The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club Book One by Ann Warner

I used to facilitate a mystery book club that was primarily composed of women in their late sixties and seventies. And before we got to the book discussion each month, we often got into a discussion of what they'd suffered under the patriarchy. This book is about women in a retirement home who ALL have stories like that, and they all have pasts, sometimes dark pasts.

I loved this book and cannot wait to read the sequels. The characters are women who could be in my friends group. There's the teacher who "took care" of the bully, accidentally paralyzing him but knowing that she saved a lot of other kids pain. There's the woman who hides an original Edward Hopper painting in her room. There's the woman who took up handwriting analysis as a hobby to occupy her retirement. 

 TThe book is free today on Kindle.

New Urban Fantasy Coming Soon.

 

It was 1993 when I read my first Urban Fantasy novel and it changed my life. I'd never heard of the the genre before. But I felt like it had been invented for my own particular pleasure. A mixture of mystery and fantasy!!!! 

I loved the snarky voice of the heroine, Anita Blake, vampire hunter. I started looking for new UF authors and found them. Nancy Collins and her SUNGLASSES AFTER DARK, Carrie Vaughn and her Kitty Norville books, Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden. When I first ventured into longer fiction after writing short stories for about a decade, I went for urban fiction. All the stories in my L.A. Nocturne world are about vampires and werewolves and the humans they interact with in a paranormal "open" city. I love my paranormal Los Angeles, where the largest vampire in the city has taken over my favorite building in the world, the Griffith Park Observatory.

But then I started venturing out and got sidetracked for a while writing sci fi and paranormal fantasy and sweet romance. I love all those stories, but now I want to go back to UF for a while. I'm going to start with Witch and the Hunter, a story set in the Pacific Northwest, which is aplace I love, particularly in Autumn when everything is ablaze with fall color.

I won't quit writing the other books--I'm releasing short, sweet Christmas romances every single day in December--but it'll be nice to return to my first love. You never forget your first.

Total Fireworks...

 

I really like writing romances revolving around holidays, but so far I've concentrated on Christmas and Halloween (my two favorites). But I've joined this anthology that'll be out next summer, and I couldn't be more excited. Using my USAT bestselling author pen name Katherine Moore, I'm writing a story that takes place at a small town Fourth of July festival with a city girl and her first love. fireworks ensue, although I write Hallmark-rated hijinks, so it's pretty sweet. (But there are a number of writers in the collection and the stories will come with all the levels of heat.) 

You can preorder it here for 99 cents. 

USA TODAY Bestseller List is BACK!

 

I am in a boxed set of mystery stories that was aiming for a list win that got derailed when the paper closed this list down. Now it's back, we're hoping we can still make it. You'll be hearing more from me, but here's a picture of my personal cover:

A Woman Presumed.

I took the title from an NPR story I heard about a double murder where the police found a victim and "a woman presumed to be his wife." And I thought...what if the dead woman wasn't his wife? And what if the person who identified the body knew that? I'm really excited by the story. 

Here's the link to pre-order Talk Deadly to Me.

I love the cover for the collection. This collection is close to my heart because I grew up reading mysteries. Yes, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, but back then, there was no such thing as YA or Middle Grade reading, so once you were done with those, you pretty much graduated to adult reading. I was reading Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and my mother read a mystery a night (because she was an insomniac.) I read everybody--Josephine Tey and Sue Grafton and Dick Francis and Agatha Christie (of course) and ... on and on and on. 

Follow me on Facebook...

 

I'm pretty low-key when it comes to pimping out my work. I'll post links if a preorder goes up, or if a friend of mine has a book I think you'll like, but 90 percent of my FB content is interesting stuff. Or things I'm interested in that I think you might be interested in too. But I'm currently trying to get a book deal and one of the metrics the editors are interesed in are HOW MANY FOLLOWERS you have. Which makes it sound like they're only interested in signing cult leaders. But I'd love it if you followed my Kat Parrish page here. Or while you're at it, follow my Kat Parrish Amazon page.

Coming soon--Chimera in Vella

 I'm giving Vella another trial after finding this cover (and another) from Chris at Novel Storm on Etsy. (Find it here.)

My story is a future, space opera-ish take on Robert Louis Stevenson's Island of Dr. Moreau. I've been playing with the idea for years!

CHOSEN ...Fight Like a Girl now on pre-order

 

Stories of bad-ass women (some of them with swords) available on preorder now. I have two stories in this collection. One by my pen name Kat Parrish, one by Katia Kozar. The stories will fit into my Twelve Realms world and be short works of epic fantasy. 

Find it here.

Speaking of epic fantasy, I watched Dungeons and Dragons today, which I enjoyed very much. I never played the game, but I know all the tropes and it was to see how the writers handled them Loved the fat dragon. It looked like Hugh Grant was having a great time. Ditto Chris Pines. Not a rod of lordly might in sight and nobody paid for their drinks with coppers!