Damned If You Don't

has been selected for Amazon's  Big Deal promotion.

 Yeah, so?

So you can buy a copy for your Kindle for 99 cents from Jan.17th - Feb.2nd.

    I never buy without trying on.

 Me either. That's why I invite you to read a couple of chapters over at Glenmere Press.

Damned If You Don't features Hannah Fox, daughter of sixties radicals, who together with the intrepid Women of Action, takes on the bad guys and the power brokers when an eminent domain scam threatens her Catskill Mountain town.

When the scam ends in murder and her friend becomes a suspect, Hannah faces hard choices, convinced the murder was a heroic act, even when it’s clear she may be the killer’s next victim.

"...Anita Page's debut novel is a winner start to finish..."  The Gumshoe Review
"...well plotted and paced, with surprising twists."  Buried Under Books
"...an intelligent plot and an appealing heroine..." The GenReview 

I hope you'll also check out my friend Cathi Stoler's Nick of Time, another Glenmere Press e-book available as a  99 cent January Big Deal at Amazon. 

My short story "Don't Be Afraid" is up at Kings River Life this week.

The Box of Books

When, at age eight or nine, I inherited a box of books from my cousins, I felt as if I'd been given the world. I remember very clearly the smell and texture of those old cloth-covered hardbacks, and the feeling of anticipation as I unpacked the box at home. One of those books was Little Women, which gave me my first seductive glimpse of a writer’s life: Jo March scribbling in the attic with a pet rat for company. In fact, a few of those books might still be on our shelves.

I thought about that box recently while poking around Project Gutenberg, the user-friendly site founded by the late Michael Stern Hart that at present offers 44,479 e-books for free download. What a gift! 

You can join the conversation at Women of Mystery today.

Sometimes you have to tell...

...your characters to shut up and stop sniveling. As Alice Munro's story "Gravel,"in her Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Dear Life, makes clear,  the less we tell readers what to feel and the more we leave to their imagination, the greater the emotional impact.

You're welcome to join the conversation at Women of Mystery today.

I know, and accept...

that change is inevitable in the newspaper industry. I’ve read that Jeffrey Bezos is planning to keep The Washington Post separate from Amazon, and I hope that’s true. I also know the damage Bezos has done to the publishing and book selling industries. Reactions to the purchase were discussed in a story in yesterday's New York Times. This quote from book publisher Dennis Johnson nailed it for me:

"It’s an old boring story — rich man buys a newspaper — but in this instance it’s one of the richest men ever buying one of the most important newspapers ever…This is the capper in the development of one of the most powerful vertical monopolies in our history, which is also one of the most controlling in matters of cultural concern.”

Worried yet? I am.

You're welcome to join the conversation at Women of Mystery today.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     the way it was...

Forever in Our Hearts

                                                                   BARLOW

                                                     January 27, 1999-June 4, 2013

                                                              A LOVING SOUL
                                                              A BRAVE PROTECTOR
                                                              A MOST LOYAL FRIEND

Terrie Farley Moran's...

...terrific new short story, "Bobby Wycoff is Dead," is up this week at BEAT TO A PULP. Go now, friends! You don't want to miss this one.

"...germs of larger worlds..."

Lydia Davis, who won the Man Booker Prize last week, had this to say on the Booker Prize website about the length of some of her short stories:

"Some of my thoughts or reactions are very brief, and their brevity is actually part of what I enjoy about them. They may sometimes appear to be just fleeting snapshots or records of transitory sensations but they are stories none the less because they hold within in them the germs of larger worlds and other narratives.”

More conversation on this at Women of Mystery today.