Pitch Wars
By E.A. Aymar (also E.A. Barres)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Author's Note
New Releases (That I'm Excited About!)
Two Writers You Should Read
Events
It's Contest Time!
Other Writing
Pitch Wars
This year I'm participating in an online event called Pitch Wars, and I'm really excited about it! Exclamation mark warranted!
For those that don't know, Pitch Wars is an opportunity for unpublished writers to team up with published writers, and we advise them on their manuscripts and on their path to getting an agent. It's a terrific, hugely successful effort, and has brought some wonderful voices into bookstores.
I know that quite a few of my readers here are hoping to get published, and I can't stress enough what a fantastic opportunity this is. You can learn more about the program HERE, and please reach out to me if you have any questions. I mean, I have no answers, but I can point you to someone who does.
One of the things that the organizers of PW stress to mentors is the importance of "tone," whether on social media or reviewing a manuscript. And that's something I think quite a bit about. I don't have an advanced degree in Creative Writing, but I have taken a number of courses at the graduate level and worked with a variety of editors. I've seen a lot of styles - from being the bait in a pool of piranhas to having my work needlessly praised (which I was cool with, don't get me wrong).
I was raised, through sports and school and writing, on the concept of tough love. And it's a concept that, I suppose, served me well. But it's a concept I question, since it seems often to serve less to the benefit of the student and more to the grievances or annoyances of the teacher. I'm a sports fan, and I'm familiar with coaches throwing tantrums on the sidelines, demeaning their players, responding to reporters or fans in ways that wouldn't be permissible by anyone else. And I wonder - is it necessary? Is it the best way to teach?
The philosophy, I suppose, is that you're preparing someone for the hardships of life. Toughening them up. Seeing if that have what it takes.
Or are we just saying that so we can play into the damaged psyche of damaged people? Successful people, to be sure, but people who believe the only way to grow is to be beaten.
And that's not my methodology.
Ultimately, when I teach, I present the path as best as I know it. I will take someone as far as they want to go. But whether they choose to travel to the end of that path...ultimately, that's their choice. Not mine.
As a teacher, I can give them the tools. Whether they use them to build something is up to them. But I hope they do, and I hope it's something beautiful. I hope I can help.
EA
Sticking this anthology here again, because we recently received word that Midnight Hour, an anthology of short stories written by members of Crime Writers of Color, earned a great review from Kirkus. Kirkus is more known for its anger and vitriol when their reviewers don't care for a book, so this was a wonderful honor. As a reminder, this book comes out later this year and is available for preorder now! Click HERE or on the graphic below for more information.
We Were Never Here
Andrea Bartz
Emily is having the time of her life—she’s in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of the trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she brought back to their room attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year’s trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can’t believe it’s happened again—can lightning really strike twice?
Back home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma, diving headfirst into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their cover-ups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can Emily outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom—even her life?
The Truth of It All
Gwen Florio
Public defender Julia Geary moves through life in simmering resentment--at her husband, a soldier killed in Iraq, leaving her a single mother; at her low-paying job; and at her overbearing mother-in law, whose home she shares. She longs for a breakout case, and it arrives when members of the high school soccer team report seeing a teammate--Iraqi refugee Sami Mohammed--assaulting a girl in the locker room.
In a town where animosity against refugees has already reached a fever pitch, Julia throws all her energy into Sami's defense. She finds an ally in high school principal Dom Parrish, who believes Sami is innocent, and the case suddenly turns red hot.
Then she begins receiving vicious threats against her family, and a senseless act of violence leaves Sami in a coma. And finally, a crop of new evidence emerges that points to the town's most prominent citizens and pits Julia against powerful forces set on burying the truth once and for all.
If Sami survives and Julia can prove him innocent, it will be the case of a lifetime. But now it's her life that's on the line.
Velvet Was the Night
Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger.
Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents.
Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock ’n’ roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he watches Maite from a distance—and comes to regard her as a kindred spirit who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart.
Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora’s secrets—at gunpoint.
Substitute
Susi Holliday
Like any mother, Chrissie wants to protect her family. She would do anything to keep them safe. So when a mysterious stranger turns up at her door, offering to prevent the deaths of the people she loves, it sounds too good to be true. The only problem: she must choose someone to die in their place. A substitute.
When her daughter Holly has a terrible accident, Chrissie has no option but to enter the programme. In that horrifying moment, she would do anything to save her. But even after Holly makes a miraculous recovery, Chrissie is convinced it’s just a coincidence. After all, who can really control the laws of life and death?
But as the dangers to her family escalate and her chosen substitutes begin to disappear, Chrissie finds herself in an underworld of hidden laboratories and secretive doctors. And the consequences of playing by their rules are far deadlier than she ever imagined…
The Turnout
Megan Abbott
With their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, Dara and Marie Durant have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents' death in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student.
Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, sidelined from dancing after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around one another, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker—a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration—an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance.
Clark and Division
Naomi Hirahara
Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train.
Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth.
The Madness of Crowds
Louise Penny
You’re a coward.
Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache.
It starts innocently enough.
While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request.
He’s asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university.
While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture.
They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson’s views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it’s near impossible to tell them apart.
Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold.
Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone.
When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion.
And the madness of crowds.
Dark Roads
Chevy Stevens
The Cold Creek Highway stretches close to five hundred miles through British Columbia’s rugged wilderness to the west coast. Isolated and vast, it has become a prime hunting ground for predators. For decades, young women traveling the road have gone missing. Motorists and hitchhikers, those passing through or living in one of the small towns scattered along the region, have fallen prey time and again. And no killer or abductor who has stalked the highway has ever been brought to justice.
Hailey McBride calls Cold Creek home. Her father taught her to respect nature, how to live and survive off the land, and to never travel the highway alone. Now he’s gone, leaving her a teenage orphan in the care of her aunt whose police officer husband uses his badge as a means to bully and control Hailey. Overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date, Hailey vanishes into the mountainous terrain, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town. Rumors spread that she was taken by the highway killer—who’s claimed another victim over the summer.
One year later, Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek, where her sister Amber lived—and where she was murdered. Estranged from her parents and seeking closure, Beth takes a waitressing job at the local diner, just as Amber did, desperate to understand what happened to her and why. But Beth’s search for answers puts a target on her back—and threatens to reveal the truth behind Hailey’s disappearance…
Look, I'm such a fan of Laura McHugh's writing that I'm a little surprised we're friends. Not that I suck at life or something, but Laura's a rock star to me. There's a strain of American crime fiction that could be classified as rural noir, known for its distinctive prose, unmistakable atmosphere, and sunken characters. Think the TV show Justified, or maybe a movie like Winter's Bone. That's where Laura's work resides, and she's among the best.
Laura's made a name for himself chronicling the Ozarks, and she does it honestly, with a careful eye and an artist's deft touch. I can't recommend her or her books enough, and she's a writer I'll always immediately read.
And an author Laura recommends? Well, she recommended three, which DOES NOT WORK WITH MY FORMATTING, LAURA. But it's totally cool and I'm glad she did, because I like all three of the writers she listed below.
Julia Dahl – Julia’s books are always smart and hard-hitting. She writes about the complexities of crime and justice in a way that is just brilliant. The Missing Hours (her first standalone, coming September 14th) is her best yet. It’s a compelling page-turner that delves into the dark corners of rape culture and revenge. Because it’s really cruel of Ed to make someone choose only one author, I’m gonna cheat and add an author who is new to me, and one whose new release I’m eagerly anticipating. I recently started my first Tracy Clark book (Runner), which makes me want to go back and read the previous books in her Cass Raines series, and I’m angling for an early copy of Amina Akhtar’s Kismet (coming in ’22)—I loved her dark, hilarious, and fabulous debut, #FashionVictim.
To learn more about these authors, click on the photos above.
I do have an event this month - a discussion of standalones v. short stories v. series with Art Taylor and Marcia Talley, but I think it's a private event for members of Sisters in Crime - Chesapeake Chapter.
So I have nothing to offer. I'm sorry.
It's contest time! The monthly contest winner wins copies of the books listed in my "Two Writers You Should Read" segment (and I'm only giving out two books, LAURA). And the winner is...
vm_ell@___com
Congrats, and keep your eye out for a separate e-mail from me!
I have a column coming up this Thursday in the Washington Independent Review of Books, and it's a fun one, all about Writer's Bucket Lists. I don't have the link yet, but check out the Independent on Thursday for it. It includes lists from Mia P. Manansala, Eliza Nellums, Lori Rader-Day, and Lisa Regan, and it was a blast to write.
Also, side note, today's my birthday! You know what would make a great gift? If you each bought FIVE copies of my most recent novel, They're Gone! Or just one copy. We can compromise.
Until next time, much love and happy reading!