The "Concise Process Handbook" was written primarily for those basic-writing, freshman English, and other courses that require a series of short expository essays. The Handbook contains sufficient footnoting and bibliographical information to be a valuable resource tool in courses that require a single term or research paper. There is also a sample research paper and supporting instructional materials in "Appendix A" of the Handbook to assist instructors who are teaching such courses. The emphasis in the handbook is on writing skills and not research skills. For this reason, the text will prove especially valuable to those teachers and professors who believe students can benefit most by going through the writing and editing process as many times as possible in a give course or semester.

Concise Process Handbook

Reference

Clausen, Dennis M.

Words, Language & Grammar

McGraw-Hill Companies

In the fall of 1926, itinerant laborer Judd McCarthy disappears with a company payroll while traveling between two small towns in the Midwest. Thirty-three years later another man, lawyer Joel Hampton, thinks he is going insane. Victimized by nightmares and blackouts, Joel is prone to sudden, unpredictable violent outbursts. Psychiatrist Ned Finley, who becomes involved in the case, believes that Joel's problems defy traditional psychological explanations. When Finley places Joel under hypnosis, he speculates that his young patient may have a second personality hidden in his subconscious memories.

Ghost Lover

Literature & Fiction

BANTAM BOOKS

In the early 1950s, eight-year-old Jake Jennings lives in a California mountain town and struggles with the loss of his father in the Korean War. School is hard for him, too. His classmates tease him because he is a poor reader and cannot pay attention during class. When Jake is diagnosed with dyslexia, he retreats to the attic to try and deal with this new challenge. He unpacks the Christmas ornaments and hangs them from an artificial tree. He soon creates a Christmas world in the attic. In this special place, his father's absence and his fight with dyslexia disappear, and he can pretend that every day is Christmas. One night Jake has a mysterious dream that old Ebenezer, one of the ornaments, comes to life and takes him on a journey to places where Christmas is forever. Old Ebenezer tells Jake the "gift of dyslexia" made the trip possible. During the journey, Jake believes that he sees his father in a dimly lit room. When Jake becomes obsessed with the idea his father may be alive, his mother believes he has lost touch with reality. But where there is Christmas magic in the air, anything is possible

My Christmas Attic

Children's Books

Holidays & Celebrations

iUniverse, Inc.

My Christmas Attic: Some Things Can Never Be Explained

Dennis M. Clausen retells the story of his father's early life as an adopted child on a Midwestern farm during the Great Depression, including his difficult relationship with his adoptive parents who treat him more as a worker than a son. Clausen's father survives his early life on the prairie and eventually launches a search for his birth mother.

Prairie Son (First Series: Creative Nonfiction)

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

Mid List Pr

Goodbye to Main Street, a family memoir and sequel to Prairie Son, is one journey divided into two parts. The first half of Goodbye to Main Street is set in the small prairie town where Dennis M. Clausen, the author and narrator, grew up. It depicts the lives of his original family in the middle of the last century after his parents were divorced. It also describes how his father Lloyd Clausen struggled with relationships and wandered into and out of his life, as his mother put it, “still searching for a place where he fit in.” His father seemed to be deeply troubled by things that happened to him earlier in his life, but was reluctant to talk about them. Clausen’s mother had more obvious challenges to overcome. She had contacted an unusual disease in her infancy that had destroyed her right hip and shortened her left leg. Sitting was difficult for her, and walking for any distance was impossible. The second half of Goodbye to Main Street is triggered by family mysteries connected to the legacy of previous generations that had shaped the emotional lives of his mother and father. These mysteries, first explored in Prairie Son, motivated Clausen to complete his father’s journey by researching and connecting with Lloyd’s biological family in ways his father was never able to do. Through these and other sources, Clausen began to find answers to the many unanswered questions in his family history. Who was his biological grandfather, the man he only knew through a faded photograph of a young man in a wrestling pose? Why did his biological grandmother keep her child (his father) hidden on the family farm for several months before giving him up for adoption? Why did his father have three different names before he was one-year old? Who was the mysterious “Aunt” Delores, another adopted child and his father’s most enduring love, who occasionally appeared in the author’s life? Was his father’s failure to develop lasting relationships the result of his early childhood experiences in his adoptive parents’ home? By researching and connecting with his biological relatives who shared the same ancestral “roots,” Clausen completed his father’s journey and learned the circumstances that compelled Lloyd’s birth mother to give her child up for adoption. In the process, he exposed the actions of previous generations that had shaped his family history, including the tragic events that had destroyed his mother’s hip and leg—and who might have been responsible for it. Goodbye to Main Street is also the sequel to Prairie Son (1999), the recipient of the 1997 First Series Award for Creative Nonfiction. After Prairie Son was published, Clausen was contacted by members of other families who experienced similar adoptions in their histories. While interacting with these families, Clausen realized the practice of adopting children to be workers was far more common than he had previously thought. Like his father, these children who were adopted to labor in their adoptive homes struggled later in life with relationships and feelings of never truly belonging anywhere. In time, Clausen came to realize this was his father’s story—and the one he chronicles during his own journey through the pages of Goodbye to Main Street.

Goodbye to Main Street: A Family Memoir & Sequel to Prairie Son

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Prairie Son is the true story of a boy who was adopted out of an orphanage in the early 1920's and raised on a Midwestern farm to be more of a worker than a son for his adoptive family. The story is told through the point of view of Lloyd Clausen, the author’s father. Lloyd survived the Great Depression, drought years, and spirit-crushing poverty. On his adoptive parents’ farm, Lloyd was denied basic dental care, an education, decent clothing except for what he bought with his own trapping money, and support for his emerging singing talents. He was also left at home or on the shore when other fathers took their sons fishing or to community outings. When his adoptive mother made it clear that she did not even want him around, the parental void in Lloyd’s life was filled by a hired man and a huge police dog named Buster. Ivar, the hired man, taught Lloyd the many skills he would need to survive later in life, and Buster was his constant companion and protector. Delores, another adopted child who lived on a neighboring farm and had a mysterious past, was his other companion and protector. The friendship the two adopted children shared eventually turned into youthful, adolescent love until fate separated them. Yet, Lloyd survived and eventually located his biological parents through a series of extraordinary coincidences and the assistance of others who sympathized with his plight and helped him find his ancestral roots. When Prairie Son was first published in 1999, it became somewhat of a national, statewide, and regional publishing sensation. Dave Woods, Past Vice-President of the National Book Critics Circle, wrote that Prairie Son, the winner of the 1999 First Series Creative Nonfiction Award, attracted “all manner of national attention, a consummation devoutly to be wished for by a small publisher.” Prairie Son was also nominated for several national book awards, and the University of Minnesota voted it one of the five most favorite books published in 1999 by a University of Minnesota alumnus. Since it was first published in 1999, Prairie Son has become a voice for many other children who were adopted to be workers and later struggled during their adult years with the legacy of those early life experiences. Goodbye to Main Street, a recently published sequel to Prairie Son, chronicles Lloyd Clausen’s son’s quest to answer the lingering questions still remaining in his family history and the people who made his own life possible.

Prairie Son

Justin Moore, a young Catholic priest, witnesses a crime he believes he might have prevented if he had intervened to assist the victim. The incident destroys his faith in himself and undermines his mental health. He takes a leave of absence and moves into a rundown studio apartment on the edge of downtown San Diego, where he lives a reclusive lifestyle without a computer, telephone, or anything that connects him to the outside world. He spends most of his time in the loneliness of that apartment reading and pondering his life’s mission. One day he spots a note advertising a part-time position as a driver for a wheelchair-bound resident of the same apartment. He answers the ad and is introduced to a mysterious elderly gentleman who identifies himself as an “accountant for an international business firm.” He tells Justin to call him A. C., an abbreviation for Accountant, and he refuses to divulge anything more about himself or his business activities. Justin soon questions whether his elderly employer might be involved in drug trafficking and other illegal activities under the guise of corporate respectability. As Justin becomes increasingly obsessive about his new employer, he speculates that A. C., who is an enigmatic and elusive character, might have an even more mysterious past. When Justin plunges deeper into the abyss of doubt and confusion concerning his life and A. C., his emotional crisis and obsessive state of mind worsen. Those self-doubts and suspicions about his enigmatic employer build as he struggles to learn A. C.’s real motives for coming to “America’s finest city.”

The Accountant's Apprentice

Literary

Brown Posey Press

My Christmas Attic is a feel-good, plot- and character-driven short novel that should appeal to audiences nostalgic for a time in our history when there was a greater sense of shared national purpose. It was written specifically for dyslexic children who often feel ostracized at school because of their struggles to read, but its appeal can be shared by children (and adults) of all ages.The story opens on December 28, 2003, as Jake Jennings returns to his boyhood home one last time before the new owners move in. As he walks through the living room, he reminisces about the many memories the house evokes. Finally, he walks upstairs to the attic, where he alludes to the fact that he was very different than other children. The story flashes back to 1952 and we learn that Jake lives in the small town of Julian, California. He is ostracized from the other kids at school, many of whom think he is stupid because he reads so poorly and is always daydreaming about Buck Rogers in Outer Space, his favorite radio show. His father is also missing in action in the Korean War, and his mother Cora often sits in the living room at night while she plays the music she once shared with her husband. Jake’s mother eventually schedules an appointment with Dr. Elway, a reading specialist who tells them that Jake is dyslexic. However, Dr. Elway explains that some people refer to it as “the gift of dyslexia,” because so many famous people (Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, and others) were also dyslexic. In spite of Dr. Elway’s pep talk, Jake continues to struggle. He escapes into the attic and creates a forever Christmas world. One of the Christmas ornaments he unpacks is a family heirloom nicknamed “Old Ebenezer,” who holds a scroll with indecipherable writing on it. One night, when Jake falls asleep in the attic, he dreams that “the gift of dyslexia” made it possible for him to read the scroll. Old Ebenezer, a playful and mischievous sprite who bears a resemblance to Dr. Elway, suddenly appears and takes Jake on a journey to the places where Christmas is forever. They visit a medical ward with a permanent Christmas tree to cheer up seriously ill children. They visit an orphanage where the kindly director keeps a replica of Santa Claus and his reindeer all year so difficult to adopt children will have something to brighten up their lives. Finally, they arrive at a small, dark prison cell, where Jake is convinced he sees his father huddled on a wooden cot.When he awakens, Jake tries to convince his mother that what he saw was real, but she is convinced he had nothing more than a muddled dream. Nonetheless, she pressures the authorities to learn what happened to her husband. Weeks later, there is a knock on the door. When Jake opens it, his father is standing there. Richard Jennings tells his wife and son how he almost gave up all hope, except for something very strange that happened in his prison cell one night—something that involved Jake and gave him a renewed desire to live.The story then returns to the attic in the year 2003, where the older Jake Jennings is still reminiscing about his early childhood struggles with dyslexia. Before leaving, he remembers the new family has a special needs girl, and he places Old Ebenezer on a window sill. After he leaves, there is an air of expectancy, as though the attic is waiting for another child to walk through the door to build a new forever Christmas world.As Jake exists from his former family home, we see that his car has the logo with a picture of Old Ebenezer and the inscription, “FOREVER CHRISTMAS, SCHOOLS FOR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN, INC.” Only then do readers realize that Jake has turned his childhood struggles with dyslexia into an adult career to help other children who are similarly challenged by “the gift of dyslexia.”

Rachel Sims, a young Midwestern farm wife, disappears in 1952 under mysterious circumstances while apparently on her way to a clandestine meeting with a man who is not her husband. Some people in a nearby small town claim they saw her leaving the area “with a well-dressed gentleman driving a car with Iowa license plates.” Others assign various nefarious motives to her disappearance. Only Charlie Flanigan, a cemetery caretaker known to the locals as “Crazy Charlie,” refuses to accept the ugly gossip about Rachel Sims. He insists he still sees her walking the riverbanks on Hodges Island on dark spring evenings when the lilacs are in bloom. After the death of her mother twenty-two years later, Laura Fielding, a graduate student with a bonding disorder and a history of broken relationships, discovers that her family may have been living under stolen identities. She also has vague memories and dreams that are unconnected to anything she remembers from her early childhood experiences. With the help of psychiatrist Ned Finley, an eccentric researcher who studies human memories, she attempts to solve the mystery of her lineage by bringing her early life memories to the surface through regressive hypnosis. They are assisted by Finley’s friend Aurther Schlepler, a retired psychic who once helped police departments solve difficult homicide cases, but who has taken up permanent residence in the Farmington State Mental Hospital. Laura eventually visits Point Tyson, where she learns that her mysterious past may be connected to the disappearance of the young farm wife, who reportedly left the area with a wealthy man. Although the townspeople believe Rachel Sims was an immoral woman who abandoned her husband for a better life, Laura suspects the real reasons for the young farm wife’s disappearance might be found in her own early life memories.

The Sins of Rachel Sims

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Clausen, Dennis M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Clausen, Dennis M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Clausen, Dennis M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Concise Process Handbook

Ghost Lover

My Christmas Attic

My Christmas Attic

Prairie Son (First Series: Creative Nonfiction)

Goodbye to Main Street: A Family Memoir & Sequel to Prairie Son

Prairie Son

The Accountant's Apprentice

My Christmas Attic: Some Things Can Never Be Explained

The Sins of Rachel Sims