Forge Guest Post - Tor/Forge Blog

Notes from K’wan on Passion for the Heist

August 20, 2024October 1, 2024Ariana Carpentieri

A crime would bring them together, grief would bind them and love would make them famous.

Parish “Pain” Wells is a man freshly reintroduced to society, after serving time in state prison. Prior to his fall, Pain had been a heist man who showed the promise of someone who could go on to be a legend. His trajectory changed on the night he had made the mistake of accepting a ride from a friend, and found himself behind bars for the one crime he hadn’t committed. Several years later, Pain returns home to a world that wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. The only one who still remains in his corner is his ailing grandmother. It’s for her sake that Pain tries to stay on the straight and narrow. He’s tired of breaking her heart and vows to be a good grandson, but when her medical bills start mounting he finds himself backed into a corner. He needs money, fast, and there’s only one way he knows how to get it.

Since her parents died and Passion Adams found herself a ward of her estranged uncle, a gangster who everyone calls Uncle Joe, her life has been on a constant downward spiral. She moves like a ghost from one day to the next, numbing her pain with drugs and alcohol, while seeking thrills in unsavory places. One morning Passion finds herself the victim of a robbery and the thieves snatch from her the only thing of value that she has left in the world, a locket containing the ashes of her deceased parents. Passion is devastated, fearing she would never see the locket again until it shows up later in the hands of a handsome stranger, who brings something into Passion’s life that has eluded her since the death of her parents… hope.

The two broken souls find themselves inescapably drawn into each other’s orbits, and begin their journey of finding lives outside the ones of poverty and sorrow that their worlds had condemned them to. But when shadows from both their pasts threaten their happiness, Passion and Pain set out on an adventure that would make them hunted by law enforcement and celebrated by the underworld. What initially starts out as a mission of vindication quickly turns into a fight for survival.

Read onwards to see K’wan’s notes on Passion for the Heist, including inspiration, what he’s currently loving, a playlist, and tips for aspiring writers!

by K’wan:

My Inspiration Behind Passion for the Heist:

The Inspiration behind Passion for the Heist? I don’t know if I can narrow it down to one thing, or instance, but it was Nina Simone who gave the book its soul. She has a song called “Black Bird,” which I love. I felt like the lyrics were articulating the story I was putting tougher. The character names (Pain, Lil Sorrow, Lonley, etc) were taken from the song.

Five things I’m loving right now (outside of my family, obviously):

House of The Dragon (though season 2 left me feeling incomplete)
Discovering new authors. I’ve come across some hidden gems.
Getting back into cooking. I used to do it a lot and post the finished products on my socials, but I fell off for a time.
Screenwriting. It’s a welcome reset for my brain in between novels.
Becoming more familiar with social media. I’ve always known how to do the basics, general posts and stuff, but technology has come a long way since the MySpace days. There’s a ton of different things I’ve found advantageous both in business and personally. I’m a junkie for learning about new things, so I’m kind of trying to catch up on that.

Playlist:

I have a playlist for Passion that my readers can check out on my Apple music page, as I have playlists for a lot of my books. For Passion for the Heist, I’ll share the essentials:

NY State of Mind by Nas
Shakey Dog by Ghostface
Black Bird by Nina Simone
Crash This Train by Joshua James
Come Join The Murder by The White Buffalo & The Forrest Rangers
Things Done Changed by Biggie
Gimmie the Loot by Biggie
Take it Back by Wu Tang
Dread Loc by Meshell Ndegeocello (that’s Passion’s theme)

Tips for aspiring writers:

To master anything, you must first be a student of it. Respect the craft. Writing isn’t a thing you do, it’s something you have to obsess over. Most importantly, always write from your heart and not what you think people want to read.

My personal experiences are channeled in the stories, but using people, places and things I’ve encountered in life to give my character true souls—it’s what makes them real. I’ve walked a lot of these places I write about and have interacted with the people. Art should always imitate life.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Passion for the Heist, available August 27th, 2024!

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Author Features / New Releases / On Writing / What's New

Peering Skyward: Looking Up from the Bottom of the Research Rabbit Hole by T. R. Hendricks

April 12, 2024June 11, 2024Ariana Carpentieri

T. R. Hendricks’s Derek Harrington returns in The Infiltrator, an adventure of man vs wild—and the domestic terrorists hidden there.

One year after the clash with his former students in upstate New York, retired Marine Warrant Officer and SERE instructor Derek Harrington is the tip of the FBI’s spear in their mission to eradicate the domestic terrorist group known as Autumn’s Tithe. After several successful operations, intelligence points to one final camp in the remote Kentucky wilderness, and Derek prepares to take down Autumn’s Tithe for good.

At the same time ex-FBI Special Agent Hannah Kittle, or Sarah as she is known to the group, devises a plan to meet Derek and her one-time Bureau colleagues head on. Yet her benefactor’s faith in Sarah’s ability to lead Autumn’s Tithe is waning, and other plans are being enacted. Knowing full well what it means for her should those plans succeed where she has failed, Sarah will stop at nothing to see that she is the victor.

As the competing agendas unravel, events place Derek and Sarah on a collision course, setting the stage for a confrontation that will bring Autumn’s Tithe right to Derek’s doorstep.

Read below to see T. R. Hendricks’s take on what it means to do in-depth research for the sake of writing, and how falling down ‘the research rabbit hole’ is paramount in developing precise details that’ll help build an excellent story!

By T. R. Hendricks:

Chances are that if you’re on this website right now, you’re just as familiar with the jokes and memes about writers and their research as I am. The ever classic, “If the FBI ever saw my search history,” elicits no small number of chuckles, but it also rings true with dogged perseverance. Yes, we all go down the rabbit hole at times, but in this context it is done so in the pursuit of those elusive details. The ones we know that once discovered will add an extra layer of authenticity – even credibility for having done the work – in turn elevating our manuscripts to the next level.

In the, “this will surprise no one category” there was no small amount of research into prominent components such as survival skills, military equipment and weaponry, and even the psychology of cults when writing both THE INSTRUCTOR and THE INFILTRATOR. But the devil is in the details, and those details at times required lengthy stretches searching for them. I can recall specifically with THE INSTRUCTOR (we’ll keep it here to avoid sequel spoilers) numerous ventures into the undiscovered country that is the world wide web.

There was one iteration researching the Yankees schedule in early summer of 2018 that resulted in a blowout win. In a podcast I recently did, I explained how I had to spend an hour searching for the USMC regulation articulating the number of folds and measurements of each for the sheet and blanket on recruit racks (beds) just to be certain my Army upbringing didn’t skew that point. “How long to bleed out from a puncture wound of the femoral artery” I’m sure made a great addition to my NSA watch list tally, especially since I made one of those memes I mentioned earlier out of it.

The physics of beaver dams. Velocity of a ball bearing fired from a slingshot. Man traps utilized by the Viet Cong. The physiology of envenomation by bamboo vipers and timber rattlers on the human body. Fun times.

I’m of the opinion that this research, even if delving into hours-long rabbit hole sessions, not only counts as writing, but is indicative of talent that manages to blend them into the story so that they are seamless rather than just window dressing. It may be that the research is limited in its application. For a recent project I’m working on, I spent two weeks getting the details down for a single chapter. Other times the research may result in only a paragraph, even a sentence. Sometimes you’ll never use them at all, because the idea that spawned the search didn’t materialize in the story. Other times you’ll nail it, and then have to kill that precious research bunny darling in the editing phase.

My point being, the rabbit holes are a necessary process (provided you stay on topic and don’t miss deadlines because of it – looking at you, TikTok.) The time put into research early on will manifest into productivity later because you know exactly what you want to say with the details to back it up. Moreover, that single chapter/paragraph/sentence could mean all the difference between readers saying, “this author gets it” and “this author hasn’t the first clue what they’re talking about.” Yikes. I’m sure you’ll agree that we’re all trying our damnedest to avoid the preposterous-induced eye roll.

All that said, I thought it might be a fun take to show you how I arrived at the bottom of a particularly long hare hollow. This journey relates to both preliminary overall plot construction and specific scene orchestration elements for the yet-to-be-title-revealed third installment in the Derek Harrington series. Reader beware: beyond this point is a front row seat to how my mind chains stuff together.

No shit, there I was (obligatory Army vernacular to start the story) sitting down to an afternoon free of obligations, save for the blank page on my screen and the keys beneath my fingers. First I needed a remote location to set the scene, but not too remote. There needed to be an airport nearby and a town large enough to accommodate the presence of a VA hospital or clinic. I settled on a place in Michigan, which then led to the next need, a Mom and Pop coffee shop in said town, complete with their menu and specialty caffeinated concoctions.

To work another angle, I drifted into U.S. Government Accountability Office reports and a congressional mandated assessment on the current state of Veterans Affairs infrastructure (stimulating reading, by the way). For a conversation in the upcoming scene, I needed to search for terminology denoting the study of the way in which certain body movements and gestures serve as a form of nonverbal communication (it’s kinesics). Obligatory hardware searches into the Army’s next generation rifle followed, so as to give my sentries the latest in available weaponry.

Do you know what corner of the U.S. government handles experimental web hosting? Yeah, neither did I. To facilitate the ensuing conversation resulting from the kinesics dialogue, I then went diving for that little nugget. Turns out there’s a whole organization called the Defense Information Systems Agency. Who knew?

The set up for a character introduction turned into looking up the various departments within the FBI, most notably what would be considered Internal Affairs for the Bureau. However, as I wanted this character to be a woman of Israeli-American descent, I then ventured into dual citizenship requirements between the two countries, which chained into female combat positions within the IDF, which prompted a prolonged search for a PDF copy of a Krav Maga combatives manual, and ultimately landed me in a search for the top ten most beautiful Israeli women in the world to model my character’s appearance after (I can assure you that any lingering on this last search parameter was purely for character development).

To make a comparison to turbulence, I wanted to reference a mechanical bull. My next search was, “Average mechanical bull ride times for beginners.” However, to accurately place the bull in Derek’s backstory, I had to spend the next few minutes venturing into the location of the USMC’s School of Infantry. After finding it was Camp Lejeune, I had to then research what the School of Infantry’s weekend liberty policy was, to see if it was even feasible that a young boot Derek would be allowed to venture into a bar in nearby Jacksonville, North Carolina to witness and/or participate in a mechanical bull ride.

Since I had now introduced turbulence during a flight – a flight involving a prisoner transfer – further down the tunnel I went. Stick with me here. I started with the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System utilized by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This turned into research on the aircraft assets available internally to the Department of Justice, which subsequently led back to another GAO report on the misappropriation of DOJ aircraft (again, riveting stuff).

Thus ruling out the government’s air transportation, I turned to researching the types, range, passenger capacity, and cost of chartered private jets. These planes had to then be cross-referenced with the size of the airport in the town I picked in Michigan, plus the nautical miles necessary to travel to New Jersey, to ensure that the jet I chose would both have the fuel to make the trip and capability to land on the runways in both locations.

Having arrived at the end of my three and a half hour writing session, I saw that the research rabbit hole had allowed me to produce a whopping 309 words. However, they were 309 highly detailed and accurate words that lent themselves to not only authenticity, but also critical and convincing components to the story. Do I wish I had put more down that day? Sure. Do I regret spending that much time burrowing? Not at all.

This is how I like to write. It’s the level of exactness I want to get to. Sure, some details could be fictionalized. I could easily extend the runway in my Michigan town if I needed to. Things like that fall in the reasonable suspension of disbelief all the time, and I make allowances for them when necessary. But for the others, the ones that shouldn’t be glossed over, this is the pursuit that in my humble opinion, takes a story from good to great.

So yeah, stop worrying about time spent searching. Go ahead and follow the rabbit to that elusive tidbit. This session might have only been 309 words, but having done the work, future sessions would be in the thousands. If it’s your style, look for those details until it makes your writing pop and your heart content. Just make sure you don’t branch off (at least not too much).

Gal Gadot is quite distracting. I get it.

Click below to pre-order your copy of The Infiltrator, available April 23rd, 2024!

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New Releases / On Writing / What's New

The Thrill of a Science-Based Thriller: By Michael C. Grumley

December 15, 2023March 13, 2024Ariana Carpentieri

From the bestselling author of the Breakthrough series: In his next near-future thriller, Michael C. Grumley explores humanity’s thirst for immortality—at any cost…

The accident came quickly. With no warning. In the dead of night, a precipitous plunge into a freezing river trapped everyone inside the bus. It was then that Army veteran John Reiff’s life came to an end. Extinguished in the sudden rush of frigid water.

There was no expectation of survival. None. Let alone waking up beneath blinding hospital lights. Struggling to move, or see, or even breathe. But the doctors assure him that everything is normal. That things will improve. And yet, he has a strange feeling that there’s something they’re not telling him.

As Reiff’s mind and body gradually recover, he becomes certain that the doctors are lying to him. One-by-one, puzzle pieces are slowly falling into place, and he soon realizes that things are not at all what they seem. Critical information is being kept from him. Secrets. Supposedly for his own good. But who is doing this? Why? And the most important question: can he keep himself alive long enough to uncover the truth?

Deep Freeze is a fast-paced, pulse-pounding story that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Read below to see Michael’s take on science-based thrillers and why they’re so exciting to write!

By Michael C. Grumley:

There is something truly exciting about writing science-based thrillers. Of course, many great genres exist, but technothrillers stand apart in a very interesting way.

Science-based technical thrillers are, at their core, idea-driven stories. Naturally, all books have ideas in them. New concepts or approaches to a particular situation or storyline. Or perhaps a fresh perspective or viewpoint on how a story is told. All interesting and completely valid. But what makes technothrillers different is that most are told from the cutting edge of human existence.

It’s been estimated that up until the nineteenth century, the whole of human knowledge doubled nearly every century. It is a staggering thought, perhaps not entirely surprising, when we consider the steady human progress that eventually led to the Industrial Revolution. It changed everything. But then came the Information Revolution. Originally born with the invention of the transistor, the information revolution really took hold in the 1980s, when the computer industry made data not just easier to store but also infinitely easier to access. And from there, the cutting edge of technology absolutely exploded.

By 1982, the great Buckminster Fuller noted that all of human knowledge was no longer doubling every century; it was now doubling every 18 months! That was in 1982! But now, after decades of technological advance after technological advance, the “knowledge-doubling curve” has also rapidly accelerated. Instead of every 18 months, people like David Schilling believe our knowledge now doubles in less than a day! Particularly following the advent of supercomputers and artificial intelligence (AI).

So, back to science-based thrillers. Why are they so exciting to write? Because the actual science and groundbreaking abilities these stories are based on are now being discovered almost daily.

And that’s why it’s so exciting to write them. Writing stories that are both character-driven AND idea-driven. Stories that not only delve into aspects of our humanity and human struggle but do so in a world so fascinating that humanity itself begins to change based on the advancements directly in front of us.

For example, how would humanity change not just with the idea but with the genuine possibility of extremely long lifespans or immortality? How would humanity’s priorities change? Or the way we see the world around us? What happens to everything when death begins to feel a little less… inevitable?

Until now, these were just fun mental exercises. Fantasies to ponder over dinner and a glass of wine or a fireside chat while staring up at the stars. But how does the fantasy change when the idea of immortality is suddenly in the present? You may not know this, but a LOT of fascinating research is being done on life extension and elimination of chronic disease. Fascinating research that feels almost outlandish until you remember that our knowledge is still doubling. Again and again. Not in centuries, not in months, but now in days.

The other day, I was thinking about how human ‘storytelling’ evolved over the millennia. How instrumental and integral it has been throughout all of history. How pervasive it’s been and still is in all cultures and all walks of life. And then it suddenly occurred to me. Storytelling is not something that happens occasionally. It’s not a ‘here or there’ occurrence. Storytelling happens constantly. Not just every day but in every sentence we speak. In every conveyance from one person to another. No matter what the topic. Everything we say to one another is basically a story of some kind.

So, then the question becomes, what are the most interesting stories? What are the most exciting things to talk about? Obviously, it varies depending on where we are at any given moment. But the question reminds me of an old quote from Eleanor Roosevelt. She once said, “Bright minds talk about ideas. Average minds talk about things. And simple minds talk about people.”

And again, we come back to technothrillers. Stories whose foundations are based on real technology, real science, and real ideas. Stories and ideas that focus not on what has already happened but, more interestingly, what is very likely about to happen. Good, bad, and ugly. Which, when combined with human nature, becomes truly interesting.

What would the good, bad, and ugly be if human lifespans were dramatically lengthened? Or what if computers became so powerful that our race could no longer discern what was real? Or if Artificial Intelligence soon accelerated our ‘knowledge-doubling’ to hours or even minutes?

Because these are the things that technothriller authors are currently writing about.

Now you’re ready for DEEP FREEZE.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Deep Freeze, available January 9th, 2024!

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Author Features / New Releases / On Writing / What's New

Big Magic and The Argument I had with my Main Character by Carol Dunbar

July 25, 2023March 7, 2024Ariana Carpentieri

A harrowing and emotional novel set in rural Wisconsin—A Winter’s Rime explores the impact of generational trauma, and one woman’s journey to find peace and healing from the violence of her past.

Mallory Moe is a twenty-five-year-old veteran Army mechanic, living with her girlfriend, Andrea, and working overnights at a gas station store while figuring out what’s next. Andrea’s off-grid cabin provides a perfect sanctuary for Mallory, a synesthete with a hypersensitivity to sound that can trigger flashbacks from her childhood.

The getaway that’s largely abandoned during the off season starts out idyllic, until Andrea’s once-loving behavior turns controlling and abusive, and Mallory once again finds herself not wanting to go home. After a particularly disturbing altercation, Mallory escapes into the subzero night and stumbles into Shay, a teenage girl, injured and asking for help. But it isn’t long before she realizes that Shay isn’t the only one who needs saving.

A story about sisterhood and second chances, A Winter’s Rime looks to nature to find what it can teach us about bearing hardship and expanding our capacity to forgive—not just others, but ourselves.

Carol Dunbar is the author of the critically acclaimed novels, The Net Beneath Us—winner of the Wisconsin Writers: Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, and A Winter’s Rime. Read below to see the inspiration behind her upcoming book, finding the voice of her main character, and how she discovered the best way to tell her story!

By Carol Dunbar:

The idea for my second novel dropped into my head whole and perfect like an egg; at its center glowed the yolk of my personal experience with trauma and what I was still trying to understand.

Most of that first draft I wrote by hand in journals: the process felt intimate, confessional, and propulsive. My main character Mallory came through very strong for me. She was ready to tell her story; as a writer, I felt ready to receive it. It was a magical partnership.

Then, we got into an argument about the right way to tell her story.

In her book about the creative process, Big Magic, author Elizabeth Gilbert writes about how ideas swirl around us begging for attention until we agree to take them on and make them manifest. I totally truck with that. I was 30,000 words into an entirely different novel when this story took hold. I knew I had to write it, and I knew I had to write it now.

The plot centers around Mallory Moe, an army veteran returning home after serving overseas, who is going through a quarter-life crisis. She can’t sleep, she’s in a bad relationship, and she hasn’t talked to anyone in her family in four years. To avoid being home she goes on long walks after working overnight shifts at a gas station store. One night, she runs into Shay, a teenage girl who is injured and asking for help. Shay is in even worse shape than Mallory, and in trying to help her, Mallory is finally motivated to confront the violence of her past.

For guidance on how to tell this story, I looked to Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton. I thought her fiction-as-memoir style would work well for Mallory’s story of healing, and I studied the opening chapters of Lucy Barton, breaking them down beat by beat. I typed out the entire first draft of A Winter’s Rime in first person, using Mallory’s voice. I printed out that draft and put it away for six weeks.

When I went back and read, it didn’t work.

First person was the wrong voice for the story because it was Mallory who was undergoing the transformation. She didn’t yet have the self-awareness for those moments of self-discovery. I needed third person for its distance and ability to navigate and weave the past and present narratives.

My next draft I wrote in third person, and everyone in my writing group was like, “Woah, what did you do? This is so much better.” It worked, but I kept getting these strong nudges from Mallory. Sometimes when writing I would slip into first person, and this was very confusing to me. I thought I had the voice wrong, so I hit the pause button and started experimenting again.

I tested out second-person, using the epistolary style that Ocean Vuong so artfully employed in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. It has this propulsive quality to it—he’s absolutely driven to understand what happened to him and his mother; Mallory is absolutely trying to understand what happened to her. For several weeks I played around with writing the book as a letter from Mallory to Shay, but that also resulted in another failure.

I went to a three-day workshop taught by Diane Wilson, author of The Seed Keeper. I told her about my struggle with how to tell this story, and she suggested I try using a rotating first-person voice. I had used a rotating third-person voice in my first novel, The Net Beneath Us, and I loved being able to view the same event through the eyes of multiple characters. The next morning, I eagerly dove into the exercise that Wilson had taught us.

Using the full name of another main character in my novel, I closed my eyes and said the words, “Noah Quakenbush, tell me your story.” Then I listened, ready to write. And it was really funny because he would not talk to me. I heard nothing but birds chirping from outside. Everybody clammed up, none of my characters would talk, and I got the sense that they were afraid to talk. This was Mallory’s story, and they knew it.

Okay, fine, I thought. I can get on board with that, but as the writer, I needed to find a voice structure that worked for the book.

In No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy used both first and third-person voices. I studied that, then did an entirely new treatment of the novel, using the third-person voice for the main driving action of the story, with italicized first-person passages where the healed Mallory got to talk, sharing her insights. When my agent read it, she didn’t like those italicized passages. None of my readers did—they got in the way of the plot’s momentum, and messy Mallory was way more interesting.

It felt to me like I was in a wrestling match with my main character and I didn’t know how to make both of us happy.

At an author event with Elizabeth Strout, I asked her how she knew that first-person was the right voice for her Lucy Barton novels. She told me, “Voice is the golden thread that I follow when writing. I trust it implicitly.” Those words gave me the balls to press on and trust my crazy process.

What I found was the monologue. Instead of recounting what happened to Mallory as a backstory scene, I used first-person monologues in present-action scenes, where Mallory is finally able to tell her story for the first time. She can only do this once she meets Shay, and that makes their scenes so much more powerful. It was very moving to me, to hear a survivor talk after years of not being able to talk.

Finally, Mallory and I were in agreement.

I’m really glad I trusted my instincts and kept searching for the right way to tell this story. I do believe there is something to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, that as writers we are “neither slave to inspiration nor its masters, but something far more interesting—its partner.”

Click below to pre-order A Winter’s Rime, available 9.12.23!

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Author Features / New Releases / On Writing

Inspiration and Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge by Spencer Quinn!

July 11, 2023December 21, 2023Ariana Carpentieri5 Comments

Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge is bestselling author Spencer Quinn’s first novel in a new series since the meteoric launch of Chet and Bernie–introducing the irresistible and unforgettable Mrs. Plansky, in a story perfect for book clubs and commercial fiction readers.

Mrs. Loretta Plansky, a recent widow in her seventies, is settling into retirement in Florida while dealing with her 98-year-old father and fielding requests for money from her beloved children and grandchildren. Thankfully, her new hip hasn’t changed her killer tennis game one bit.

One night Mrs. Plansky is startled awake by a phone call from a voice claiming to be her grandson Will, who desperately needs ten thousand dollars to get out of a jam. Of course, Loretta obliges—after all, what are grandmothers for, even grandmothers who still haven’t gotten a simple “thank you” for a gift sent weeks ago. Not that she’s counting.

By morning, Mrs. Plansky has lost everything. Law enforcement announces that Loretta’s life savings have vanished, and that it’s hopeless to find the scammers behind the heist. First humiliated, then furious, Loretta Plansky refuses to be just another victim.

In a courageous bid for justice, Mrs. Plansky follows her only clue on a whirlwind adventure to a small village in Romania to get her money and her dignity back—and perhaps find a new lease on life, too.

Read below to see where Spencer Quinn drew his inspiration from when writing Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge!

Inspiration and Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge

Uh-oh. Inspiration is the topic. I’m a little afraid to even go there, in case the gods of inspiration are disturbed by my presence and vote to blacklist me. But unlike with any of the other novels I’ve written, the idea for Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge (my 45^th), came directly from a real life event, so maybe the gods will give me a pass.

Five or six years ago, my dad got a phone call. At the time he was in his early nineties. He died two weeks short of his 97^th birthday and was in excellent mental shape and very good physical shape until the end. I want to emphasize that mental part. He was a very smart guy: quick, sharp, clear-headed. Back to the call.

Caller: Hey, Grandpa!

My dad: Jake?

Caller: Yeah, Grandpa, it’s me, Jake.

Cut To: My dad’s wife, noticing he’s putting on his jacket.

Wife: Ed? Where are you going?

My dad: To the bank. Jake’s in trouble and he needs some money.

At that point it was decided to call Jake (living in another city), and he had not called my dad and wasn’t in any trouble. “Jake” never got a penny. But I was amazed that someone like my dad could have been fooled.

And then I got back to writing the Chet and Bernie novel I was working on and thought no more about the two Jakes. Then one day on a bike ride the idea for Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge—indeed the whole set-up, including the Romanian part—came to me in one fell swoop. Shall I summarize that now, or go on and on about bike riding, which I do all year round even though I live on Cape Cod where winter temps can dip into the 20’s or even lower, and how I actually prefer the cold days because no one else is on the bike path, so it’s like I’m in one of those dystopian Last Of Us stories, except it’s a utopia? No, that would be boring, so instead the set-up of Mrs. P.

Mrs. Plansky is a seventy-one year old retiree. She and her husband Norm sold a successful small business they built from nothing and moved to Florida for their sunset years, but Norm soon died. Mrs. P has a 98-year-old father in a fancy assisted living she pays for, plus a grown daughter and son with big dreams but not enough money to realize them. Mrs. P is the kind who helps out. She also has two grandchildren, one of whom is Will, out in Colorado. Late one night Mrs. P gets a call from him—a Jake type call—and, following his precise instructions, she sends $9726.18. She can afford it. Her grandson is in trouble. Case closed.

But it wasn’t Will. And because Mrs. P uses the same password for everything, the scammers have cleaned out not just her checking account but her retirement accounts as well, everything. The FBI tells her the scammers are probably in Romania, but identifying them would be almost impossible and the chances of getting her money back are nil. Mrs. P is humiliated. How stupid she’s been! And even worse: she’s let Norm down. She goes to Romania to recover her self-respect, the trust of a dead husband, her money.

So: that all dropped into my mind on the bike path but at first I didn’t connect it to my dad! Then I started wondering why I’d chosen the name Plansky. Bingo! Tony Plansky was a legendary track coach at Williams College, where the Navy had sent my dad in WW2 as part of their program to get officers (my dad commanded a sub chaser hunting Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic). My dad had run cross country at Williams and he had some funny stories about Tony Plansky. And when I went to Williams in the 1960’s he was still there! Therefore Mrs. Plansky’s name was the bridge to where my story had come from, even if I was too blockheaded to put it together myself. Just one more reason to love what my grandmother always called “the writing game.”

Above: Tony Plansky

Above: Ed Abrahams

Click below to pre-order your copy of Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, available 7.25.23!

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Author Features / New Releases / On Writing / What's New

The Return of the Reluctant Hero by Kent Lester

December 13, 2022July 11, 2023Ariana Carpentieri4 Comments

A high-octane thriller that sets Dan Clifford against ancient secret societies vying for power in the modern world; in the vein of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series.

In The Third Instinct, author Kent Lester brings his signature blend of cutting-edge science, history, and pulse-pounding action to the next Dan Clifford adventure.

Read below to see Kent’s take on what it means to write about heroes with flaws—ones grounded in reality and who are easy to relate to.

By Kent Lester:

What type of fiction? Over the top, or realistic? That is a question most authors ask themselves before starting a new thriller series. There is a place for both writing styles, but my favorite is “near science fiction,” a fantasy world realistic enough to imagine happening in the near future.

When an author chooses a fictional writing style, nothing anchors the story in reality or sends it into the realm of fantasy more effectively than the choice of hero. Is the hero an ordinary guy or a superhero? The trend lately has been toward superheroes, characters occupying a fantastical setting that barely resembles the “real world.” This trend has probably been influenced by the rise in cinematic special effects and the popularity of the comic book universe. In high concept movies, heroes are often gifted with incredible abilities, over-the-top talents, and often, the power to alter reality itself.

Think Superman or Wonder Woman. The antics of superheroes can often stretch credulity, but their superhuman abilities do make for impressive cinematic special effects, spectacular visual imagery, and lots of action. Sure, all those special effects and superhuman feats can stretch the imagination, but often at the cost of empathy and identification with the hero. And naturally, superheroes beget super villains, and soon the entire story premise becomes an overwrought graphic novel. Movies with an excess of special effects encourage passive viewing and a bored audience. With little emotional involvement in the characters, a flashy story is easily forgotten.

The most enduring movies are ones with a realistic premise and flawed, reluctant heroes. Think John McClain in Die Hard or Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

In literary storytelling, the choice of hero is even more critical. I’ve always considered books to be a far more active endeavor than movies, so much so, that I often remind my fellow writers that their novels are a shared experience. Every fictional story is a partnership between two imaginations: the author’s and the reader’s. Unlike movies with their fully formed scenes, words on a page cry out for interpretation and embellishment. The reader becomes the author’s writing accomplice, filling in the missing details that inevitably hide between the words on the page. This probably explains how two readers can often interpret a single story so differently, because their individual viewpoints influence the perceived events.

To fully embrace the importance of a story’s hero, we should reexamine the purpose of storytelling in the first place. Ever since the first adventures were breathlessly whispered around a campfire, humans have been drawn to stories. One reason is to feel in control of a world filled with random threats and challenges. Our imaginations are always in control, free to craft the outcome however we wish. We can also learn lessons from others’ mistakes. Stories also allow us to empathize with the feelings of others, to walk in their shoes and experience the story through their eyes. Most importantly, stories allow us to work through our own personal problems and fears in the relative safety of a story’s fictional universe.

That’s why I prefer my heroes to be grounded in reality, because it makes it easier to imagine myself walking around in their shoes. In the so-called “real world,” heroes are seldom born; they are made by the necessity and demands of the situation.

In my latest thriller, The Third Instinct, Dan Clifford is the consummate reluctant hero. (as are most real-world heroes) Dan just wants to return to normalcy after the Covid pandemic and share his ordinary life with his adrenaline-junkie girlfriend, Rachel Sullivan. Unfortunately for Dan, and thankfully for the reader, the real world has a different scenario in mind for Dan’s future. Circumstances will demand that Dan overcome a set of challenges two thousand years in the making. As he determines the truth in a pack of lies, he will discover the hero within himself through incredible hardships.

It is my hope that readers will be able to identify with Dan’s vision, and in doing so, imagine an adventure through their own unique viewpoints. To me, the best fiction inspires us to think about issues in the real world, and our own roles within it. If, however, you just want a good beach read or a mindless adventure, don’t worry. The Third Instinct has plenty of literary special effects and superhuman challenges to keep your imagination occupied. Enjoy!

Click below to order your copy of The Third Instinct, available now!

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Author Features / New Releases / What's New

The Lavender House Playlist By Lev AC Rosen

September 23, 2022May 17, 2024Ariana Carpentieri1 Comment

A delicious story from a new voice in suspense, Lev AC Rosen’s Lavender House is Knives Out with a queer historical twist.

When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business.

Read below to see Lev’s playlist for his upcoming novel Lavender House!

By Lev AC Rosen:

To me, music is such a great way to capture the energy of a historical piece. Not just as an author making a playlist to have on as I write, but for readers, too. Music evokes a time so quickly. A mention of It’s Raining Men takes you to the disco era. Mister Postman immediately paints a Motown picture. Music is time, and it’s succinct in a way that describing an outfit or room can’t always be. So I knew I wanted to use it when writing Lavender House (and it didn’t hurt that I love the music of the late 40s and early 50s).

But as I started using it more and more, I realized that with a first-person narrator, the music had to be important to the character, too – how does he recognize these songs? And that helped me fill in some of Andy. Music is the thing he loves; it reminds him of his dad, it reminds him of friends, and it kept him company in a way that his fellow officers and his anonymous hook-ups could not. As I’ve been writing the sequel, I gave Andy a new home, and I knew the first thing he would buy for it would be a record player and radio. That’s what music is to him. It’s the first thing he needs to survive beyond food and water.

So with that in mind, one of the first things I did was make a playlist of all the named songs (and a few cut ones) in Lavender House. They were chosen for their vibe, generally, because they expressed the time, and because I like them, but also because of their mood, and how it matched the moment.

Tennessee Waltz, sung by Patti Page

Honestly one of the most 50s songs I could think of, it’s the first one on the page, playing in the background of the bar as Andy tries to drink himself to death. It’s a melancholy song for a melancholy moment.

2. Mixed Emotions, sung by Rosemary Clooney

Again, another song that to me expresses the early 50s very well – but also, perhaps I was tempted by the on-the-noseness of the title for the moment. Andy getting in a car, going who knows where, taking a case he barely understands, when just moment ago his plan was suicide – he’s having a lot of mixed emotions himself.

3, 4, 5. The St. Louis Blues and After You’re Gone sung by Kay Starr and Cold Cold Heart sung by Dinah Washington

For Cliff’s strip tease/lip-synch (though, fun fact: the term “lip synch” didn’t exist til the 60s, so I had to find other ways to say it), I knew I wanted something sexy, but also kind of sad, and most importantly, something interactive – lines he could reach out and touch Andy on, and suggest that it was Andy who was being with holding and cold. My first instinct was After You’ve Gone because of it’s tone of ‘you’ll regret this’ which felt very haughty and Cliff. But after a few drafts, I decided it was too much of a bop, not enough longing in it, and switched to Cold Cold Heart, which had a lot more sensuality to it. And then my editor pointed out I needed the rights to use the lyrics of songs from that time period. Oops. So I did a deep dive into songs which were technically in the public domain now, but had recordings that were done in the late 40s or early 50s. My friend Molly was invaluable here, and managed to find another Kay Starr number for me – The St. Louis Blues. Again it’s about a cold man leaving a sad woman, and while a bit more upbeat, it still has that great sense of longing, and wonderful lines for Cliff to playact to, like “Oh my man’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea.” And best part? The B-side of the record was After You’ve Gone, so I got to get that in, too – even if I couldn’t use the lyrics.

6. Kiss of Fire sung by Georgia Gibbs

One of my weirder choices, with its opening notes that sound like Pretty Woman and much more modern overall vibe. But I wanted something that felt like a tango. The staff, particularly the couple Dot and Judy, don’t get as much time on the page as the family in Lavender House. So when I had Andy go down into the kitchen to meet them for the first time, before they go stony and cold with him, I wanted a moment where they didn’t see him, and were just being themselves, a moment to express who they were out of sight. This song is sexy and fun, and when Judy and Dot dance to it, even just for a moment, you get a glimpse of who they really are.

7. Would I Love You? Sung by Doris Day

Doris Day is one of the other classic singers of the 50s I knew I needed to use. I wanted a song that was popular enough folks might sing along, and one calm enough to set the mood for the casual family breakfast it plays in the background of. Though Lavender House is brimming with a lot of secrets and emotions, there are moments – especially breakfast, when they all sit down together – when I wanted to fact that they’re still a family who loves each other to come across.

8. Too Young, sung by Nat King Cole

I wanted something with a similar energy to Would I Love You? To come on afterwards, to keep the mood going. Too Young has that great sweeping opening and even goes more romantic, perfect for Andy to notice the casual normalness of the relationships here.

8a. The Thing, sung by Phil Harris

I also wanted something that felt like an artifact, a silly 50s song, for someone to immediately shut off after Too Young. This fit the bill. I’ve spared you by not putting it on the playlist.

9. Mad About the Boy, sung by Maxine Sullivan

Oh Gene. Sweet, wonderful Gene, who I knew I wanted to not only introduce here, but set up to become more central in the sequel. Something romantic, and a bit sexy… but also Andy has just been beaten within an inch of his life and is passed out. But when he comes to, Gene next to him, I knew I needed the music to fit. This song is a little twinkly – as I imagine it might be coming out of a post-beating-blackout – but sexy, romantic, mysterious and obviously sets up Gene as an object of affection.

10. Why Don’t You Do Right, sung by Peggy Lee

I HAD to have some Peggy Lee. And why not use this song, made famous by that classic noir icon Jessica Rabbit? It’s one of my favorites. So when Cliff was drunk-dancing again and I wanted the music sexy, this was the perfect choice.

11. The Lady Drinks Champagne, sung by Pat (in the book) and Johnnie Ray (in the playlist)

Pat, the butler, is a wonderful character, and I thought it would be fun to give him a moment to shine, a song to sing as a sort of alarm at Andy’s request. But what song would Pat sing? A ballad for sure, Pat’s the type to enjoy holding a note, but also something filled with melodrama, and as he was supposed to be sweeping, something he could sing to a broom with real style. I don’t know why this song fits all of that so perfectly, but it does, and every time I reread the moment when Pat started singing, thinking of this song made me laugh because I could picture him camping it up so perfectly.

12. Wheel of Fortune, sung by Kay Starr

In an early draft, this plays in the final scene, a sort of obvious statement about how things have turned out and Andy’s life has turned around, but at some point I decided it was far too on the nose, and cut it. Still a fun song, though.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Lavender House, coming October 18th, 2022!

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Author Features / New Releases / What's New

Writing is Hard: Forthcoming Books to Disappear Into by Rita Woods

September 21, 2022April 24, 2024Ariana Carpentieri2 Comments

From Hurston/Wright Legacy Award-winning author Rita Woods, The Last Dreamwalker tells the story of two women, separated by nearly two centuries yet inextricably linked by the Gullah-Geechee Islands off the coast of South Carolina—and their connection to a mysterious and extraordinary gift passed from generation to generation. Read below to see Rita’s reflection on writing and some upcoming books she’s excited about!

By Rita Woods:

Writing is hard.

Not construction worker, twelve-hour nursing shift, firefighter hard. More like – I’ve been sitting in this chair for five hours, I can’t feel my butt, I think my brain has turned to ranch dressing, and what in God’s name is this gibberish on the screen – hard.

There are rewards of course, many, in fact. And I’m not talking about the fame and fortune (truly, I’m not, because. . .well, that would require a whole other blog post). No, one of the truly wonderful and unexpected surprises of releasing a novel over the past few years is that a whole new world of readers and writers and books has opened up for me. Readers I never would have had the opportunity to meet and writers who I’d known only from their photos on the jacket covers of their books have become friends, mentors and cheerleaders.

But one of the coolest and most unforeseen surprises (and let’s just keep this between us) is that I often get the inside scoop on some of the most amazing upcoming books. There are so many new and forthcoming books I can’t wait to disappear into – I mean, it’s not like I’m on a deadline or already have a TBR pile big enough to fill an entire semi-truck or anything – and I thought I would share a few with you.

Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments by T.L. Huchu

This is the sequel to Library of the Dead. Set in dystopian Edinburgh, it is the story Ropa Moya, a teenaged high-school dropout who supports her family as a licensed ghost talker, delivering messages between the living and the dead.

Arca by G.R Macallister

Another sequel, this one is Book 2 in the Five Queendom series that follows a matriarchal society defined by five queendoms, each with unique abilities, that has been plagued by a decades long drought of girls.

Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen

A murder is suspected on the estate of Irene Lamontaine, the matriarch of a soap empire. Andy, a police detective, disgraced, fired and contemplating suicide after being discovered in a gay bar is hired to investigate. An exploration of family, identity, murder and queerness in the 1950’s.

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

In a near dystopian future, a hyper-intelligent species of octopus is discovered with their own language and culture, setting off a dangerous global competition to exploit this discovery for financial gain.

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

Set in a modern day, but alternate world, the Book Eaters are a human-like race that survives on literature rather than food. But then, a Book Eater is born with, not a hunger for books, but for human minds.

So many books. So little time.

And with apologies to my editor at Forge, Lindsey Hall, who thinks I am writing a book, I offer the old adage: reading is writing.

Click below to order your copy of The Last Dreamwalker, available now!

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Author Features / New Releases / What's New

Summertime Sweetness: 3 Treats to Make in the Summer by Heather Webber

June 23, 2022July 11, 2023torforge3 Comments

From the USA Today bestselling author of Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe comes Heather Webber’s next charming novel, In the Middle of Hickory Lane!

Emme Wynn has wanted nothing more her whole life than to feel like part of a family. Having grown up on the run with her con artist mother, she’s been shuffled from town to town, drawn into bad situations, and has learned some unsavory habits that she’s tried hard to overcome. When her estranged grandmother tracks her down out of the blue and extends a job offer—helping to run her booth at an open-air marketplace in small-town Sweetgrass, Alabama—Emme is hopeful that she’ll finally be able to plant the roots she’s always dreamed of. But some habits are hard to break, and she risks her newfound happiness by keeping one big truth to herself.

Cora Bee Hazelton has her hands full with volunteering, gardening, her job as a color consultant and designer, and just about anything she can do to keep her mind off her painful past, a past that has resulted in her holding most everyone at arm’s length. The last thing she wants is to form close relationships only to have her heart broken yet again. But when she’s injured, she has no choice other than to let people into her life and soon realizes it’s going to be impossible to keep her heart safe—or her secrets hidden.

In the magical neighborhood garden in the middle of Hickory Lane, Emme and Cora Bee learn some hard truths about the past and themselves, the value of friends, family, and community, and most importantly, that true growth starts from within.

Read below to check out what yummy treats Heather likes to make during this sunny time of year!

By Heather Webber:

With all the fruit in season this time of year, it’s no wonder summer and sweetness go hand in hand. Come June, July, and August, farmer’s markets and produce sections at the grocery store become two of my favorite places. There’s never any lack of fabulous fruits to choose from — berries and cherries and melons and nectarines and plums and pineapples (oh my!). More than once I’ve wanted to set up camp next to the displays of ripe peaches. Have mercy, that amazing scent. But in my family, we’re all about the strawberries.

I read somewhere once that nearly three billion pounds of strawberries are grown in the US each year, and I’m fairly certain most of that poundage ends up in my kitchen. Mostly, it’s piled high on bowls of heart-healthy cereal, but a fair amount of those strawberries end up in desserts.

Three of our favorite summertime recipes are strawberry shortcake, strawberry pie, and trifle with strawberries and (sometimes) blueberries.

Strawberry shortcake is such a classic, traditional treat. Sweet biscuits with buttery layers, luscious sugared strawberries, and fluffy whipped cream. A dream!

My recipe for strawberry pie isn’t classic or traditional, except within my family, as I’ve been making it for close to thirty years now. It’s made with strawberries, strawberry Jell-o, and Cool Whip and has a graham cracker pie crust. It isn’t the least bit good for you, but is such a family favorite that it was my oldest son’s choice for his birthday cake (pie!) for many years.

Trifle is another treat that has found itself used as a birthday cake replacement numerous times. It’s made up of delightful layers of vanilla pudding, strawberries (and sometimes blueberries), whipped cream, and cubes of angel food cake, which is appropriate because it tastes like heaven.

Whatever fruits are your favorites, I hope you use them to find a little bit of extra sweetness this summer, and if you happen to catch the scent of ripe peaches, take an extra whiff for me.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Heather’s new book, In the Middle of Hickory Lane, coming 07.26.22!

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Author Features / New Releases / On Writing / What's New

The Non-Fiction Pieces That Inspired Project Namahana by John Teschner

June 17, 2022June 16, 2022torforge2 Comments

Everyone loves a good villain: the scheming mastermind, the taunting bully, the monster under the bed. However, real world evil often stems not from one individual, but from a long line of people making small, selfish decisions. In his upcoming thriller Project Namahana, John Teschner casts a corporation as his antagonist and asks the question, can a person make evil choices without being evil themselves? Read on for Teschner’s thoughts on life changing books, his experiences in the Peace Corps, and the subtleties of structural violence.

By John Teschner:

All of us have certain “Before and After” books that abruptly changed how we see the world. Sometimes so thoroughly, it’s easy to forget we ever saw things differently.

For instance, after 30+ years of being a know-it-all, I became slightly less obnoxious in 2014, thanks to a lesson on why that attitude could get me killed, courtesy of Laurence Gonzales’ profound book Deep Survival – Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why:

A closed attitude, an attitude that says, ‘I already know,’ may cause you to miss important information. Zen teaches openness. Survival instructors refer to that quality of openness as ‘humility.’

This February, I was reminded of another Before and After book when I saw the news that Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health, had died unexpectedly.

In 2005, I borrowed his book, Pathologies of Power, from a Peace Corps buddy during our second year as volunteers in a poorly-conceived HIV education initiative serving the Kenyan public school system. Like most HIV interventions at the time, our work focused on prevention and personal responsibility. We were told that when Kenyans asked us why anti-retroviral drugs that were widely accessible in the US were not available to them, we should say these drugs had side effects the Kenyan health system wasn’t capable of managing. In other words, it was no one’s fault—at least, no American’s fault—that a treatable disease in one country was a death sentence in another.

The hollowness of that claim became obvious when PEPFAR–George W. Bush’s anti-AIDS initiative—made anti-retrovirals widely available in Kenyan clinics. There was no more mention of the side effects. This was vivid confirmation of Farmer’s point in Pathologies of Power: the suffering caused by systemic inequities is no different from suffering caused by more obvious sources—both are acts of violence.

Just because no individual had made a deliberate choice to cause the suffering of Kenyans with untreated AIDS, it didn’t mean no one was implicated. In fact, we all were.

The term for this is Structural Violence, and once you see it somewhere, you start recognizing it everywhere—sometimes in literal structures, like the interstate highways constructed in the 50s and 60s that deliberately demolished and isolated prosperous black communities. It soon becomes clear that while clear-cut forms of violence—murder and war—fill up the headlines, the vast majority of human suffering is caused by structural forces with no obvious guilty party.

This, obviously, is a challenge for novelists.

The novel, by definition, chronicles the individual experiences of a small cast of characters. A novel has stakes because characters’ decisions have concrete results with a moral dimension. The more directly a decision is linked to a result, the more entertaining the story: Mark decided to hit Sam. Sam fell down. What happens next?

The more links we add between decisions and results, the less compelling the story becomes. Villains become harder to identify. Heroes’ work becomes more mundane. We are in the realm of politicians and lawyers, not detectives and spies.

My first novel was inspired by a NYT Magazine story of structural violence: for decades, as told by Nathaniel Rich, DuPont factories dumped toxic chemicals in West Virginia streams, abetted by permissive regulators and a corporate bureaucracy that distributed the action of poisoning other human beings into a chain of indirect decisions carried out by hundreds of employees. The hero was a lawyer, and the story played out primarily in conference rooms and courthouses.

The article is compelling. And authors like Rich, Michael Lewis, and John Carreyrou have shown you can turn these stories of structural violence into riveting narratives.

But can you make them a thriller? That was the goal I set for myself.

First, I had to understand how these structures actually function. From the sociologist Robert Jackall, I learned corporate managers make directives as vague as possible, forcing those lower down the chain to make ever more concrete decisions. And from Stanley Milgram, I learned it’s human nature to shift our model of morality when following orders, justifying actions we would never do on their own.

So, in Project Namahana, I plotted a series of events that tear down the distance between a powerful executive and the consequences of his decisions. Over the course of the novel, Michael Lindstrom is thrust into direct contact with the kind of violence his company had been doling out in a more or less legal and socially acceptable way for decades.

One of my goals was to understand why a good person can make decisions that cause so much harm. In fact, I wanted to do more than understand; I wanted to enter the characters’ perspective and force myself and my readers to ask whether we have similar self-deceptions.

After all, there’s another reason we choose clearcut stories of heroes and villains over narratives of complex social forces: it’s not just their entertainment value, it’s the fact that we all want to identify with the hero. And stories of structural violence force us to ask whether we may sometimes be the villain as well.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Project Namahana, coming June 28th, 2022!

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Click below to pre-order your copy of Passion for the Heist, available August 27th, 2024!

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Click below to pre-order your copy of The Infiltrator, available April 23rd, 2024!

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Click below to pre-order your copy of Deep Freeze, available January 9th, 2024!

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Click below to pre-order A Winter’s Rime, available 9.12.23!

Inspiration and Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge

Click below to pre-order your copy of Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, available 7.25.23!

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Click below to order your copy of The Third Instinct, available now!

Tennessee Waltz, sung by Patti Page

2. Mixed Emotions, sung by Rosemary Clooney

3, 4, 5. The St. Louis Blues and After You’re Gone sung by Kay Starr and Cold Cold Heart sung by Dinah Washington

6. Kiss of Fire sung by Georgia Gibbs

7. Would I Love You? Sung by Doris Day

8. Too Young, sung by Nat King Cole

8a. The Thing, sung by Phil Harris

9. Mad About the Boy, sung by Maxine Sullivan

10. Why Don’t You Do Right, sung by Peggy Lee

11. The Lady Drinks Champagne, sung by Pat (in the book) and Johnnie Ray (in the playlist)

12. Wheel of Fortune, sung by Kay Starr

Click below to pre-order your copy of Lavender House, coming October 18th, 2022! opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window

Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments by T.L. Huchu

Arca by G.R Macallister

Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

Click below to order your copy of The Last Dreamwalker, available now!

Read below to check out what yummy treats Heather likes to make during this sunny time of year!

Click below to pre-order your copy of Heather’s new book, In the Middle of Hickory Lane, coming 07.26.22!

Click below to pre-order your copy of Project Namahana, coming June 28th, 2022!

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Click below to pre-order your copy of Lavender House, coming October 18th, 2022!

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