Into bark and pore
the cold vapor
seeps
a foreign light
strange gravity
All turns
as if in a truce,
equilibrium
shifted
Caught in the
expanding
pause
you are forgotten—
-ikk
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Literary Agency Clients — our writers & illustrators
(alphabetical order)
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M. Molly Backes |
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Molly Backes grew up in Wisconsin, where she began writing about the world around her. At age four she penned her first story, "Raccoons Looking in a Mailbox, " asking readers to grapple with the important question: What are those raccoons looking for? After graduating from Grinnell College, Molly moved to New Mexico, where she got 150 middle schoolers to write novels with her for NaNoWriMo. Her first novel Homecoming Girl is about a girl whose life seems perfect: popular friends, a great boyfriend, and a strong bid at becoming Homecoming Queen...until an accident causes her to discover a talent she didn't know she had, and she's forced to choose between old loyalties and new passions. Molly lives in Chicago, writes for young adults, and stops to pet every dog she sees. Check out her blog at mollybackes.blogspot.com.
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Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen |
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Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen never thought she'd grow up to be a writer. She'd thought of being a doctor (but she's afraid of blood), a model (but she likes to eat), the president (but she had a dissolute youth)... so much for childhood dreams. Sudipta is the author of eleven picture books and sixteen nonfiction books for children including The Hog Prince, illustrated by Jason Wolff (Dutton, 2009), Ballots for Belva, illustrated by Courtney Martin (Abrams, 2008) and The Mine-o-saur, illustrated by David Clark (Putnam, 2007). Sudipta often visits schools to share her stories, and teaches writing to children and adults. She lines in New Jersey with her three children and an imaginary pony named Penny. Find her on the web at www.sudipta.com.
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A.C.E. Bauer |
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A.C.E. Bauer has been telling and writing stories since childhood. After a break while she worked as an attorney, writing legal briefs and telling stories about her clients, she has returned to fiction, writing children's books and short stories for all ages. No Castles Here (Random House, 2007), her first middle grade novel, was named "one of the strongest titles of the year" in a starred Kirkus review and was named to the ALA's 2009 Rainbow List. Her second middle-grade novel, Come Fall, is due out from Random House in July 2010. Born and raised in Montreal, A.C.E. Bauer spends most of the year in New England, and much of the summer on a lake in Quebec. To learn more about her writing, visit her website at http://acebauer.com.
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Jake Bell |
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Jake Bell declared his intention to be a writer when he was seven years old. His mother gave him one piece of advice: "Get a good day job." After fifteen years in the job market, Jake had been a sportscaster, a magician, a disc jockey, a bagel baker, professional wrestling referee, a college English instructor, and a minor league second baseman, and earned a BA and MBA--but he hadn't gotten much writing done. Finally, during a stint of unemployment, Jake got fed up with trying to find a good day job and wrote his first middle grade novel, Secret Identity Crisis. This is the first superhero book in The Amazing Adventures of Nate Banks series coming from Scholastic in May 2010, with cover illustrations and a special full-color, eight page comic insert by Chris Giarrusso. Jake lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his two kids from whom he regularly poaches ideas for picture book manuscripts.
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David Borofka |
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David Borofka is the award-winning author of more than forty published short stories in which he explores the relationship of spirituality with sexuality, religion with the deceptions of piety. Elizabeth Gaffney (NY Times Book Review) observes, "Moments of giddy redemption leaven the woes of Mr. Borofka's characters, but the real miracle is the deftness, subtlety and humor with which he makes their many bedeviled lives cohere in a single vision of well-earned affirmation." Winner of the Missouri Review's Editors' Prize and Carolina Quarterly's Charles B. Wood Award for Distinguished Writing, David's work has appeared in numerous literary journals. His latest novel, A Perfect Life, intertwines the story of the notorious Oneida Community with our contemporary desire for utopian and religious ideals, a reminder that in a country founded by religious radicals and lunatics, a repetition of our spiritual history is inevitable, generation after generation.
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Read an excerpt from David Borofka
The Secret Life of Engineers
My father was well into his eighties and dying before he told me certain things.
My mother, he told me, had had a nervous breakdown, sometime in 1966, about the
time I was due to start junior high. One day she was fine, and the next day she
woke up crying and cutting the bed sheets to ribbons with a pair of kitchen
shears. The crying he could ignore, my father said, but the shears... Well, you
never knew what those shears might be aimed at next. Let the Freudians among
you think what you will. Have a field day.
"You never knew, did you?" my father said.
"No," I said. I couldn't have been more glum. To be unaware when one's own
mother heads off to the loony bin? "Where was I?"
"Camp," he said. My confusion made him happy, of that I could tell. "Three
weeks in the beautiful Mojave Desert."
The brochure had promised archaeology, geology, and desert survival skills, but
the reality was tube tents, a desert wind that froze us each night, and high
school and college-age counselors who lectured us about Marx and Lenin and Mao,
then gave us hits off their joints. They turned a blind eye when we got into
their stash of Boone's Farm and Ripple. We learned slogans, "Hell, no. We won't
go," being among our favorites. I came home with tonsillitis, a hangover, and a
revolutionary attitude.
"I came home from Japan," my father said, "when the neighbors started to
complain. She was wandering the block in her nightgown. There were the bed
sheets. The shears. She had pulled the stuffing out of the mattress. Your
mother dropped you off at the YMCA parking lot, and then she went crackers. She
didn't like to be alone."
My mother's dislike of solitude was directly related to my father's absences.
Absences that, to my mind, were not that frequent or that long in duration, but
seemed to my mother to be interminable. "I didn't get married," I remember her
saying, "so your father would have a ride to the airport." While my father was
gone, my mother bitterly counted the hours. When I was younger, we often spent
the nights at my grandparents' house; she didn't sleep well since, without him
in our wood frame house, every creak and groan was evidence of burglars and
rapists, murderers and thieves. "One of these days," my mother often said,
"he's going to come home to the sight of our bloody, dismembered corpses, and
won't he feel bad then?" Frankly, I didn't think my father, who was guilty of
terminal cheerfulness, was capable of feeling bad about anything, including the
deaths of his family, either real or imaginary, whereas my mother was able to
feel terrible about everything, including those events confined entirely to her
own imagination, a psychic space that was diminished-if only slightly-when she
was no longer alone.
My father, on the other hand, never minded being by himself. On several
occasions during the three years that my mother was dying, we offered him our
spare bedroom, but he declined each time. "Don't think I
don't appreciate it," he told Ellen, "but the last thing you kids need is an
old fart hanging around, clogging up the sofa, and stinking up the bathrooms."
Ellen and I looked at each other across the kitchen table, connected by our
guilt since that was more or less the assessment we had each come to, the offer
being made out of assumed obligation more than any true desire. Ellen felt that
obligation more keenly, but she was also the more greatly relieved by my
father's refusal. She loved my father, she insisted, but he was stubborn and
insensitive and a pain in the ass, and if he were to live with us, she'd
probably want to kill him about fourteen times a day.
"Don't worry about me," my father said. "I've got ten good years yet, twenty if
I follow that dumb doctor's orders, and I don't intend to become a burden."
"All right, then," Ellen said. "I'm going to hold you to it. The moment you
need help in the bathroom is the moment I hand you the Jonestown Kool-Aid."
My father, whose cancer would kill him in six more months, said: "And don't
think I won't be grateful."
Copyright © 2007 by David Borofka
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Meagan Brothers |
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Meagan Brothers' debut novel for young adults, Debbie Harry Sings in French, was published in 2008 by Henry Holt & Co. It was a selection in the Kirkus First Fiction special section, an ELLEgirl book club pick and included in the New York Public Library's Stuff for the Teen Age 2009. The book received a starred review in PW, and Booklist proclaimed it "an easy recommendation for reluctant readers." A second young adult novel is due out soon from Henry Holt. She is also the author of Drinking People, an adult novel set in a dusty Texas town that explores the relationship between father, daughter, and their writing (out for submission). Her chapbook of poems, 1978, was published by CafeMo Press in 2001. Meagan has also written film and album reviews for Upstage Magazine, and played guitar with several loosely formed groups in the New York-New Jersey area. A native Carolinian, Meagan currently lives and works in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
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Read excerpts from Meagan Brothers
Debbie Harry Sings in French
(Henry Holt & Company Spring 2008)
I picked up the two parts of the chain, with a strange feeling in my chest.
"Looking for something?" I knew it. I turned around. There was Brian,
holding my bike up high, by the front tire. Donald stood close behind him.
"Oh, hi, Brian," I said, smooth as I could manage. "Where's the third stooge?"
"Shut up, faggot. You want this back?" I felt hot prickles beneath my skin.
"No, you can keep it." He blinked, not sure of a comeback. Finally, he
hoisted it up with both hands and threw it. Maria and I both ducked. The bike
flew over our heads and smashed down in the trees behind us.
"Brian!" Maria exclaimed. "Who do you think you are, the Incredible fucking
Hulk?"
"If I'd known you liked hanging around with queers," Brian's chest heaved, "I
never woulda wasted my time."
"But, Brian," she batted her eyes innocently. "Why do you think I hung around
with you?"
"I don't know what the hell they did to you up there," he gritted his teeth at
her. "But they sure didn't do you any favors."
"Why don't you and Donald go wrestle each other," she put her sunglasses back
on, looking annoyed. She turned away, but Brian wasn't backing down, and for a
second I thought he was going to hit her. A car horn blasted.
"Hey Brian! Come on, man, let's go!" We all looked up. It was Ben. He was
driving a huge, beat-up Bronco with a rebel flag in the back window. The radio
blasted Tupac. Ben kind of nodded at me. Acknowledging me, but nothing more.
I squinted at him. I was glad we didn't have any dissections coming up.
"Later, faggot," Brian swaggered off towards the behemoth with Donald trotting
closely behind him. The engine grunted and they took off. Maria gave them the
finger, but it was futile. We went into the trees to retrieve my bike.
"Man," she sighed as we pulled it from a thorn bush. "He really messed it up."
I stood the bike upright. The chain had come off, but it wasn't broken. The
back tire rim was bent, though - there was no way I could go anywhere on it now.
"I don't know how I'm gonna get it home."
"Worry about that later," Maria said. "Come on. We'll take mine." I limped
my bike over to the rack and tried to tie it up with the two broken chain
pieces.
"Both of us? Where am I gonna ride, on the handlebars?"
"No. On the back," she led me to the farthest rack - there, chained up like
an ordinary bike, was a blue Vespa motorscooter, like something out of Roman
Holiday. "Cool, innit?"
"I'm downright speechless," I finally said.
"But the beat goes on. Here," she popped open a compartment under the seat and
handed me a small, stylish black helmet. "Safety first." I strapped it on and
climbed on behind her. She revved the engine until it hummed.
"Hold on to me tight," she commanded. "Don't worry about being fresh." I
slipped my arms loosely around her waist, trying not to go too low or too high.
She was warm, and smelled a little like lavender and cigarette smoke. We took
off faster than I anticipated. Startled, I squeezed her, and she laughed.
"I told you to hold on!" She pulled out into traffic and we sped past the
doctor's offices and fast food restaurants, past the retirement home and the
hospital. Her hair whipped around my face as we buzzed along. It smelled like
almonds. There was a cool smell in the air, too; the smell of the woods, of
old trees.
Winter coming on, I guess.
Drinking People
The TV was on in the living room. Dave Letterman was debating with Paul
Schaffer over whether a rubber chicken would float or not. My mother sat on
the couch beneath the amber-colored lamp, going through an old shirt box full
of papers, her reading glasses on. I sat down next to her and saw that she had
a near-empty bottle of Jim Beam tucked into the crook of her arm.
"Geez, mom, have a drink."
She handed me the bottle.
"This is your father's. I've only had a couple sips." I felt the burn
in my throat and handed it back to her. "I figured it would be the last -" she
sighed and gazed at the bottle. "Oh, I don't know what I figured. I've been
turning this house upside down for the past two days looking for a will -"
"You think he might've left you the fine china?" I snorted. My mother gave me
a weary look.
"I thought he might've left some clue as to what he wanted done with his
remains. But instead all I've found is a bunch of old stories he never
finished and letters he never sent." She handed me a sheet of folded, yellowed
hotel stationary from the shirt box. "Here, look at this."
Septembersomething, 19seventysomething, San Fransomewhere
3:25 am
Suzy, Jesus,
You wanna accuse me of something, fine, but lemme remind you whose been taking
care of whose. Not to mention the kid. So you want some marlon brando
loverboy to show you a goodtime, fine, kick me to the ol' curb and have fun
doing it, but don't jangle me around like yr old highschool saddleshoe promdate
ho-dee-ho Goodtime Dan. I'm jangleproof, baby. Shake me, I don't rattle.
But I'm not angry with you. It's early and the sun will make the bay turn pink
soon and I'll think of your pink skin in the hot bath and the way your teeth
leave little halfmoon tracks in my shoulder when you bite down. I want to be
there with you but I don't know if you really want me there anymore. I don't
know if I should be there or here or anywhere and I get scared at night that I
might start tearing around like a tornado some which a way and just whip you up
in it, in this frenzy in my head that I'm afraid will bust outta me one day and
I can't be held accountable for what it might do. For what I might do. I'm
afraid of the day you look at me and don't recognize me. I don't know why I
can't sit still and be good, honey. I want to be with you and our kid in our
house and even though I told you on the first day we met, no promises, I want
to be that real standup guy of your dreams and I'll change change change, unzip
my head to whatever psychobabbler you want, I'll join the army, I'll teach
geometry, I'll stay right by your side and knit sweaters, you just say what it
is you want, and I'll give it to you.
By the way, you got the wrong idea about that girl from Del Rio, honey.
I'll be here with Mack until Friday. Working up a storm because these bastards
won't let me alone otherwise. On Saturday we go down to Hollywood for that
Sunday morning television show, but by the time you can see me on it I'll be
home to you, if you want me.
I miss you, Suzy. Goddam. Love,
Eddie
"Did I ever tell you about how we met?"
"Yeah, sure." He came into her father's bakery in Shreveport and stole her
away.
"Not the bakery story. The real story."
"I'm all ears."
Copyright © 2007 by Meagan Brothers
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Pamela Callow |
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Pamela Callow is the author of a new legal biomedical thriller series set in Halifax. Damaged (MIRA Books, July 2010) debuts struggling thirty-something lawyer Neve Lange, whose career-making case becomes deadly as she uncovers a scam that rocks the foundations of biomedical research—and puts her in the path of a dementing killer. In Indefensible (MIRA Books, January 2011), the Managing Partner of Neve's firm is accused of a gruesome case of domestic homicide—and his defense lies in the hands of the one person who understands only too well the taint of criminal scandal: Neve Lange. Prior to making writing a career, Pamela worked as a strategy consultant for an international consulting firm. She is a member of the Nova Scotia Bar, and has an undergraduate degree in English Literature and a Master's degree in Public Administration. Pamela lives in Nova Scotia, along with her husband, two children and a mischievous pug named Peaches. She loves to go for walks (unlike her dog), drink coffee (but her stomach doesn't), and can be spotted avidly cheering on her kids at their soccer and basketball games.
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Read excerpts from Pamela Callow
No Man's Land
Springtime in Halifax was not known for its warmth or sunshine. Neither
was Barrett, Lyons and Goldstein.
Tess Lange allowed herself a one-minute break and gazed out her window on
BLG's associate floor. Drizzle specked the glass, obscuring the line of cars
snaking along Lower Water Street. Friday night rush hour was just beginning.
She turned back to her desk, forcing her eyes to focus on the separation
agreement spread out in front of her. The fourth this week. The thirty-seventh
since she joined BLG. She grimaced. The irony was not lost on her. She'd left
Marshall and Assoc. because Madelyn Marshall had a preponderance of family law
clients. Tess had assumed -- incorrectly -- that she'd seen the end of them
when she'd packed her boxes and left four months ago. Instead, she'd done more
separation agreements at BLG than she'd done during her eighteen month tenure
with Madelyn.
"Tess." A man's voice broke through her thoughts.
She glanced at the door in surprise. She hadn't heard anyone coming.
Her pulse jumped into her throat.
It was Randall Barrett. Himself.
She rose quickly, smoothing her skirt. "Hi, Randall." She gave him a
brilliant smile, grateful she wore the new suit she'd bought with her last pay
cheque. It had been a toss up between replacing her old articling clothes or
the old kitchen piping, but the lure of the Jackie-O style suit had been too
strong. When she heard the pipes groaning that night, she'd regretted her
extravagance, but couldn't bring herself to take the sleek cream suit back and
ask for a refund. She'd learned a long time ago that there were no returns in
life.
Now, eyeing Randall's exquisitely tailored grey suit, she was glad she'd
kept it. He, of all people, needed to see that Tess belonged in this office,
that her name had a place on BLG letterhead. Because it didn't, not yet. Not
for another two months.
And only if she cut it.
Carpe Diem
"You heard what I said, Alexandra." He threw me an exasperated look. "Why do you
have to be so stubborn?"
"Why are you never willing to listen to me?"
His mouth tightened.
Good. My jab had hit home. "I have a plan that will get you -- and me --
off the hook for treason."
"Indeed." He raised an eyebrow. "Alexandra, I have racked my brain for a
solution to this difficulty and have come up dry."
"So did I. But then it just dawned on me." I didn't dare tell him I was
seething with jealousy over his book of Shakespearean sonnets when I had this
revelation.
"Oh yes, you are an expert in the field of law." His biting tone cut me to
the quick. "I had forgotten."
"You're damned right I am an expert." I jabbed my finger at him angrily.
"I have almost as many years at the Bar as you!"
His jaw worked. "So you say."
The Erato was getting closer.
"You won't even listen to my plan?"
He sighed deeply. "Pray tell me what your plan involves."
Annoyed, I mimicked his tone. "It involves you marrying me."
A look of incredulity crossed Thomas's face. "Have you gone mad? How could
that possibly be of benefit to either of us?"
I almost burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. Me
proposing to a man. Man calling me crazy. Me pleading my case: "Thomas, very
simply it will benefit both of us because as husband and wife we cannot
incriminate one another."
Comprehension dawned in Thomas's eyes.
Copyright © 2007 by Pamela Callow
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Opal Carew |
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Opal Carew writes erotic romance for St. Martin's Press. In May 2006 (on Opal's wedding anniversary), Emily Sylvan Kim called to invite her into the Prospect family of authors. Within a week, Emily had sold Twin Fantasies to Rose Hilliard at St. Martin's Press as part of a three-book deal! Now Opal is writing three books a year for St. Martin's Press. She has been a finalist for several awards, including the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, the HOLT Medallion, the Laurel Wreath Award, and the Passionate Plume Award. She was also named "Fresh Face of Erotic Fiction" by H.B. Fenn (the largest Canadian distributor of books). Before publishing with St. Martin's Press, Opal wrote for New Concepts Publishing and Loose Id under the name Elizabeth Batten-Carew. She wrote everything from short stories to full-length novellas and in several difference subgenres of romance. Opal earned a degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and spent 15 years as a software analyst before turning to her passions as a writer. She lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and two sons. Her oldest is just beginning his adventures in university. To learn more about Opal, visit her website at www.OpalCarew.com, or contact her at OpalCarew@BestRomanceAuthors.com.
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Lee Chapman |
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Lee Chapman is originally from Los Angeles, where he directed TV commercials for cars, soaps, toys, and various junk foods. In 1992 he moved to Mexico to fulfill his dream of becoming an artist. His work has been strongly influenced by the people, color, music and folklore of Mexico (and also the many dogs, cats, pigs, and burros in his neighborhood). Lee has illustrated several picture books, including Eight Animals on the Town, Eight Animals Play Ball, and Eight Animals Bake a Cake (all from Putnam). His images also have been licensed and reproduced as prints, calendars, greeting cards, and decorative items sold in stores such as Pier 1, JCPenny, and Kohl's. In addition, Lee's whimsical paintings have been shown in galleries throughout Mexico. Lee lives in Puerto Vallarta with his wife, Nancy, and their two dogs, Rudy Rojo and Pinta la Vaca. Visit him online at www.LeeChapmanGallery.com.
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Cori Doerrfeld |
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Cori Doerrfeld has been creating art since she could first hold a pencil. After graduating with a degree in studio art from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, she received her Post Baccalaureate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. With a strong passion for animation and children's literature, Cori has always tried to create art that tells a story. She has illustrated Welcome to Your World, Baby! and It's the Best Day Ever, Dad!, both by Brooke Shields (HarperCollins, 2008 and 2009), as well as the upcoming Seashore Baby by Elise Broach (Little, Brown, 2010). Cori is also excited about two fabulous picture books that she has written herself, Penny Loves Pink (Little, Brown, 2011) and Little Bunny Foo Foo (Dial, 2011). Cori currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband, daughter and two mischievous kitties. Visit Cori online at www.CoriDoerrfeld.com.
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Dan Ettinger & Simon Goldberg |
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Dan Ettinger and Simon Goldberg are the de facto national experts on cross-country joke-collecting/bicycle touring. In the fall of 2007, the pair (close friends since sharing a locker in 6th grade) set off from Astoria, Oregon on a race to the American punch line. They finished their ride three-months later in Charleston, South Carolina, 3,148 miles and some 275 video-recorded jokes richer. Despite their share of challenges and conflicts on the road, they found a home in the hearts, backyards, and living rooms of those they encountered throughout their journey. Their first book, Joke Pedalers: A Cross Country Bicycle Ride Through the Heart of American Humor, is part joke book, part travelogue, and 100% organic, free-range American humor. To learn more about their project check out the website: www.JokesAcrossAmerica.net.
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Katherine Easer |
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Katherine Easer's first young adult novel, Vicious (out for submission) tells the story of Sarah Weaver, a slightly jaded, depressed seventeen-year-old from a broken family who leaves California to attend an eastern women's college. At Wetherly, Sarah meets Maddy Snow and Agnes Pierce, a mysterious pair of legacy students who have been best friends since birth. When the girls accept her into their circle, loner Sarah finally has the family she's always wanted. But then she starts to notice things: Maddy's compulsive lying, Agnes's obsession with Maddy, the deterioration of the girls' friendship. And just when Sarah begins to question her own sanity, Maddy reveals a shocking secret—a secret which could lead to the murder of a best friend. Katherine is a graduate of Smith College. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
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Read an excerpt from Bonnie Edwards
Midnight Confessions II
(Kensington 2007)
Once inside, Belle floated up the stairs ahead of her, dressed in a peignoir
set that had once been green. Faye saw flashes of color in the folds as they
fluttered behind Belle's otherwise monochrome beige. Being outside in the grey
overcast light and with the faded grey wicker at her back, Faye hadn't noticed
Belle's lack of color.
It wasn't like her to be beige. Something must be wrong. "Are you upset at the
idea of my inviting Kim to the house?"
"No, of course not. I have a feeling Kim will be very entertaining."
"You will leave Kim alone," Faye said firmly to Belle, whose knowing smirk
irritated the hell out of Faye. "She's not to be jazzed up in any way. While
she's here, she'll be working, either helping get the new location ready or
searching out new inventory. She's not a plaything." If they messed with Kim,
Faye would lose her for sure.
Faye heard a deep sigh come from the wall beside her. She stopped and put her
hands on her hips, spun toward the long-suffering sound. "I'm not joking,
Lizzie. You leave her alone."
With Lizzie's penchant for practical jokes, Faye was afraid the spirits would
go too far and she'd lose a great employee. Not to mention a friend.
There must be a state law against terrorizing the help. Just because she had no
problem being surrounded by spirits didn't mean Kim would be okay with it.
"All right, I promise," agreed Lizzie from somewhere deep inside the wall. At
least it sounded like she was inside the wall. It might have been the ceiling.
Now, all she had to do was make Annie and Felicity promise to leave Kim alone
and she'd have an easier mind about Kim living here for the next few weeks.
"But the minute one of you pulls something on her, I lose my help and you'll be
sorry," she threatened, loud enough for all of them to hear. What good
threatening the dead did, she didn't know, but it was worth a shot.
The attic entrance was in the ceiling of a back hall corner.
Belle stood to the side while Faye tugged on an ancient rope. The stairs folded
down from the ceiling with the groans and squeaks that were to be expected from
hundred year old hinges. But, once the stairs got moving they opened easily
enough and Faye climbed up, surprised by the sturdy feel underfoot. "What," she
slanted a glance at Belle, "not coming with me?"
"I'll meet you there."
"You being afraid of heights seems a little weird. You can't exactly get hurt."
Belle blew her a raspberry.
As soon as Faye set foot on the attic floor Belle appeared seated on a trunk in
the corner. Dust flew everywhere, but for all the years of neglect, it smelled
clean enough. There were no obvious signs of animal or bird infestations.
No bats, either. She hated bats. They flew so erratically.
From the central staircase opening, the attic went off in every direction. From
here it was clear how large the house was because the entire floor area was
open. Dormer windows were evenly spaced around each wall, including the
additions that were built on later. There was an octagonal area that was
obviously over the conservatory.
Each dormer wall had hooks on the walls. Some even had tiny closets built in.
"What went on up here, Belle? These sort of look like cubbies or partitioned
areas."
"Staff slept up here if they didn't have homes to go to. Beds were tucked in
under the windows and there was a stove by the stairs for heat in the winter.
It wasn't unpleasant."
She took a closer look and saw curtain rings on poles stretched across the
openings to each dormer. "How large a staff did you need?"
Belle shrugged. "Four or five live ins. More in the summer to tend the garden.
We had a laundress, eventually some kitchen help, but mostly the cook's son,
Henry, at first."
Four or five live ins. Willa was right. She was going to need more help than
she thought. Even with modern equipment like a dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, and
a washer and dryer, Perdition House was too big for one person to keep up.
Especially one person with a business to run.
"Did Annie work in a cathouse in Butte when she ran away from home?" She might
have suggestions for efficient use of Faye's time.
"Yes, and it wasn't anything like working here. She'll tell you that!" Belle
chuckled and the green in her gown returned.
"You're feeling better."
"Why, yes." She cocked an eyebrow at Faye in query.
"You were beige. First time I've ever seen you so colorless. Is something
worrying you?"
"Nothing for you to be concerned about. I may have a renegade in the ranks,
that's all."
"Renegade?" She laughed, finding the idea funny in a weird way. "A renegade
ghost. Ooooo, scary."
Belle frowned. "Until now your experiences have been pleasant, haven't they?"
"You mean things could get nasty?" The thought of a ghost going postal suddenly
scared the bejeebers out of her.
Copyright © 2007 by Bonnie Edwards
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Cynthia Gall |
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Cynthia Gall has dreamed of being an artist and writer since she was a small child. Fearful for her future, Cynthia's practical parents forbade her from taking art classes and enrolled her in French class instead. So when instructed to study something sensible in college, Cynthia majored in French Literature at UC Santa Barbara. She spent a year studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, and also worked in Germany, teaching English and translating advertising copy. Since her return to the States, Cynthia has focused on refining her photographic and sculpting skills at California State University Long Beach, where her work has been featured in several shows. She currently combines the sculpture and photography to illustrate her picture books. She lives in Long Beach, California, with her two small dogs, Hansel and Gretel, and a posse of garden gnomes who prefer to remain anonymous. Visit her online at www.cynthiagall.com.
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Bridget Hardy |
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Bridget Hardy is a freelance writer and fitness instructor who prides herself on her ability to summon the endurance both professions require. She recently completed her first manuscript, How Babies Are Made (due out for submission), a bittersweet tale of a nervous accountant and father-to-be, Ray Brisco. Ray is forced to cope with his fear of fatherhood when his wife becomes pregnant after an enthusiastic 'christening' of their new, vintage red, three thousand dollar couch. Once he gets over his initial bafflement ("Sex: newborn baby. It was like finding shoes in the refrigerator."), Ray proceeds to unravel, with sarcasm, insight, and compassion, the source of all his fears.
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Leeza Hernandez |
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Leeza Hernandez spent her spare time as a child scribbling on every possible surface. It soon led to career in art and design, where she learned to keep her art on paper and off her mum's living room walls. She grew up in the south of England, and leapt to this side of the pond ten years ago. Leeza graduated with a degree in art, design and communication, but it was working as an art director that threw her into illustration. Her love for line, color and texture is evident in her award-winning work, which has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, American Illustration, and national magazines. She was also the recipient of the SCBWI's Tomie dePaulo Award in 2009. Leeza has illustrated Sandy Donovan's Bored Bella Learns About Ficion and Nonfiction (Picture Window Books, 2010) and is currently working on artwork for Ann McCallum's Eat Your Math Homework (Charlesbridge, 2011) and her very own debut picture book, Dog Gone (Putnam, 2012). She currently dwells in rural New Jersey with her husband, daughter and fluffy cat, Maisy. Visit Leeza's website at www.LeezaWorks.com.
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Read an excerpt from Aryn Kennedy
To Buzz or Not to Buzz
The next morning I awoke with a powerful sense that this day would finally be
prosperous. As I drove to work, the sun smiled on me from a clear sky. Well,
except for that one oddly penis-shaped cloud.
The Starbucks near the mini-mall tempted me to cross the street and order a
chai latte, but prosperity tea awaited me upstairs.
Samantha trotted up the stairs ahead of me. Women milled about on the landing,
preparing to go into the Curves to have their chocolate sins exercised from
their bodies. As I stuck my key in the lock, whispers surrounded me. I looked
up. Three of the women had descended on me. "Can I help you?"
They rushed inside. I grabbed the canister of endurance tea on my way to the
register. "How many weeks worth of the tea would you like?"
The women glanced at each other. A petite woman with red hair a few shades
lighter than my own auburn stepped forward. She leaned forward as if she were
about to reveal the secret to achieving non-stop orgasms by consuming minute
amounts of luxurious dark chocolate. "We're not here for the tea."
"I can make you any kind of candle you need," I said. "What's your goal?"
The plump brunette shook her head. "We need the thing you gave Tania."
"How do you know Tania?" I asked.
"I'm her lawyer," the slim brunette said. "She told me about it."
"And she told us." The redhead turned in a circle, surveying my wares. "Where
are they?"
"I don't have any."
"I told you we should have come earlier. She sold out already."
"She opened three minutes ago." The slim one set her briefcase on the counter.
"Can we special order them?"
I hadn't even drunk the prosperity tea yet. Was this a sign of the day to come?
"That was a special. Just for Tania. But there's a Hustler store further down
Sunset. They have a good selection vibrators."
"It won't be the same." The redhead shook her head, her bun bouncing. "You
charmed it. Tania said she had the best orgasm of her life. We'll pay double
for the rush. Triple. Whatever it takes to get them here pronto."
The other two women nodded their agreement.
I couldn't resist all of them combined. Besides, it couldn't hurt to get a few
more vibrators: for special cases related to saving my business. Just so long
as this rule breaking didn't become a habit. "Leave me your numbers. I'll call
you when they're ready, hopefully by tomorrow."
The redhead gripped my hand. "Thank you so much. You're saving my life."
I took their information and promised to call them as soon as possible.
At the sound of the door opening, the three women turned toward it. The
temperature in the room shot up as Dave strolled inside. They looked at me with
lust burning in their eyes. I waved to him.
The redhead leaned close to me. "Did your magic bring him?" she asked.
They stared at him as they skirted past. There was something about his toned
frame and movie star blue eyes that made women walk into poles. True to form,
one of the brunettes backed into the doorframe with an "oof."
I'd done the same thing when we met at the bookstore nine years ago. Some days
I wished I hadn't called off our fling a week later when I met Jack and
erroneously deemed him The One. Alas there was no use dwelling on the past. I'd
been twenty-three. I'd been stupid. I'd learned my lesson.
Dave grinned at the three red-cheeked ladies. Like teenagers being noticed by
the captain of the football team, they giggled as they hurried out of the store.
"What was that about?" he asked.
"Tania referred some friends."
"Great, new business. You need more of that."
"It's not exactly the kind of business I want." I crooked my finger at him to
come closer and lowered my voice. "They wanted charmed sex toys."
Copyright © 2007 by Aryn Kennedy
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Rose Kent |
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Rose Kent served as a Navy lieutenant and later as a manager for a Fortune 500 food company before returning to her favorite childhood pastime: writing books. An avid reader and runner, Rose is also an admitted foodie who enjoys thickening the plot with mouthwatering dishes (Book titles give that away.) Her first middle-grade novel, Kimchi & Calamari (HarperCollins, Spring 2007) was inspired by her adopted Korean children and features a wisecracking Korean adoptee. Kimchi & Calamari was selected for the Sunshine State Reader's Award, the READ ON Wisconsin program, and was a featured book selection of the Anti Defamation League. Her second novel, Rocky Road, is due out from Knopf in 2010, and introduces an artistic, indefatigable Tess, who, along with her erratic mom and deaf little brother, opens an ice cream shop in the dead of winter. Rose is thrilled to be with Prospect Agency and sends a "Write on, Rock On!" shout-out to all writers and illustrators. Visit Rose at www.RoseKent.com
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Read an excerpt from Rose Kent
Kimchi & Calamari
(Harper Collins 2007)
Alone at last with Mom. I could ask what she knew about the day I was born.
Seeing Yongsu and his parents got me wondering again. Plus, I still had to give
Nash something to search with, since my talk with Dad was a bust.
"Can I ask you a few questions, Mom?"
She gave me a curious look. "Ask away," she said. "Do you know my birth
parents' names, or where the adoption agency found me?" I folded the napkins in
triangles, concentrating so I wouldn't have to look at Mom.
Mom started to say something, then paused. "I planned on sharing this with you
at a special time. When you were, well, a bit older."
"Sharing what?" I asked.
"The information the adoption agency gave us. But it isn't much, Joseph."
"I really want to know whatever it is. Now," I pleaded.
She took a breath before she began. "They told us they found you in the south
of Pusan, by the waterfront, in a police station parking lot. An old woman was
walking back from the fish market in the afternoon when she heard crying. You
were lying in a basket, wrapped in a blanket."
This sounded like the Baby Moses story. Had I floated down a river in Pusan,
too?
"What was my birth mother's name?"
"They didn't give us names."
"What day did the old lady find me?"
"May seventh," Mom said, rubbing the top of my head with her fingertips.
"Well, since my birthday is May fifth, that meant my birth mother took care of
me for two days. Maybe she felt torn and didn't want to give me up," I said,
blurting out my thoughts.
Mom nodded. "Maybe," she said.
"Move, Frazer!" Sophie yelled from the family room. That old boxer loved to
park himself in inconvenient places, like on top of the puzzle.
"What's got you thinking about all this, honey?" Mom asked.
Should I tell Mom about the essay? I wanted to, but she was practically crying
already. I didn't want to make her feel she wasn't a good-enough mom. "I just
met this new kid at school today, and he's Korean. That's all."
She nodded and started scooping mashed potatoes from the Styrofoam container
onto the plates.
I kept imagining how it all happened in Pusan fourteen years ago. "Maybe it was
a baby- snatching conspiracy and the lady who found me was in on it," I said.
"She could have kidnapped me, realized she was going to get caught, and then
dropped me at the police station with that story so they wouldn't suspect
anything."
"I don't think so. The adoption agency told us that's just the way babies are
left in Korea. Birth mothers pick spots where they know their babies will be
safe and get discovered quickly."
Then Mom continued, as if trying to convince me she was right. "Unmarried
Korean women can't keep their babies, Joseph. Having a child before marriage is
taboo there, much worse than here. Mothers without husbands are outcasts.
Sometimes they can't even find jobs or homes. I think your birth mother knew
you both would have had a difficult life if she'd kept you."
"Why do Koreans make the mothers feel so bad? That's dumb," I said. "Besides,
maybe my birth mother was married to my birth father and they just didn't have
enough money to raise a kid. Or she could have gotten sick. Isn't that
possible, too?"
Copyright © 2007 by Rose Kent
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Jane Kohuth |
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Jane began her love affair with children's books before she could walk. At her preschool entrance interview, she introduced herself and her sister as Frances and Gloria — Russell Hoban's iconic badger characters (she got in). She's also a big fan of of Scrabble, crossword puzzles, and GRE analogies, but has found that writing for kids is the most fun of all. Jane has a degree in English and Creative Writing from Brandeis University as well as a master's degree in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She currently has a swoon-worthy job as a children's bookseller at the fabulous Wellesley Booksmith in Wellesley, MA, where she gets to meet her children's author idols and give kids great books. She loves to write about sensitive kids and goofy animals, but will tackle most subjects as long as she can make the words sing. Her first book, Ducks Go Vroom (Random House, due out Spring 2011) is about a family of ducks who take off in their convertible for a visit to their Auntie Goose's house. She frequently brainstorms with her husband, who, conveniently, has the sense of humor of a four-year-old.
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Shannon Landrum |
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Shannon Landrum enjoys the sound of water lapping at the hull of a boat, the smell of theme park asphalt baking in the sun, and living vicariously through her rockstar teenagers. Her first novel, The Dust Prophet (out for submission), tells the story of Esta, the daughter of poor dirt farmers in a Depression-era Kansas town. After a devastating tornado, Esta is miraculously found unharmed and perched on the roof of a church. When she speaks of a heavenly experience and is found to be pregnant, the town must decide if she is God's handmaiden, a witch, or a clever con-artist. Shannon is also the author of two collections of children's poems, The Book of Brats and Dark Verses for the Truly Twisted. She lives in Florida with her husband, two children, and three Jack Russell terriers.
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Read an excerpt from Shannon Landrum
The Dust Prophet
"Did Doctor Taylor tell you about your condition?"
"Yes." She stood unnaturally still for a child. Stock still. And she had a way
of turning her head slightly while still keeping her eyes on a person. "I'm
going to have a baby."
"Yes. Well, we need to talk about that, don't we?" He found himself blinking to
compensate for how seldom she did. "Esta, I need to know who did this to you. I
know it might be frightening to talk about. But it needs to be said out loud.
The person who did this to you did a bad thing. Who's been at you, child?"
She cocked her head a few degrees but remained silent.
"Esta, we need to know the father of your child."
"It's between me and God," she said.
"Alright. We can discuss it later if you'd rather. But I'd like to talk with
you about what you told Doctor Taylor. About Jenny."
"What about it?" she replied.
"No one knows better than I how it feels to want to give comfort to those who
are suffering and yet be unable to. I have spent much of my adult life and all
of the last two months striving to grant the tiniest measure of comfort in the
face of terrible loss. But it is wrong to create falsities, even with the
purest of motives -- to ease another's pain."
"I wouldn't do that," she said.
"I must assume that you were school friends with Jenny Taylor and that she told
you about the dress and how she wanted to wear her hair."
"I've only ever had one friend, Reverend," Esta said, "Miss Margaret Goode."
Thomas heard the door to the office opening and conversation between Doctor
Taylor and a woman.
Thomas continued, "Then you must have heard this information from Margaret
Goode. Perhaps you've stored this memory without even being aware where it came
from."
"I know where it came from," she said.
"Where?" Thomas heard himself say. Doctor Taylor pulled back the curtain and
entered the room with Priscilla in tow. The woman was in wretched shape with
large dark circles around the eyes and a frantic expression.
"The Lord showed it to me when he lifted me up," Esta said.
"What is this?" Priscilla said.
"I told you, Prissy," Doc said. "This is the girl who was found on the church.
She says she saw Jenny with God in heaven."
"Doctor Taylor, I'm not sure it's wise to involve Priscilla with this," Thomas
interjected. "Let me talk with the girl alone."
"My Jenny?" Priscilla said choking on sobs.
"Yes," Esta said.
"Esta, stop it this instant," Brother Thomas pleaded. "You can't toy with
people this way! Tell the doctor that you made this up, or that it was just a
dream!"
"Tell her about the dress and her hair," Doc Taylor said. "She was wearing the
green dress you made and her hair was in plaits, Priscilla. It was our Jenny!
In Heaven with God!"
"But how could you know this? How could you see into Heaven?" Priscilla pressed.
"Exactly," Brother Thomas added.
Esta had been waiting patiently to be asked. She looked at Mrs. Taylor and
Doctor Taylor only as she relayed the story of what happened to her on that day.
"It was blowing hard outside. Miss Merrell was poised to hit me with the ruler
for not paying attention in class when my cousin, Doris, looked out the window
and yelled, 'It's a twister!' Then the roof peeled away."
Esta closed her eyes now and a slight smile turned up the corners of her mouth.
"And I heard a loud voice say 'Talitha Kumi'." And then I was pulled upward and
all the sounds of crashing and screaming and blowing fell silent. And I saw a
shining light, bright like the sun, only gentler. It drew me into itself.
That's when I saw Jenny seated at the feet of the father. Then the voice said,
'be blessed,' and touched me here," Esta said pointing to the middle of her
chest.
Esta opened her eyes again. "And then I could hear the wind again and I was
moving backward, but I didn't want to. And then it went dark. When I woke up, I
was on the church roof."
"Praise God! Praise God!" Priscilla exclaimed. Doctor Taylor embraced his wife
as she bawled unabashedly.
"It's a miracle!" he said.
"My girl! My baby! I was so worried, what with her not bein' baptized!"
Priscilla tore herself from her husband and ran to Esta pulling the child tight
to her chest. "Thank you! Bless you, child."
Brother Thomas pulled Esta from the woman's grasp, "Doctor Taylor, I would ask
you to kindly take your wife back upstairs. She's had a tremendous shock and
needs to lie down." He shot Esta an angry glance as he ushered the two parents
toward the office door.
Upon returning, he ripped the curtain back and glared angrily at her. "What
are you up to, Esta Macphee, with this cockamamie story? You and I both know
that nothing like that happened. You were simply lucky to be thrown clear of
the awful death the other children shared and now you would mock the very God
who mercifully spared your pitiful life! Surely, he will not allow you to go
unpunished for this sin!"
"I thought you didn't believe in luck Pastor," Esta retorted.
"You will speak of this matter no more, young lady. You've got yourself in a
delicate condition which requires your full attention. And I won't have you
distracting good God-fearing people from their rightfully- earned grieving. Now
let's get you home. We've got some news to share with your parents." He took
her by the arm and marched her swiftly to the car.
The ride back to the Macphee farm felt far different than the ride to the
doctor's office. Brother Thomas sensed that there had been a shifting of sorts
-- the same feeling he often had when he presided over a wedding or a funeral.
It was the uncertainty of stepping from one age, to the next. That the
occasion of the telling of Esta's outlandish story, to an even greater extent
than the school tragedy itself, marked a new focus in his work on earth, and a
new season for the community of Harmony.
As he parked the car in the Macphee yard and shut off the ignition, Esta spoke.
"Brother Thomas, remember when I came to you and asked you about my spiritual
gift?"
He gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead trying to will the
child to be shocked into silence once more. Forever more. But it didn't work.
"I think I know now what mine is."
Copyright © 2007 by Shannon Landrum
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Susan Lyons |
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Susan Lyons writes sexy contemporary romance that's intense, passionate, heartwarming, and fun. Her books have won the Booksellers Best Award, the Aspen Gold, the Golden Quill, and the More Than Magic, and been nominated for the RT Reviewers' Choice award. Reviewers say: "a heartwarming romance topped with steaming hot erotica"; "wickedly hot sex and a story line that grabs you and doesn't let go until the last word." She has sold sexy romance to Kensington Aphrodisia, Berkley Heat, and Harlequin Spice Briefs. Her sweet short romance is published by The Wild Rose Press, and she is a three-time contributor to the Dreams & Desires charity anthologies from Freya's Bower. With an eclectic background spanning psychology, law, and computers, she now finds that writing romance and women's fiction gives her a perfect outlet to demonstrate her belief in the power of love, friendship, and a sense of humor. She lives in Vancouver, BC, and enjoys photography, growing orchids, and being around those she loves. Learn more at www.SusanLyons.ca.
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Read an excerpt from Susan Lyons
Touch Me
(Kensington 2007)
"You have a right to be mad," Adonis told her. "Your mom cheated you of things
a kid should have."
Ann's body stiffened. "I'm being unfair. She tried her best."
"Maybe so." Touch firm but gentle, he stroked her chest, breasts, rib cage,
trying to give her the warmth her mother seemed incapable of. "Doesn't mean you
don't have a right to be pissed. Children should be nourished with hugs and
kisses, praise and love."
"I wish . . ." She sighed and her muscles loosened. "I was going to say, I wish
I had a different mother. But that's not true, I love her. I just wish she'd
been different."
"Is it too late? Could she change?"
Her eyes were squeezed shut. "I w-wish. But she's set in her ways." She
sniffed. "D-damn, I never cry. Tears are a waste of time."
But they were welling from under her closed lids. "That last voice sounded like
your mom's," he said gently.
She sniffed again. "It was." A tear spilled over.
"I don't agree with her." He caught the tear with his finger and brought it to
his mouth. "Tears help you let pain out, where it doesn't have so much power."
She opened tear-glazed eyes. "That your mom talking?"
"Yeah." Definitely not his macho dad.
As tears tracked down her temples into her hair, he said, "Your mom may not be
super affectionate, but you know she wanted you. She could have had an abortion
or given you up for adoption, but she kept you. Loved you."
"I guess. But it puts so much pressure on me, being the only person she's got.
Pressure to live up to her expectations."
She was still meeting his gaze and he looked deeply into her damp hazel eyes,
feeling the hurt inside her. He took her by the shoulders. "Those expectations
are hers; she owns them. She's the one who let rejection hurt her so badly she
never lets anyone into her life. Focuses on her career, rather than risking her
heart. You can be braver, you don't have be the same as her. Figure out what
you want, and tell her."
"What if she says I'm wrong?" The tears were sliding freely now.
"Then tell her again." He lay down beside her and gathered her into his arms,
felt the dampness of her cheek against his shoulder. For a while, he just
hugged her close as she cried.
Then, when the tears eased, he said, "Tell her you love her, you respect her,
but you have to find your own path. And if she loves you, she should try to
understand and respect you back."
She sniffed. "Is that what you told your father?"
Crap. "Uh, maybe not quite like that. More like, I didn't want to be a tile
layer so I wasn't going to do it."
"Which he'd take as rejection of everything he's worked for."
"Shit." He'd never thought of it that way, but once she'd said it, it was
obvious. "I guess you're right."
"I know if I'd ever said I didn't want to be a lawyer, that's how Mother would
have felt. But it was okay, she made it so fascinating, there was never
anything else I wanted anyhow."
"And now?"
She eased away, wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands, sat up. "I want
friends, too. A life away from the office, maybe one day a family of my own." A
little smile. "Perhaps a puppy or kitten."
He sat up too, caught and held her gaze. "Those are all good things. Normal
things. She's the one with the warped life, Ann. That's sad, and you don't have
to be like her."
She nodded slowly. "Adonis, what's the thing you've most wanted from your dad?"
He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, then opened them again so she could
see into his heart. "For him to say he's proud of me, like he does with my
sisters."
"Me too, with Mother. Every time she compliments me, there's some damn
qualification. Or, what I've done is good but she wants more from me." She
sighed. "And I've been trying. Now you, you deliberately chose another path.
Neither way has worked out for us."
"Nope."
"So, what's the worst case scenario?" she said thoughtfully. "They never say
those magic words. But we know they love us. Right?"
"Yeah." He managed a small smile. "That's not such a bad thing to settle for."
"Some wise man once told me, conflict's inherent in the parent-child
relationship."
His own words. The smile grew. "That was pretty smart. So, I should tell Dad I
respect him and what he's accomplished, but his way isn't mine, and I wish he'd
respect me too."
"And if he's still on your case, remember conflict's normal, and he loves you."
God, she was beautiful, even all swollen and tear-stained. Beautiful and smart
and brave. And sexy. Opening up the way they'd both done was even better than
sexual foreplay. He felt so close to her, and he wanted to get closer. Until
they merged. Body and soul.
It was so cool she'd finally got into the gazing into each other's eyes thing.
He could see the moment she read his thoughts. The green flecks in her eyes
sparkled. Her lips curved. "You haven't finished my massage."
"Later." He leaned in for a kiss.
She avoided his mouth, her smile widening. "Hey, aren't we doing hours of
foreplay, before sex?"
"We've done hours. Now it's time for sex." He stripped off the silk boxers and
leaned in again.
Copyright © 2007 by Susan Lyons
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Evie Manieri |
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Evie Manieri has been fascinated by all kinds of fantasy writing since her fifth grade teacher introduced her to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Later in life, impatient with the tendency of fantasy heroes to go for very long walks, she found herself wishing that their worlds were better supplied with horses. This set her on the path to satisfy her own desire for an immersive, fast-paced, emotionally nuanced brand of fantasy, and The Mongrel was born. The first book in a trilogy, The Mongrel takes place in a desert world rife with revolution, secrecy and deception—which reaches a breaking point when a notorious female mercenary forces a reckoning between worlds of fire and ice. Evie is fascinated by intricacy, and when not entangled in the threads of her plots, she can be found knitting airy lace shawls, re-reading Bleak House, singing soprano with New York's Renaissance Street Singers, and attempting to match the relentless imagination of her daughter, Prudence.
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Rachel Mankowitz |
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Rachel Mankowitz lives on Long Island, near three beaches, though she never swims. Her novel Yeshiva Girl, is about Izzy, a fifteen year old girl who looks a lot like Rachel did, and acts a lot like Rachel may have acted, but turns out a lot better than Rachel. While the book is out looking for a publisher, Rachel hopes to write essays that will attempt to balance an extreme need for self disclosure and a strong desire to hide in the back of a cave. Rachel has a few degrees, and they're nice, but they don't make the writing any easier. She is most often found indulging in a little bit of nap time with her equally sleepy puppy dog, Cricket.
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Read an excerpt from Elizabeth Martinez
The Queen of Crime TV
We were on verdict watch, and the clock was ticking.
It had been almost seven hours since the jury disappeared into the deliberation
room and I was beginning to wonder if they were ever coming out. The
courtroom, which normally held no more than thirty people, was now packed, and
it was difficult to breathe. Reporters lined the walls, their pens and cell
phones poised for action. Spectators jammed themselves into the ten rows of
narrow wooden benches, elbow to elbow and thigh to thigh. Cameras hovered near
the front of the room, their lights at the ready. The warm air was heavy and
still. Suddenly there was a loud thud from overhead and everyone looked up.
Then, as if God had taken mercy on us, the air conditioner came on full blast.
We drank in the cool air for a few moments, then went back to discussing, in
hushed and urgent tones, our predictions, all the while keeping one eye on the
clock above the judge's bench. The jury had been out for six hours, forty-one
minutes and counting. At trials like these everyone was an expert with an
opinion to share. Most people, I'd gathered, believed the jury would hand down
a guilty verdict, but as the saying goes, it ain't over till the fat lady
sings.
I had a press pass and as an associate producer should have been standing with
our camera crew on the sidelines, but somehow I got a much coveted front row
seat. Not only did I have a bird's eye view of the defendant's table, I could
see the clock above the judge's bench perfectly. Right now it was 4:26. Court
ended at 4:30 and the jury had been deliberating since this morning. If what I
knew about juries was any indication, that meant they'd want to announce their
verdict today so they wouldn't have to come back tomorrow (so much for
idealized justice). Apparently everyone else knew this too because by 4:27 the
air was so electric with anticipation you could almost hear it crackling. At
4:28 cameramen rose to assume their positions, reporters flipped to clean
sheets in their notebooks and the lights seem to glow a little brighter. I
brought my hand up to my forehead and realized, despite the air conditioning,
that it was damp. I was glad I'd showered that morning.
The only person in the room who seemed to care less about the verdict was the
bailiff, who, at exactly 4:30, set down her Detroit Sentinel, stood and slowly
crossed the room. As we watched her the murmurs died down and we sucked in one
collective breath. "All rise," she sang. We rose, and Judge Swanson entered
through a door behind the bench, black robe flowing, already motioning with his
hands for us to have a seat. This was good, as I could see better when we were
seated. Like I said, I had a clear view of the defendant, Jason Allan
Jerickson, aka world famous rap star and Grammy winner Jack Attack. And it
wasn't just the back of his head either, it was the whole left side of his
face, which was uncharacteristically clean-shaven, probably a recommendation
from his publicist or his attorneys or both. I figured his lawyers had also
dressed him for the occasion, because instead of his trademark white track
suit, gold chains and black skull cap, he wore a charcoal gray three-piece,
complete with white shirt and navy blue tie. The only thing that gave away his
status as the country's hottest rapper was his hair, still shaved close to his
head and bleached blonde. As I watched him whisper something to his lead
lawyer it occurred to me that he epitomized the true irony of the hip-hop
world: while his latest album, Attack You Back was hovering at Number One on
the Billboard charts, he was standing trial here in Detroit for attempted
murder. For the past two weeks the Detroit D.A.'s office had been zealously
trying to prove that Jack Attack had pointed a gun in the face of a rival
rapper and threatened to kill him. It was a stretch to charge Jack with
attempted murder-you had to prove that he intended to kill the other rapper,
and proving intent was never easy-- but as this wasn't Jack's first foray into
the criminal justice system the prosecutors wanted to smack him as hard as they
could, and the results could be devastating. If Jack lost this trial, he could
face life in prison.
The jury took their seats except for the forewoman, a squat lady in her early
forties. She stood at the helm of the jury box and unfolded a white piece of
paper. I noticed that her hands were trembling and that she did not look at
the defense table but kept her gaze glued to the paper. This is it, I thought,
the big moment, and even though it wasn't my ass on the line, my heart started
to pound.
Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Lardaro Martinez
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Read an excerpt from Janice Maynard
Improper Etiquette
(NAL 2007)
A large presence appeared behind her right shoulder, heralded by a whiff of
really fabulous aftershave. Pheromones, she told herself stubbornly. That's
all.
She swallowed hard.
Duke brushed a strand of hair from her cheek with a careless gesture. "Nice to
see you again, Caitlyn."
She bit her lip, gathering up her things and stuffing them into a briefcase.
The room was emptying, and she had to grab somebody quickly and beg for
information.
But Duke was effectively blocking her exit. He propped a hip on the conference
table, bringing their eyes level. Her knees trembled. She told herself it was
because she had skipped breakfast.
She took a deep breath. "You'll have to excuse me," she said, her voice cool.
"I have to run."
"The mayor wants us to start today."
She looked directly at him for the first time. The mischief in his long-lashed
eyes was not at all reassuring. "I'm aware of the time table," she said primly.
His large thigh, covered respectably in dark suit fabric, was practically
touching her hip, so she inched away from the table.
He picked up her BlackBerry, and it was all she could do not to snatch it back.
"I really am in a hurry," she said with as much politeness as she could muster.
He cocked his head. "Don't you think we should program some dates into this
little electronic thingy of yours?" He poked at a button and the screen went
blank.
"Give me that," she hissed. "And no. I'm all booked up in the date
department. Thanks anyway."
Now the devilment spread across his face and his straight white teeth flashed
in a grin of blinding proportions. "Well, Miss Caitlyn... you may be willing
to offend the mayor, but I'm not. Turn this thing back on and let's get down
to business."
Her mouth gaped. "What the hell are you talking about?"
He brushed her lips with a fingertip. "Tut. Tut. Such language from a lady.
I know your mama wouldn't approve."
Temper threatened to blow the top of her head sky high. Her pale skin blotched
with color when she got angry, and she knew from experience that it wasn't a
good look on her. But God, he made her mad.
She pursed her lips. "My vocabulary is none of your concern. I'm out of here."
She grabbed up her things and scooted around him, but he was not so easily
defeated. He caught hold of the end of the pretty braided raffia belt she wore
and reeled her back in, tucking her firmly between his thighs. It would have
been a highly inappropriate position had the room not been empty. Even so, she
deemed it insulting.
She narrowed her eyes. "Swear to God, Duke Yancey. I'll knock the crap out of
you with my purse if you don't let me go right this instant.
Copyright © 2007 by Janice Maynard
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Shaun McGuire |
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Shaun McGuire has been a student of fiction since the age of eleven when he wrote his first short story about adolescence, mountain lions, and sucking chest wounds. He credits his love for storytelling to his father's dinnertime habit of spinning everyday life into epic quests for adventure and his mother's love for all things oil painted. Shaun holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University and his short fiction has appeared in various literary journals including: The Indiana Review, Alligator Juniper, and Carve Magazine. His novels tend to explore the intricate mythology of popular culture while imposing a supernatural order on a relatively normal hero. Atomic Punk (out for submission) is a novel about punk rock, demons, and a young reporter who finds himself chasing after both—problem is, saving the soul of rock n'roll may lead straight to a showdown with the devil himself. Shaun currently lives in Brooklyn with his soul mate, Lora, his dog, Rocky, and his cat, Bailey. He believes, wholeheartedly, that someday puppies will save the world.
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Alison Pion |
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Alison Pion, writing as Alison West, finds inspiration for her work in the gritty underbelly of nineteenth-century life where explosive danger and raw passion collide. In her dark, sensual Regency romance, The Lady Thief (out for submission), desire, lies, and prejudice clash when a desperate thief and a notorious half-Persian Viscount battle distrust and treacherous secrets to uncover a murderer before he destroys them both. The Lady Thief won first place in Indiana Romance Writers of America 2008 Golden Opportunity Contest, the Rose City Romance Writers 2008 Golden Rose Contest, and the 2008 From the Heart Romance Writers Golden Gateway Contest, and placed second in the 2009 First Coast Romance Writers Unpublished Beacon Division Award for Excellence in Romance. In her current sensual historical, The Adder and the Rose, passion and intrigue flourish as a ruthless English assassin and a beautiful French spy once married must work to squash an international conspiracy before war erupts and they lose not only a second chance at love, but everything they hold dear, including their lives. A student of the historical period about which she writes, Alison received her B.A. in Literature and Society from Brown University. Later, she received a PhD in European History, with a specialization in Nineteenth-century Britain, from Northwestern University. She lives in Washington, DC.
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Bonnie Ramthun |
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Bonnie Ramthun grew up in Colorado and earned a degree in computer science so she could find her way into strange and amazing jobs—and write about them. She's now a full time mom and writer and lives in Erie, Colorado with the love of her life, Bill. Bonnie finds raising four children to be more adventurous and exciting than her helicopter crash investigations in Alabama or the giant welding robots in Michigan, although she sometimes longs for the peaceful days of virtual war gaming. In Bonnie's first three published novels, Colorado Springs homicide detective Eileen Reed and her handsome partner Joe Tanner, a war gamer, solve murders and save the world in Ground Zero, Earthquake Games and The Thirteenth Skull. Her most recent novel, The White Gates (Random House Children's, November 2008), is a middle grade mystery introducing Torin Sinclair, a young snowboarder who must discover the modern secret behind an ancient curse. The White Gates was recently named a Junior Library Guild Premiere selection for 2008 and was praised in Kirkus Reviews. Bonnie's currently working on Phantom Canyon, a sequel in which Torin and his friends find themselves cornered between a haunted landmark and some very real, very bad guys. Fortunately, this time the kids have a dog with a mysterious past on their side. Bonnie is thrilled to be with Prospect Agency and invites you to visit her website at www.BonnieRamthun.com.
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Read an excerpt from Peter Reese
Into the Wissahickon
Dan was half-heartedly working through a sheet of math problems on Eben's
living room floor. He had lost his pencil and was using one of Eben's pens and
kept making mistakes that he had to scribble out. Dan's empty stomach gave off
a groan that started low and then rose, like the slow creak to the door of a
haunted house. He and Jessie had gotten home from school hours ago and they'd
already finished the box of Frosted Flakes. They had ridden the sugar buzz and
crashed again, and now they were even hungrier. Millie still hadn't called.
It was almost seven o'clock at night.
"Where's Mommy?" Jessie asked. "Gorilla's sick of Frosted Flakes."
"Everyone's sick of Frosted Flakes." Dan sighed.
In his easy chair, Eben looked up from the sports section of the newspaper.
"There's instant macaroni in the kitchen. I could make it."
"That's okay, Uncle Eben." Dan shook his head at Jessie. The offer was phony;
their uncle never cooked. Dan blinked at the math sheet, his eyes fatigued by
the poor lighting. He stood and flipped on the lamp switch. The bulb was
grey, dead. The dishwasher didn't work either. It leaked brown water and
dishes still had hard bits of food stuck to them. Things broke and no one
fixed them. He was sick of it.
"Maybe she had car trouble again," Eben suggested. "That car looks like it's
stuck together with spit and scotch tape."
Dan suddenly imagined the Gremlin skidding into an intersection and getting
crushed by a garbage truck-a scene from an episode of the Incredible Hulk he
had watched. Ever since his father had returned to Chicago, Dan imagined
Millie dying in different ways: shot by a drug dealer, caught in a fire,
diagnosed with brain cancer. He pictured himself comforting her as she lay in
a hospital bed. He pictured her like the wounded soldiers in M*A*S*H-lots of
tubes draining fluid from her arms, a nurse tapping air bubbles from a syringe,
Millie murmuring but making no sense. An awful feeling ran through Dan when
these images appeared, as if he was wishing for her to get hurt. But trying to
banish the images from his head made them stick harder, like the tiny burrs
that clung to his shoelaces after he walked through the Wissahickon.
"Maybe she's buying pizza," Jessie said.
"Or maybe she robbed a bank and had to take the long way home." Dan tried to
picture Millie speeding away on a motorcycle, popping a wheelie, a bag of cash
strapped to her back and a few hundred dollar bills fluttering out. But then,
the bike crashed and exploded into flames as his imagination got the better of
him.
"Dan, can you make me a peanut butter and jelly?" Jessie asked.
He knew they had tossed the empty jar of peanut butter yesterday. But, feeling
sorry for his sister, Dan went to the kitchen and filled a pot with water and
lit the stove. He had seen Millie make macaroni plenty of times. All you had
to do was boil the noodles and dump cheese powder on top.
Twenty minutes later, they ate macaroni with cherry Kool-Aid and Wonder Bread
toast in front of the news, watching a story about factories closing in
Pittsburgh. The newslady interviewed a guy who got fired and was trying to
sell his lawnmower, his vacuum cleaner and some old shirts in a yard sale. It
made Dan think of the bills that Millie wasn't paying. The news anchor talked
about the bad economy and inflation and it seemed like everyone everywhere was
broke.
"What's inflation?" Jessie asked.
"It's the banks stealing money right out of your pocket," Eben said. "Dan,
this macaroni's not half bad. But you could stir the cheese in better next
time."
They were finished eating by the time Millie walked through the door. "How's
my family doing?" she exclaimed, kissing Jessie on the head.
"Christ on a bike! We were about to call missing persons is how we're doing!"
Eben barked. "It's past dark. Ever hear of the phone?"
"I'm sorry Eben. I stopped at Wade's club downtown and lost track of time. He
was dying to show me the renovations. They redid the whole place, it's going
to be amazing. I forgot that his father was into real estate, he has so many
projects going on. Anyway, I might pick up some weekend shifts at the ticket
office. He says you can make good money and you get to hear the music too.
Well, let me tell you, I tried a payphone outside but the line was dead. Can
someone explain why half the phones in Philly don't work? And when they do
work, you don't have a quarter on you." She clapped her hands. "Let's get
take-out. Aren't you kids starved? I'm about ready to eat my purse."
"We had macaroni," Jessie said, the cheese powder crusted all over her chin.
"Good for you, Jessie-girl." Millie picked up a piece of blackened toast and
nibbled the edge. "Forget take-out then." She kicked off her shoes and put
her feet on the table. Inside her pantyhose, her feet looked like flippers and
had a locker-room odor. "Jessie, come here and give Mommy a foot rub. I love
these new heels but they're hell on my arches."
"Well, you shouldn't come home late," Dan said. "It's bullshit."
"Easy there." Eben pursed his lips.
"Someone's testy tonight. What happened?" Millie belched and didn't cover her
mouth in time. Her breath smelled like beer. "How was school?"
"I can't figure out my stupid math homework. The directions don't make any
sense." Dan shoved his textbook under the couch, thinking about the kid Shawn
who called him a faggot practically every day, how everything was so unfair.
"I never met a math problem I couldn't beat," she said. "I love math. We'll
blow through the problems in no time. I got a full ride to college for math,
you know."
"You told us that a million times." Dan carried the macaroni pot to the
kitchen. Millie tried to tousle his hair as he passed, but he jerked his head
away. She didn't seem to care that he had cursed or shoved his book-and so, he
would do something worse. In the kitchen, the pot dropping into the porcelain
sink from a two-foot height made a satisfying crash.
Copyright © 2008 by Peter Reese
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Jonathan Roth |
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Jonathan Roth lives in Rockville, Maryland, by way of Detroit, the Congo, Brooklyn, the Virgin Islands, and rural Virginia. He earned his BFA at the Cooper Union School of Art in Manhattan, and later combined his love of pictures and words as a freelance cartoonist for various publications. Though he once ran back into a burning house to save a dog, it is probably only a coincidence that his latest middle-grade novel, Never Leave Home Without Your Tarantula (out for submission), is about a boy whose pet spider gets left behind in a wildfire evacuation. By day, Jonathan teaches public school elementary Art, where he sees over 500 kids a week. By comparison, he thinks running into a burning building was easy.
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Read an excerpt from Jonathan Roth
Funny Things Happen to Dewey Farrder
Chapter 7: Lucky Pencil
"Please take out a sharpened number two pencil."
Ugh. A sharpened number two pencil could only mean one thing.
"Today's test," Mr. Speling began, "is a test to test how well you do on tests."
I already knew how I would do: a C. I always got C's on tests. Maybe with a
plus, maybe with a minus, but still a C. It could be worse, I suppose.
It was worse: the point of the only pencil I had left in my desk broke halfway
through bubbling in my name. I tried to sharpen it, but it was already so
short from taking so many tests that it got stuck in the pencil sharpener. I
banged on the side of the sharpener to loosen it, but the tin cover fell off
and all the pencil shavings sprinkled to the floor.
Mr. Speling shot me a dirty look, and I hurried back to my seat. Now what?
Mr. Speling did not believe in loaning out materials. And I doubt he would
believe that a squirrel had taken my other pencil.
I tried to get Robin's attention. "Psst." I pointed to the pencil in her
hand, and then held out my empty palm.
When Mr. Speling wasn't looking, she reached into her backpack and brought out
a hot pink pencil that said A-B-C-D-E along the side in gold letters. It was
the kind of pencil that was probably popular with Little Sister and her little
friends.
Robin handed it across the aisle.
"Can't I use your other one?" I whispered as I pointed to the yellow pencil in
her hand.
She nodded to the pink pencil. "But that one's lucky," she whispered back.
I narrowed my eyes at her. "Humoring me again?"
"Maybe. But I'll tell you this: that pencil's only ever given me straight A's."
I thought for a moment. "Then why aren't you using it now?"
She held up the yellow one. "This one gives me straight A's, too."
The next day, Mr. Speling pulled me aside and handed me a test with a big A on
the top. I took me a few moments to realize it was mine! My first Middle
School A!
But Mr. Speling was not smiling. "Don't think I didn't see you talking to Miss
Bailey during this exam. If I ever catch you cheating, you will both be
penalized."
"But..."
"No buts! There are plenty of quizzes coming up, and a big unit test next
week. I expect you to earn your scores this time. And don't think I won't
know if you know something you don't."
Huh? But if he already knew how I was going to do, then why did I even need to
bother?
Robin slid up next to me at lunch. "What were you talking to Mr. Speling
about?"
"I got an A, but he didn't believe me."
"Did you cheat?"
"No! Of course not." I thought about the pencil. "Well, kind of. I used
your lucky pencil."
She rolled her eyes. "Dewey, that pencil was only lucky for me because I
studied."
"Yeah, but I didn't. So explain that."
"It's called the power of suggestion. You believe it, so it happens. That's
all."
"Oh, yeah. Well what if I do it again?"
"Then Mr. Speling will probably have a heart attack."
"Good," I said under my breath.
"Dewey, that's horrible!"
"Well, so is he."
She popped a bubble. "What do you have against Mr. Speling, anyway?"
"Let's just say that until I met Vice Principal Jennifer, I thought Mr. Speling
was the villain."
"Villain?" she said. "What villain?"
Oops. I hadn't really wanted to tell Robin about my destiny of becoming a hero
and saving the school from some evil villain's plot until after I did it. But
now that I'd brought it up, I figured I might as well spill the beans. She
might laugh now, but I'd love to see her face when it finally happens.
Copyright © 2007 by Jonathan Roth
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Brianna Caplan Sayres |
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Brianna Caplan Sayres used to tell her second graders, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a writer." "But you are grown up, Mrs. Sayres," her students would protest. Well, Brianna's still not quite sure she's grown up, but she has grown into a writer. She writes poetry, picture books, chapter books and nonfiction, and her writing has been accepted by magazines including Highlights, Cobblestone, Appleseeds and Wee Ones. While Brianna now lives in New Jersey, she will always root for her hometown Seattle Mariners. She still loves to teach, and in her free time (which there isn't much of with a fire-truck-loving preschooler and a learning-to-eat-solids baby!), she is a very beginning cellist. Brianna and her critique group chat about writing for children at The Paper Wait.
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Read an excerpt from Laurie Schneider
Double Stop
"Move over, Beethoven!" Casey Metzler gives me a shove.
Casey is the only girl on the Pewee team and she might as well be a boy, and
not an especially nice one. If I had my stick I'd give her a poke, but we had
to leave our sticks by the bench. What would Coach Matt say to that? No high
sticking in the team photo!
The photographer is slipping all over the ice in Reeboks trying to get us lined
up to fit in the viewfinder. It's not easy squishing eleven guys and Casey in
their hockey gear into one scrapbook-ready masterpiece.
"What a dork!" Keenan says a little too loud.
Coach Doormatt glares. Keenan catches a blade and falls on his butt and
everyone cracks up.
"Don't laugh, Beethoven!" Keenan punches my shoulder pad.
I rub my arm. "Hey, cool it! That's my bow arm."
Keenan rolls his eyes. "Whatever."
I guess his Mom doesn't nag him about his lazy word choices.
At the start of the season I would have winced at being called Beethoven, but I
like it now. Beethoven was cool-whacked-but cool. In fact, he was a slob like
me, left his dirty dishes all over his room, had a terminal case of bedhead
like me, except mine is red. He probably even hated his little sister like me .
. . if he had a sister. But more than anything he loved music, loved it like a
madman, which is what got me into this whole hockey business in the first place.
Now you might ask, what does music have to do with hockey? Think about it for
two seconds: A twelve-year-old guy who plays classical violin. That guy's got
to salvage his reputation however he can.
I started violin lessons in first grade. It was my idea. I used to look up at
my Dad's fiddle hanging on the wall and wish I could play like him. That was
before Dad took off. He left when I was four. Just packed up his mandolin and
fiddle and left. He lives in Wyoming now. Wyoming is kind of like Planet of the
Apes, except with cowboy hats.
When I started violin I didn't know it was like signing on with the mafia. Now
that I'm in sixth grade I have private lessons once a week with Mrs. Park,
who's like the Yoda of violin, and I go to a Suzuki group class, a Suzuki
orchestra and, starting this year, I play in the Whelan Youth Orchestra. And
then there's practice. Every day, without exception. Mrs. Park says, "You
should pick up your violin every day." Like it would feel neglected if I
didn't.
Not that I could ever forget. Mom remembers for both of us. She's convinced I'm
going to be rich and famous someday... if I practice until my fingernails fall
off and stay away from hockey. She's always hated hockey. I don't mind
practicing violin, though. I like the violin. It's like having a second voice.
One that can say all the things my real voice can't.
Unfortunately, most of the boys at Walt Whitman Elementary do not share my
opinion of the violin. The one time I brought my instrument to school for
"Marvelous Me" in third grade every boy in class, including my best friend
Riley, stuck their fingers in their ears and screeched like parrots until the
teacher made them stop. A couple of girls clapped after I played. Casey Metzler
was not one of them.
That's when everyone started calling me Beethoven, even though it would have
made more sense to call me Paganini or Perlman or Vengerov. Beethoven was more
of a piano guy.
Copyright © 2007 by Laurie Schneider
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Read an excerpt from Inara Kirsten Scott
Delcroix Academy: The Candidates
Garrett ordered a bottle of wine that sounded old and impressive. Kaia studied
him through her lashes. He was promising to be an interesting challenge. If she
could get him alone in her room he'd be unable to resist her. She felt certain
of that. But in this setting, he appeared remarkably resilient.
No matter. Ever since she'd become one of Zafira's Handmaids, she'd made a
study of humans -- men in particular. She'd lived among them for weeks at a
time, seduced them over and over. Through the decades, she'd learned their
likes and dislikes, come to understand their culture.
They were simple creatures, really. It was just a matter of outsmarting them.
***
"Ted should have mentioned how dangerous you are," Garrett said, as her arms
tightened around his neck.
Kaia gave him a coy smile. "Me? Dangerous? That's absurd. I'm as helpless as a
newborn kitten."
"You are about the furthest thing from a kitten that I've ever seen." He tried
to spin her to the left, but she moved right and they bumped heads. "But you
are a horrible dancer." He laughed. "Are you sure it's legal for you to be out
here?"
For just a moment her mask of sensuality slipped, and she giggled and shook her
head, sending strands of shimmering gold over his shoulder. "What can I say? I
love to dance. It's just my partners that seem to have an aversion to it."
"How about you keep your feet in one place, and just sway."
She nodded. "That sounds like a good idea."
Her body felt as soft and supple as it looked, her flesh firm and warm under
his fingers. He'd never danced with such a tall woman before and found it added
a level of eroticism to their movements. His hips brushed against hers as they
moved, making it impossible to ignore that they fit together perfectly. They
could have been lying down, bodies meshed, inches from making love, for all the
distance between them.
Her face was level with his, her lips only inches away, and he found it
difficult to look away from her cat-like eyes. For a moment, he had the feeling
she was watching him through her lashes, studying him as if he were prey. But
then the look was gone and all he saw in her gaze was a guileless, radiant
sensuality.
"So what's the story? I'm not good enough for your friend, but I'm good enough
for you?" Kaia asked.
"My friend is engaged," he reminded her.
She shrugged. "That doesn't stop most of the men I know."
He dug his fingers into her hips and pulled her closer, just enough to briefly
mold her stomach and thighs against his. It was a delicious sensation, one that
demanded further attention. She did not protest, so he did it again, this time
more deliberately.
"It should," he said.
"If you say so. I say, sometimes you need to forget about the rules, and let
your body be in control." As if proving her own words, she arched backward,
pressing her lithe torso against his, giving up any pretense of dancing.
He chuckled, struggling to maintain control. "I get the feeling you don't worry
about rules very much."
Copyright © 2009 by Inara Kirsten Scott
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Read an excerpt from Regina Scott
La Petite Four
Late the next morning, Emily was trying to determine how blood would pool
around a decapitated body when the footman announced she had visitors.
Priscilla, Daphne, and Ariadne were eager to hear what she'd learned, but she
only agreed to tell them after they promised to pose for her battle scene.
She would have preferred to use the footmen. Unfortunately, the last time
she'd asked, two had become so carried away that a Chinese vase had been
damaged, and Warburton had asked her not to involve the staff again.
As it was, only Daphne could stand straight and valiant enough to do her any
good as a model soldier. Ariadne made an excellent corpse. Priscilla insisted
on playing a duchess watching from the edge of the battlefield. Emily pointed
out that duchesses, or most dukes for that matter, seldom went to war, but
Priscilla was adamant, so Emily let it go at that.
"So," she said as she studied the angle of Daphne's chin, "we know that Lord
Robert Townsend has no money and likes the ladies all too well."
"Definitely not hero material," Ariadne said, raising her head into a patch of
sunlight that turned her hair to gold.
Emily wanted to disagree, but she couldn't, so she merely ordered Ariadne to
lie back down like a good corpse.
"It isn't enough," Priscilla said with a sigh. "A great many people find
themselves with less money than they'd like. That doesn't make them criminals."
"But how is Lady Emily to know?" Ariadne asked.
"An excellent question," Emily replied. "Please forgive me, Ariadne, but I
deviated from your plan. First thing this morning, I sent one of our footmen
with a note asking if Lord Robert would come calling this afternoon. I thought
perhaps I'd get him to take me to see the Parthenon Marbles."
Ariadne smiled. "An excellent strategy. Draw him out."
Copyright © 2007 by Regina Scott
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Jody Jensen Shaffer |
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Jody Jensen Shaffer has always loved to write. Her first book, The Easter Bunny, which she also illustrated, was a big hit with her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Smith. Since then, Jody has put aside illustrating bunnies to focus full-time on writing. She has won or placed in several writing contests, including a haiku contest for which she won the grand-prize: a bike. Jody received a BA in English from William Jewell College and an MA in English from Truman University. Jody taught college composition and directed several corporate training departments before deciding to stay home with her kids, who provide her with lots of material for her books. Jody lives with her husband, two kids, and dog in Liberty, Missouri. You can visit her blog at jodyjensenshaffer.blogspot.com.
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Read an excerpt from Jon Skovron
Grope for Luna
I joined my first band when I was a junior in high school. We'd only been
playing for a few months, but I felt like if we really worked hard, we could be
famous. Not lame famous like U2 or Greenday, the kind of bands that played
stadiums where no one under the age of thirty could afford tickets. Bands that
tried to pretend that they were still in touch with their fans but really were
so rich they couldn't remember what it was like to be a real person. No, we
were going to be that cool kind of famous like the Pixies or Modest Mouse.
Bands that didn't get much play on MTV except maybe late at night because they
weren't commercial enough for the soulless marketing people to understand.
That was the kind of band we were going to be.
We were called Tragedy of Reason. Or Tragedy of Wisdom. We hadn't decided
yet. I liked "Reason" because it said how much it sucked to be the only
thoughtful person in a crazy world. But our frontman, Joe, liked "Wisdom"
because he said:
"It just sounds cooler!"
We rehearsed at the Parks and Rec building downtown. It was one of those
large, stuffy rooms with no windows, low ceilings, brown mat carpet, and
flickering florescent lights. It kind of smelled like somebody's basement. I
had talked about the band name before rehearsal with Rick the bassist and TJ
the drummer and we had all agreed that "Reason" made more sense. But they
didn't say anything now because they were afraid to piss off Joe.
Okay, okay. I was afraid to piss Joe off too. He was one of those guys who
started shaving in junior high. He was almost two feet taller than Rick and
me. He was about the same height as TJ, but TJ was a lanky, stooped hipster
boy and Joe was a massive, pierced, steel-toe boot wearing, leather and all the
crazy spikes metal dude. He just looked plain scary. And he wasn't one of
those "Oh, once you get to know him, he's such a softie" kind of guys. No,
once you got to know him you realized that deep down, he was even scarier.
The problem was that, even though I was scared of Joe, I had a hard time
keeping my mouth shut.
Copyright © 2007 by Jon Skovron
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Todd Tarpley |
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Todd Tarpley grew up in Colorado before journeying to New York City in search of adventure. He has written How About a Kiss for Me? (Dutton, 2010), as well as several other humorous picture-book manuscripts, including How to Become a Knight, So My Grandma is a Ninja, and The Furry Four (all out for submission). Todd is a graduate of NYU, the University of Iowa, and Yale. His favorite subjects are still lunch and recess. He lives with his smart and beautiful wife, two huggable sons, a sweet black Cavalier Cocker, and an evil, furniture-destroying cat in Manhattan.
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Tim Tharp |
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Tim Tharp lives in Oklahoma where he writes novels and teaches in the Humanities Department at Rose State College. In addition to earning a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma and an M.F.A. from Brown University, Tim Tharp has been a factory hand, construction laborer, psychiatric aid, long-distance hitchhiker, and record store clerk. His first novel, Falling Dark (Milkweed Press), was awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Knights of the Hill Country (Knopf Books for Young Readers) is his first novel for young adults and was named to the American Library Association's Best Books of 2007 list. Tim's new YA novel, The Spectacular Now, (Knopf Books, Nov. 2008) was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award. Visit Tim's website: www.TimTharp.com
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Read excerpts from Tim Tharp
Knights of the Hill Country
(Knopf Books for Young Readers 2006)
"Hampton!" It was my buddy Blaine Keller barking at me. He strictly plays
offense so he had his helmet off and his black hair was pasted to his forehead,
the black slashes of war paint under his eyes starting to run some from the
sweat. "Don't give your hand to the enemy like that. This is a battle, son.
Don't ever give your hand to the enemy during a battle."
He meant business too. You could tell by the way the sparks flared up in his
brown eyes. He wasn't faking. He was mad. I jogged back to the defensive
huddle, feeling like I'd had the air half let out of me. Tell you what, Coach
Huff and his assistants was some of the best coaches in Oklahoma-and I figured
you might as well throw Texas in there too. Everything about them was polished
and sharp as a new pair of scissors-their clothes, their hair, and their
orders most of all. But they was always distant, up on another level looking
down. Blaine was my best friend, my brother almost, and his words cut deeper
than anyone else's.
He was right, I thought. That always was my shortcoming right there. Too much
sympathy. It was like Blaine used to tell me, "Feeling sorry for folks never
won no football games."
This wasn't any time to go weak neither. This was a time a guy needed insides
about as tough and gnarled and hard as one of them old blackjack oaks on the
hills outside of town. Me and the rest of the Kennisaw Knights had us eighteen
yards and twenty-seven inches of battleground to defend. Three minutes and
thirty-four seconds left in the game. First and ten. Kennisaw, 20 and the
Wynette Titans, 17.
Every game this season, the pressure weighed down more and more. It was like
carrying around a sack full of rocks, only every time you got to thinking you
could lay it down, someone would throw another sack full of bigger rocks up on
top of you. If we could keep it going, this would be Kennisaw's fifth
undefeated season in a row. For thirty some years, no Knights team had strung
together that many wins, and them old-time players from back then was still
heroes around the hill country of eastern Oklahoma. More than just heroes, they
was flat-out legends.
Now, people love their legends in the hill country. I don't just mean the ones
that run up and down the green fields there in Biggins Stadium with its crown
of golden lights neither. I'm talking about the old timey Wild West legends
like the Doolins and the Daltons and Belle Starr, the queen of the outlaws. All
them famous characters in the wax museum. And then you got your bull riders and
bronc busters, your Five Civilized Tribes and your wildcat oil strikers.
Prettyboy Floyd and Woody Guthrie, Will Rogers, Mickey Mantle and the original
great football player, Jim Thorpe his self. Kennisaw's a dusty little old town,
but even the smallest scrawny kid can feel big if he's got his self a legend to
hold onto.
And believe you me, not a player on our team didn't think about what kind of
legends we could end up being our own selves if we finished off this fifth
straight season undefeated. Boy howdy. The Kennisaw Knights was the best damn
football team in all the hill country, where Friday night high school football
ranked next to God and country and, truth be known, sometimes come in first.
It'd be one hell of a big sack of rocks to carry around if you let the Knights
down.
The Spectacular Now
(Knopf Books for Young Readers 2008)
Okay, yes, maybe I do drink a little bit more than a little bit too much, but
don't go getting the idea I'm an alcoholic. It's not some big addiction. It's
just a hobby, a good old-fashioned way to have fun. Once, I said that exact
thing to this uptight church girl at school, Jennifer Jorgenson, and she goes,
"I don't have to drink alcohol to have fun." So I'm like, "I don't have to ride
a roller coaster to have fun either, but I do."
That's the number one problem with these anti-drug-and-alcohol programs they
shoehorn you into starting in grade school. No one will admit any of that stuff
is fun, so there goes all their credibility flying right out the window. Every
kid in school-except the Jennifer Jorgensons of the world-recognizes the whole
scam is faker than a televangelist's wife with a boob job.
I've taken those questionnaires on the internet that are supposed to tell you
if you're an alcoholic: Do you ever have a drink first thing in the morning to
get your day going? Do people annoy you when they criticize how much you drink?
Do you ever drink alone? That kind of thing.
First, sure, I drink in the mornings sometimes but not because I need to. It's
just a good change of pace. I'm celebrating a new day, and if you can't do
that, then you might as well be laid out with your arms across your chest
studying the pattern on your coffin lid. Second, who's not going to get annoyed
when someone starts nitpicking at them? I mean, you could just have one beer
and your mother smells it on your breath and she and your stupid stepfather
start in with the good-cop/bad-cop interrogation routine, except there's no
good cop. What, are you supposed to enjoy that?
And third, why is drinking alone so bad anyway? It's not like I'm some derelict
drinking cheap aftershave alone behind the bus depot. Say you get grounded and
you're watching TV or playing on the computer in your room-a couple of drinks
can keep you from going stir crazy. Or maybe your friends all have curfews on
weeknights, so you go home and have three or four more beers sitting on your
windowsill with your iPod before going to bed. What's wrong with that?
It's all in the attitude behind your drinking, see. If you're like, Woe is me,
my girlfriend left me and God hath forsaken me, and guzzling down a fifth of
Old Granddad until your neck turns to rubber and you can't lift your chin off
your chest, then, yes, I'd say you're an alcoholic. But that's not me. I'm not
drinking to forget anything or to cover anything up or to run away. What do I
have to run away from?
No, everything I do when I'm drinking is about creativity, broadening my
horizons. It's actually educational. When I'm drinking, it's like I see another
dimension to the world. I understand my friends on a deeper level. Music
reaches into me and opens me up from the inside out. Words and ideas that I
never knew I had come flying out of me like exotic parakeets. When I watch TV,
I make up the dialogue and it's better than anything the writers dreamed up.
I'm compassionate and funny. I swell up with God's beauty and sense of humor.
The truth is I am God's own drunk.
Copyright © 2007 by Tim Tharp
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Joseph Williams |
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Joseph Williams makes his living as a "Courseware Developer, Instructional". Thirty years ago he would've been called a "Technical Writer". And a hundred years ago he would've just been a plain old "Writer" —which is far more romantic, really. Joseph wrote his first novel, The Incendiary Agent (due out for submission), on the PATH and F trains during his daily commute from Hoboken to Queens. In this thinking man's espionage thriller—inspired by John MacDonald and Dennis Lehane—agent Nathan Frost disrupts the principal players in a counterfeiting ring, resulting in a trail of violence that leads him to a plan for apocalypse. Frost is a new take on the anti-hero character, and while readers may be unsettled by his unique philosophy and interrogation methods, they'll be forced to reconcile their own thoughts on what the world must do to keep itself safe—and at what cost. Joseph Williams lives in Long Island, New York with his wife, Liz, and daughter, Laura.
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Kaitlin Willihnganz |
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Kaitlin Willihnganz wrote her first novel at fourteen. It was not good, but it was good practice. She continued practicing as she attended Indiana University, where she created an individualized major in theatrical linguistics, and then Spalding University, where she received an M.F.A. in writing. Her supernatural young adult novel, Dream Walker (due out for submission), explores the lives of a secret society of people who risk their lives in the dream world in order to end nightmares. When their most promising young dream walker, Joshlyn Weaver, is given an apprentice from the outside, she has to teach him the ropes—while saving him from nightmares, her own grandfather, and monsters from her past—all without falling in love. Kaitlin is currently writing another young adult novel, set during the Black Death in England, and also owns the Louisville branch of Women Writing for (a) Change, a feminist writing academy.
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Lindsay Woolman |
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Lindsay Woolman has always had a burning desire to write books that matter. She is thrilled to have written the first young adult novel about trichotillomania, Split Ends. In the book, Alyssa Simone cannot stop pulling her hair out. She's horrified and embarrassed, but to make matters worse she moves to Las Vegas with her mom to be on a reality show and falls in love. As the bald spots grow bigger, Alyssa has to hide them from everyone she knows, not exactly easy considering she's surrounded by cameras and about to get her first kiss. Lindsay's work has been featured in Girls' Life magazine and Collegebound Teen. She is currently working on her second young adult novel. Besides being a writer, Lindsay is a night owl, jewelry maker, and a dancing machine. Her laugh is especially loud. She graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon and currently lives in Boise, Idaho. Visit: www.lindsaywoolman.com
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Emma Wunsch |
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Emma Wunsch has an MFA from Brooklyn College. Her humorous tween novel, Like (out for submission) tells the story of Susannah Brewster, an eighth grader who returns from summer camp only to discover that her best friend is now in the popular crowd and her mother has started dating a woman. She also has a YA novel in the works about a girl whose brother is diagnosed with schizophrenia. In addition, Emma has written several short stories for adults that have been published in The Bellevue Review, Lit, Fugue, Passages North, The Brooklyn Review, The Vermont Review, The Boston Fiction Annual Review, and Natural Bridge. One story, "Lily of the Valley", was included in The Best of The Bellevue Review anthology and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Emma lives with her husband, the photographer Nick Gaffney, and daughter, Georgia, in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
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David Zeltser |
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David Zeltser was born in Moldova, grew up in Pittsburgh and San Diego, and got his bachelor's degree in physics at Harvard. He then moved to New York, where he wrote ads for a living and wallpapered his tiny apartment with publishers' rejection letters. This all changed when he finally fled to San Francisco and met his fabulous wife, Fiona, who looks askance at wallpaper of any kind. Since settling in Mill Valley, California, his humor writing has appeared in McSweeney's (from The Complete Guide to the Care and Training of the Writer in Your Life) and his screenplay, Sticks and Stones (co-written with friend Max Faugno), has been picked up for production. David has a lifelong love of picture books, and has written several manuscripts including Bartholomew's Book, Guide Horse, and Holy Molars! (all out for submission). To learn more about David, please visit www.linkedin.com/in/zeltser.
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