, Ben Royce, follows in the footsteps of his father and Gregory—though in a different way—setting out to practice entertainment law during the critical years when jazz evolved, big bands faded and rock n’ roll emerged. Coming of age in the turbulent sixties and eventually abandoning the music business to join the ACLU during the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, Ben’s love for one woman, a svelte redhead named Rickie Taylor, embodies the great love once shared by both his father and Gregory.

It is through love and loss, both past and present, that Ben and his father's best friend Gregory finally confront Nate Royce’s most crippling issue: determining how much to risk, balanced against what to settle for in life.

If you enjoy Center of Gravity, as I hope you will, these simple steps have quantum effects.

1. Suggest the book be stocked at your local library.
2. Recommend it to friends in conversation, and by forwarding an email link to this page to everyone in your address book with a brief introduction and a positive word.
3. If you give it as a gift, ask your local bookstore to order that copy, and use the opportunity to suggest they might want to stock an additional copy or two, as you are recommending it to people.
4. If you're part of a book club, suggest it for your reading list, and if you know of any book or reading clubs, do the same.
5. Write and post short reviews for prospective online buyers to read at Publish America, Barnes & Noble or Amazon. I can't understate how helpful this one is.
6. If you're attending school, recommend the book to language arts teachers and professors.
7. If you write or contribute to weblogs, or newsletters of any kind, from PTA to sewing clubs to Boy Scouts, a short review or recommendation can do wonders for me.
8. If your local or community newspaper has a book reviewer, suggesting my book to them for review can be very helpful, while emailing me their name and contact information would allow me to target them for review copies and/or press kits.
 
 

About the Author

Born and raised in Colorado, Greg Cohen now lives and writes on the Island of Lana’i in Hawaii. His love of motion and travel has taken him through parts of North America, Asia and Europe. In addition to traveling, his interests include music, photography, fine cooking, computers and graphics.

Greg Cohen’s fiction explores “the decisive moment”; those fleeting, defining instants when entire lives can change. His various short fiction has appeared in the Eureka Literary Magazine, Bellowing Ark, City Primeval and the Belletrist Review.

Center of Gravity is his first published novel.


Click here to read some of my published short fiction!
Click on the HOME button below to explore the rest of my site!

Special Thanks to the Mike Carroll Gallery in Lanai City for a fun and successful book signing on Fri., Oct 21 , 2005!

Click here to see photos of the event.

Click their logo to visit the Carroll website and treat yourself to lovely images of Hawaii and other far-flung places as seen through the painter's eye.