Catching UP!

Books that went to Press this week:

Marta's Place by C.M. Albrecht. 

   When Hal Morrison goes to work at Marta's Place he doesn't just have to deal with customers; he has to deal with love, lust, detectives, drugs, murder, mayhem…and Marta!

Galleys that went out this week:

EASTERN SHORE NOIR, a Collection of Work by Members of the Writers Bloc

   Okay, so here you are, reader, opening the page ... obviously you have discriminating tastes and a longing, nay, a desire, for a cracking good story pulsing with noir elements.

RED YEAR, by Jan Shapin

    Can a red-haired woman from Chicago single-handedly force Joseph Stalin to back down?         China, 1927. 

    Thirty-three year old Rayna Prohme, accompanying her left-wing journalist husband, becomes the political confidant and lover of Mikhail Borodin, the Russian commander sent to prop up a failing Chinese revolution. In a bid to continue their love affair, Rayna hatches a plan to accompany Mme. Sun, the widow of the Chinese revolution’s founder, to Moscow.

Chasing Nightmares by James R. Kincaid

             Chasing Nightmares, deliberately embracing terrors, isn’t what you and I are likely to do.  But you and I are not the four central characters in this novel, pretty typical college kids who sense that their lives are so predictable they hardly seem present in them.  They are determined not to succumb to the commonplace scripts set out for them, pathways that are so comfortable they might as well be padded, MUSAK softly playing.

      So, they set out from Los Angeles, trying hard to find the perilous.  They try hard to make themselves unprepared, open, desperate to vivify their minds and senses.  They make it only as far as Lake Tahoe and the nearby Donner Pass, where they do succeed in attracting horrors, certainly not the ones they had, despite themselves, anticipated. 

            But the nightmares they wrap round themselves also contain a good deal more than shivers, and the calls on their resolve demand more than simple courage (or foolhardy consistency).  Without knowing how it happened, they are drawn into a different strangeness, asking for and yet reluctant to receive something very much like love.

Jack's News!

  by your Official Bookstore Cat, 

and Gossip Columnist.

Hi Folks,

  Some of the folks at the Writers' Block are sending corrections to arline. So far she has heard from Ann Foley, Andy Nunez, Shirley Gaffney, Rita Tiso, and Jerry Sciortino George Mason and Tom Taylor 

   I also heard from my private Grapevine that some folks were having trouble retrieving the files from  the cloud locker. If anyone has questions or needs help, don't worry Tom with it. He has worked hard enough on this, Contact arline directly and she will help the best she can.

 Just e-mail

 arline@mail.com

with any problems -- and (just in case) that's MAIL.com, not gmail.

As for around here, not much has been going on. Roger has been cutting grass and Spunky kept sneaking out to play in the grass and she came back with both front shouldes almost bald. There's a pair of mockingbirds building  nest in the Pecan tree (I Saw them from the window). Arline had to put salve on her they pecked her so bad. Their chicks should have a fine nest, all that gray and white fur. She is such a baby. I tried to tell her (oh, they got me too, when I was little, but she didn't listen to me. WHAT ids it with baby sisters, anyway? They never listen to their big brothers. If I had had a big brother I would have listened. THOSE !@#$%^&*#@ BIRDS almost killed me. My Aunt Carol over at Little Angels had to come and save me. Thank goodness she was there.

Meanwhile, don't forget to let me know what you are all up to, so I can post it.

Just send an e-mail to arline@mail.com with 

 "News for Jack" 

 in the subject line, and

I'll make sure it shows up here for all the world to see!