The Joy of Saying Yes
By E.A. Aymar
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
The Joy of Saying Yes
So, I've taken on a few too many things.
I'm about to plunge into deep edits for a novel and, as always, I have another one glinting on the horizon. But, as you saw in last month's author newsletter, I also volunteered for Pitch Wars this year, which meant reading through over one hundred book submissions, narrowing that number down to fifty, then ten, then four, and then reading that final four in-depth until I had the perfect one for me. And, once the mentors and mentees are announced, I need to provide an in-depth editorial letter of the book. I'm looking forward to that! If I get the novel I want, I'm looking forward to reading that manuscript again.
I'm also teaching in a writing workshop called Futurescape later this month. One of my dreams has always been to be a community college professor, and teaching has always been a natural fit for me. I'm teaching three different workshops at Futurescape, which means busily reviewing the submissions from the workshop participants.
There are other things - blurbs due, a bookstore newsletter from Crime Writers of Color, prepping for another project that hopefully gets off the ground, another D.C. Noir at the Bar in December - but you don't really need an exhaustive rundown of my Day Planner. As helpful as this has been for me.
Instead, I'm writing this because I'm so happy about all this work.
That sounds sarcastic. Probably because I'm always sarcastic. But it's not, and I'm not (this time).
I've talked about the length of my journey to become a published writer before, and I won't do it again here, but to give context - I started writing seriously (meaning on a daily basis) in 1997. I didn't get my first book published until 2013. This journey has been a long time in the making and it's certainly nowhere near complete. It's also not a journey in which I'll ever let myself feel comfortable. I'm always motivated by the sense that I'm working at the edge of something, like a towering cliff, and I'm determined not to let myself fall over.
And so having these opportunities, these chances to work in a field I coveted for so long, are like tangible dreams. This business definitely has its downs, as any writer will tell you, but having the opportunity to work in this field, to realize you're a peer among the people who were once your heroes, is a true joy.
And it just makes you want to work harder. Happily.
Midnight Hour, a collection of short stories written by members of Crime Writers of Color, is coming out November 9th! My own short story, a choose-your-own-adventure styled story, is included with some other fantastic offerings. Click HERE or on the graphic below for more information.
The Alchemist of Fire and Fortune
Gigi Pandian
Alchemist Zoe Faust’s mentor Nicolas Flamel is back in her life, but catching up with him will have to wait. An elusive blackmailer has threatened to expose a dangerous alchemical secret. Zoe’s boyfriend is out of town protecting secrets of his own. So when rumors of a treasure map reach Zoe, she turns her back on what sounds like no more than a game.
Zoe’s mischievous living gargoyle best friend Dorian, who thinks of himself as a modern-day Poirot, is convinced the map is real—and that it’s the key to proving himself as valuable to Zoe as her human family. With the help of the neighborhood teenagers, Dorian sets out to find the treasure, risking more than he planned in the process. Rumors, treasures, and secrets intersect to unearth more than Zoe could have dreamed—and could leave her family changed forever.
Can Zoe stop the threat to the family unit she’s created?
Mercy Creek
M.E. Browning
The late summer heat in Echo Valley, Colorado turns lush greenery into a tinder dry landscape. When a young girl mysteriously disappears, long buried grudges rekindle. Of the two Flores girls, Marisa was the one people pegged for trouble. Her younger sister, Lena, was the quiet daughter, dutiful and diligent—right until the moment she vanished.
Detective Jo Wyatt is convinced the eleven-year-old girl didn’t run away and that a more sinister reason lurks behind her disappearance. For Jo, the case is personal, reaching far back into her past. But as she mines Lena’s fractured family life, she unearths a cache of secrets and half-lies that paints a darker picture.
As the evidence mounts, so do the suspects, and when a witness steps forward with a shocking new revelation, Jo is forced to confront her doubts, and her worst fears. Now, it's just a matter of time before the truth is revealed—or the killer makes another deadly move.
Litani
Jess Lourey
In the summer of ’84, fourteen-year-old Frankie Jubilee is shuttled off to Litani, Minnesota, to live with her estranged mother, a county prosecutor she barely knows. From the start, Frankie senses something uneasy going on in the small town. The locals whisper about The Game, and her mother warns her to stay out of the woods and away from adults.
When a bullying gang of girls invites Frankie to The Game, she accepts, determined to find out what’s really going on in Litani. She’s not the only one becoming paranoid. Hysteria burns through the community. Dark secrets emerge. And Frankie fears that, even in the bright light of day, she might be living among monsters.
The Mother Next Door
Tara Laskowski
The annual Halloween block party is the pinnacle of the year on idyllic suburban cul-de-sac Ivy Woods Drive. An influential group of neighborhood moms—known as the Ivy Five—plans the event for months.
Except the Ivy Five has been four for a long time.
When a new mother moves to town, eager to fit in, the moms see it as an opportunity to make the group whole again. This year’s block party should be the best yet... until the women start receiving anonymous messages threatening to expose the quiet neighborhood’s dark past—and the lengths they’ve gone to hide it.
As secrets seep out and the threats intensify, the Ivy Five must sort the loyal from the disloyal, the good from the bad. They’ll do anything to protect their families. But when a twisted plot is revealed, with dangerous consequences, their steady foundation begins to crumble, leaving only one certainty: after this year’s block party, Ivy Woods Drive will never be the same.
Death at Greenway
Lori Rader-Day
Bridey Kelly has come to Greenway House—the beloved holiday home of Agatha Christie—in disgrace. A terrible mistake at St. Prisca’s Hospital in London has led to her dismissal as a nurse trainee, and her only chance for redemption is a position in the countryside caring for children evacuated to safety from the Blitz.
Greenway is a beautiful home full of riddles: wondrous curios not to be touched, restrictions on rooms not to be entered, and a generous library, filled with books about murder. The biggest mystery might be the other nurse, Gigi, who is like no one Bridey has ever met. Chasing ten young children through the winding paths of the estate grounds might have soothed Bridey’s anxieties and grief—if Greenway were not situated so near the English Channel and the rising aggressions of the war.
When a body washes ashore near the estate, Bridey is horrified to realize this is not a victim of war, but of a brutal killing. As the local villagers look among themselves, Bridey and Gigi discover they each harbor dangerous secrets about what has led them to Greenway. With a mystery writer’s home as their unsettling backdrop, the young women must unravel the truth before their safe haven becomes a place of death...
The Best American Mystery and Suspense Short Stories of 2021
Ed. Steph Cha
“Crime writers, forgive the pun, are killing it right now creatively,” writes guest editor Alafair Burke in her introduction. “It was difficult—painful even—to narrow this year’s Best American Mystery and Suspense to only twenty stories.” Spanning from a mediocre spa in Florida, to New York’s gritty East Village, to death row in Alabama, this collection reveals boundless suspense in small, quiet moments, offering startling twists in the least likely of places. From a powerful response to hateful bullying, to a fight for health care, to a gripping desperation to vote, these stories are equal parts shocking, devastating, and enthralling, revealing the tension pulsing through our everyday lives and affirming that mystery and suspense writing is better than ever before.
The Savage Kind
John Copenhaver
Philippa Watson, a good-natured yet troubled seventeen-year-old, has just moved to Washington, DC. She’s lonely until she meets Judy Peabody, a brilliant and tempestuous classmate. The girls become unlikely friends and fashion themselves as intellectuals, drawing the notice of Christine Martins, their dazzling English teacher, who enthralls them with her passion for literature and her love of noirish detective fiction.
When Philippa returns a novel Miss Martins has lent her, she interrupts a man grappling with her in the shadows. Frightened, Philippa flees, unsure who the man is or what she’s seen. Days later, her teacher returns to school altered: a dark shell of herself. On the heels of her teacher’s transformation, a classmate is found dead in the Anacostia River—murdered—the body stripped and defiled with a mysterious inscription.
As the girls follow the clues and wrestle with newfound feelings toward each other, they suspect that the killer is closer to their circle than they imagined—and that the greatest threat they face may not be lurking in the halls at school, or in the city streets, but creeping out from a murderous impulse of their own.
Hold Me Down
Clea Simon
Gal, a middle-aged musician, is back in Boston to play a memorial for her late drummer/best friend, when she finds herself freezing on stage at the sight of a face in the crowd. The next day, she learns that the man she saw has been killed – beaten to death behind the venue – and her friend’s widower is being charged in connection with his death. When the friend refuses to defend himself, Gal wonders why and, as the memories of begin to flood back, she starts her own informal investigation. As she does so, she must reexamine her own wild life, her perception of the past, and an industry that monetizes dysfunction in a dark tale of love, music, and murder.
I've started these introductions before with a note pondering how I met the guest author in question, and that's not the case with this one. I know exactly when I met John Copenhaver; my question was, how did I not know him earlier? We went to the same university - George Mason University, me for a Bachelors, him for a MFA - and we have the same close group of friends, and we both write crime fiction. WEIRD. Maybe he was avoiding me.
Anyway, I'm glad that our paths eventually crossed, because John is a fantastic, highly praised (and deservedly so) writer, and his new novel is receiving wonderful reviews from everywhere...including, recently, from the New York Times. He's also a greatly supportive figure in the crime fiction community, and a good friend.
And a writer John Copenhaver recommends?
I recommend Robyn Gigl’s legal thriller BY WAY OF SORROW, which features Erin McCabe, a New Jersey criminal defense attorney and trans woman, who takes the case of a young black trans woman accused of killing a senator’s son. Gigl weaves the painful reality of what it means to be trans and black in our current legal system with a riveting and emotional mystery. I’m so thankful to have her novel amid my mystery book collection—and I’m excited that her new book, SURVIVOR’S GUILT, is on its way this January.
To learn more about these authors, click on the photos above.
Futurescapes
Okay, this isn't really an event and you can't come unless you've already registered, but it's November in the third straight winter of a pandemic so, look, this is what you get. As mentioned above, I'll be teaching a series of writing workshops at Futurescapes this month. I've taught before, but never at this particular conference, and the sessions look really good! If you're an aspiring writer, then I definitely recommend you check their site for future workshops.
It's contest time! The monthly contest winner wins copies of the books listed in my "Two Writers You Should Read" segment. And the winner is...
k____kilkenny__@gmail.com
Congrats, and keep your eye out for a separate e-mail from me!
My latest column in the Washington Independent Review of Books was all about self-care and how helping others can help yourself. Yes, that shouldn't be a surprise, but when you're very selfish, these things can surprise you, as they did me. You can check it out HERE.
Also, I did a podcast with the gang at Chatter on Books! I've been on Chatter before and it's one of my favorite podcasts. It's hosted by D.C. luminary Torie Clark and co-hosted by sports reporting legend David Aldridge, and the two of them always have a fun, informative conversation. I was sort of a guest co-host with featured author Sasha P. Smith, author of the bestselling debut novel, The Witch Haven. You can check it out HERE.
Until next time, much love and happy reading!