Catching UP!

No Books went to Press this week.

Work Continued the following books 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.

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!

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,

  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.

   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.

 I shouldn't tell tales out of school, but the whole time she was working on it,she kept telling Roger, "Boy, this is really GOOD!" and "Wow, this is the best one YET!" Not to mention that she kept losing her place and forgetting to look for typos.     

I heard from Barbara Garro and she has been chosen by tMarquis Who's Who Publications Board to receive their exclusive Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award due to her "many esteemed years of professional service" in her field"

It says that "many years" is more than thirty... Buy Gee, I wonder which field?... Business woman?... Artist?... Poet?... 

Christian Writer?...

She sent me a PDF of the whole letter, but I can't post it here, because it's a PDF not a .jpg.

As for around here, not much has been going on. I've had a terrible time with Arline, and Roger, too. The sun keeps getting up earlier and earlier every morning, but they refuse to feed me breakfast until the clock says 7 a.m., I've told them and told them, cats don't run on clocks. Cat time says it's tome for Breakfast. But they just roll over and go back to sleep No matter how hard I remind them I'm hungry.  Humans are such Lazy Creatures!

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!