Tonight at Boswell's!

Can't wait to read at one of my favorite indie bookstores tonight! It's the closest bookstore to Hawley. Boswell's Books, 10 Bridge St, Shelburne Falls, MA, at 6:30pm. I know, I know, the events page of this website incorrectly says 7, so hope folks get this info in time to venture out in a timely fashion. What better way to spend a rainy evening than to be read to! Come in your PJ's, if you like. I have to be fancy, or I would, too.

Check out As The Crowe Flies (and Reads)!

My co-worker at the Odyssey Bookshop, Emily Crowe, was kind enough to ask me to guest post on her wonderful blog, As the Crowe Flies (and Reads)! AND we are having a give-away of a signed 1st edition of The Hawley Book of the Dead -- all you have to do is shoot me a line or two, and your address (just click on 'contacts' on this website, and you can e-mail me from there!

Check out As the Crowe Flies (and Reads), for my post, Cheer and Roving In Las Vegas,

here:

http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/

Hawley

Hawley is a real place. It is a town of 300 souls, bisected by a huge state forest. There are many cellar holes in the forest -- once a few hundred people lived there. And now they are gone. I have always found this fascinating. Here is a photo of the Middle Road entrance to the forest:

I used to ride my horse there. And walk my dogs. It seemed incredibly magical, with its old stone walls, and those ancient foundations. Ancient, at least, for New England. 

So, the title came to me first. The Hawley Book of the Dead. It haunted me, just the title, for a few years, all the time I was writing another book and a half (also set in my half-real, half-fictional version of the hilltowns of western Mass, and still in the drawer). Then, while I was riding in the forest one day, I got a vivid image of a woman riding frantically through the forest, searching for her missing daughters. And that is how The Hawley Book of the Dead was born. 

One Week and Counting

The launch of The Hawley Book of the Dead is one short week away! The Odyssey Bookshop in lovely South Hadley, Massachusetts, where I also work as a part time bookseller, will be hosting my launch party. There will be food and drink: cakes from La Fiorentina with a Ouija board design, and Tea Trekker's own blend for my character, Jolon. Sushi from Iya, and wraps from Johnny's, also. My husband George says all I can think of is the food, but that's not so.

I'm finally getting excited, am beginning to really comprehend that my book is now a real book, which actual people will be (are!) reading. I've seen the book itself, I've seen the starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly and Booklist, and the by and large very kind reviews on Goodreads and Amazon Vine. I'm beginning to have interviews and essays in places like the Huffington Post.

And it's beginning to be not my book now, but a book of its own, out in the world. How it got to be that way is what I'll be talking about here. It's been quite a ride, and I'd love to tell you about it. So more anon!