Friday Freebie: It’s My Country Too by Jerri Bell and Tracy Crow

Congratulations to Nancy Bekofske, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: the big Summer of Book Lovin’ Giveaway.

This week’s contest is for It’s My Country Too by Jerri Bell and Tracy Crow. Subtitled Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan, the book is a vital new member of the military history bookshelf. I thought it would be especially pertinent to offer it as a Friday Freebie this week since we’re coming up on the 4th of July here in America and it’s a good reminder of just how much women have contributed to America’s history, military or otherwise. It’s My Country Too tops my must-read list for this summer; I hope it will be on yours, too. Keep scrolling for more information about the book...

This inspiring anthology is the first to convey the rich experiences and contributions of women in the American military in their own words--from the Revolutionary War to the present wars in the Middle East. Serving with the Union Army during the Civil War as a nurse, scout, spy, and soldier, Harriet Tubman tells what it was like to be the first American woman to lead a raid against an enemy, freeing some 750 slaves. Busting gender stereotypes, Josette Dermody Wingo enlisted as a gunner’s mate in the navy in World War II to teach sailors to fire Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns. Marine Barbara Dulinsky recalls serving under fire in Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968, and Brooke King describes the aftermath of her experiences outside the wire with the army in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In excerpts from their diaries, letters, oral histories, and pension depositions--as well as from published and unpublished memoirs--generations of women reveal why and how they chose to serve their country, often breaking with social norms, even at great personal peril.

If you’d like a chance at winning It’s My Country Too, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on July 6, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on July 7. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.

Front Porch Books: June 2017 edition

The Ninth Hour
by Alice McDermott
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Any good and proper Most-Anticipated-Fiction list of mine will always start with Alice McDermott. I have been an earnest fan since reading That Night one night in grad school. Though I haven’t read all of her most-recent work, I will always be the first in line to snatch-grab her newest release. The Ninth Hour is no exception. To the top of the To-Be-Read pile, buster!

Jacket Copy:  On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove―to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife―“that the hours of his life belong to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, a Little Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child. In Catholic Brooklyn, in the early part of the twentieth century, decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the man’s brief existence, and yet his suicide, although never spoken of, reverberates through many lives―testing the limits and the demands of love and sacrifice, of forgiveness and forgetfulness, even through multiple generations. Rendered with remarkable lucidity and intelligence, Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour is a crowning achievement of one of the finest American writers at work today.

Opening Lines:  February 3 was a dark and dank day altogether: cold spitting rain in the morning and a low, steel-gray sky the rest of the afternoon.

Blurbworthiness:  “Partly told by a voice from the future who drops tantalizing hints about what’s to come—for example, a marriage between the occupants of the baby carriages—this novel reveals its ideas about love and morality through the history of three generations, finding them in their kitchens, sickbeds, train compartments, love nests, and basement laundry rooms.” (Kirkus Reviews)

Wolf Season
by Helen Benedict
(Bellevue Literary Press)

Another author and her books who will always take a seat in the crowded front row of my new books to read: Helen Benedict. She’s written seven novels—most notably Sand Queen—and has emerged as one of our most thoughtful and provocative writers of war literature. Wolf Season, which comes out in October, brings the war home to the United States from the Middle East, not in a “deranged veteran can’t re-adjust to society and takes a sniper rifle to a tower” sort of way, but in the more-realistic depiction of characters leading “lives of quiet desperation.”

Jacket Copy:  After a hurricane devastates a small town in upstate New York, the lives of three women and their young children are irrevocably changed. Rin, an Iraq War veteran, tries to protect her blind daughter and the three wolves under her care. Naema, a widowed doctor who fled Iraq with her wounded son, faces life-threatening injuries. Beth, who is raising a troubled son, waits out her Marine husband’s deployment in Afghanistan, equally afraid of him coming home and of him never returning at all. As they struggle to maintain their humanity and find hope, their war-torn lives collide in a way that will affect their entire community.

Opening Lines:  The wolves are restless this morning. Pacing the woods, huffing and murmuring. It’s not that they’re hungry; Rin fed them each four squirrels. No, it’s a clenching in the sky like a gathering fist. The wet heat pushing in on her temples.

Blurbworthiness:  “No one writes with more authority or cool-eyed compassion about the experience of women in war both on and off the battlefield than Helen Benedict. In Wolf Season, she shows us the complicated ways in which the lives of those who serve and those who don’t intertwine and how―regardless of whether you are a soldier, the family of a soldier, or a refugee―the war follows you and your children for generations. Wolf Season is more than a novel for our times; it should be required reading.” (Elissa Schappell, author of Use Me)

To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts
by Caitlin Hamilton Summie
(Fomite Press)

Talk about most anticipated....Caitlin Hamilton Summie’s first book, a collection of short stories, has been on my radar ever since it was the tiniest green blip on the edge of the screen. I’ve known Caitlin (in the virtual sense of the word) as a book publicist extraordinaire for about two decades (and still we’ve yet to meet!), and wrote about it earlier here at the blog. But it wasn’t until about six months ago I learned she had a book of her own coming out. So, yes, any book of Caitlin’s earns an automatic position near the top of my ever-growing TBR stack (aka Mount NeveRest). And that’s before I open the book and clap my eyes on that powerful, poignant first paragraph in the first story.

Jacket Copy:  In these ten elegantly written short stories, Caitlin Hamilton Summie takes readers from WWII Kansas City to a poor, drug-ridden neighborhood in New York, and from the quiet of rural Minnesota to its pulsing Twin Cities, each time navigating the geographical boundaries that shape our lives as well as the geography of tender hearts, loss, and family bonds. Deeply moving and memorable, To Lay To Rest Our Ghosts examines the importance of family, the defining nature of place, the need for home, and the hope of reconciliation.

Opening Lines:  Jimmy Weston had his Dad’s dog tags. He wore them around his next on a steel chain and had this funny habit of rubbing them back and forth between his fingers. We’d be playing marbles or collecting tin for the war effort; we’d be jumping on cracks to break Hitler’s back or be waiting, just waiting for the whole thing to end, and Jimmy would talk and rub those dog tags together, and I’d listen, That’s mostly how I remember those days: Jimmy and me sitting on the curb, tired of marbles, tired of tin, him with that sound of his father, and me with nothing of mine but his name.

Blurbworthiness:  “To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts is nothing short of magnificent. After reading the vivid and powerful opening story, I thought Well, this is a smart writer―she’s obviously led off with her best. Then I found that if anything I liked the next story even better, and by then I knew I was reading something special. These stories are realist fiction at its finest. The author’s sense of place is extraordinary, and it informs every word she writes. Her characters are as real as anybody you know in the town where you live, and their lives are depicted with quiet dignity. The stories are both intense and economical. I’ve gotten very hard to please, but I loved this book.” (Steve Yarbrough, author of The Realm of Last Chances)

It’s My Country Too
by Jerri Bell and Tracy Crow
(Potomac Books)

Since reading Studs Terkel when I was a teenager, I’m convinced of one thing: history is best told by the voices of witnesses. In Studs’ case, that could be about labor, urban life, or economic hard times. Now, thanks to the brilliant editing skills of military veterans Jerri Bell and Tracy Crow, a choir of female voices is singing about war. At various times, that singing can be a running cadence, an aria from a tragic opera, or a peppy rendition of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” (with, in this case, the bride being the one who marches off to battle). For years, the gravelly voices of men have dominated the ranks of war literature (reflecting the sexual demographics of the military), but now it’s time to hear from all uniformed members in those ranks. There have been various accounts of female service (from Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse, and Spy by Sarah Emma Edmonds to Love My Rifle More Than You by Kayla Williams), but Bell and Crow have brought so many stories together in one place―from the American Revolution to the battles of Afghanistan―that It’s My Country Too is bound to become an indispensable member of every military historian’s bookshelf.

Jacket Copy:  Serving with the Union Army during the Civil War as a nurse, scout, spy, and soldier, Harriet Tubman tells what it was like to be the first American woman to lead a raid against an enemy, freeing some 750 slaves. Busting gender stereotypes, Josette Dermody Wingo enlisted as a gunner’s mate in the navy in World War II to teach sailors to fire anti-aircraft guns. Marine Barbara Dulinsky recalls serving under fire in Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968, and Brooke King describes the aftermath of her experiences outside the wire with the army in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In excerpts from their diaries, letters, oral histories, and pension depositions―as well as from published and unpublished memoirs―generations of women reveal why and how they chose to serve their country, often breaking with social norms, even at great personal peril.

Blurbworthiness:  “This compendium of women’s bravery and accomplishments is a compelling read of firsthand accounts in U.S. military conflicts. No American woman should raise her right hand and swear to ‘support and defend’ without these haunting voices urging her to walk the trail where few have gone. Every American history syllabus should include this book as a requirement. A true inspiration!”  [Maj. Gen. Dee Ann McWilliams, U.S. Army (Ret.), president of Women in Military Service for America]

Fen
by Daisy Johnson
(Graywolf Press)

Earthy, organic, twisted, wry, fractured fairy tales were the hallmark of Angela Carter’s work (The Bloody Chamber, Nights at the Circus, etc.), and I’m glad to see some of that same spirit in newcomer Daisy Johnson’s fiction. As Evie Wyld (All the Birds, Singing) notes, this debut collection of short stories promises “lush language, ever-surprising characters” and a crooked path taking readers “through the rooty tangle of human love and desire.”

Jacket Copy:  Daisy Johnson’s Fen, set in the fenlands of England, transmutes the flat, uncanny landscape into a rich, brooding atmosphere. From that territory grow stories that blend folklore and restless invention to turn out something entirely new. Amid the marshy paths of the fens, a teenager might starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl and grow jealous of her friend. A boy might return from the dead in the guise of a fox. Out beyond the confines of realism, the familiar instincts of sex and hunger blend with the shifting, unpredictable wild as the line between human and animal is effaced by myth and metamorphosis. With a fresh and utterly contemporary voice, Johnson lays bare these stories of women testing the limits of their power to create a startling work of fiction.

Opening Lines:  The Land was drained. They caught eels in great wreaths, headless masses in the last puddles, trying to dig into the dirt to hide. They filled vats of water to the brim with them: the eels would feed the workforce brought in to build on the wilderness. There were enough eels to last months; there were enough eels to feed them all for years.

Blurbworthiness:  “Fen is a lusty, voracious beast. It will tie you up, rip off your boots, and throw them off the balcony. These stories are charged by an undercurrent of crouching energy that waits, waits, waits....and then, delightfully, pounces. There's a calm feralness to Daisy Johnson's writing that is as refreshing as it is invigorating.”  (Kelly Luce, author of Pull Me Under)

Eat Only When You’re Hungry
by Lindsay Hunter
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

From the title to the first sentence to that unappetizing clutter of half-eaten snacks on the cover, food is everywhere in Lindsay Hunter’s new novel. Though the Pringles, jelly donuts, Circus Peanuts and fruit pies may be low in nutritional value, Hunter’s writing is reliably fortified with 11 essential minerals and vitamins, so I’m looking forward to her latest literary feast. I can’t wait to eat this book.

Jacket Copy:  In Lindsay Hunter’s achingly funny, fiercely honest second novel, Eat Only When You’re Hungry, we meet Greg an overweight fifty-eight-year-old and the father of Greg Junior, GJ, who has been missing for three weeks. GJ’s been an addict his whole adult life, disappearing for days at a time, but for some reason this absence feels different, and Greg has convinced himself that he’s the only one who can find his son. So he rents an RV and drives from his home in West Virginia to the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, the last place GJ was seen. As we travel down the streets of the bizarroland that is Florida, the urgency to find GJ slowly recedes into the background, and the truths about Greg’s mistakes as a father, a husband, a man are uncovered. In Eat Only When You’re Hungry, Hunter elicits complex sympathy for her characters, asking the reader to take a closer look at the way we think about addiction why we demonize the junkie but turn a blind eye to drinking a little too much or eating too much and the fallout of failing ourselves.

Opening Lines:  It was too late to be a lunch, too early to be a dinner, this disappointing collection of food Greg was packing. He was leaving in the odd smear of time between the markers of his day. Not in the morning, not in the night. Not even in the midday. After lunch, before dinner. The sun was out but getting lazy. Everything started to give over, accepting that this day’s moment was swiftly passing. Maybe that was why he finally left. He had to get away from the giving over, for once. His son had been missing three weeks.

Blurbworthiness:  “The frailties of the human body and the human heart are laid bare in Lindsay Hunter’s utterly superb novel Eat Only When You’re Hungry. There is real delicacy, tenderness, and intelligence with which Hunter tackles this portrait of a broken family of people who don’t realize just how broken they are until they are forced to confront the fractures between them and within themselves. With this novel, Hunter establishes herself as an unforgettable voice in American letters. Her work here, as ever, is unparalleled.”  (Roxane Gay, author of Hunger)

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life
by Megan Stielstra
(Harper Perennial)

I had the pleasure of meeting Megan Stielstra in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin at this year’s Midwest Independent Booksellers Association spring meeting and I was immediately struck by her passion, her sense of humor, her down-to-earth...realness. There are some people whose electric personalities vibrate off the surface of their skin even from the most regrettably-short meetings (which ours was...regrettably). Those same qualities pour from the pages of her new collection of essays, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, like heat from a humming engine. Megan hooked me into her book with the simple elevator-pitch summary of one of her essays in the book (“Here Is My Heart”): “My father had his third heart attack while hiking up a mountain in Alaska.” I may have put words in Megan’s mouth, but that’s the gist of the story and it went straight to my chest for three reasons: 1. I have a history of heart disease in my family; 2. I used to live in Alaska; 3. I like to hike. Yep, it was  booklove at first sight. Now, if only our hearts were as simple, as shiny, and as easy to reassemble as the plastic heart model on the cover of this book!

Jacket Copy:  In this poignant and inciting collection of literary essays, Megan Stielstra tells stories to ward off fears both personal and universal as she grapples toward a better way to live. In her titular piece “The Wrong Way To Save Your Life,” she answers the question of what has value in our lives—a question no longer rhetorical when the apartment above her family’s goes up in flames. “Here is My Heart” sheds light on Megan’s close relationship with her father, whose continued insistence on climbing mountains despite a series of heart attacks leads the author to dissect deer hearts in a poetic attempt to interrogate her own feelings about mortality. Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.

Blurbworthiness:  “In The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, Megan Stielstra takes a core sample of her life, like a core sample of a glacier, and subjects it to her great punk-rock sensibility. What happens? It melts beautifully! There are fires and guns and knives in these terrific essays, and heavy metal and bloody hearts on cutting boards, and Stielstra handles it all with humor and expert humanity.”  (Eula Biss, author of On Immunity)

Strangers in Budapest
by Jessica Keener
(Algonquin Books)

Prior to my recent river cruise in Europe, which began on the Danube in Budapest and ended on the Rhine in the Netherlands, I set about trying to find some reading that would serve as a literary soundtrack for my trip. I eventually settled on two books by Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water (the latter which I still need to read). Fermor’s memoirs of his walk across Europe in the 1930s were quite good and illuminated much of my route. I received a copy of Jessica Keener’s new novel in the mail earlier this week, long after I’d returned from Hungary, et al. I wish I’d had Strangers in Budapest with me earlier, so I could have a sense of verisimilitude while walking the streets of the two halves of the city: Buda and Pest. Keener’s earlier books, Night Swim and Women in Bed, received glowing reviews but never really found the number of readers the Boston author deserves. If there’s a just and righteous god in charge of publishing, Strangers in Budapest will be her breakout book. I can’t wait to revisit the enigmatic city through Keener’s imagination.

Jacket Copy:  Budapest is a city of secrets, a place where everything is opaque and nothing is as it seems. It is to this enigmatic city that a young American couple, Annie and Will, move with their infant son, shortly after the fall of the Communist regime. Annie hopes to escape the ghosts from her past; Will wants to take his chance as an entrepreneur in Hungary’s newly developing economy. But only a few months after moving there, they receive a secretive request from friends in the U.S. to check up on an elderly stranger who also has recently arrived in Budapest. When they realize that his sole purpose for coming there is to exact revenge on a man who he is convinced seduced and then murdered his daughter, Will insists they have nothing to do with him. Annie, however, unable to resist anyone she feels may need her help, soon finds herself enmeshed in the old man’s plan, caught up in a scheme that will end with death. Atmospheric, secretive, much like the old Hungarian city itself, Strangers in Budapest is an intricately woven story of lives that intersect and pull apart, perfect for fans of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Chris Pavone’s The Expats. Keener has written a transporting novel about a couple trying to make a new life in a foreign land, only to find themselves drawn into a cultural, and generational, vendetta.

Opening Lines:  She’d grown used to calling the Danube by its Hungarian name—Duna. In fact, she preferred it over the American version. The whimsical sound—Duna—felt light on her tongue, fanciful and upbeat, a spirit rising. But, like all things in this city, the river that glittered at night concealed a darker surface under the day’s harsh sun. The water looked sluggish and dull from this high point on the bridge.
       “How much farther?” Annie asked. They had walked a mile, but it felt longer to her.
       “Almost there,” Will said, waving his well-worn map. “A few more blocks.”
       “Good, because this whole thing feels crazy.”

Blurbworthiness:  “What do we run away from? And what do we run toward? Two American expatriates in Budapest, a lonely young mother with a devastating secret, and an old man desperate to discover the truth about his daughter’s death, forge a shattering connection. Gorgeously told and deeply moving, Keener’s brilliant new novel is a bold, brave and dazzlingly original tale about home, loss and the persistence of love.”  (Caroline Leavitt, author of Cruel Beautiful World)


Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books—mainly advance review copies (aka “uncorrected proofs” and “galleys”)—I’ve received from publishers. Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books. In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss. Note: many of these books won’t be released for another 2-6 months; I’m here to pique your interest and stock your wish lists. Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released. I should also mention that, in nearly every case, I haven’t had a chance to read these books.

My First Time: Eliza Henry-Jones

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. Today’s guest is Eliza Henry-Jones, a writer based in Victoria, Australia. Her debut novel In the Quiet was published earlier this year as part of a three-book deal with HarperCollins Australia. In the Quiet was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and longlisted for the ABIA and Indie Book Awards. She has worked for years with families in the drug and alcohol sector and has qualifications in grief, loss and trauma counseling and psychology. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Big Issue, Daily Life, Southerly, Island, Seizure, LiNQ and many other places.

My First Agent

My first (and only!) agent is a lovely and very talented woman called Sally Bird from Calidris Literary Agency. How I found Sally is not very elegant. I typed “Australian literary agents” into Google. I liked the sound of the books she’d placed and thought she sounded fascinating. I emailed her when I was twenty-one and had just finished writing a manuscript that I was pretty chuffed with. She liked the sample and asked for the full manuscript. When she called to ask if I’d still be happy for her to represent it and send it out to publishers, I cried.

Writing is, in many ways, quite a lonesome activity. Not just the physical typing, but the process of submitting for publication; the editing; the waiting. After many years of trying to sell myself as a writer, it was the most wonderful feeling to have someone on my side; someone who saw something in my work; someone who was advocating for me. Sally helped me edit the manuscript; she picked up typos and inconsistencies and pulled together a proposal to go out with it, which included market placement, a bio and other bits and pieces.

I felt like this was it. A wonderful agent had picked up my manuscript. There were names like Random House and Hachette floating around. And then… nothing. A lot of very lovely, generous rejections filtering gradually in over the next eight months. My writing, it seemed, was not the problem. But nobody felt like they could sell the story. I assumed they were just being encouraging because I was quite young (twenty-two). I didn’t really think any were truly interested when they told Sally to send them any further manuscripts I wrote.

Sally was pragmatic. We started over again with the manuscript I’d written in the meantime–a quiet little book on family and grief called In the Quiet. Sally loved it, but she said that we might very well get the same response as last time. So I steeled myself for another influx of rejections and did what I always did when I was nervous about something–I started work on another story.

But things were different this time. Publishers came back quickly with questions which Sally sent on to me–was I firm on the title? Could I come in to meet with them? How did I feel about making it quite a bit longer?

Sally and I did lunch before meeting a local publisher. While I was in the meeting, she bought me gardener’s hand cream–I’d been telling her how working in my veggie patch had dried out my skin.

A few rejections filtered through. Of the ten publishers Sally approached, five rejected my manuscript and five made offers. Which is such an important reminder that fiction is subjective and what one person might toss out another person might make a large offer on. If my manuscript had only found its way into the hands of the five who weren’t interested, I would have thought it wasn’t good enough and quietly tucked it away in a drawer.

As I’m a quite controlling, anxious and neurotic little person, Sally had her hands full keeping me calm during the weeks we had offers coming in. I was freaked out and delighted in equal measure–there were people out there keen to turn my story into a book! People wanted to buy my manuscript! After ten years of jumping up and down, desperate to get the attention of editors and publishers, desperate for them to notice me, I was suddenly being wooed. It was a wonderful and unsettling experience. I talked to editors on the phone about the changes they wanted to make. Sally asked for counter offers; she chased busy editors up when they missed deadlines. It was an overwhelming time–the publishers were all magnificent and I couldn’t quite believe they were all interested in what I’d written. I woke up a lot in the night with a start, unsettled–even in sleep–by this sudden turning of the tables.

Three years after initially approaching Sally at the age of twenty-four, I signed an international, three-book deal with HarperCollins Australia for In the Quiet and two subsequent books. And now In the Quiet is out in the U.S.–something I never even dreamed of.

Sally reads various versions of the manuscripts, although she doesn’t have to. She encourages me and keeps me calm. After six years of representing me, she’s no longer just my agent but has become a very wonderful friend whose relationship I am grateful for every single day.

I often hear people saying that you don’t need an agent; that it’s simpler to go it alone. But I truly don’t know what I’d do without Sally.

Sunday Sentence: The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

I’m a novelist. My business is with souls and what goes on in them.

The Dain Curse
by Dashiell Hammett

Friday Freebie: Summer of Lovin’ Books Giveaway

Congratulations to John Smith, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: Fen by Daisy Johnson.

This week’s contest is another of those clear-the-shelves-and-dump-everything-into-a-big-box giveaways. I’ve put together a shelf of eclectic books, ones which have been waiting (im)patiently for the right Friday Freebie to come along. There should be something for just about everyone in this stack. Will you be the ONE lucky reader to win ALL of the following books? You can’t win unless you play...

Dinner With Edward by Isabel Vincent: When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter--who lives far away and has asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York--Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot souffle will end up changing her life. As Edward and Isabel meet weekly for the glorious dinners that Edward prepares, he shares so much more than his recipes for apple galette or the perfect martini, or even his tips for deboning poultry. Edward is teaching Isabel the luxury of slowing down and taking the time to think through everything she does, to deconstruct her own life, cutting it back to the bone and examining the guts, no matter how messy that proves to be. Dinner with Edward is a book about love and nourishment, and about how dinner with a friend can, in the words of M. F. K. Fisher, “sustain us against the hungers of the world.”

Pumpkinflowers by Matti Friedman: It was just one small hilltop in a small, unnamed war in the late 1990s, but it would send out ripples that are still felt worldwide today. The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code word for “casualties.” Award-winning writer Matti Friedman re-creates the harrowing experience of a band of young Israeli soldiers charged with holding this remote outpost, a task that would change them forever, wound the country in ways large and small, and foreshadow the unwinnable conflicts the United States would soon confront in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Pumpkinflowers is a reckoning by one of those young soldiers now grown into a remarkable writer. Part memoir, part reportage, part history, Friedman’s powerful narrative captures the birth of today’s chaotic Middle East and the rise of a twenty-first-century type of war in which there is never a clear victor and media images can be as important as the battle itself. Raw and beautifully rendered, Pumpkinflowers will take its place among classic war narratives by George Orwell, Philip Caputo, and Tim O’Brien. It is an unflinching look at the way we conduct war today.

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist: One day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state of the art recreation facilities, and live the few remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her. Here, women over the age of fifty and men over sixty–single, childless, and without jobs in progressive industries–are sequestered for their final few years; they are considered outsiders. In the Unit they are expected to contribute themselves for drug and psychological testing, and ultimately donate their organs, little by little, until the final donation. Despite the ruthless nature of this practice, the ethos of this near-future society and the Unit is to take care of others, and Dorrit finds herself living under very pleasant conditions: well-housed, well-fed, and well-attended. She is resigned to her fate and discovers her days there to be rather consoling and peaceful. But when she meets a man inside the Unit and falls in love, the extraordinary becomes a reality and life suddenly turns unbearable. Dorrit is faced with compliance or escape, and…well, then what? The Unit is a gripping exploration of a society in the throes of an experiment, in which the “dispensable” ones are convinced under gentle coercion of the importance of sacrificing for the “necessary” ones. Ninni Holmqvist has created a debut novel of humor, sorrow, and rage about love, the close bonds of friendship, and about a cynical, utilitarian way of thinking disguised as care.

Most Dangerous Place by James Grippando: Defending a woman accused of murdering the man who sexually assaulted her, Miami lawyer Jack Swyteck must uncover where the truth lies between innocence, vengeance, and justice in this spellbinding tale of suspense—based on shocking true-life events—from the New York Times bestselling author of Gone Again. According to the FBI, the most dangerous place for a woman between the ages of twenty and thirty is in a relationship with a man. Those statistics become all too personal when Jack Swyteck takes on a new client tied to his past. It begins at the airport, where Jack is waiting to meet his old high school buddy, Keith Ingraham, a high-powered banker based in Hong Kong, coming to Miami for his young daughter’s surgery. But their long-awaited reunion is abruptly derailed when the police arrest Keith’s wife, Isabelle, in the terminal, accusing her of conspiring to kill the man who raped her in college. Jack quickly agrees to represent Isa, but soon discovers that to see justice done, he must separate truth from lies—an undertaking that proves more complicated than the seasoned attorney expects. Inspired by an actual case involving a victim of sexual assault sent to prison for the death of her attacker, James Grippando’s twisty thriller brilliantly explores the fine line between victim and perpetrator, innocence and guilt, and cold-blooded revenge and rightful retribution.

Dimestore by Lee Smith: Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith’s youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters, and her daddy’s dimestore. When she was sent off to college to gain some “culture,” she understood that perhaps the richest culture she would ever know was the one she was leaving. Lee Smith’s fiction has always lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story. Dimestore’s fifteen essays are crushingly honest, wise and perceptive, and superbly entertaining. Together, they create an inspiring story of the birth of a writer and a poignant look at a way of life that has all but vanished.

The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan: The Gray House is an astounding tale of how what others understand as liabilities can be leveraged into strengths. Bound to wheelchairs and dependent on prosthetic limbs, the physically disabled students living in the House are overlooked by the Outsides. Not that it matters to anyone living in the House, a hulking old structure that its residents know is alive. From the corridors and crawl spaces to the classrooms and dorms, the House is full of tribes, tinctures, scared teachers, and laws—all seen and understood through a prismatic array of teenagers’ eyes. But student deaths and mounting pressure from the Outsides put the time-defying order of the House in danger. As the tribe leaders struggle to maintain power, they defer to the awesome power of the House, attempting to make it through days and nights that pass in ways that clocks and watches cannot record.

Little Boy Lost by J. D. Trafford: Attorney Justin Glass’s practice, housed in a shabby office on the north side of Saint Louis, isn’t doing so well that he can afford to work for free. But when eight-year-old Tanisha Walker offers him a jar full of change to find her missing brother, he doesn’t have the heart to turn her away. Justin had hoped to find the boy alive and well. But all that was found of Devon Walker was his brutally murdered body—and the bodies of twelve other African American teenagers, all discarded like trash in a mass grave. Each had been reported missing. And none had been investigated. As simmering racial tensions explode into violence, Justin finds himself caught in the tide. And as he gives voice to the discontent plaguing the city’s forgotten and ignored, he vows to search for the killer who preys upon them.

Leave Me by Gayle Forman: Every woman who has ever fantasized about driving past her exit on the highway instead of going home to make dinner, and every woman who has ever dreamed of boarding a train to a place where no one needs constant attention--meet Maribeth Klein. A harried working mother who’s so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn’t even realize she’s had a heart attack. Surprised to discover that her recuperation seems to be an imposition on those who rely on her, Maribeth does the unthinkable: she packs a bag and leaves. But, as is often the case, once we get where we’re going we see our lives from a different perspective. Far from the demands of family and career and with the help of liberating new friendships, Maribeth is able to own up to secrets she has been keeping from herself and those she loves. With bighearted characters--husbands, wives, friends, and lovers--who stumble and trip, grow and forgive, Leave Me is about facing the fears we’re all running from. Gayle Forman is a dazzling observer of human nature. She has written an irresistible novel that confronts the ambivalence of modern motherhood head on and asks, what happens when a grown woman runs away from home?

The Legend of the Albino Farm by Steve Yates: The Legend of the Albino Farm is a horror story turned inside out. What if a thriving family were saddled with an unshakable spook tale? And what if that lore cursed them with an unending whirlwind of destruction from thrill seekers, partiers, bikers, and Goths? Hettienne Sheehy is about to inherit this devouring legacy. Last child to bear a once golden name, she is heiress to a sprawling farm in the Missouri Ozarks. During summer, childhood idylls in the late 1940s, Hettienne has foreseen all this apocalyptic fury in frightening, mystifying visions. Haunted by a whirling augury, by a hurtful spook tale, and by a property that seems to doom all who would dare own it, in the end, Hettienne will risk everything to save the family she truly loves. The Legend of the Albino Farm has haunted two generations of Sheehys and marred all memory of the family’s glory days. Worse, this spooky lore now draws revelers, druggies, motorcycle gangs, hippies, and later Goths to trample the land, set bonfires, and vandalize its structures, all while Hettienne’s aged aunts cling to privacy, sanity, and a rapidly deteriorating thirteen-room mansion.. From her youth, throughout her marriage and her rearing of her children, the Legend of the Albino Farm and the curse of the Sheehys drag at her and her family like a vortex. Haunted by a whirling augury, by a hurtful spook tale, and by a relentlessly judgmental Ozarks city, in the end, Hettienne believes she must make decisions that might compromise her family’s financial security but will severe them from an ever more dangerous legacy.

Security by Gina Wohlsdorf: Manderley Resort is a gleaming, new twenty-story hotel on the California coast. It’s about to open its doors, and the world--at least those with the means to afford it--will be welcomed into a palace of opulence and unparalleled security. But someone is determined that Manderley will never open. The staff has no idea that their every move is being watched, and over the next twelve hours they will be killed off, one by one. Writing in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, and with a deep bow to Daphne du Maurier, author Gina Wohlsdorf pairs narrative ingenuity and razor-wire prose with quick twists, sharp turns, and gasp-inducing terror. Security is grand guignol storytelling at its very best. A shocking thriller, a brilliant narrative puzzle, and a multifaceted love story unlike any other, Security marks the debut of a fearless and gifted writer.

Said Not Said: Poems by Fred Marchant: In this important and formally inventive new poetry collection, Fred Marchant brings us into realms of the intractable and the unacceptable, those places where words seem to fail us and yet are all we have. In the process he affirms lyric poetry’s central role in the contemporary moral imagination. As the National Book Award winner David Ferry writes, “The poems in this beautiful new book by Fred Marchant are autobiographical, but, as is always the case with his poems, autobiographical of how he has witnessed, with faithfully exact and pitying observation, the sufferings in the lives of other people, for example the heartbreaking series of poems about the fatal mental suffering of his sister, and the poems about other peoples, in Vietnam, in the Middle East, written about with the noble generosity of feeling that has always characterized his work, here more impressively even than before.” Said Not Said is a poet’s taking stock of conscience, his country’s and his own, and of poetry’s capacity to speak to what matters most.

Stick a Fork in Me by Dan Jenkins: Pete Wallace, a good old boy from Texas, paid his dues coaching football on obscure campuses in the boondocks of America until he landed the athletic director's job at Western Ohio University. For 15 years, he has steadily and skillfully guided the school into the high society of major college sports. But now Pete, fed up with politically correct campus culture and babysitting fragile egos, is retiring from the "arms race." As he waits for the university's board of trustees to act on his early retirement package, he reflects on his career, the people he's come across, and what life will be like in retirement. Pete's story is told in Jenkins's unmistakable, raucous, old-school style, and it's full of colorful, absurd, and downright crazy characters--from clueless trustees and busybody protestors to prima donna football coaches and booster club pests.

Anton and Cecil: Cats Aloft by Lisa Martin and Valerie Martin: Tuckered out from a journey across the Wild West, cat brothers Anton and Cecil are ready to head east for home--until a minor stop to change trains in Chicago turns into a major adventure. A bloodhound detective recruits the brothers to help solve a case: puppies are disappearing right off their leashes! Anton and Cecil’s search takes them deep into the heart of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where they befriend exotic animals, ride the newly invented Ferris Wheel, and look for clues amid the crowds of fairgoers. Just as they close in on the culprit, Cecil is carried away in a giant flying balloon and Anton is left behind. Can the cat brothers find the puppies and each other in this big, busy city? Fans of classic animal adventures such as A Cricket in Times Square and Poppy will love Anton and Cecil’s world, brimming with action and rich, true-to-life detail.

The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin: What would you do if your four-year-old son claimed he had lived another life and that he wants to go back to it? That he wants his other mother? Single mom Janie is trying to figure out what is going on with her beloved son Noah. Noah has never been ordinary. He loves to make up stories, and he is constantly surprising her with random trivia someone his age has no right knowing. She always chalked it up to the fact that Noah was precocious―mature beyond his years. But Noah’s eccentricities are starting to become worrisome. One afternoon, Noah’s preschool teacher calls Janie: Noah has been talking about shooting guns and being held under water until he can’t breathe. Suddenly, Janie can’t pretend anymore. The school orders him to get a psychiatric evaluation. And life as she knows it stops for herself and her darling boy. For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has already stopped. Diagnosed with aphasia, his first thought as he approaches the end of his life is, I’m not finished yet. Once an academic star, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, a professor of psychology, he threw everything away to pursue an obsession: the stories of children who remembered past lives. Anderson became the laughing stock of his peers, but he never stopped believing that there was something beyond what anyone could see or comprehend. He spent his life searching for a case that would finally prove it. And with Noah, he thinks he may have found it. Soon, Noah, Janie, and Anderson will find themselves knocking on the door of a mother whose son has been missing for eight years. When that door opens, all of their questions will be answered. Gorgeously written and fearlessly provocative, Sharon Guskin’s debut explores the lengths we will go for our children. It examines what we regret in the end of our lives and hope for in the beginning, and everything in between.

Great Books of China by Frances Wood: Great Books of China invites readers to discover—or rediscover—some of the major achievements of Chinese culture and civilization. The literature of China remains largely unknown in the West, yet it offers much insight into Chinese life. The long continuity of Chinese culture means that texts created more than two thousand years ago are still part of the education and background of today's China. Great Books of China introduces outstanding works of various genres, from fiction, drama, and poetry to history, science, and travel; they were written by philosophers and artists, government officials and scholars, by men and women across many centuries and from every part of China. These great books are presented in their historic, cultural, and social context, with a focused summary of content and author. Beginning with some of the Confucian and Daoist classics and ending with modern fiction, Great Books of China features famous novels including The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), Journey to the West (Xiyou ji), and Dream of the Red Chamber (Hongloumeng); celebrated dramas such as The Story of the Lute (Pipa ji) and The Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan); poetry from ancient times and the “golden age” of the Tang to the last years of imperial China; renowned historic manuals on Chinese painting, on the construction of Chinese gardens, and on a carpenter’s varied tasks; major texts describing Chinese history, the military exploits of ancient generals, and the legendary journeys of Buddhist monks; and works by a number of modern writers including Lu Xun, Ding Ling, and Lao She. Concise, provocative, and illuminating, Great Books of China introduces the literature of one of the world's most significant cultures and helps us understand the China of the present and the past.

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, edited by Kelly Jensen: Forty-four writers, dancers, actors, and artists contribute essays, lists, poems, comics, and illustrations about everything from body positivity to romance to gender identity to intersectionality to the greatest girl friendships in fiction. Together, they share diverse perspectives on and insights into what feminism means and what it looks like. Come on in, turn the pages, and be inspired to find your own path to feminism by the awesome individuals in Here We Are. “[Jensen’s] strength is on full display in this dynamic collection of essays, interviews, comic strips and more, which brings together a chorus of diverse viewpoints, from women and men, to help teens understand, broaden and visualize their own definition of contemporary feminism.” (Chicago Tribune)

Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez: Every night, tiny stars appear out of the darkness in little Sandy’s bedroom. She catches them and creates wonderful creatures to play with until she falls asleep, and in the morning brings them back to life in the whimsical drawings that cover her room. One day, Morpie, a mysterious pale girl, appears at school. And she knows all about Sandy’s drawings. Nightlights is a beautiful story about fear, insecurity, and creativity, from the enchanting imagination of Lorena Alvarez. “Readers will cheer...The beings that inhabit Sandy’s nighttime world are simply delightful. The album size, cloth spine binding, and spot gloss on the cover are the icing on the cake of this beautiful graphic novel.” (Kirkus Reviews)

Audubon: On the Wings of the World by Fabien Grolleau and Jeremie Royer: At the start of the nineteenth century, John James Audubon embarked upon an epic ornithological quest across America with nothing but his artist’s materials, an assistant, a gun and an all-consuming passion for birds...This beautiful volume tells the story of an incredible artist and adventurer: one who encapsulates the spirit of early America, when the wilderness felt limitless and was still greatly unexplored. Based on Audubon”s own retellings, this graphic novel version of his travels captures the wild and adventurous spirit of a truly exceptional naturalist and painter. “Everything feels rich and strange and unrestricted, much like the continent must have felt in the early 19th century, when Audubon set out on his journeys. In other words, On the Wings of the World wants to do cataract surgery on your impressions of the time, the place and central figure, and it succeeds beautifully.” (Paste Magazine)

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church: n her sweeping debut novel, Elizabeth J. Church takes us from the World War II years in Chicago to the vast sun-parched canyons of New Mexico in the 1970s as we follow the journey of a driven, spirited young woman, Meridian Wallace, whose scientific ambitions are subverted by the expectations of her era. In 1941, at seventeen years old, Meridian begins her ornithology studies at the University of Chicago. She is soon drawn to Alden Whetstone, a brilliant, complicated physics professor who opens her eyes to the fundamentals and poetry of his field, the beauty of motion, space and time, the delicate balance of force and energy that allows a bird to fly. Entranced and in love, Meridian defers her own career path and follows Alden west to Los Alamos, where he is engaged in a secret government project (later known to be the atomic bomb). In married life, though, she feels lost and left behind. She channels her academic ambitions into studying a particular family of crows, whose free life and companionship are the very things that seem beyond her reach. There in her canyons, years later at the dawn of the 1970s, with counterculture youth filling the streets and protests against the war rupturing college campuses across the country, Meridian meets Clay, a young geologist and veteran of the Vietnam War, and together they seek ways to mend what the world has broken. Exquisitely capturing the claustrophobic eras of 1940s and 1950s America, The Atomic Weight of Love also examines the changing roles of women during the decades that followed. And in Meridian Wallace we find an unforgettable heroine whose metamorphosis shows how the women’s movement opened up the world for a whole generation.

Fifty-Six Counties by Russell Rowland: Montana has a long and celebrated tradition of artful, reflective nonfiction. From Joseph Kinsey Howard’s Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome to K. Ross Toole’s Montana: An Uncommon Land, we’ve been gifted with a series of erudite and sharp-eyed guides to help show us who we are. To this eminent list we can now add Russell Rowland’s Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey. A native Montanan and an applauded novelist (In Open Spaces, High and Inside), Rowland spent the better part of a year studying and traveling around his beloved home state, from the mines of Butte to the pine forests of the Northwest, from the stark, wind-scrubbed badlands of the East to the tourist-driven economies of the West. Along the way, he considered the state’s essential character, where we came from, and, most of all, what we might be in the process of becoming.

Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan: In his latest historical novel, bestselling author Robert Morgan brings to full and vivid life the story of Jonah Williams, who, in 1850, on his eighteenth birthday, flees the South Carolina plantation on which he was born a slave. He takes with him only a few stolen coins, a knife, and the clothes on his back--no shoes, no map, no clear idea of where to head, except north, following a star that he prays will be his guide. Hiding during the day and running through the night, Jonah must elude the men sent to capture him and the bounty hunters out to claim the reward on his head. There is one person, however, who, once on his trail, never lets him fully out of sight: Angel, herself a slave, yet with a remarkably free spirit. In Jonah, she sees her own way to freedom, and so sets out to follow him. Bristling with breathtaking adventure, Chasing the North Star is deftly grounded in historical fact yet always gripping and poignant as the story follows Jonah and Angel through the close calls and narrow escapes of a fearsome world. It is a celebration of the power of the human spirit to persevere in the face of great adversity. And it is Robert Morgan at his considerable best.

And, to cap it all off, I’ll throw in an advance copy of Brave Deeds by Yours Truly....

If you’d like a chance at winning ALL THE BOOKS, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on June 29, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on June 30. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.

My First Time: Anne Corlett

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. Today’s guest is Anne Corlett, author of the new debut novel The Space Between the Stars. She lives in a village near Bath in southwest England with her partner and three young sons. Her short fiction has been published in various magazines and anthologies, and she is currently working on a second novel.

My First Time Reading in Public

Before I was a writer, I was a criminal lawyer.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I always wrote, from first being able to hold a pen, and by my late teens, I was certain that I’d finish up working as a writer, or in publishing, but somewhere along the way I got distracted and became a lawyer.

I’m still not quite sure how that happened.

By the time I started taking my writing seriously again, I had ten years as a criminal lawyer and High Court Advocate under my belt. Over that decade, I stood up and talked in front of judges, juries, defendants and their families, fellow lawyers, the press, and members of the public. After the first couple of hearings, I don’t remember ever finding it particularly difficult or nerve-racking. So when I got the news that an extract from my first novel, Telemachus, had been selected for the “Friday Night Live” final at the York Festival of Writing, I was fairly blasé about that side of things.

I read through my piece a couple of times, smoothing out a few clunky sentences, and getting a sense of the rhythm and shape of the extract. I tried out the dialogue, and came to the reluctant but sensible conclusion that I could not do voices, and should probably stick to just reading it straight. But overall, I was fairly comfortable with the idea of reading in public.

Then someone suggested that I video myself, to see how I sounded, and to work out if I needed to slow down or speak up, or vary my pitch or pace a bit more. This seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea, so I propped up my camera on the mantelpiece, hit record, sprinted back to the other side of the room, and launched into my reading. It went fairly well, I thought.

And then I played the footage back.

On viewing it, I was immediately hurled into a state of complete and utter panic. I appeared to have a whole host of nervous twitches and bad habits. I watched the video several times, with ever-growing horror. Had I been gurning and fidgeting my way around the courts of London for the last ten years? Was I notorious in the judges’ corridors as “that one who flicks her papers back and forward with her thumb and touches her face every three-and-a-half seconds”? Did I generally stand on one leg while addressing the bench? And what was I doing with my face?

This was the day before the festival. I spent the next few hours ruthlessly drilling myself out of all the bizarre habits, until I was confident that I could deliver a performance that wouldn’t have the audience making subtle “how much has she had to drink?” gestures at one another.

When I boarded the train the following day, I had started to feel fairly good about the forthcoming reading. Unfortunately, somewhere between London and York, I managed to put my neck out, and by the time I arrived at the festival, the only way I could look at anything to either side of me, was to rotate my entire body through ninety degrees, keeping my head and torso in strict alignment.

Whatever the opposite of an owl is, that’s what I looked like.

The evening came round, and with it, the gala dinner and Friday Night Live. I did my strange robot-like walk up onto the stage, apologized to the audience for appearing to ignore the very existence of ninety-nine percent of them, while staring at the one percent directly in front of me in a rather fixed and sinister manner, and somehow delivered a reasonably competent reading.

Well, I assume it was reasonably competent. My piece won the judges’ vote, although not the final audience verdict, and immediately afterwards (although not before I’d managed to hurl a large glass of wine down my throat), my now-agent, came and introduced herself. I don’t think I was making much sense by that point, but fortunately we had a meeting scheduled for the following day, where I was able to give a slightly more coherent account of myself. A few days later, after reading my full manuscript, she offered representation.

That novel garnered some interest, but ultimately no offers of publication. My second one did better, getting as far as an acquisitions meeting, before falling at the final hurdle. It was the third one that made it to the finish line. The Space Between the Stars has just been published by Berkley in the US, and Pan Macmillan in the UK.

The story of my first public reading isn’t a tale of overnight success. It took three-and-a-half years before I got that first yes from a publisher. There were smaller “firsts“ along the way–first short story acceptance, first competition win, first serious interest in one of my novels–but that Friday night at the York Festival was where it all started.

I never did work out whether I’d spent the best part of a decade standing on one leg in courts all over London. Someone would have told me.

Wouldn’t they?

Sunday Sentence: Finders Keepers by Stephen King

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

A good novelist does not lead his characters, he follows them. A good novelist does not create events, he watches them happen and then writes down what he sees. A good novelist realizes he is a secretary, not God.

Finders Keepers by Stephen King

Friday Freebie: Fen by Daisy Johnson

Congratulations to Susan Dunlap, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: A Really Big Lunch by Jim Harrison.

This week’s contest is for Fen by Daisy Johnson. Here’s what The Rumpus had to say about Johnson’s collection of stories: “As a reader, the world of Fen won’t leave you. That is Johnson’s power as a writer―she creates a dark, self-aware world that feels heavy and gray and covered in mist. In her universe, if you’re lonely, you can befriend a fish. Words don’t just cause emotional pain, but they form burns and welts. The ones you love can come back from the dead. To read Johnson’s stories is to live in dreams, at once both disturbing and comforting.” Keep scrolling for more information about the book...

Daisy Johnson’s Fen, set in the fenlands of England, transmutes the flat, uncanny landscape into a rich, brooding atmosphere. From that territory grow stories that blend folklore and restless invention to turn out something entirely new. Amid the marshy paths of the fens, a teenager might starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl and grow jealous of her friend. A boy might return from the dead in the guise of a fox. Out beyond the confines of realism, the familiar instincts of sex and hunger blend with the shifting, unpredictable wild as the line between human and animal is effaced by myth and metamorphosis. With a fresh and utterly contemporary voice, Johnson lays bare these stories of women testing the limits of their power to create a startling work of fiction.

If you’d like a chance at winning Fen, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on June 22, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on June 23. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.