ONE HUNDRED BOOKS for only 99 pennies each!

I’m part of a big Science Fiction & Fantasy promotion this weekend. Offered by Patty Jansen, the queen of such events, this promotion is  a chance to pick up a handful (or more) of digital books for just 99 cents each.  LINK TO ALL RETAILERS HERE.

My collection of urban fantasy tales, The L.A. Nocturne Collection: Tales of the Misbetotten  is available  on Amazon. If you like shape-shifters, djinn, vampires, mermaids, ghosts, or any other kind of paranormal creature, you’ll find a story to like in the collection. And bonus, even if my book doesn’t tempt you, there are lots of other books(100) on offer. For just 99 cents each!!!! It’s like they’re free, only slightly more expensive.

Check out all the goodies here. Have a great weekend.

And don’t forget to vote!

Bryan Cranston as LBJ in ALL THE WAY

Lyndon Baines Johnson once said, "Cast your bread upon the waters and the sharks will eat it." A consummate politician, a born political animal and a deeply flawed man, he makes for an excellent character and in All the Way, Bryan Cranston brings him to vivid life. All the Way is about LBJ
s fight to get the Civil Rights Act passed. And it was a down and dirty dog fight all the way.

A side note about Cranston.  When you live in Los Angeles, you're never more than one step away from practically any actor you see on TV or in the movies. There's David Caruso in the grocery line ahead of you; there's Steve Carell opening the door for you at the Firestone place; there's Kevin Costner banking at the same time. Or you live on a block next to an actor. Or you go to church with an actor.And on and on. And it doesn't take long before you learn which actors are d-bags. And which are the good guys. Bryan Crnaston is a good guy. His kids went to school with a friend of mine's kids and even before he hit it big with the role of a lifetime on Breaking Bad, people said nice things about him. And in L.A., the default option is to say nasty things about people. It's the whole reason TMZ exists.

The Most Important Article You'll Read Today if you didn't read it yesterday

"What can be causing Trumpism? We ask, and seek for an earthquake, or at least a historical oddity or a series of highly specific causal events. The more tragic truth is that the Trumpian view of the world is the default view of mankind. Bigotry, fanaticism, xenophobia are the norms of human life—the question is not what causes them but what uncauses them, what happens in the rare extended moments that allow them to be put aside, when secular values of toleration and pluralism replace them."--Adam Gropnik, "Why Trump is Different--and Must be Repelled" (New Yorker, November 3, 2016)

Gropnik's article is sobering. It's full of facts that counter what's become perceived wisdom. But he

also does something that I think cheapens his article. He uses this phrase, "...so infantile a figure as the orange menace." It's become a standard thing for news stories and blog posts and magazine articles to trot out the metaphors to mock Trump's perennial orange tan. It's often funny. As are the bazillion memes that mockery has generated. (Like the one on the right.)
But as Gropnik says in another part of his article, "there's nothing funny about it." Anything that trivializes Trump makes him seem less dangerous. People were not paying attention when he started his campaign. They enjoyed the spectacle. They laughed and pointed and couldn't get enough of him. And now...he's a heartbeat away from becoming President of the United States. We sowed the wind and we're reaping the whirlwind.

Read the article if you're thinking about voting for Trump. And then go Google "Bill Weld and Trump" to see what the Libertarian candidate has to say about him. (Here's a story from USA Today that includes a link to his appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show.)

The Ghost by Robert Harris

Robert Harris wrote Fatherland, a "what if" novel that wrapped a thriller plot around the premise that the Nazis won WWII. He also wrote Enigma (about the code-breaking machine), and Archangel, a thriller set in present-day Russia. He's also written a lesser-known non-fiction book called Selling Hitler, which was about the so-called "Hitler Diaries." Harris' novels always have a political subtext, and one of his best, The Ghost, was turned into a movie called The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. It's about "power, politics, and murder." Great stuff and just the thing to be reading four days out from the most important election so far in the millennium.

The Best and the Brightest--David Halberstam's dissection of a disastrous foreign policy

I was a huge fan of writer David Halberstam. I admired his prose so much I even read his book The Breaks of the Game, and I am not a fan of sports writing. (A great writer can make any subject riveting.) The Best and the Brightest is his examination of the way John F. Kennedy's cadre of intellectual advisors ("the best and the brightest") came up with a misbegotten foreign policy that led us into the Vietnam War. (Read it in tandem with The Pentagon Papers or John Paul Vance's A Bright Shining Lie.) The book feels particularly relevant to this election cycle because the personalities involved were all so very, very sure they knew more about things than people who actually had experience about things and against all advice, rushed into terrible, terrible policies.

My favorite book by Halberstam is probably The Reckoning, though. This is from the blurb: Told with panoramic detail and gripping insight, The Reckoning is the inside story of automakers Ford and Nissan—and the collapse of America’s industrial supremacy.  The book was originally published in 1986, but 30 years later, it still feels prescient as we look at the collapse of cities like Detroit.

An Election Day Reading List from Charles Pierce

This is a list of 15 books that includes everything from Robert Caro's monumental biography of LBJ to Twilight of the Presidency, one of the scariest books you'll ever read.Written in 1970, here's what the blurb says:

Former special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, George Reedy, examines the growing isolation of the president from the country's citizens, the air of unreality, and the virtually unchecked power that works to corrupt any man who holds the office of the President.  

check out the full list here.

A Week of Political Books: All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

We're one week out from what will be an historic election, no matter which way it turns out. America will never be the same no matter which candidate wins. I've got a whole reading list that includes Hillbilly Elegy and The Man Without a Face. II pulled that last book off the Guardian's list of ten must-read books about Vladimir Putin. Check out the list here.)  The book I've just finished is Rebecca Traister's All The Single Ladies.

This is the review excerpted on the book's Amazon page:

The New York Times bestselling investigation into the sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women is “an informative and thought-provoking book for anyone—not just the single ladies—who want to gain a greater understanding of this pivotal moment in the history of the United States” (The New York Times Book Review).  

It's an important book, I think.

New from Alexandra Sokoloff

The latest (number 4) in her "Huntress" FBI series is out. Yay. Check it out on her site.

In Celebration of Women--Edna Lewis

This book came up in, of all things, a search for "gargoyles." The cover is wonderful, isn't it? This is an illustrated biography of the chef and natural food advocate Edna Lewis (with recipes) and it's filled with lovely illustrations and a kind of crazy quilt of folk tales and received wisdom that gives the impression of being in the middle of a family reunion. For foodies. And feminists. And people who love illustrations.

Don't listen to me, listen to Salman Rushdie

Returning to my roots

My genre is mystery.
It's what I read for pleasure.
It's what I always wanted to write.
When I first started writing fiction, it was crime fiction that I wrote. Sometime the crimes were mixed with fantasy; sometimes with science fiction; sometimes even with romance. But they were always mysteries.
I wrote a long novella as my first mystery and I could not get arrested for it. Then I wrote a shorter novella in the fantasy romance vein and I suddenly started selling books. I wrote a sequel to the fantasy romance and that sold too, as did a couple of novelettes I wrote.
It's nice selling books.
And I very much enjoyed writing them.
But I'm going back to my roots for NANOWRIMO. This November I'm going to write a psychological mystery, my version of the female centric thrillers that are suddenly hot. I have a pretty good idea I think; at least and idea that excites me enough to put my heart into writing every day for a month.
And to celebrate, I bought a cover from The Book Cover Designer, my favorite "go-to" for premade covers.
The designer was Valdas Miskinis  of Book Cover Arts and at no extra charge I was provide three font variations, which was a nice surprise.
Wish me luck with this one.
Because I've missed writing crime.

Vote Early. Vote right now.

One ballot, Four Women

So yes, a woman is running for president, the nominee of a major party.
And also there's Jill Stein, who is running for the Green Party.
But I did not know that there are two other women running for President this year. There's also Gloria La Riva of the Socialism and Liberation Party and there's Alyson Kennedy of the Socialist Worker's Party. You can see Alyson Kennedy talking about a woman's right to choose here. You can see Gloria La Riva's stance on the issues here.
It's interesting looking at the platforms of the two lesser-known candidates. La Riva, for instance, shares my stance on the minimum wage. On her web site you can find this meme--which pretty much sums up La Riva's belief that there is no "lesser evil" among the two main party candidates.
Here's a site where you can download information on Alyson Kennedy and her running mate Osborne Hart.You can download their statements on police brutality and killings, as well as a statement of solidarity for the working people of Syria.

Just Another Day in Paradise has just gone wide!

Back in 2011, I dipped my toes in the indie author waters by releasing a collection of my short fiction called Just Another Day in Paradise. The cover was created by G. Wells Taylor (author of the brilliant Dracula of the Apes trilogy, as well as other horror classics, including Bent Steeple). The photograph was by retired firefighter Keith Cullom, who allowed me to purchase the licensing rights on time because he normally sells to magazines like National Geographic. for a lot more than I had in my budget. (See his amazing photos at Fire Image.)

I wanted that picture!  I'd seen it published in the paper during one of California's apocalyptic wildfires and it took me about three hours of Googling before I tracked down the photographer.

I had the book exclusive to Amazon's Kindle for  years but I decided it twas time to test the waters with other platforms as well. To celebrate going wide, I re-edited the collection, adding 45,000 words of new stories and weeding out some stories that weren't working for me. The result is, I think, a nicely "curated" collection of short fiction that represents my best work over the last decade. If you're interested, you can get it on Kobo, B&N, 24 Symbols, Page Foundry, Apple, Scribd, Tolino, and of course, Amazon.

I love mysteries that have history in them.
Throw in a little literary flare, I'm there.
And if you can tie everything to a legend, it's the trifecta.
The Tiger's Wife caught my eye today as I was scrolling past books on offer in the Monday mystery newsletters I get. I can't wait to read it. Check it out here.

Here's the blurb from Amazon:

In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.
 
 

Good news for fans of Gone Girl and Girl on the Train

This is a debut novel and kudos to Mary Kubica for pulling off the multiple point of view/dual time-line story. (She’s since written two more psychological thrillers, and I cannot wait to read them.) 

Here the focus is on the search for missing Mia Dennett, a young woman whose father disapproves of the way she lives her life and whose mother flagellates herself for not being more of a nurturer. The story is told from several different angles, including Mia’s mother Eve and Detective Gabe Hoffman, who finds himself drawn to Eve as he searches for clues to her missing daughter. 

The more we know about Mia, the more we sympathize with her and that’s also true of Gabe, who starts out being a somewhat generic wise-cracking cop but develops into a man whose compassion extends beyond the family of the victim in the case he’s investigating. The twists and turns are nicely handled, and even fans of the genre may find themselves surprised by the end.Yes, yes, the comparisons to Gone Girl and Girl on the Train are more than justified.

Sample Karin Slaughter's new book

I'm a big fan of Karin Slaughter's books and she just published a new one last month. Her publisher is making a sample available online here. Check it out.

Size does matter

I'm short. At five foot one, I'm four inches shorter than the average American woman. I'm even short by worldwide standards, unless you factor in Bolivian women, where the average height is 4'8" or Cambodia where the average is five feet even. The average height of an American man is approximately 5'10" so I'm nearly a foot shorter than even the average man. I can live with that. My height makes it harder to find clothes that really fit--I can't afford Vera Wang who dresses petite celebrities like Holly Hunter, and it's sometimes hard finding cute shoes in my size, but in general, I've learned work-arounds for things like getting cans off high shelves in supermarkets and dusting the tops of refrigerators and posing for pictures with taller people so we don't look like a circus act.

My height was never an issue until I worked at a production company on the Warner Brothers lot. The man whose name was on the company hired an executive to run the film division so that he could expand into television and cable. The man he hired was a sociopath. He was eventually (and successfully) sued for sexual harassment by a male intern, but before that happened, he was responsible for a 100 percent turnover in the people who worked at the company. I was there for eighteen months. Within months of my leaving, there wasn't a single person left I'd worked with.

This man was tall, probably six feet four, or so, and he liked LOOMING. It was his go-to stance. He would move in really close and loom. I do not have a particularly large bubble of personal space. I can feel comfortable standing close to other people, even to strangers, but every time this man loomed over me, I had to fight an almost viseral urge to back up. I'd forgotten about that until I watched the debate last night and watched Donald Trump (who is 6'2") looming over Hillary Clinton (who is 5'7"). I can only imagine the discipline it took not to flinch away. I don't care if this is a tried and true strategy for pulling focus, the optics were creepy. If you didn't see it, here's the link. 

Ride the Pink Horse--Vintage Noir

I've always been a fan of writer Dorothy B. Hughes. She is best known for writing In a Lonely Place, but this book, Ride the Pink Horse, is probably her second-best well-known novel. She rote hard-boiled mysteries and noir-ish crime and her work has definitely held up in the 23 years since her death. The Kindle version of the book is on sale today. If you haven't had the pleasure of reading this book, now is the time to change that.

And I love that cover!

Think Spiders are Scary? Me Too

For the last several years I have written longish short horror tories just for Halloween. In the past I published them just on Amazon but I'm in the process of "going wide" with them. Right now you can find Unsanctified--the most spidery of my stories--on all platforms; by the end of the weekend, Spite will be there too.

It's going to be a really busy month, so I might not get a story out this month. If I do, it's going to be called Godforsaken and will most likely feature a cover from my favorite source of pre-made cover designs, Book Cover Designer. My "wish list" on that site is embarrassingly long.

A meme is worth a thousand words

I've worked in a sexist business since I was in my 30s. If I blushed every time a man used the C word or the P word around me, I'd  be permanently beet red. I've heard producers candidly dismiss actresses because they weren't sexy enough (or because they didn't want to sleep with them and as Rachel Maddow would say, "That's not the word they used.")

I saw one of Donald Trump's female surrogates on CNN yesterday defending what he said on the leaked Access Hollywood tape as just being the way people in Hollywood talk. And you know--she wasn't wrong. There are people in Hollywood who do talk like that. But they're not running for president.

Another Great Cover

And another book for the TBR pile. This one is a "Roaring Twenties" fairy tale retelling  that came up in the "also boughts" section when I was checking out another book. The cover caught my eye. So many books!  But this is a three-day weekend so I see some reading in my future.

Free Monday Mystery

I'm signed up for a lot of the newsletters that showcase free Kindle books. When I'm feeling a little light in the wallet, it comforts me to know that I can still have new books to read without spending any money. (I spend a lot of money on books when I have it to spare, so I'm not one of what a friend of mine calls a "greedy grabber" who won't spend money on books and just slurps up all the freebies.)
Today it's Mystery Monday, and I snagged this thriller, the first of a series set on the Oregon Coast. I'm still new to the Pacific Northwest, so I'm eager to see how it's depicted in The Gray and Guilty Sea.

A luminous novel of female empowerment

I'd heard of Caroline Herschel before, sister of the composer/astronomer William Herschel. (He is the man who discovered Uranus, which was once known as "Herschel's Planet.") When I stumbled across this book on Pinterest, on a board dedicated to beautiful covers, my curiosity was piqued. (I LOVE the cover.) The Stargazer's Sister was a wonderful historical novel and I recommend it highly.

Free Sci Fi and Fantasy Books

Love free books?  Click here to go to Patty Jansen's monthly promo site where you can choose your favorite retailer. Just one click gives you a choice of more than 100 books in all flavors of sci fi and fantasy. You'll find short reads like my book Daughter of the Midnight King there, along with Heartblaze 1: Vampire Soul, The Cobweb Bride, and many others I KNOW you've been dying to read. And did I mention it's FREE???

Cover reveal--my new urban fantasy series

I know that generally you reveal a cover when you're about to actually publish your latest novel, but I am so excited about this new cover that I can't wait. It was created by Kristyn McQuiggan of Drop Dead Designs, who sells both premades and custom covers. (There's a pre-made I have my eye on right now that's pretty stunning.)

This image is fabulous, I think. The model is gorgeous, the photoshopping is fine, and the overall urban fantasy concept just works beautifully. Go check out her work. She prices her work for the indie author on a budget but her work doesn't look like those cheap covers you pick up on Fiverr. (She includes the print book wraparound in her cover prices, and they are VERY affordable.)

An anthology of political satire

My story, "Looking Good America," is part of this new anthology, We've Been Trumped, timed to hit the bookstores a month before the election. The genre is political satire, the them is what life might be like under a Trump presidency. There are some excellent stories in the collection, and if you enjoy snark, you might enjoy them.

You Know This Already

But I'm going to say it again. If you're not registered to vote--register.
Just Google "How to Register to Vote" and all the info will come up.
And if you are registered to vote, VOTE.
Don't make me tell you again that my father voted on his deathbed by absentee ballot.
Don't make me tell you that that my great grandmother died before women had the right to vote.
Don't make me remind you that African-Americans had to die to win the right to vote.
Not voting is un-American.
And if you do vote, make sure your vote counts. It's all very well to write in a  no-hoper for Senior Class President, because there's not a lot at stake. What's the worst that can happen?
But only one of two people in this election has a chance at being elected President--Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Even if there are elements of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson's platforms that reflect your values, they will not win. They won't.  But there are Libertarian and Green Party candidates in down-ticket races that might have a chance. If you believe America should have multiple party systems, be a part of building those parties up so that they are viable alternatives.
But in this race, in 2016, a vote for anyone but one of the two major party candidates is a vote that says you don't really care who wins because it's not the candidate you wanted. And "not caring" is how we got into this mess in the first place. This is a participatory Democracy.
Participate.

Happy Banned Books Week!

Don't just sit there--read something subversive. Go to the official Banned Books Week site for ideas.

Autumn sentinel

It's so much fun having fall weather again. I missed that in Los Angeles.

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

Behold the Dreamers. You need to read this book. If your library doesn't have it, buy the paperback or the Kindle edition. Because seriously, you need to read it.

I have a history with this book. I was in the running for the job of editing it, and although I did not get the gig, I got to read the book last year as the author was refining it for publication. When I read it, I got that prickle on the back of my neck, the one that says, this is a fantastic book and if there is justice in the universe, it will be a best seller.

This is a story about an immigrant and his family whose lives become intwined with the lives of their employers--the typical "one percent" just before the economy crashes and burns in 2008. Like her immigrant protagonists, the author is herself an immigrant, and her portraits of the various "dreamers" are rich and layered and believable and true.

The writing is luminous. She takes us to the heart of several very different lives and takes us to a time and place that was a pivot point for history, a time that shattered a lot of people's dreams. The book came out last month and has already been picked as one of Good Housekeeping's fall reading picks. It'll be on a lot more reading lists before too long. 

Strawberry corn

It's officially the first day of Fall so my local supermarket has gone all in on the harvest-themed displays. There are twenty kinds of pumpkins and gourds, and a half-dozen kinds of corn (sweet, Indian, you name it). And there was this...strawberry corn. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the size of the little corns is just about the same size as an extra large strawberry. I've never seen such a thing before, so I immediately came home and Googled it. Turns out "strawberry corn" is a kind of popcorn. But to me it looks like something fairy animals would eat. (They also look exactly like that strange hard candy with the nubbins on it.)

Cover Comparison The Stephen King edition

I love short story collections and continue to buy them even as my friends and colleagues bemoan the way short story markets have dried up. Paying markets that is. I started out writing short stories and it's still my favorite length. Some ideas are just short story ideas.
Somehow, in the middle of writing longer works and doing good works and just living his life, Stephen King still finds time to write short stories. The most recent collection of these is Bazaar of Bad Dreams, a title I love. But when the book came out, I didn't love the cover. Honestly, it looked like one of those photoshopped numbers that indie authors get slammed for. That's it on the left. The combination of black and white and red just doesn't say "Dreams" to me.

But since today is King's birthday, everyone is offering special deals on his books (Simon and Schuster, his long-time publisher, is wishing him a "Happy Birthday" with all kinds of offers on his backlist.) And so I saw an offer with the UK cover of Bazaar of Bad Dreams and for me, it's a winner. I'm drawn to covers with splotches of color anyway, and I like the typography and the whole "concept" just so much better. Which one would you rather pick up?

Happy Birthday Stephen King!

The first writer I sought out because I loved her books and wanted to read everything she wrote was Beverly Cleary, who just turned 100 in April. (Live long and prosper Bev!)  And then it was Carolyn Keene "who" wrote the Nancy Drew books but she wasn't really one person, so "she" doesn't count. And then it was Stephen King.
I didn't start with Carrie; my gateway to the Kingdom was a collection of his short stories. Back then, he wasn't writing six or seven books a year like an indie author, but he'd been writing for a couple of years by the time I discovered him and so it took me a while to work through the backlog. (Well, it probably took me a week. I read fast and back then, I still had a lot of free time.)
I was moved by The Dead Zone and scared by Pet Sematary and blown away by The Stand. To this day, the only epic apocalyptic novel that even comes close to it in terms of Dickensian breadth of characters is Robert McCammon's Swan Song.
So I've been reading along all these years and love that he's writing like his life depends on it.

Wait, maybe it does? Maybe the reason he's so prolific is that in the terrible accident that nearly killed him, he did die? And he made a bargain with the devil to come back. But if he doesn't write 10 books a year, he has to return.
Happy Birthday Stephen King.
Thank you for the books!

Seven Skeletons

I am a sucker for books that tell a story through a collection of objects or similar items. (A History of the World in 6 Glasses is one of my favorite books.) This book, Seven Skeletons (from Penguin) bills itself as a "cultural history of each celebrity fossil" that combines into a work of science and history. I'm so there. Plus, I like the cover. It's clean and graphic.

Random Cat Picture--because cats!

My cat has recently taken to hanging out at the top of the stairs. He likes sitting in the sun and he also likes having a clear view of the upstairs and down into the kitchen. Whenever I see the cat following the sun around,  I always think of Robert Heinlein talking about the title of his book The Door Into Summer. It came to him while watching his cat go from room to room in the winter, looking for "the door into summer."

For the TBR pile BELOVED POISON

A Victorian mystery!  My favorite. Well, one of my favorites. Read a review on Criminal Element.

Thomas Mullen's DARKTOWN, a review

In Thomas Mullen’s novel DARKTOWN,  the murder of a young black woman exposes a secret that goes all the way to the highest levels of Atlanta’s white society.

In post-war Atlanta, LUCIUS BOGGS and TOMMY SMITH are cops. But they’re also black and “Negro policemen” don’t get a lot of respect from either civilians or white cops. Their authority is limited, and whites know flout that limited authority wheneve they feel like it. As when a white man drunkenly plows into a street lamp with a bruised black  woman in the passenger seat and repeatedly ignores Lucius’ polite requests to hand over his license. Instead, he simply denies hitting the light pole and rives away … slowly.

The ongoing information about the black police force and how it was formed and where it is located is dripped into the story as needed (sometimes a bit clumsily) along with information on the racial politics of the time and place. Real-life people are mentioned (including Rev. Martin Luther King SENIOR) and there’s a real feeling of verisimilitude to the story.

Free Short Story--a little September horror

I snagged this cover from Indie Author Services last year when they were having a blow-out on their pre-mades and I wrote the story around it. My heart still belongs to short fiction and I'm quite pleased with the way this dark little story came out. You can snag it free on Amazon for the next five days. Click here.

You'll Want to See Collateral Beauty

I read scripts for a living. Most of them aren't that good.  Some of them are so bad you despair for the movie industry. And some of them are so wonderful that when you read them, the hair on the back of your neck stands up because you know you're reading something that's going to make a great movie. I felt that way about The King's Speech.

Collateral Beauty is a lovely story. It will be out at Christmas. You should go to see it. The cast alone makes it worth the admission--Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton.

I wish I drank coffee

Because I would be all over those pumpkin spice lattes. And also the chile mochas. I love Mexican chocolate. But alas, I am a failed adult in that I never acquired the taste for coffee. But I do love pumpkins. Aren't these little tiger-striped pumpkin-lets adorable?