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May 8, 2008 Joe O’Connell is Author of the Month at Straight From Hel: Joe O’Connell is the May author of the month for Straight From Hel, a blog about writing and authors. Joe answers questions about film, his novel, and writing in general in Helen Ginger’s interview.
March 23, 2008 Local writers share sources of inspiration: “Author Joe M. O’Connell found the “life” for his book at a place of death. ‘It was a place of final moments,’ O’Connell said. ‘After seeing how life was there, I had the goal of telling their story…’”
February 5, 2008 The great escape: “Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice” by Joe M. O’Connell is nothing short of remarkable. While some might call it morbid, it is far from it. It approaches the topic of death with open eyes and calls attention to people’s inability to speak about death without hesitation.
January 11, 2008 Checkout Time: “The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity.”
December 3, 2007 Jen Thorpe of Book Sandwich Interviews Joe O’Connell: How do you want to depart from this life? Do you have an evacuation plan? These are not easy questions to think about, in part, because most people become uncomfortable when they think about death. O’Connell has created a series of short stories that explore, evaluate, and cope with death in it’s many forms.
November 15, 2007 What if you died tomorrow? Author Joe O’Connell asks this question and more in new novel: Joe O’ Connell began volunteering at the Christopher House, an in-facility hospice home in Austin, to research for a mystery novel he was working on. He left being taught “what it means to be a human being.”
November 2007 Peggy Tibbetts Interviews Author Joe O’Connell: “I read and reviewed his new novel, EVACUATION PLAN and it just knocked me out, so I HAD to get to know Joe better.”
October 21, 2007 Joe O’Connell’s EVACUATION PLAN Named #1 on Local Best-Seller List.
October 2007 See Joe O’Connell’s Writers’ League of Texas Reading on TV: On August 16, 2007, author Joe O’Connell was invited to a Writers’ League of Texas meeting where he read from his novel-in-stories titled EVACUATION PLAN, a novel from the hospice. The event was recorded and will be aired on PACT Channel 10’s “Writing Across Texas” program.
October 14, 2007 O’Connell’s Story Adapted into a Play: “The Gambler,” one story in Joe O’Connell’s novel-in-stories EVACUATION PLAN, a novel from the hospice, has been adapted into a stage play by Janet Heimlich. The performances are planned for Frontera Fest in Austin this coming January. “The Gambler” is the sordid tale of a gambler who makes a scary bet involving his own wife and degenerate father over a game of Monopoly.
September 2007 Will’s Texana Monthly features Joe O’Connell’s Evacuation Plan: The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan.
July 26, 2007 Austin American Statesman’s Best Bet, Joe O’Connell: Austin author Joe O’Connell’s first novel, “Evacuation Plan,” sets out to honor the dying — and those who care for them — in the setting of hospice. “(You) know the difference between death and an electric eel?” observes one of the characters in the book. “People aren’t afraid to talk about electric eels!”
June 15, 2007 O’Connell makes the cover of the Austin Chronicle’s Summer Reading Issue, and an Excerpt from Evacuation Plan inside:
“How’s that work for you, Mr. Belacek?”
He mouths “fine” but no sound comes out. I can see the words pooling inside him.
Mary returns to the counter and whispers to me, “Talk to him.”
I know nothing about the man, so I slip down to the volunteer office and check the book.
April 7, 2008 Review and Giveaway: Evacuation Plan by Joe O’Connell: “The thing about O’Connell’s writing that I find most compelling is the raw genuine human emotion…Human minds don’t sugarcoat thoughts, and I think it is only appropriate that novelists imitate life in its entirety. Because of this, the stories never languish or prove tiresome.”
March 11, 2007 Armchair Interviews Reviews Evacuation Plan: “The idea behind Evacuation Plan is brilliant. Joe O’Connell works from the theory that ‘everybody has a story to tell,’ and you are left with the knowledge that this is without a doubt true.”
December 8, 2007 Dawn Papuga of Midwest Book Review reviews Joe O’Connell’s Evacuation Plan: Death isn’t usually the focus of contemporary novels. It’s dark, it’s uncomfortable, and it doesn’t typically inspire the warm and fuzzy feeling that mass market readers seem to require for beach reading selections.
November 14, 2007 Dawn Papuga, Lyrique Tragedy Reviews, Reviews Joe O’Connell’s EVACUATION PLAN: “The most impressive accomplishment of Evacuation Plan is that the structure of the novel and O’Connell’s vivid imagery encourage readers to visualize the entire narrative as a film even as Matt is scrounging to develop his own screen play.”
November 2007 Peggy Tibbetts of Midwest Book Review Reviews Joe O’Connell’s EVACUATION PLAN: Does how you live your life reveal how you will deal with your death? If life is for the living and death is for the dying then somewhere in between must be hospice.
October 2007 Peggy Tibbetts Reviews Joe O’Connell’s EVACUATION PLAN: “O’Connell has employed masterful storytelling skills to compose an achingly captivating symphony from all these life stories that could very possibly change the way you view your own life – and death.”
October 2007 Max Falkowitz Reviews Joe O’Connell’s EVACUATION PLAN: “It is a curious work; resistant to pigeon-holing and suffused with paradox, but carrying plenty of interest and propelling the reader to a haunting and intelligent conclusion.”
July 2007 Texas Monthly Reviews Joe O’Connell’s Evacuation Plan: “The tales are nicely written, and…quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie wherein Nurse Marco recalls a scandalous teenage affair between his sister, Marina, and a circus tramp named Ernesto.” -Texas Monthly