I woke up thinking of how many book I hadn’t yet mentioned here . . . they swirled through my head in a tornado. If I didn’t have a pile seven feet tall of books on my nightstand, here are the top five books I’d re-read today:

A Fine Balance by Rohintin Mistry

“Though Mistry is too fine a writer to indulge in polemics, this second novel is also a quietly passionate indictment of a corrupt and ineluctably cruel society. India under Indira Gandhi has become a country ruled by thugs who maim and kill for money and power . . . A sweeping story, in a thoroughly Indian setting, that combines Dickens’s vivid sympathy for the poor with Solzhenitsyn’s controlled outrage, celebrating both the resilience of the human spirit and the searing heartbreak of failed dreams. “ Kirkus.

All that and also a page-turner. All his books are wonderful.

A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton

“The Goodwins, Howard, Alice, and their little girls, Emma and Claire, live on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Although suspiciously regarded by their neighbors as “that hippie couple” because of their well-educated, urban background, Howard and Alice believe they have found a source of emotional strength in the farm, he tending the barn while Alice works as a nurse in the local elementary school.

But their peaceful life is shattered one day when a neighbor’s two-year-old daughter drowns in the Goodwins’ pond while under Alice’s care. Tormented by the accident, Alice descends even further into darkness when she is accused of sexually abusing of a student at the elementary school. Soon, Alice is arrested, incarcerated, and as good as convicted in the eyes of a suspicious community. As a child, Alice designed her own map of the world to find her bearings. Now, as an adult, she must find her way again, through a maze of lies, doubt and ill will.” From the book jacket.

And written so well you could bathe in her words. Another page-turner.

Mudbound by Hilary Jordan

“In 1946, Laura McAllan, a college-educated Memphis schoolteacher, becomes a reluctant farmer’s wife when her husband, Henry, buys a farm on the Mississippi Delta, a farm she aptly nicknames Mudbound. Laura has difficulty adjusting to life without electricity, indoor plumbing, readily accessible medical care for her two children and, worst of all, life with her live-in misogynous, racist, father-in-law. Her days become easier after Florence, the wife of Hap Jackson, one of their black tenants, becomes more important to Laura as companion than as hired help. Catastrophe is inevitable when two young WWII veterans, Henry’s brother, Jamie, and the Jacksons’ son, Ronsel, arrive, both battling nightmares from horrors they’ve seen, and both unable to bow to Mississippi rules after eye-opening years in Europe.” Publishers Weekly

I dare you to start this book and not immediately fall in love.

Jump at the Sun by Kim McLarin

“With a big house in an upscale Boston suburb, a doting scientist husband and two cute daughters, Grace, heroine of this penetrating novel of family affection and disaffection, is living the middle-class black woman’s dream. But as she tends to her kids’ wearying demands, fends off her husband’s desire for a son and watches her sociology Ph.D. go to waste, she feels like “a claustrophobic in a mining shaft” and fantasizes about ditching her family. It’s no idle daydream—her grandmother Rae repeatedly abandoned her children to search for whatever satisfactions life had to offer a Mississippi sharecropper’s daughter, while her mother, Mattie, who sacrificed her happiness for her children’s, offers an object lesson in the toll that family devotion can take. McLarin (Taming It Down) weaves the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters in astringent prose (”You couldn’t be expected to live without them, but you’d better remember at all times, even with the good ones, that it was you against them,” Grace muses of the wild cards that are men). Her characters chafe against the bonds of poverty, racism and feminine stereotypes, but their deeper struggle is to resolve their longing for fulfillment with ties of the heart.” Publishers Weekly

All of McLarin’s books belong on your ‘to read right now’ list—a wonderful and engaging writer.

At Home in The World: A Memoir by Joyce Maynard

“If you don’t want to invade the privacy of J. D. Salinger, you can shun altogether Joyce Maynard’s memoir, AT HOME IN THE WORLD. Or you can skip the rest of the chapters and move on to her remarkable life. But if you follow either of the above paths, you’ll miss a portrait of a comic genius, Salinger himself. Perhaps Ms. Maynard didn’t intend to draw humor from a painful episode, but that’s what she did for me and I laughed over the eccentricity of the hermit of Cornish. Surely he’s laughing himself, unlike the solemn asses now shooting their squibs at this wry, painful, engaging book.” Frank McCourt, author of ANGELA’S ASHES

I loved this book when it came out, not just for Maynard’s portrait of Salinger, but for the all-to-believable portrait of a far too young woman caught up way beyond her own level of understanding by her relationship with the far older Salinger.

(NOTE: The nightmare ended on Friday, Feb 5,  7 days after it began,)

So, for those who don’t know, as of this moment, Macmillan and their imprints (mine being St. Martin’s Press) have been pulled off the virtual shelves of Amazon. For me, until I learned about the war I thought something awful had happened to my book.

My first hint of trouble came during a Friday night computer conversation on She Writes, an online community for women writers, when someone said that they couldn’t buy my book on Amazon.

I rushed over to the site in a virtual run.

My book was only available, according to Amazon, from ‘third party sellers.’ I was no longer a member of the Kindle family. The Murderer’s Daughters was homeless. Thinking this was an individual software problem, I shot off a Friday night email to my agent, editor, publicist, rabbi, primary care physician and God.

My beloved agent responded with calming words, but was (at the time) mystified by the problem.

Being incredibly neurotic in the department of ‘must address now’ (a quality which does not endear me to anyone but my doppelganger sister) I foolishly called Amazon. An hour and a half later, after being fobbed off from one clueless rep to another, I was sobbing, yes, actually sobbing, on the shoulder of my husband. “But what if my review (I was expecting a major newspaper review) comes out tomorrow?”

Still thinking this was a ‘me’ problem, I went to my usual source of writerly comfort, Backspace for Writers, where I posted my crisis on the forum. After many loving replies assuring me that Amazon is not the only bookseller, in fact, not even the top bookseller, I got an instant update, simultaneously, from Backspace and Twitter, that more than one St. Martin/Macmillan author was missing from Amazon.

Soothed into the misery loves company arms of shared sadness, I wrested my arms from around my laptop and went to sleep, certain that by morning this technical glitch would be solved.

At 6:30 I plugged back in. And there was twitter confirmation from my new BFF in Australia: it’s an Amazon vs. Macmillan vs. Amazon problem. Quick, to Backspace, there it was—links to the New York Times and Publishers Marketplace articles. Wow, it was a corporate smackdown, with Amazon throwing its weight like an Internet J. Paul Getty.

I breathed. Made coffee. Took in our hard copy Boston Globe and New York Times and tried very hard to keep my hands off the computer for five minutes. Unsuccessfully.

It’s scary. I am a new author of a debut novel (it came out on January 19^th.)  And like when I was in the throes of the incredible mono-mindedness of mothering a newborn, I find myself spending every possible moment babying my book. So, having it thrown out of one of the major daycare facilities in the nation, that scared the heck out of me.

I’ve been reading the tweets pinging back and forth in the virtual world, along with the few articles that have surfaced so far. There are pro-Amazon factions. There are pro-Macmillan factions. Pro-reader. Pro-consumer. Pro-frugalistas. And I can’t help feel a little lost here.

The helpless writers have no weapons (except words) despite having quite a dog in this fight.

Hello, Barnes and Noble. Love you, Powells!

Most of all, thank God for independent booksellers, right? I’ve always done as much as my buying there as possible. Now I am willing to truly talk with my wallet, forgo the temptations of discounts and armchair shopping (though you can certainly shop Indies on line!) and support my fellow authors at full price. I’ll never take my local bookstores for granted again!

Lesson learned.

UPDATE: Monday morning: I wrote this post on Sunday evening. Soon after, Amazon said they would lift the ban, but Macmillan books are still MIA on the Amazon site.

First you gotta have friends . . .

For weeks before my book launch, I obsessed about the party I was giving. Maybe it was because it was a hard bricks and mortar thing—I was facing people in person—or maybe because it was easier to worry about facing an empty restaurant than worrying about reviews. Whatever the reasons, I had many (and conflicting) fears about my launch party:

Nobody will come!

Too many people will come!

However, that night, like Goldilocks, I was lucky, and it turned out just right.

So here’s the thing about giving a book launch party. You gotta have friends. You gotta have family. And you gotta have food. (And to anyone who complains about spending money for this—would you EVER invite people to a party and then NOT serve food??? If so, take me off your invite list.)

Every moment of this party reminded me how lucky I am.

My sister, she didn’t just bring herself—from three hours away—and her incredible warmth, she brought two friends who took pictures, videotaped, and were (silently!) the party angels. (Thanks Linda & Diane!)

My daughter, she didn’t just keep everything on schedule, she moved through the room with smiles, hugs and love for each and every friend from our past and present. Plus, she looked so radiant that I could barely breathe. She even wore a dress that wasn’t black, that’s how much she loves me.

My husband, the best person in the world, who is as far from a party person as you can get, this man circled the room with love and conversation and welcomes for all – and somehow looked after me at the same time. He chatted with my ex-boyfriends AND made sure I had hot water with lemon.

My closest friends were willing to be on their own as I spent my time with people newer to the group. They all looked beautiful, came early, and asked to be put to work. Those are friends. I love my friends.  So much. And my agent came! Seeing her dazzling smile lit up my heart.

I think people dug deeper into their pockets because for every book purchased from the wonderful Newtonville Books, a matching amount went to the Home for Little Wanderers’ Harrington House—an organization working against all odds to provide a home for kids with no place in this world.  When you’re lucky enough in this world to get a book published, you gotta remember to say thanks!

Yes, it was a wonderful party.

I read without choking.

I didn’t cry—and so I didn’t ruin all the make-up I applied in a desperate attempt to look as good as my author photo (thank you to my sister Jill and the miracle of Photoshop!).

In addition, my friends have told me, the launch didn’t make me look fat. Oh yes, that’s what friends are for.

Today’s guest post is from multi-writer blog, BEYOND THE MARGINS (yes, yes, yes . . . I am a member of the group.) This interview, done by writer Nicole Bernier, explores a terrific question: what’s behind the curtain of one of the top literary prizes?

INSIDE THE NEWBERY AWARDS

By Nichole Bernier

The results are in: Of the hundreds of books submitted by publishing companies, this year’s Newbery Award winner is WHEN YOU REACH ME, by Rebecca Stead. It is a story of a 12-year-old girl in Manhattan in 1979 who must unravel a mystery posed by letters she receives accurately predicting the future.

On the eve of the announcement, Beyond The Margins caught up with Diane Bailey Foote, one of the judges, to gain her insights about this year’s field of contenders and what makes for an award-winning children’s book.

Diane Bailey Foote is one of 15 members of the 2010 John Newbery Award Selection Committee, a past Executive Director of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC, a division of the ALA), and a reviewer of children’s and parenting books.

What were some impressions you had of the field of nominees?

I noticed a large number of books about children and families coping with war. There were a few contemporary books in which the Iraq war figured, and many more that took place during the Civil War, World War I or II, or the Vietnam War.

What made WHEN YOU REACH ME a winner for you?

As a young reader one of my favorite books was Madeleine L’Engle’s A WRINKLE IN TIME (also a Newbery medalist). WHEN YOU REACH ME is an homage to that book, and concepts explored by L’Engle are revisited here, especially time travel and the interconnectedness of seemingly random events. The intricate plot weaves together a vast number of threads and clues in a very satisfying way, with a stunning surprise of a conclusion.

Can you tell us about the nominating process? Do authors nominate themselves?

The Newbery Committee seeks out and evaluates the contenders, but many other organizations offer submissions as well. All members of ALSC send their suggestions to the committee chair during the year. And most publishers are eager to submit their newly published books to us, so we receive hundreds of submissions.

What are the criteria to be considered as a Newbery book?

The award is given for “the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature” published in the prior year in English in the United States, and the criteria have changed relatively little since the award was established in 1922. The award is not for popularity or didactic intent, and it’s given for the text alone, not the illustrations or design or any other aspect of a book. Criteria include interpretation of the theme or concept; presentation of information including accuracy, clarity, and organization; plot development; delineation of characters and setting; appropriateness of style; and excellence of presentation for a child audience.

Can you tell us about how books are winnowed down (finalists, semifinalists, etc)?

Judging begins as soon as the first books published in the year prior to the award announcement are available. (For example, books for the January 2010 award began with the first books published in 2009.) Starting in mid-fall prior to the award’s announcement in January, each committee member nominates seven titles. The nominations are confidential. Since there are 15 committee members, the maximum number of titles that could be nominated is 105. But stellar books often have more than one nomination, so there are generally fewer nominated titles than that. All of us read all the nominated books. If there is no clear winner (a book needs eight first-place votes in order to win the Medal), there is another round of discussion, then another vote, and so on.

What makes a book stand out for you personally? What are important elements for excellence in children’s literature as opposed to adult fiction?

For me, a strong novel, picture book, or poetry book will be fresh and immediate, “shows” rather than “tells” the audience about the characters and their actions, and is written in an engaging style. For informational books, engaging style is also important, and the facts must be absolutely accurate, explained clearly, and documented. It’s essential to think back to what it was like to read as a young person; I’ve read several children’s books this year that appealed to me as a grown-up that I’m not sure really are the most distinguished books for children from 2009.

Is this your first year working on the Newbery awards?

This is my first time on the Newbery Selection Committee itself, although I have been heavily involved with the award and other children’s literature awards, including the Caldecott Award (for picture books).

What kind of work experience gave you entrée to being a judge?

I’ve been an editor at Book Links magazine, published by ALA, and wrote hundreds of children’s book reviews for Kirkus Reviews and Booklist. I am trained as a librarian (with a masters degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois), and spent 10 years in children’s book publishing. Obviously, I did not work on the publishing side of the business while reviewing and serving on award committees!

Will you do it again next year?

For the 2011 awards, I’ll be on the committee for the Coretta Scott King Award, the ALA honor for books on African American topics by African American authors and illustrators.

Every day I try to remind myself that too many women in this world live without voice, without words, and without the ability to make themselves heard. Is anything more basic than the desire to be understood? Perhaps I have taken too much for granted my right to walk free and express myself. There is a soon-to-be-yellowing newspaper clipping in my blog post idea folder. Of late I have been incredibly caught up in myself, my book launch, the omnipresent me, me, me. But, finally, a voice with far better sense of priorities spoke into my ear today.

According to Los Angeles Times writer Mark Magnier, “The Khabar Lehariya, or News Waves, is India’s first newspaper written by tribal women or those from the Dalit, or so-called untouchable caste.”

Magnier writes that many of these women were beaten, sexually abused as children, and married off young. Some of them fought to get out of abusive marriages. The story outlines the incredible journeys all these women have taken to be part of writing, producing, and delivering the paper.

Indianexpress.com relates that “[r]ural newspapers are creating a silent revolution in Uttar Pradesh. Recently, Khabar Lehariya, brought out by the low-caste rural women of Bundelkhand, was selected for the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize for the year 2009. With this, over a dozen newsletters across UP have also come into focus.”

Reading about women, who faced many hardships to produce their paper, and then walked through harsh conditions to deliver it, I am reminded once again: there but for the grace of luck and happenstance go I.

Today is a good day to remember how many women have been silenced, and to thank the magnificently strong women all over the world who fight to make their voices heard. Their struggle should be ours. How do we make it so?

One world.

Amazing. Here I am, about to realize my longest-held-dream—publishing a novel—and my biggest concern is whether I‘ll look fat at the launch party.

No matter what the event, we always wonder: how will I look? You bet that Michelle Obama, even as she basked in the glory of becoming First Lady, checked out her reflection from every angle. And you gotta know that it wasn’t just for the press. Mrs. Obama’s closest, realest friends, for sure asked:

What are you wearing?

I am lucky to be part of a “it’s hard out there for a pimp!” promo support group—we’re writers at various stages of releasing and selling novels—and on the night before the week before my book launch party, the question came (from the only man in the group. As a joke. Right, Chris???)

What are you wearing?

I had dinner with my oldest, most supportive friends—my women’s group, my sisters—and they asked:

What are you wearing on Thursday?

Oh, I don’t know. Just one of the 23 outfits I picked up on drastic reduction at Bloomingdale’s . Just one of the 35 outfits I’ve been trying on for the last 4 days. Oh, no big deal—just one of the 666 dresses, skirts, and jackets strewn across my bed, dresser, office, and floor.

I feel ludicrous. Is it possible that I spent more time trying on outfits for this event than I did copy-editing my final chapter?

Do male authors get facials before their book launch parties? Do they worry that their hands are so cracked and chapped from work and cold that they can’t get a manicure, and as a result, when they sign books, people will gasp with horror at their ragged nails?

Do these same men stand stupidly in front of the mirror wearing a shoe on one foot and a boot on the other, wondering which looks better?

Do they wonder if their suit makes them look fat?

So for me:

Surplice dress?

Simple blazer?

Sheath?

Be honest, everyone. Do I look fat in this launch?

One World

The tragedy in Haiti points ever more poignantly at the amazing deeds of everyday heroes. Right now, somewhere in Haiti, selfless men and women are putting their lives at risk and sacrificing comfort, sleep, food, peace of mind and who knows what else to pull someone from rubble, to deliver a baby in the midst of wreckage, and to perform the horrifying task of dealing with dead bodies.

Quiet and everyday heroes surround us.

Miep Gies died on Monday at age 100. Ms. Gies resisted the Nazi occupation of Holland and helped to hide Anne Frank, her family, and three other Jews during World War II. A true example of a quiet heroism, Miep Gies dismissed accolades, saying:

“I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more—much more—during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then. More than twenty thousand Dutch people helped to hide Jews and others in need of hiding during those years. I willingly did what I could to help. My husband did as well. It was not enough.”

Those words are from the prologue of Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped the Frank Family by Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold.

Miep Gies’ bravery was recorded by history. She was an everyday hero—someone who saw injustice and need, and responded.

I hope that all who can have made generous donations to help the relief efforts in Haiti—at times like this it’s often money that moves the mountains. I am amazed that agencies like Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are just groups of individual men and women, who bandage the injured and drive trucks across rutted roads—offering their hands, their hearts, and their expertise, whether it be for stitching wounds or heaving sacks of ready-to-eat meals.

Some seem born with the gene for quietly helping. Not all of it ends up in the press or in a book. In my own life, I laud my sister who spends days lugging food for abused and abandoned farm animals one day, and the next day goes to work in a church basement with lonely elderly people. My friends Diane and Mark provide a home for people traveling to Boston for health care not available where they live. My neighbors Alan and Rose recently biked countless hours to raise funds for fighting lung disease. Another neighbor, John, has dedicated endless hours and resources to renovating a residential home for kids at risk.

Whether we perform our good deeds with the pen, strong muscles, or a welcoming house, the tragedy in Haiti reminds us to help, for we live together in a small world.

In honor of Miep Gies, I like to remember the words of Anne Frank, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”

Writers Helping Writers

Writing is a lonely profession in many ways: you work alone for hours upon hours, wearing the nastiest of outfits. Your closest companions are characters you’ve invented—who become more real each day. If you’re obsessive (like yours truly)you eat at your desk, or, at best, gobble something down while flipping the pages of the newspaper at a speed that precludes any fact absorption.

If you’re lucky, you have a writer’s group which nurses you through draft after draft of your novel—people who will be honest (“no, you can’t send that out until you go do one more revision!”) and who will also be generous enough to help you keep going, even through rough beginning time when you are desperate for a bit of approbation(“yes, that is a beautiful passage about friendship; look at that gorgeous line!”) If you’re very lucky, perhaps some of those groups were led by Jenna Blum and under the auspice of Grub Street.

If you’re lucky, you have honest and trusted writer friends, willing to tear your work apart (with love) time after time and build you up when necessary. Without them, life would be a bear. Thank you, Ginny DeLuca.

When you’re finished with your work, if you’re lucky, you have friends who will listen sympathetically when you receive yet another rejection, read your fifteenth query iteration, and agree that agents are terrible, mean people—until you get your agent. Then they say, “Yes, she is truly a gifted and prescient woman!”

And, if you are truly lucky, when your book is about to release, you will have friends who offer love and support for years and months. Friends who are in the same boat, like Beth Hoffman, whose book SAVING CEECEE HONEYCUTT is being released today, the first pick for the Sam’s Club bookstore! Her publishers are sending her on a whirlwind tour, and still, still she finds time to tout my book.

Or, if you’re lucky, you have a friend like Melanie Benjamin, whose ALICE I HAVE BEEN also comes out today. Melanie is reeling from interviews and bookstore visits, yet she took the time to publicize my book review in the Boston Globe (cute how I got that in, huh?).

I am grateful for my writers groups: Grub Street, The Splinters, The Council, my promo-support group which includes already published writers Chris Abouzied, Lisa Borders, and Carol Newman Cronin, soon-to-release writers Holly LeCraw and Iris Gomez, and Roberta Gately, and newly agented-soon-to-sell writers Nichole Bernier and Kathleen Crowley—watch for their websites to be announced here!

There are so many more writers on whom I rely and who I hope rely on me. Each deserves her own page, but I’ll start with Diane Butkus, wonderful and kindhearted essayist, and Susan Knight, writer of much comfort.

I definitely have to write many more posts to include everyone (please see previous post, Writers As Fairy Godmothers.)

Oh, and of course, when I need a friend, 24/7, Backspace for Writers is there.

For a practitioner of a lonely profession, I sure am blessed to have so much company.

Right now, I’m thinking about the character of the mother in my book, The Murderer’s Daughters. Perhaps it’s because today I thought about how happy my own mother would be to see my book coming out. Although she never stopped telling me that I should lose weight, wear more make-up, cut my bangs, let my bangs grow, wear shorter dresses, wear longer dresses, and wear BIGGER jewelry, my mother had infinite faith in my writing abilities. Before she died, she’d read all my ‘practice’ books and thought each one perfect.

What a gift she gave me with that.

She never read The Murderer’s Daughters, which may be a blessing, as the story is a 300-page speculation about my father’s attempt to kill her  – what if he had succeeded?

Luckily for my family, my mother lived. But Celeste, the mother in my book dies, as do so many women—leaving sons and daughters all over the world effectively orphaned, just as my characters Lulu and Merry are.

With that in mind, today, as I gear up for my book launch, it feels important to share here a list of warning signs that you may be in an abusive relationship—remembering that though these warnings are written in the guise of straight man/straight woman, abuse knows no gender or sexual preference boundaries.

Jealousy: Does he want to be with you constantly? Accuse of you cheating?  Follow you? Call far too often?

Controlling Behavior: Does he become angry if you’re late, always need to know who you were with, where you went, what you wore, and what you said? Do you have to ask permission to do things? Does he want veto power over your friendships?

Instant Involvement: Be careful of a man who claims ‘love at first sight’, and says that you are the ‘only one who can make him feel this way.’ Be cautious of a man who pressures you for commitment too quickly, perhaps suggesting that you move in together or become engaged within 6 months of meeting.

Unrealistic Expectations: This may seem strange, but compliments that seem excessive are a warning sign. Beware those who see or expect perfection, and those who say, “you are all I need; I am all you need.”

Isolation: Controlling and abusive men will try to cut off your resources and distance you from your friends and family, perhaps by telling you that your family doesn’t love you or that you are too dependent on them.  They will say your friends are stupid. They will keep you from the car, get angry when you talk on the phone, and make it difficult for you to go to school or work.

Blames Others for Problems: For controlling and abusive men, any problems they have at school or work are always someone else’s fault. In the relationship, anything that goes wrong is because of you.

Blames Others for Feelings: Beware of men who make you feel responsible for how they feel, who see everything as a personal attack, are easily insulted, and who have tantrums about the injustice of things that happen to them. Abusive men will look for fights, blow things out of proportion, and overreact to small irritations.

Disrespectful or Cruel to Others: Dangerous men will punish animals and children cruelly.  They are insensitive to pain and suffering and have expectations of children that surpass abilities. They tease children until they cry and treat people disrespectfully.

Use of Force During Sex: When men show little concern over whether you want sex or not and use sulking or anger to manipulate you into sexual compliance, this is a warning sign. Degrading sexual remarks about you should be taken as indication of a serious problem.

Rigid Sex Roles: Abusive men often believe that women are inferior to men and that a woman cannot be a whole person without a relationship.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: Beware of men who are nice one moment and explode the next, and men who have rapid and extreme mood swings.

Past Battering: Abusers will deny and minimize their past violence, saying it is a lie, or their ex is crazy, or that is wasn’t that bad.

Breaking or Striking Objects: Violent men will break things, beat on tables, throw objects, and use other methods to inspire fear.

Any Force during an Argument: No one should be physically restrained, pushed, or shoved. Any use of weapons, kicking, hitting, slapping, or other physical violence is abuse.

Let’s all stay safe out there.

If you need help:

National Domestic Violence Hotline

Help For Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Community

Gay Men’s Domestic Violence Project

One of the unexpected joys of (soon!) publishing a novel is how, like heat and comfort- seeking missiles, you find friends on the same path. Some you know in real life, some you meet on Twitter, some on wonderful sites like Backspace. Virtual or real, in that lonely sweat pants wearing world no matter what your work, first ya gotta have friends.

I’ve not read any of these books in their entirety, but I’ve visited all their websites, read their first chapters online where I could, and pre-ordered each and every one. Thus, in order of pub date, I present, my launch sisters (is it okay if I squeeze myself in there also?) beginning with the first lines of each book.

Part One: January

Double Black: A Ski Diva Mystery by Wendy Clinch. January 5, 2010

“When Stacey Curtis found the dead man in the bed, she knew it was time to get her own apartment.

The writing had been on the wall for a while and she’d ignored it for as long as she could. These empty condos on the mountain were convenient—they had clean sheets and plenty of hot water and maybe even a packet of somebody’s left-behind instant oatmeal to toss in the microwave come morning—and it seemed like a shame to let them sit unused. Especially when she was new in town, just sprung from an engagement gone bad, and living out of a tip jar.

A tip jar and an ‘87 Subaru, to tell the whole truth.”

*********

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman. January 12, 2010:

“Momma left her red satin shoes in the middle of the road. That’s what three eyewitnesses told the police. The first time I remember my mother wearing red shoes was on a snowy morning in December 1962, the year I was seven years old. I walked into the kitchen and found her sitting at the table. No lights were on, but in the thin haze of dawn that pushed through the frostbitten window, I could see red high-heeled shoes peeking out from beneath the hem of her robe. There was no breakfast waiting, and no freshly ironed school dress hanging on the basement doorknob. Momma just sat and stared out the window with empty eyes, her hands limp in her lap, her coffee cold and untouched.

I stood by her side and breathed in the sweet scent of lavender talcum powder that clung to the tufts of her robe.”

*********

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin. January 12, 2010

“But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.

Only I do get tired.

I pause, place the pen down next to the page, and massage my aching hand; the joints of my fingers, in particular, are stiff and cold and ugly, like knots on a tree. One does get tired of so many things, of course, when one is eighty, not the least of which is answering endless letters.”

*********

The Murderer’s Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers, releasing January 19, 2010

“I wasn’t surprised when Mama asked me to save her life. By my first week in kindergarten, I knew she was no macaroni- necklace- wearing kind of mother. Essentially, Mama regarded me as a miniature hand servant:

Grab me a Pepsi, Lulu.

Get the milk for your sister’s cereal.

Go to the store and buy me a pack of Winstons.

Then one day she upped the stakes:

Don’t let Daddy in the apartment.”

*********

February Launches: coming soon, including:

Drive Time by Hank Phillipi Ryan, releasing February 1, 2010

The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley, releasing February 9, 2010