Happy birthday, Bram Stoker (b. 8 November 1847)
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Happy birthday, Bram Stoker (b. 8 November 1847)
Blog tour day. Keep reading for more information about Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez, as well as my spoiler-free review of the book.
FURIA By Yamile Saied Méndez Algonquin Young Readers Publication Date: September 15, 2020 ISBN: 9781616209919 $17.95 | 368 pages www.algonquinyoungreaders.com https://yamilesmendez.com/
An #ownvoices contemporary YA set in Argentina, about a rising soccer star who must put everything on the lineâeven her blooming love storyâto follow her dreams. In Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan lives a double life. At home, she is a careful daughter, living within her motherâs narrow expectations, in her rising-soccer-star brotherâs shadow, and under the abusive rule of her short-tempered father. On the field, she is La Furia, a powerhouse of skill and talent. When her team qualifies for the South American tournament, Camila gets the chance to see just how far those talents can take her. In her wildest dreams, sheâd get an athletic scholarship to a North American university. But the path ahead isnât easy. Her parents donât know about her passion. They wouldnât allow a girl to play fĂștbolâand she needs their permission to go any farther. And the boy she once loved is back in town. Since he left, Diego has become an international star, playing in Italy for the renowned team Juventus. Camila doesnât have time to be distracted by her feelings for him. Things arenât the same as when he left: she has her own passions and ambitions now, and La Furia cannot be denied. As her life becomes more complicated, Camila is forced to face her secrets and make her way in a world with no place for the dreams and ambition of a girl like her.
Yamile (sha-MEE-lay) Saied MĂ©ndez is a fĂștbol-obsessed Argentine American who loves meteor showers, summer, astrology, and pizza. She lives in Utah with her Puerto Rican husband and their five kids, two adorable dogs, and one majestic cat. An inaugural Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, sheâs a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. MĂ©ndez is also part of Las Musas, the first collective of women and nonbinary Latinx middle grade and young adult authors. Furia is her first novel for young adult readers.
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Rating: 5/5 stars
Review: Furia is one of those books that grabs your attention as soon as you open it and refuses to let go. With wonderful writing and accompanied by a strong protagonist, the story unravels in breathtaking fashion. It was impossible for me not to empathize with the main character. The events and emotions are fleshed out perfectly, making the book poignant. The characters are so realistic that the entire story feels less like a fictional book, and more like youâre experiencing the entire thing first hand. Itâs quite difficult to put my thoughts of Furia into words. The best I can do is explain what reading it feels like, and the answer to that is quite a simple one. It felt sincere. It felt like I was going through one of the most important experiences Iâll ever get. Furia left an aftertaste in my mouth after I finished it, left me craving more of the same, but Iâm afraid that books like this are rare. I absolutely recommend it, and I can only hope that youâll experience it the same way I did. I wish I could go back in time just so I can read it for the first time again.
Blog tour day! I offer you info and an excerpt from Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles.
Early Praise: "Janella Angeles steals the 2020 show with her fiercely imagined debut starring larger than life characters, a dangerous world alive with magic, and a dizzying dose of grab-a-fainting-couch-and-swoon-away romance!" - Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Gilded Wolves "Where Dreams Descend is a glamorous dark gem of a tale, sparkling with romance, magic, and intrigue. Readers will be captivated by prima donna Kallia as the mystery is slowly unmasked. Bravissima!" - Julie C. Dao, author of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns âLavish and opulent in a way that feels warmly familiar yet demands your attention. There are secrets upon secrets, a girl whoâs boldly ambitious, and truly riveting stage magic. I didnât want the show to stop.â - Emily A. Duncan, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Saints "Vibrant imagery, jaw-dropping set pieces, sizzling romantic tension, and unstoppable heroine Kallia bring this ambitious debut novel to spectacular life. Fans of Caraval and The Night Circus will be delighted!" - Claire Legrand, New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn  "[A] spellbinding melody of a book, and the true magic is how Angeles puts all the best parts of an enrapturing theatrical performance onto paper and ink. From the gripping twists in the first pages all the way to the final, heartbreaking crescendo, Where Dreams Descend will surge you to your feet in a standing ovation.â â Sara Raasch, New York Times bestselling author of the Snow Like Ashes trilogy
In a city covered in ice and ruin, a group of magicians face off in a daring game of magical feats to find the next headliner of the Conquering Circus, only to find themselves under the threat of an unseen danger striking behind the scenes.
As each act becomes more and more risky and the number of missing magicians piles up, three are forced to reckon with their secrets before the darkness comes for them next.
The Star: Kallia, a powerful showgirl out to prove sheâs the best no matter the cost
The Master: Jack, the enigmatic keeper of the club, and more than one lie told
The Magician: Demarco, the brooding judge with a dark past he can no longer hide
Where Dreams Descend is the startling and romantic first book in Janella Angelesâ debut Kingdom of Cards fantasy duology where magic is both celebrated and feared, and no heart is left unscathed.
Buy Link: https://read.macmillan.com/lp/where-dreams-descend/
JANELLA ANGELES is a Filipino-American author who got her start in writing through consuming glorious amounts of fanfiction at a young ageâwhich eventually led to penning a few of her own, and later on, creating original stories from her imagination. A lifelong lover of books, she's lucky enough to be working in the business of publishing them on top of writing them. She currently resides in Massachusetts, where she's most likely to be found listening to musicals on repeat and daydreaming too much for her own good. Where Dreams Descend is her first book.Â
Social Links:Â Twitter: @Janella_Angeles // Instagram: @Janella_Angeles
Excerpt:
Never come to Hellfire House without wearing a mask.
It was one of the rare rules in a joint without any. The only rule the master of the club did not mind following. He blended in with the sea of suits and white masks that arrived every other night, switching appearances from crowd to crowd. A bartender one moment, a dealer at the card tables the next.
Only his face remained the same, half-masked and haunting. Like a prince who relished the bloody crown on his head, and the ghosts that came with it. A face almost hardened by beauty, though glints of youth ran deep beneath soft black eyes. It always shocked new guests, to see him. The master of the House was rumored to be a dragon of a man. A monster. A magician who had no mercy for fools.
Only those who dared slur the word boy in his face understood how true those rumors were.
To the rest, he played the devil on all shoulders, leading patrons to his bar and game tables, guiding them toward his enchanted smoke lounge to drown in curated memories. The warmth of first love, the heady rush of triumph, the immense joy of dreams come true. The master kept a selection of sensations, and one hit of the pipes delivered magic the people came crawling to his house to taste.
They had no idea the show that was in store for them.
The master of the House sipped his short glass of scarlet whiskey in peace, tapping along the wide black strip over his brass knuckles. Heâd long since manipulated his attire, sitting casually at a card table and savoring the mayhem. Raucous cheers erupted from the next table as dice rolled out across the surface. Smiling Hellfire girls in black blazers and masks of lace denied patrons begging for a dance. Loudest of all, the dealerâs crisp shuffling of the black cards with teeth-white numbers before she doled out hands to players at the table.
âNo, no more,â one moaned. âI canât.â
âSure you can, chap.â A young man in a white thorn-edged mask cheerfully pressed him back in his seat. âWe canât leave. Havenât even finished your drink, yet.â
His drunken friendâs mouth puckered under another gulp. âThink itâs true, the drink? Magicianâs Blood, the menu said.â
âThink you have power, now?â Thorn Mask laughed, leaning back to appraise the club. âHere, you take your magic where you can get it. You wear a mask. You flip a card, smoke a memory. Or you look up . . . at her.â
The masterâs fingers tightened around his glass, just as the lights dimmed. Dancers cleared the floor under the hush of music, shifting from smooth, steady beats to a racing rhythm loud as thunderous applause.
Right on cue.
The bandâs worth of instruments heâd charmed for the night started up a wild entry tune of drums, the thick trill of trumpets. Chatter ceased and backs straightened as a beam of light speared toward the ceiling. A panel slid open over the dance floor.
And the chandelier descended.
Strings of crystals dangled along tiered rims of rose gold, cutting sharply into a jewel-set swing where a masked showgirl sat. A throne of glittering jewels, casting luminous lace across the walls and the ground and the audience taking her in. Her brown skin glowed against her corset, red as her gem-studded mask. Arms stretched out, she crossed and extended her legs in smooth lines all the way down, until her heels touched the lacquered black dancefloor. With the hint of a smile, she rose from her throne and stalked forward, thrusting a hand up with a snap.
Darkness engulfed the room.
Hoots and hollers rang at the drop of the beat, before a glimmer of her form reappeared in the shadows. The room pulsed at her command, matching the spike of heartbeats the master sensed throughout the club.
The smirk on his lips matched the girlâs as she arched her back to the raw stretch of the melody. She thrived under the attention, like a wildflower under the sun. A star finding the night.
His star.
âIâll be damned.â The drunk at the card table breathed in awe, as the girlâs palms began brightening with a molten glow. âNothing like an academy girl.â
âWorth the trip, right?â His friend clapped a hand on his shoulder.
âI didnât know they could be magicians like . . . this.â
The master smothered a dark scoff under a sip of whiskey. The girl showed off good tricksâimprovised and bettered from his basic crowd-pleasers. Treating the ceiling like a sky and showering comets from it, casting an elaborate shadow show of dancing shades over the floor, shifting every candlelight in the room to different colors to the beat of the music.
But always the performer, she preferred to be front and center. Teasing her power just enough to make the audience want more of her magic, more of her.
He wet his lips as flames shot from her hands, arcing over her head and around her body. The fireâs melody bent to her every movement, and she gave everything to it. If she wasnât careful, sheâd overexert herself like she did most nights, never knowing when to stop. How to pull back.
Careful never was her strongest suit.
Sparks fell before her, sizzling on the ground. Unafraid, she sauntered down her stage of flames with slow swaying hips and a firelit smile.
âMagicians like this are best kept a secret,â Thorn Mask went on. âAnd besides, the work is far too scandalous for a lady. Only clubs will take them.â
âWhat a shame. Imagine going up against the likes of her at the competition.â
The master paused, drawing his gaze back to his glass.
âNot this again. That flyer was nothing but a joke.â Thorn Mask slapped the table with a groaning laugh. âA prank.â
The drunk sloppily patted around his coat, pulling from his breast pocket a dirty, scrunched ball of paper. âItâs real. Theyâre all over the academies, in Deque and New Crown andââ
âA prank,â repeated Thorn Mask, unfolding the flyer anyway. âIt has to be. No oneâs been to that city in ages, it would never open itself to such games.â
âThat makes it all the more interesting, donât you think?â As another roar of cheers erupted around them, the friend sipped his drink smugly. âImagine if she entered, the city might implode.â
âRight. As if that would ever happen.â Thorn Mask leered. âCompetition would eat a creature like her alive.â
âBecause sheâs . . . ?â
With an impish lift of his brow, the man in the thorny mask flicked the flyer off the table and returned to his forgotten spread of cards. âLetâs get on with the game, shall we?â
Before he could gesture at the dealer, the master suddenly appeared at their table, snatching the young manâs wrist in a biting grip. The man yelped as the force knocked over his drink, and sent a stream of hidden cards spilling out from his sleeves.
âWhatâs this?â The master bent toward the ground and picked up a couple, entirely too calm. âCheating in my house?â
The man froze, recognition dawning at the brass knuckles alone. âWhere did youâI-I mean,â he sputtered, patting frantically at his sleeve. âThatâs impossible. Those arenât mine, I swear.â
âThen where did they come from?â
Sweat dripped from his temple, his face paler than the white of his mask. âI emptied my pockets at the door. Honest.â
Honest. That was the best he could do? The master almost laughed.
âYou want to know the price cheaters pay in my joint?â His question offered no mercy. Only deliverance, served on ice. âMemories.â
âNo, please!â The manâs lip trembled. âI didnât, I-Iâll do whatever you want!â
âThis is what I want.â The master rose from the table with the jerk of his wrist. The cheat flew to the ground in a gasp as he gripped at the invisible chain-like weight around his neck. Sharp, staccato breaths followed the master as he dragged his prisoner toward the smoke dens.
The man screamed, but no one heard him. No one saw, no one cared. All eyes fell on the star of the show as she searched for a dance partner to join her. The drunken friend, noticing nothing amiss, raised his half-full glass of Magicianâs Blood to his lips before waving his hand high like the others. The man thrashed harder, only to feel his cries smothered and deeper in his throat. His form, invisible at the sweep of the masterâs hand.
With a disdainful glance, the master chuckled. âYouâre only making this more difficult for yourself. One memory wonât kill you.â
At once, he paused. The lights blinked around them, the air grown still. Dim and hazy, as though locked in a dream.
He thought nothing of it until he caught the movements of the patronsâtheir arms raised and waving slowly, increment by increment. Their cheers dulled and stretched into low, gravelly roars, as if the sound were wading through heavier air. Against time itself.
âWhere do you think youâre going?â
The sound of her voice slithered around him, stopping the master in his tracks. The man quieted. Sweat soaked his pale face, his chest heaving. The showgirl stood in their path, every stare in the room still locked on the spotlit floor where sheâd been. As though sheâd never left.
Impressive.
Her red corset glinted as she cocked her hip and pointed at the man on the floor. âI choose him.â
She could never let things be easy.
âKallia,â he growled, warning.
She smiled. âJack.â
âPick another. Heâs a cheater.â
Her lips pursed into a dubious line. âThen let me teach him a lesson. Heâll no doubt prefer it more.â She swung a leg over the manâs prone form so she stood directly above him. Invitation dripped from the crook of her fingers. âThe music calls, darling. Letâs have ourselves a grand time.â
The manâs terror turned swiftly into awe, and he looked at her as if ready to kiss the ground she walked on. As soon as he took her beckoning hand, the room resumed its lively rhythmâa song snapped back in full swing. The cheers and hollers returned to their normal speed, exploding in delight as patrons found their lovely entertainer in their midst, her chosen dance partner in tow.
She bypassed the master, pressing a casual hand on his chest to move him. It lingered, he noticed. Unafraid, unlike most. Their gazes locked for a moment, their masked faces inches apart.
No one ever dared to get this close. To him, to her.
Only each other.
At the next round of cheers and whistles, she pushed him away, smug as a cat. Tugging the man close behind her, she sent fires onto the ground that illuminated her path and warded others from trying to follow them to the stage. Never once looking back at the master, even as he watched on after her.
His fist tightened, full of the cards from his earlier trick. They disappeared into mist, having served their purpose. Along with the flyer he managed to grab.
He didnât even bother giving it a read. It died in the fire caged by his palm. Tendrils of smoke rose between his brass knuckles, and when he opened his fingers, nothing but ash fell to the ground.
Blog tour! Letâs talk a bit about The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
THE LAST STORY OF MINA LEE Author: Nancy Jooyoun Kim ISBN: 9780778310174 Publication Date: September 1, 2020 Publisher: Park Row Books
THE LAST STORY OF MINA LEE (on sale: September 1, 2020; Park Row Books; Hardcover; $27.99 US/ $34.99 CAN). opens when Margot Leeâs mother, Mina, doesnât return her calls. Itâs a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, Los Angeles, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous and invisible strings that held together her single motherâs life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.
Interwoven with Margot's present-day search is Mina's story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While she's barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a series of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.
Buy Links: Harlequin Barnes & Noble Amazon Books-A-Million Powellâs
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Nancy Jooyoun Kim is a graduate of UCLA and the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Asian American Writersâ Workshopâs The Margins, The Offing, the blogs of Prairie Schooner and Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her essay, âLove (or Live Cargo),â was performed for NPR/PRIâs Selected Shorts in 2017 with stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Phil Klay, and Etgar Keret. THE LAST STORY OF MINA LEE is her first novel.Â
Excerpt:
Margot
2014
Margot's final conversation with her mother had seemed so uneventful, so ordinaryâanother choppy bilingual plod. Half-understandable.Â
Business was slow again today. Even all the Korean businesses downtown are closing.Â
What did you eat for dinner?
Everyone is going to Target now, the big stores. It costs the same and it's cleaner.  Â
Margot imagined her brain like a fishing net with the loosest of weaves as she watched the Korean words swim through. She had tried to tighten the net before, but learning another language, especially her mother's tongue, frustrated her. Why didn't her mother learn to speak English?
But that last conversation was two weeks ago. And for the past few days, Margot had only one question on her mind: Why didn't her mother pick up the phone?
****
Since Margot and Miguel had left Portland, the rain had been relentless and wild. Through the windshield wipers and fogged glass, they only caught glimpses of fast food and gas stations, motels and billboards, premium outlets and "family fun centers." Margotâs hands were stiff from clenching the steering wheel. The rain had started an hour ago, right after they had made a pit stop in north Portland to see the famous 31-foot-tall Paul Bunyan sculpture with his cartoonish smile, red-and-white checkered shirt on his barrel chest, his hands resting on top of an upright axe.
Earlier that morning, Margot had stuffed a backpack and a duffel with a week's worth of clothes, picked up Miguel from his apartment with two large suitcases and three houseplants, and merged onto the freeway away from Seattle, driving Miguel down for his big move to Los Angeles. They'd stop in Daly City to spend the night at Miguel's family's house, which would take about ten hours to get to. At the start of the drive, Miguel had been lively, singing along to "Don't Stop Believing" and joking about all the men he would meet in LA. But now, almost four hours into the road trip, Miguel was silent with his forehead in his palm, taking deep breaths as if trying hard not to think about anything at all.
"Everything okay?" Margot asked.
"I'm just thinking about my parents."
"What about your parents?" Margot lowered her foot on the gas.
"Lying to them," he said.
"About why you're really moving down to LA?" The rain splashed down like a waterfall. Miguel had taken a job offer at an accounting firm in a location more conducive to his dreams of working in theatre. For the last two years, they had worked together at a nonprofit for people with disabilities. She was as an administrative assistant; he crunched numbers in finance. She would miss him, but she was happy for him, too. He would finally finish writing his play while honing his acting skills with classes at night. "The theatre classes? The plays that you write? The Grindr account?"
"About it all."
"Do you ever think about telling them?"
"All the time." He sighed. "But it's easier this way."
"Do you think they know?"
"Of course, they do. But..." He brushed his hand through his hair. "Sometimes, agreeing to the same lie is what makes a family family, Margot."
"Ha. Then what do you call people who agree to the same truth?"
"Uh, scientists?"
She laughed, having expected him to say friends. Gripping the wheel, she caught the sign for Salem.
"Do you need to use the bathroom?" she asked.
"I'm okay. We're gonna stop in Eugene, right?"
"Yeah, should be another hour or so."
"I'm kinda hungry." Rustling in his pack on the floor of the backseat, he found an apple, which he rubbed clean with the edge of his shirt. "Want a bite?"
"Not now, thanks."
His teeth crunched into the flesh, the scent cracking through the odor of wet floor mats and warm vents. Margot was struck by a memory of her mother's serene faceâthe downcast eyes above the high cheekbones, the relaxed mouthâas she peeled an apple with a paring knife, conjuring a continuous ribbon of skin. The resulting spiral held the shape of its former life. As a child, Margot would delicately hold this peel like a small animal in the palm of her hand, this proof that her mother could be a kind of magician, an artist who told an origin story through scrapsâthis is the skin of a fruit, this is its smell, this is its color.
"I hope the weather clears up soon," Miguel said, interrupting the memory. "It gets pretty narrow and windy for a while. There's a scary point right at the top of California where the road is just zigzagging while you're looking down cliffs. It's like a test to see if you can stay on the road."
"Oh, God,â Margot said. âLet's not talk about it anymore."
As she refocused on the rain-slicked road, the blurred lights, the yellow and white lines like yarn unspooling, Margot thought about her mother who hated driving on the freeway, her mother who no longer answered the phone. Where was her mother?
The windshield wipers squeaked, clearing sheets of rain.
"What about you?" Miguel asked. "Looking forward to seeing your mom? When did you see her last?"
Margot's stomach dropped. "Last Christmas," she said. "Actually, I've been trying to call her for the past few days to let her know, to let her know that we would be coming down." Gripping the wheel, she sighed. "I didn't really want to tell her because I wanted this to be a fun trip, but then I felt bad, so..."
"Is everything okay?"
"She hasn't been answering the phone."
"Hmm." He shifted in his seat. "Maybe her phone battery died?"
"It's a landline. Both landlinesâat work and at home."
"Maybe she's on vacation?"
"She never goes on vacation." The windshield fogged, revealing smudges and streaks, past attempts to wipe it clean. She cranked up the air inside.
"Hasn't she ever wanted to go somewhere?"
"Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. I don't know why, but she's always wanted to go there."
"It's a big ol' crack in the ground, Margot. Why wouldn't she want to see it? It's God's crack."
"It's some kind of Korean immigrant rite of passage. National Parks, reasons to wear hats and khaki, stuff like that. It's like America America."
"I bet she's okay,â Miguel said. âMaybe she's just been busier than usual, right? We'll be there soon enough."
"You're probably right. I'll call her again when we stop."
A heaviness expanded inside her chest. She fidgeted with the radio dial but caught only static with an occasional glimpse of a commercial or radio announcer's voice.
Her mother was fine. They would all be fine.
With Miguel in LA, she'd have more reasons to visit now.
The road lay before them like a peel of fruit. The windshield wipers hacked away the rivers that fell from the sky.
Excerpted from The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim, Copyright © 2020 by Nancy Jooyoun Kim Published by Park Row Books
Blog tour day! Today Iâm sharing some information about Lobizona by Romina Garber, as well as an excerpt. Scroll down to learn more.
Some people ARE illegal.
Lobizonas do NOT exist.
Both of these statements are false.
Manuela Azul has been crammed into an existence that feels too small for her. As an undocumented immigrant who's on the run from her father's Argentine crime-family, Manu is confined to a small apartment and a small life in Miami, Florida.
Until Manu's protective bubble is shattered.
Her surrogate grandmother is attacked, lifelong lies are exposed, and her mother is arrested by ICE. Without a home, without answers, and finally without shackles, Manu investigates the only clue she has about her pastâa mysterious "Z" emblemâwhich leads her to a secret world buried within our own. A world connected to her dead father and his criminal past. A world straight out of Argentine folklore, where the seventh consecutive daughter is born a bruja and the seventh consecutive son is a lobizĂłn, a werewolf. A world where her unusual eyes allow her to belong.
As Manu uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it's not just her U.S. residency that's illegal. . . .itâs her entire existence.
Early Praise: âWith vivid characters that take on a life of their own, beautiful details that peel back the curtain on Romina's Argentinian heritage, and cutting prose that shines a light on the difficulties of being the âotherâ in America today, Romina Garber crafts a timely tale of identity and adventure that every teenager should read.ââTomi Adeyemi New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone
âRomina Garber has created an enthralling young adult fantasy led by an unforgettable Latinx character Manu. In Manu we find a young girl who not only must contend with the injustice of being undocumented she also discovers a hidden world that may explain her very existence. I fell in love with this world where wolves, witches and magic thrives, all in a rich Latinx setting!â âLilliam Rivera, author of Dealing in Dreams and The Education of Margot Sanchez
Buy Link:https://read.macmillan.com/lp/lobizona/
Author bio:
ROMINA GARBER (pen name Romina Russell) is a New York Times and international bestselling author. Originally from Argentina, she landed her first writing gig as a teenâa weekly column for the Miami Herald that was later nationally syndicatedâand she hasnât stopped writing since. Her books include Lobizona. When sheâs not working on a novel, Romina can be found producing movie trailers, taking photographs, or daydreaming about buying a new drum set. She is a graduate of Harvard College and a Virgo to the core.
Social Links: Â Twitter: @RominaRussell // Instagram: @rominagarber
Excerpt:
2
I awaken with a jolt.
It takes me a moment to register that Iâve been out for three days. I can tell by the well-rested feeling in my bonesâI donât sleep this well any other time of the month.
The first thing Iâm aware of as I sit up  is an urgent need  to use the bathroom. My muscles are heavy from lack of use, and it takes some concentration to keep my steps light so I wonât wake Ma or Perla. I leave the lights off to avoid meeting my gaze in the mirror, and after tossing out my heavy-duty period pad and replacing it with a tampon, I tiptoe back to Maâs and my room.
Iâm always disoriented after lunaritis, so I feel separate from my waking life as I survey my teetering stacks of journals and used books, Maâs yoga mat and collection of weights, and the posters on the wall of the planets and constellations I hope to visit one day.
After a moment, my shoulders slump in disappointment.
This month has officially peaked.
I yank the bleach-stained blue sheets off the mattress and slide out the pillows from their cases, balling up the bedding to wash later. My body feels like a crumpled piece of paper that needs to be stretched, so I plant my feet together in the tiny area between the bed and the door, and I raise my hands and arch my back, lengthening my spine disc by disc. The pull on my tendons releases stored tension, and I exhale in relief.
Something tugs at my consciousness, an unresolved riddle that must have timed out when I surfaced . . . but the harder I focus, the quicker I forget. Swinging my head forward, I reach down to touch my toes and stretch my spine the other wayâ
My ears pop so hard, I gasp.
I stumble back to the mattress, and I cradle my head in my hands as a rush of noise invades my mind. The buzzing of a fly in the window blinds, the gunning of a car engine on the street below, the groaning of our buildingâs prehistoric eleva- tor. Each sound is so crisp, itâs like a filter was just peeled back from my hearing.
My pulse picks up as I slide my hands away from my temples to trace the outlines of my ears. I think the top parts feel a little . . . pointier.
I ignore the tingling in my eardrums as I cut through the living room to the kitchen, and I fill a stained green bowl with cold water. Maâs asleep on the turquoise couch because we donât share our bed this time of the month. She says I thrash around too much in my drugged dreams.
I carefully shut the apartment door behind me as I step out into the buildingâs hallway, and I crack open our neighborâs window to slide the bowl through. A black cat leaps over to lap up the drink.
âHola, Mimitos,â I say, stroking his velvety head. Since weâre both confined to this building, I hear him meowing any time his owner, Fanny, forgets to feed him. I think sheâs going senile.
âIâll take you up with me later, after lunch. And Iâll bring you some turkey,â I add, shutting the window again quickly. I usually let him come with me, but I prefer to spend the morn- ings after lunaritis alone. Even if Iâm no longer dreaming, Iâm not awake either.
My heart is still beating unusually fast as I clamber up six flights of stairs. But I savor the burn of my sedentary muscles, and when at last I reach the highest point, I swing open the door to the rooftop.
Itâs not quite morning yet, and the sky looks like blue- tinged steel. Surrounding me are balconies festooned with colorful clotheslines, broken-down properties with boarded- up windows, fuzzy-leaved palm trees reaching up from the pitted streets . . . and in the distance, the ground and sky blur where the Atlantic swallows the horizon.
El Retiro is a rundown apartment complex with all elderly residentsâmostly Cuban, Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicara- guan, and Argentine immigrants. Thereâs just one slow, loud elevator in the building, and since Iâm the youngest person here, I never use it in case someone else needs it.
I came up here hoping for a breath of fresh air, but since itâs summertime, thereâs no caress of a breeze to greet me. Just the suffocating embrace of Miamiâs humidity.
Smothering me.
I close my eyes and take in deep gulps of musty oxygen, trying to push the dread down to where it canât touch me. The way Perla taught me to do whenever I get anxious.
My metamorphosis started this year. I first felt something
was different four full moons ago, when I no longer needed to squint to study the ground from up here. I simply opened my eyes to perfect vision.
The following month, my hair thickened so much that I had to buy bigger clips to pin it back. Next menstrual cycle came the growth spurt that left my jeans three inches too short, and last lunaritis I awoke with such a heightened sense of smell that I could sniff out what Ma and Perla had for dinner all three nights I was out.
Itâs bad enough to feel the outside world pressing in on me, but now even my insides are spinning out of my control.
As Perlaâs breathing exercises relax my thoughts, I begin  to feel the stirrings of my dreamworld calling me back. I slide onto the rooftopâs ledge and lie back along the warm cement, my body as stagnant as the stale air. A dragon-shaped cloud comes apart like cotton, and I let my gaze drift with Miamiâs hypnotic sky, trying to call up the dreamâs details before they fade . . .
What Ma and Perla donât know about the Septis is they donât simply sedate me for sixty hoursâthey transport me.
Every lunaritis, I visit the same nameless land of magic and mist and monsters. Thereâs the golden grass that ticks off time by turning silver as the day ages; the black-leafed trees that can cry up storms, their dewdrop tears rolling down their bark to form rivers; the colorful waterfalls that warn onlookers of oncoming danger; the hope-sucking Sombras that dwell in darkness and attach like parasitic shadows . . .
And the Citadel.
Itâs a place I instinctively know Iâm not allowed to go, yet Iâm always trying to get to. Whenever I think Iâm going to make it inside, I wake up with a start.
Picturing the black stone wall, I see the thorny ivy that
twines across its surface like a nest of guardian snakes, slith- ering and bunching up wherever it senses a threat.
The sharper the image, the sleepier I feel, like Iâm slowly sliding back into my dream, until I reach my hand out tenta- tively. If I could just move faster than the ivy, I could finally grip the opal doorknob before the thornsâ
Howling breaks my reverie.
I blink, and the dream disappears as I spring to sitting and scour the battered buildings. For a moment, Iâm sure I heard a wolf.
My spine locks at the sight of a far more dangerous threat: A cop car is careening in the distance, its lights flashing and siren wailing. Even though the black-and-white is still too far away to see me, I leap down from the ledge and take cover behind it, the old mantra running through my mind.
Donât come here, donât come here, donât come here.
A familiar claustrophobia claws at my skin, an affliction forged of rage and shame and powerlessness thatâs been my companion as long as Iâve been in this country. Ma tells me I should let her worry about this stuff and only concern myself with studying, so when our papers come through, I can take my GED and one day make it to NASAâbut itâs impossible not to worry when Iâm constantly having to hide.
My muscles donât uncoil until the sirenâs howling fades and the police are gone, but the morningâs spell of stillness has broken. A door slams, and I instinctively turn toward the pink building across the street thatâs tattooed with territorial graf- fiti. Where the alternate version of me lives.
I call her Other Manu.
The first thing I ever noticed about her was her Argentine fĂștbol jersey: #10 Lionel Messi. Then I saw her face and real- ized we look a lot alike. I was reading Borges at the time, and
it ocurred to me that she and I could be the same person in overlapping parallel universes.
But itâs an older man and not Other Manu who lopes down the street. She wouldnât be up this early on a Sunday anyway. I arch my back again, and thankfully this time, the only pop I hear is in my joints.
The sunâs golden glare is strong enough that I almost wish I had my sunglasses. But this rooftop is sacred to me because itâs the only place where Ma doesnât make me wear them, since no one else comes up here.
Iâm reaching for the stairwell door when I hear it.
Faint footsteps are growing louder, like someoneâs racing up. My heart shoots into my throat, and I leap around the corner right as the door swings open.
The person who steps out is too light on their feet to be someone who lives here. No El Retiro resident could make it up the stairs that fast. I flatten myself against the wall.
âCreo que encontrĂ© algo, pero por ahora no quiero decir nada.â
Whenever Ma is upset with me, I have a habit of translat- ing her words into English without processing them. I asked Perla about it to see if itâs a common bilingual thing, and she said itâs probably my way of keeping Maâs anger at a distance; if I can deconstruct her words into languageâsomething de- tached that can be studied and dissectedâI can strip them of their charge.
As my anxiety kicks in, my mind goes into automatic trans- lation mode: I think I found something, but I donât want to say anything yet.
The woman or girl (itâs hard to tell her age) has a deep, throaty voice thatâs sultry and soulful, yet her singsongy accent is unquestionably Argentine. Or Uruguayan. They sound similar.
My cheek is pressed to the wall as I make myself as flat as possible, in case she crosses my line of vision.
âSi tengo razĂłn, me harĂĄn la capitana mĂĄs joven en la his- toria de los Cazadores.â
If Iâm right, theyâll make me the youngest captain in the history of the . . . Cazadores? That means hunters.
In my eight years living here, Iâve never seen another per- son on this rooftop. Curious, I edge closer, but I donât dare peek around the corner. I want to see this strangerâs face, but not badly enough to let her see mine.
âÂżEl encuentro es ahora? Che, Nacho, Âżvos no me podrĂas cubrir?â
Is the meeting right now? Couldnât you cover for me, Nacho?
The che and vos sound like Argentinespeak. What if itâs Other Manu?
The exciting possibility brings me a half step closer, and now my nose is inches from rounding the corner. Maybe I can sneak a peek without her noticing.
âOkay,â I hear her say, and her voice sounds like sheâs just a few paces away.
I suck in a quick inhale, and before I can overthink it, I pop my head outâ
And see the door swinging shut.
I scramble over and tug it open, desperate to spot even a hint of her hair, any clue at all to confirm it was Other Manuâ but sheâs already gone.
All that remains is a wisp of red smoke that vanishes with the swiftness of a morning cloud.
Excerpted from Lobizona by Romina Garber. Published by Wednesday Books.
On todayâs blog tour I offer you info and an excerpt from Rules of the Road by Ciara Geraghty.
Rules of the Road : A Novel Ciara Geraghty On Sale Date: August 4, 2020 9780778309710, 0778309711 Trade Paperback $17.99 USD, $22.99 CAD Fiction / Friendship 384 pages
In this emotional, life-affirming novel, two women embark on an extraordinary road trip and discover the transformative power of female friendship--perfect for fans of JoJo Moyes and Gail Honeyman.
The simple fact of the matter is that Iris loves life. Maybe she's forgotten that. Sometimes that happens, doesn't it? To the best of us? All I have to do is remind her of that one simple fact.
When Iris Armstrong goes missing, her best friend Terryâwife, mother and all-around worrierâis convinced something bad has happened. And when she finds her glamorous, feisty friend, she's right: Iris is setting out on a bucket-list journey that she plans to make her last. She tells Terry thereâs no changing her mind, but Terry is determined to show her that life is still worth living.
The only way for Terry to stop Iris is to join herâon a road trip that will take them on a life-changing adventure. Along the way, somehow what should be the worst six days of Terryâs life turn into the best. Told in an irresistible voice and bursting with heart, Rules of the Road is a powerful testament to the importance of human connection and a moving celebration of life in all its unexpected twists and turns.
BUY LINKS Barnes & Noble Bookshop.org Harlequin Amazon Books-A-Million Indie Bound
Ciara Geraghty was born and raised in Dublin. She started writing in her thirties and hasnât looked back. She has three children and one husband and they have recently adopted a dog who, alongside their youngest daughter, is in charge of pretty much everything.
SOCIAL LINKS Author Website: http://www.ciarageraghty.com/ Twitter: @ciarageraghty Facebook: @CiaraGeraghtyBooks Instagram: @ciara.geraghty.books
Excerpt:
Iris Armstrong is missing.
       That is to say, she is not where she is supposed to be. I am trying not to worry. After all, Iris is a grown woman and can take care of herself better than most.
       Itâs true to say that I am a worrier. Ask my girls. Ask my husband. Theyâll tell you that Iâd worry if I had nothing to worry about. Which is, of course, an exaggeration, although I suppose itâs true to say that, if I had nothing to worry about, I might feel that I had overlooked something.
       Iris is the type of woman who tells you what she intends to do and then goes ahead and does it. Today is her birthday. Her fifty-eighth.
       âPeople see birthdays as an opportunity to tell women they look great for their age,â Iris says when I suggested that we celebrate it.
       Itâs true that Iris looks great for her age. I donât say that.
       Instead, I say, âWe should celebrate nonetheless.â
       âIâll celebrate by doing the swan. Or the downwardfacing dog. Something animalistic,â said Iris after she told me about the yoga retreat she had booked herself into.
       âBut you hate yoga,â I said.
       âI thought youâd be delighted. Youâre always telling me how good yoga is for people with MS.â
       My plan today was to visit Dad, then ring the yoga retreat in Wicklow to let them know Iâm driving down with a birthday cake for Iris. So theyâll know itâs her birthday. Iris wonât want a fuss of course, but everyone should have cake on their birthday.
       But when I arrive at Sunnyside Nursing Home, my father is sitting in the reception area with one of the managers. On the floor beside his chair is his old suitcase, perhaps a little shabby around the edges now but functional all the same. A week, the manager says. Thatâs how long it will take for the exterminators to do what they need to do, apparently. Vermin, he calls them, by which I presume he means rats, because if it was just mice, heâd say mice, wouldnât he?
       My father lives in a rat-infested old folksâ home where he colors in between the lines and loses at bingo and sings songs and waits for my mother to come back from the shops soon.
       âI can transfer your father to one of our other facilities, if youâd prefer,â the manager offers.
       âNo, Iâll take him,â I say. Itâs the least I can do. I thought I could look after him myself, at home, like my mother did for years. I thought I could cope. Six months I lasted. Before I had to put him into Sunnyside.
       I put Dadâs suitcase into the boot beside the birthday cake. Iâve used blue icing for the sea, gray for the rocks where Iâve perched an icing stick figure which is supposed to be Iris, who swims at High Rock every day of the year. Even in November. Even in February. She swims like itâs July. Every day. I think sheâll get a kick out of the cake. It took me ages to finish it. Much longer than the recipe book suggested. Brendan says itâs because Iâm too careful. The cake does not look like itâs been made by someone who is too careful. There is a precarious slant to it, as if itâs been subjected to adverse weather conditions.
       I belt Dad into the passenger seat. âWhere is your mother?â he asks.
       âSheâll be back from the shops soon,â I say. Iâve stopped telling him that sheâs dead. He gets too upset, every time. The grief on his face is so fresh, so vivid, it feels like my grief, all over again, and I have to look away, close my eyes, dig my nails into the fleshy part of my hands.
       I get into the car, turn over the engine.
       âSignal your intent,â Dad says, in that automatic way he does when he recites the rules of the road. He remembers all of them. There must be some cordoned-off areas in your brain where dementia cannot reach.
       I indicate as instructed, then ring the yoga retreat before driving off.
       But Iris is not there. She never arrived.
       In fact, according to the receptionist who speaks in the calm tones of someone who practices yoga every day, there is no record of a booking for an Iris Armstrong.
       Iris told me not to ring her mobile this week. It would be turned off.
       I ring her mobile. Itâs turned off.
       I drive to Irisâs cottage in Feltrim. The curtains are drawn across every window. It looks just the way it should: like the house of a woman who has gone away. I pull into the driveway that used to accommodate her ancient Jaguar. Her sight came back almost immediately after the accident, and the only damage was to the lamppost that Iris crashed into, but her consultant couldnât guarantee that it wouldnât happen again. Iris says she doesnât miss the car, but she asked me if I would hand over the keys to the man who bought it off her. She said she had a meeting she couldnât get out of.
       âItâs just a car,â she said, âand the local taxi driver looks like Daniel Craig. And he doesnât talk during sex, and knows every rat run in the city.â
       âIâll just be a minute, Dad,â I tell him, opening my car door.
       âTake your time, love,â he says. He never used to call me love.
       The grass in the front garden has benefited from a recent mow. I stand at the front door, ring the bell. Nobody answers. I cast about the garden. Itâs May. The cherry blossom tree, whose branches last week were swollen with buds, is now a riot of pale pink flowers. The delicacy of their beauty is disarming, but also sad, how soon the petals will be discarded, strewn across the grass in a week or so, like wet and muddy confetti in a church courtyard long after the bride and groom have left.
       I rap on the door even though Iâm almost positive Iris isnât inside.
       Where is she?
       I ring the Alzheimerâs Society, ask to be put through to Irisâs office, but the receptionist tells me what I already know. That Iris is away on a weekâs holiday.
       âIs that you, Terry?â she asks and there is confusion in her voice; she is wondering why I donât already know this.
       âEh, yes, Rita, sorry, donât mind me, I forgot.â
       Suddenly I am flooded with the notion that Iris is inside the house. She has fallen. That must be it. She has fallen and is unconscious at the foot of the stairs. She might have been there for ages. Days maybe. This worry is a galvanizing one. Not all worries fall into this category. Some render me speechless. Or stationary. The wooden door at the entrance to the side passage is locked, so I haul the wheelie bin over, grip the sides of it, and hoist myself onto the lid. People think height is an advantage, but I have never found mineâfive feet ten inches, or 1.778 meters, I should sayâ to be so. Imperial or metric, the fact is I am too tall to be kneeling on the lid of a wheelie bin. I am a myriad of arms and elbows and knees. Itâs difficult to know where to put everything.
       I grip the top of the door, sort of haul myself over the top, graze my knee against the wall, and hesitate, but only for a moment, before lowering myself down as far as I can before letting go, landing in a heap in the side passage. I should be fitter than this. The girls are always on at me to take up this or that. Swimming or running or Pilates. Get you out of the house. Get you doing something.
       The shed in Irisâs back garden has been treated to a clearout; inside, garden tools hang on hooks along one wall, the hose coiled neatly in a corner and the half-empty paint tinsâsealed shut with rust years agoâare gone. Itâs true that I advised her to dispose of themâcarefullyâgiven the fire hazard they presented. Still, I canât believe that she actually went ahead and did it.
       Even the small window on the gable wall of the shed is no longer a mesh of web. Through it, I see a square of pale blue sky.
       The spare key is in an upside-down plant pot in the shed, in spite of my concerns about the danger of lax security about the homestead.
       I return to the driveway and check on Dad. He is still there, still in the front passenger seat, singing along to the Frank Sinatra CD I put on for him. Strangers in the Night.
       I unlock the front door. The house feels empty. There is a stillness.
       âIris?â My voice is loud in the quiet, my breath catching the dust motes, so that they lift and swirl in the dead air.
       I walk through the hallway, towards the kitchen. The walls are cluttered with black-and-white photographs in wooden frames. A face in each, mostly elderly. All of them have passed through the Alzheimerâs Society and when they do, Iris asks if she can take their photograph.
       My fatherâs photograph hangs at the end of the hallway. There is a light in his eyes that might be the sunlight glancing through the front door. A trace of his handsomeness still there across the fine bones of his face framed by the neat helmet of his white hair, thicker then.
       He looks happy. No, itâs more than that. He looks present. âIris?â
       The kitchen door moans when I open it. A squirt of WD-40 on the hinges would remedy that.
       A chemical, lemon smell. If I didnât know any better, I would suspect a cleaning product. The surfaces are clear. Bare. So too is the kitchen table, which is where Iris spreads her books, her piles of paperwork, sometimes the contents of her handbag when she is hunting for something. The table is solid oak. I have eaten here many times, and have rarely seen its surface. It would benefit from a sand and varnish.
       In the sitting room, the curtains are drawn and the cushions on the couch look as though theyâve been plumped, a look which would be unremarkable in my house, but is immediately noticeable in Irisâs. Iris loves that couch. She sometimes sleeps on it. I know that because I called in once, early in the morning. She wasnât expecting me. Iris is the only person in the world I would call into without ringing first. She put on the kettle when I arrived. Made a pot of strong coffee. It was the end of Dadâs first week in the home.
       She said sheâd fallen asleep on the couch, when she saw me looking at the blankets and pillows strewn across it. She said sheâd fallen asleep watching The Exorcist.
       But I donât think thatâs why she slept on the couch. I think itâs to do with the stairs. Sometimes I see her, at the Alzheimerâs offices, negotiating the stairs with her crutches. The sticks, she calls them. She hates waiting for the lift. And she makes it look easy, climbing the stairs. But it canât be easy, can it?
       Besides, who falls asleep watching The Exorcist?
       âIris?â I hear an edge of panic in my voice. Itâs not that anything is wrong exactly. Or out of place.
       Except thatâs it. Thereâs nothing out of place. Everything has been put away.
       I walk up the stairs. More photographs on the landing, the bedroom doors all closed. I knock on the door of Irisâs bedroom. âIris?â There is no answer. I open the door. The room is dark. I make out the silhouette of Irisâs bed and, as my eyes adapt to the compromised light, I see that the bed has been stripped, the pillows arranged in two neat stacks by the headboard. There are no books on the nightstand. Maybe she took them with her. To the yoga retreat.
       But she is not at the yoga retreat.
       Panic is like a taste at the back of my throat. The wardrobe door, which usually hangs open in protest at the melee of clothing inside, is shut. The floorboards creak beneath my weight. I stretch my hand out, reach for the handle, and then sort of yank it open as if I am not frightened of what might be inside.
       There is nothing inside. In the draft, empty hangers sway against each other, making a melancholy sound. I close the door and open the drawers of the tallboy on the other side of the room.
       Empty. All of them.
       In the bathroom there is no toothbrush lying on its side on the edge of the sink, spooling a puddle of toothpaste. There are no damp towels draped across the rim of the bath. The potted plantsâwhich flourish here in the steamâare gone.
       I hear a car horn blaring, and rush into the spare room, which Iris uses as her home office. Jerk open the blinds, peer at the driveway below. My car is still there. And so is Dad. I see his mouth moving as he sings along. I rap at the window, but he doesnât look up. When I turn around, I notice a row of black bin bags, neatly tied at the top with twine, leaning against the far wall. They are tagged, with the name of Irisâs local charity shop.
       Now panic travels from my mouth down my throat into my chest, expands there until itâs difficult to breathe. I try to visualize my breath, as Dr. Martin suggests. Try to see the shape it takes in a brown paper bag when I breathe into one.
       I pull Irisâs chair out from under her desk, lower myself onto it. Even the paper clips have been tidied into an old earring box. I pick up two paper clips and attach them together. Good to have something to do with my hands. I reach for a third when I hear a high plink that nearly lifts me out of the chair. I think it came from Irisâs laptop, closed on the desk. An incoming mail or a Tweet or something. I should turn it off. Itâs a fire hazard. A plugged-in computer. I lift the lid of the laptop. On the screen, what looks like a booking form. An Irish Ferries booking form. On top of the keyboard are two white envelopes, warm to the touch. Irisâs large, flamboyant handwriting is unmistakable on both.
       One reads Vera Armstrong. Her motherâs name. The second envelope is addressed to me.
 Excerpted from Rules of the Road by Ciara Geraghty, Copyright © 2019 by Ciara Geraghty. Published by Park Row Books.
Blog tour! Letâs talk about The Kids Are Gonna Ask by Gretchen Anthony. Scroll down for more information as well as an excerpt from the book.
THE KIDS ARE GONNA ASK By Gretchen Anthony On Sale:Â July 28, 2020 Park Row Books CONTEMPORARY FICTION/Mothers &Children/Family/FictionSatire/Humorous American Literarure 978-0778308744; 077830874X $17.99 USD 416 pages
A whip-smart, entertaining novel about twin siblings who become a national phenomenon after launching a podcast to find the biological father they never knew. The death of Thomas and Savannah McClairâs mother turns their world upside down. Raised to be fiercely curious by their grandmother Maggie, the twins become determined to learn the identity of their biological father. And when their mission goes viral, an eccentric producer offers them a dream platform: a fully sponsored podcast called The Kids Are Gonna Ask. To discover the truth, Thomas and Savannah begin interviewing people from their motherâs past and are shocked when the podcast ignites in popularity. As the attention mounts, they get caught in a national debate they never asked forâbut nothing compares to the mayhem that ensues when they find him. Cleverly constructed, emotionally perceptive and sharply funny, The Kids Are Gonna Ask is a rollicking coming-of-age story and a moving exploration of all the ways we can go from lost to found.
Buy Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Kids-Are-Gonna-Ask-Novel/dp/077830874X Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-kids-are-gonna-ask-gretchen-anthony/1131329819 IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780778308744 Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Kids-Gonna-Ask/Gretchen-Anthony/9780778308744?id=7941582454467&_ga=2.251093830.1162369720.1594158248-529522754.1594158248# AppleBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-kids-are-gonna-ask/id1460789878 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Gretchen_Anthony_The_Kids_Are_Gonna_Ask?id=siOYDwAAQBAJ
GRETCHEN ANTHONY is the author of Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners, which was a Midwestern Connections Pick and a best books pick by Amazon, BookBub, PopSugar, and the New York Post. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Medium, and The Write Life, among others. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.
Social Links:
Author website: Â https://www.gretchenanthony.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45297823-the-kids-are-gonna-ask
Twitter: https://twitter.com/granthony
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gretchenanthony.writer/
Excerpt:
Excerpted from The Kids Are Gonna Ask by Gretchen Anthony © 2020 by Gretchen Anthony, used with permission by Park Row Books.
JULY
The house had become an aquariumâone side tank, the other, fingerprint-smeared glassâwith Thomas McClair on the inside looking out. There had been a dozen protests outside their home in less than a week, all for the McClairs toâwhat, enjoy? Critique? Reject? There was no making sense of it.
Tonight, Thomas pulled his desk chair up to the window and kicked his feet onto the sill. Heâd been too anxious to eat dinner, but his mind apparently hadnât notified his stomach, which now growled and cramped. He was seventeen. He could swallow a whole pizza and wash it down with a half-gallon of milk, then go back for more, especially being an athlete. But that was before.
Before the podcast, before the secrets, before the wave of national attention. Now he was just a screwup with a group of strangers swarming the parkway across the street from his house because heâd practically invited them to come.
He deserved to feel awful.
The McClairs had been locked in the house for a week, leaving Thomas short of both entertainment and sanity. He had no choice but to watch the show unfolding outside. Stuck in his beige bedroom, with the Foo Fighters at Wembley poster and the Pinewood Derby blue ribbons, overlooking the front lawn and the driveway and the hand-me-down Volvo neither he nor Savannah had driven since last week. There they stoodâa crowd of milling strangers, all vying for the McClairsâ attention. All these people with their causes. Some who came to help or ogle. More who came to hate.
Thomas brought his face almost to the glass and tried to figure out the newly assembling crowd. Earlier that day, out of all the attention seekers, one guy in particular had stood out. He wore black jeans, black boots, a black beanieâa massive amount of clothing for the kind of day where you could see the summer heat curling up from the pavementâand a black T-shirt that screamed WHOâS PAYING YOU? in pink neon. He also held a leash attached to a life-size German shepherd plushy toy.
Some of the demonstrators had gone home for the night, only to be replaced by a candlelight vigil. And a capella singing. There were only about a dozen people in the group, all women, except for two tall guys in the back lending their baritones to a standard rotation of hymns. âAmazing Graceâ first, followed by âJesus Loves the Little Children.â Now they were into a song Thomas didnât know, but the longer he listened, he figured hundred-to-one odds that the lyrics consisted of no more than three words, repeated over and over. They hit the last note and raised their candles high above their heads. By daaaaaaaaaaaayyyy.
âNo more,â he begged into the glass. âI canât take any more.â
A week. Of this.
Of protests, rallies and news crews with their vans and satellites and microphones.
Of his sister, Savannah, locked in her room, refusing to speak to him.
Of his grandmother Maggie in hers, sick with worry.
Of findingâthen losingâhis biodad, the missing piece of his motherâs story. And his own.
Thomas was left to deal with it all. Because heâd started it. And because he was a finisher. And most of all, because it wasnât over yet.
âIt is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.â â Vincent van GoghÂ
đž ig: frenchflaps_and_deckleedges
Review: All of Us are Birds and Some of Us Have Broken Wings by Ojo Taiye
This chapbook was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for a fair review. All opinions are my own.
In Taiyeâs words: "I think itâs an important act of resistance to grieve something you've never seenâto witness, record & recite a projection that we have not experienced. I do hope at some level, the reader can connect with the poems, or find things that resonate with them on a human level."âOjo Taiye 2019 KINGDOMS IN THE WILD POETRY PRIZE WINNER: OJO TAIYE is a young Nigerian poet. In the winning chapbook All of Us Are Birds & Some of Us Have Broken Wings Ojo Taiye utilizes the elegy in the inquisition of identity, heritage, mental health, language and memory.Â
Genre: Poetry
Rating: 5/5 stars
Review: This wasn't an easy or fast read for me. It might be chapbook of 48 pages, but the stories told in the poetry felt too important to me, so I found myself following along with the titles of the articles that a few of the poems are accompanied with, and finding out more. That's when the words of Ojo Taiye got even heavier, and I had to take a break to process. The poetry is beautifully written. It's heavy, poignant, and eye opening both to what poetry can be, and what's happening in a part of the world that seems so far away from mine. Ojo Taiye plays around with the structure and style, sometimes focusing on emotions only, sometimes talking as if there are no emotions involved. That change of perspective, along with the vividly expressed metaphors, make the chapbook feel dynamic. For me, this was impossible to put down. It's an experience that I'm glad I had. It moved me. I recommend it.
Blog tour! I present to you some info and an excerpt from Sheâs Faking It by Kristin Rockaway.
Sheâs Faking It Kristin Rockaway FICTION/Romance/Contemporary Trade Paperback | Graydon House Books On Sale: 6/30/2020 978152580464 $15.99 $19.99 CAN
You canât put a filter on reality. Bree Bozeman isnât exactly pursuing the life of her dreams. Then again, she isnât too sure what those dreams are. After dropping out of college, sheâs living a pretty chill life in the surf community of Pacific Beach, San DiegoâŠif âchillâ means delivering food as a GrubGetter, and if it means âuneventfulâ. But when Bree starts a new Instagram account â @breebythesea â one of her posts gets a signal boost from none other than wildly popular self-help guru Demi DiPalma, owner of a lifestyle brand empire. Suddenly, Bree just might be a rising star in the world of Instagram influencing. Is this the direction her life has been lacking? Itâs not a career choice sheâd ever seriously considered, but maybe itâs a sign from the universe. After all, Demiâs the real deal⊠right? Everything is lining up for Bree: life goals, career, and even a blossoming romance with the chiseled guy next door, surf star Trey Cantu. But things are about to go sideways fast, and even the perfect filterâs not gonna fix it. Instagram might be free, but when your life looks flawless on camera, whatâs the cost?
BUY LINKS:
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Kristin Rockaway is a native New Yorker with an insatiable case of wanderlust. After working in the IT industry for far too many years, she traded the city for the surf and chased her dreams out to Southern California, where she spends her days happily writing stories instead of software. When she's not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and son, and planning her next big vacation.
SOCIAL LINKS:
http://kristinrockaway.com/ Facebook: /KristinRockaway Twitter: @KristinRockaway Instagram: @KristinRockway
Excerpt
From Chapter Two
âDonât these books make your purse really heavy? Thereâs gotta be some app where you can store all this information.â
âStudies show youâre more likely to remember things youâve written by hand, with physical pen and paper.â She reached across my lap and opened the glove compartment, removing a notebook with an antiqued photograph of a vintage luxury car printed on the cover. âFor example, this is my auto maintenance log. Maybe if youâd kept one of these, like I told you to, we wouldnât be in this predicament right now.â
I loved Natasha, I really did. She was responsible and generous, and without her Iâd likely be far worse off than I already was, which was a horrifying thought to consider. But at times like this, I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake the shit out of her.
âA maintenance log wouldnât have helped me.â
âYes, it would have. Organization is about more than decluttering your home. Itâs about decluttering your mind. Making lists, keeping recordsâthese are all ways to help you get your life in order. If youâd had a maintenance log, this problem wouldnât have caught you off guard in the middle of your delivery shift. Youâd have seen it coming, andââ
âI saw it coming.â
âWhat?â
âThis didnât catch me off guard. The check engine light came on two weeks ago.â Or maybe it was three.
âThen why didnât you take it to the mechanic?â She blinked, genuinely confused. Everything was so cut-and dried with her. When a car needed to be serviced, of course you called the mechanic.
That is, if you could afford to pay the repair bill.
Fortunately, she put two and two together without making me say it out loud. âOh,â she murmured, then bit her lip. I could almost hear the squeak and clank of wheels turning in her head as she tried to piece together the solution to this problem. No doubt it included me setting up a journal or logbook of some sort, though we both knew that would be pointless. The last time sheâd tried to set me up with a weekly budget planner, I gave up on day two, when I realized I could GrubGetter around the clock for the rest of my life and still never make enough money to get current on the payments for my student loans. You know, for that degree Iâd never finished.
But Natasha was a determined problem solver. It said so in her business bio: âNatasha DeAngelis, Certified Professional OrganizerÂź, is a determined problem solver with a passion for sorting, purging, arranging, and containerizing.â My life was a perpetual mess, and though she couldnât seem to be able to clean it up, that didnât stop her from trying. Over and over and over again.
âIâll pay for the repairs,â she said.
âNo.â I shook my head, fending off the very big part of me that wanted to say yes. âI canât take any money from you.â
âItâs fine,â she said. âBusiness is booming. Iâve got so much work right now that Iâve actually had to turn clients away. And ever since Al introduced that new accelerated orthodontic treatment, his office has been raking it in. We can afford to help you.â
âI know.â Obviously, my sister and her family werenât hurting for cash. Aside from her wildly successful organizing business, her husband, Al, ran his own orthodontics practice. They owned a four-bedroom house, leased luxury cars, and took triannual vacations to warm, sunny places like Maui and Tulum. They had a smart fridge in their kitchen that was undoubtedly worth more than my nonfunctioning car.
But my sister wasnât a safety net, and I needed to stop treating her like one. Sheâd already done so much for me. More than any big sister should ever have to do.
âI just canât,â I said.
âWell, do you really have any other choice?â There was an edge to Natashaâs voice now. âIf you donât have a car, how are you going to work?â
âIâll figure something out.â The words didnât sound very convincing, even to my own ears. For the past four years, all Iâd done was deliver food. I had no other marketable skills, no references, no degree.
I was a massive failure.
Tears pooled in my eyes. Natasha sighed again.
âLook,â she said, âmaybe itâs time to admit you need to come up with a solid plan for your life. Youâve been in a downward spiral ever since Rob left.â
She had a point. Iâd never been particularly stable, but things got a whole lot worse seven months earlier, when my live-in ex-boyfriend, Rob, had abruptly announced he was ending our three-year relationship, quitting his job, and embarking on an immersive ayahuasca retreat in the depths of the Peruvian Amazon.
âIâve lost my way,â heâd said, his eyes bloodshot from too many hits on his vape pen. âThe Divine Mother Shakti at the Temple of Eternal Light can help me find myself again.â
âWhat?â Iâd been incredulous. âWhere is this coming from?â
Heâd unearthed a book from beneath a pile of dirty clothes on our bed and handed it to meâPsychedelic Healers: An Exploratory Journey of the Soul, by Shakti Rebecca Rubinstein.
âWhat is this?â
âItâs the book that changed my life,â heâd said. âIâm ready for deep growth. New energy.â
Then heâd moved his belongings to a storage unit off the side of the I-8, and left me to pay the full cost of our monthly rent and utilities on my paltry GrubGetter income.
I told myself this situation was only temporary, that Rob would return as soon as he realized that hallucinating in the rainforest wasnât going to lead him to some higher consciousness. But I hadnât heard from him since he took off on that direct flight from LAX to Lima. At this point, it was probably safe to assume he was never coming back.
Which was probably for the best. Itâs not exactly like Rob was Prince Charming or anything. But being with him was better than being alone. At least Iâd had someone to split the bills with.
âHonestly,â she continued, âI canât stand to see you so miserable anymore. Happiness is a choice, Bree. Choose happy.â
Of all Natashaâs pithy sayings, âChoose happyâ was the one I hated most. It was printed on the back of her business cards in faux brush lettering, silently accusing each potential client of being complicit in their own misery. If they paid her to clean out their closets, though, they could apparently experience unparalleled joy.
âThatâs bullshit, and you know it.â
She scowled. âIt is not.â
âIt is, actually. Shitty things happen all the time and we have no choice in the matter. I didnât choose to be too broke to fix my car. I work really hard, but this job doesnât pay well. And I didnât choose for Rob to abandon me to go find himself in the Amazon, either. He made that choice for us.â
I almost mentioned the shittiest thing that had ever happened to Natasha or to me, a thing neither of us had chosen. But I stopped myself before the words rolled off my lips. This evening was bad enough without rehashing the details of our motherâs death.
âSometimes things happen to us that are beyond our control,â Natasha said, her voice infuriatingly calm. âBut we can control how we react to it. Focus on what you can control. And it does no good to dwell on the past, either. Donât look back, Breeââ
âBecause thatâs not where youâre going. Yes, I know. Youâve said that before.â About a thousand times.
She took a deep breath, most likely to prepare for a lengthy lecture on why itâs important to stay positive and productive in the face of adversity, but then a large tow truck lumbered onto the cul-de-sac and she got out of the car to flag him down.
Grateful for the interruption, I ditched the casserole on her dashboard and walked over to where the driver had double-parked alongside my car.
âWhatâs the problem?â he asked, hopping down from the cab.
âIt wonât start,â I said, to which Natasha quickly followed up with, âThe check engine light came on several weeks ago, but the car has not been serviced yet.â
He grunted and popped the hood, one thick filthy hand stroking his braided beard as he surveyed the engine. Another grunt, then he asked for the keys and tried to start it, only to hear the same sad click and whine as before.
âItâs not the battery.â He leaned his head out of the open door. âWhen was the last time you changed your timing belt?â
âUh⊠I donât know.â
Natasha shook her head and mouthed, Maintenance log! in my direction but I pretended not to see.
The driver got out and slammed the hood shut. âWell, this thing is hosed.â
âHosed?â My heart thrummed in my chest. âWhat does that mean? It canât be fixed?â
He shrugged, clearly indifferent to my crisis-in-progress. âCanât say for sure. Your mechanic can take a closer look and let you know. Where do you want me to tow it?â
I pulled out my phone to look up the address of the mechanic near my apartment down in Pacific Beach. But Natasha answered before I could google it up.
âJust take it to Encinitas Auto Repair,â she said. âItâs on Second and F.â
âYou got it,â he said, then retreated to his truck to fiddle with some chains.
Natasha avoided my gaze. Instead, she focused on calling a guy named Jerry, who presumably worked at this repair shop, and told him to expect âa really old Civic thatâs in rough shape,â making sure to specify, âItâs not mine, itâs my sisterâs.â
I knew she was going to pay for the repairs. It made me feel icky, taking yet another handout from my big sister. But ultimately, she was right. What other choice did I have?
The two of us stayed quiet while the driver finished hooking up my car. After heâd towed it away down the cul-desac and out of sight, Natasha turned to me. âDo you want to come over? Izzyâs got piano lessons in fifteen minutes, you can hear how good she is now.â
Even though I did miss my niece, there was nothing I wanted to do more than go home, tear off these smelly clothes, and cry in solitude. âIâll take a rain check. Thanks again for coming to get me.â
âOf course.â She started poking at her phone screen. A moment later, she said, âYour Lyft will be here in four minutes. His name is Neil. He drives a black Sentra.â A quick kiss on my cheek and she was hustling back to her SUV.
As I watched Natasha drive away, I wishedânot for the first timeâthat I could be more like her: competent, organized, confident enough in my choices to believe I could choose to be happy. Sometimes I felt like she had twenty years on me, instead of only six. So maybe instead of complaining, I shouldâve started taking her advice.
 Excerpted from Sheâs Faking It by Kristin Rockaway, Copyright © 2020 by Allison Amini. Published by Graydon House Books.
Let me tell you more about That Summer in Maine by Brianna Wolfson, and share with you an exclusive excerpt, all as part of the blog tour.
THAT SUMMER IN MAINE By Brianna Wolfson On Sale:Â June 23, 2020 MIRA CONTEMPORARY FICTION 978-0778351238; 0778351238 $16.99 USD 320 pages
A novel about mothers and daughters, about taking chances, about exploding secrets and testing the boundaries of family
Years ago, during a certain summer in Maine, two young women, unaware of each other, met a charismatic man at a craft fair and each had a brief affair with him. For Jane it was a chance to bury her recent pain in raw passion and redirect her life. For Susie it was a fling that gave her troubled marriage a way forward.
Now, sixteen years later, the family lives these women have made are suddenly upended when their teenage girls meet as strangers on social media. They concoct a plan to spend the summer in Maine with the man who is their biological father. Their determination puts them on a collision course with their mothers, who must finally meet and acknowledge their shared past and join forces as they risk losing their only daughters to a man they barely know.
Buy Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/That-Summer-Maine-Brianna-Wolfson/dp/0778351238 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/that-summer-in-maine-brianna-wolfson/1132648661 IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780778351238 Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/That-Summer-Maine/Brianna-Wolfson/9780778351238?id=7461743347313 AppleBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/that-summer-in-maine/id1474109100Â Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Brianna_Wolfson_That_Summer_in_Maine?id=AQAAAEBstyX3WM
Brianna Wolfson is a New York native living in San Francisco. Her narrative nonfiction has been featured on Medium, Upworthy and The Moth. She buys a lottery ticket every Friday.
Social Links: Author website: https://www.briannawolfson.com/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51798228-that-summer-in-maine
Excerpted from That Summer in Maine by Brianna Wolfson © 2020 by Brianna Wolfson, used with permission by MIRA books.
 ONE YEAR AGO
All mothers wish a perfect love story upon their daughters. The wish that their daughters will grow up wrapped in love and that one day they will go on to wrap others in love. They wish for their love to be simple and pure and uncomplicated.
As a single mother, Jane did everything she could to upÂhold that perfect love for her daughter, Hazel. At least, sheâd tried.
Today, Jane gave birth to twin boys with a man she had recently fallen in love with and married. In the postbirthÂing haze, Jane could taste the salt on her upper lip where her sweat was now dried. The fiery heat deep within her body was starting to subside and her spine still felt sore and twisted. Jane held one twin against her bare chest while the other was tucked into the crease of her husband Camâs arm. Jane motioned for him to come closer and embrace the start of their family. âI love you,â she said and kissed him and then the two babies gently. She looked up to see if she could find her daughter. The back of Hazelâs shoulder was just visible in the doorway as she stood cross-armed, looking away from the room. Hazel, at fourteen years old, looked both young and old for her age all at once standing there.
âCome in, honey, and meet your brothers,â Jane said gently.
Hazel turned around slowly, her black hair like a veil in front of her eyes. She shuffled toward her mother without lifting her feet and leaned over her bed. Jane brought her free arm up toward Hazelâs face and tucked her daughterâs hair behind her ear, revealing her eyes of different colors. Her lashes were damp, and her eyesâone green and one hazelâwere clear and dewy. A mother can always tell when her child has been crying. Jane leaned over to kiss Hazelâs cheek, but her sudden movement startled her newborn, who let out a brief wail that ended when Jane returned her body to its original position.
Hazelâs shoulders fell. Hazel wanted that kiss. Perhaps needed it.
âMeet your brother Griffin,â Jane whispered to Hazel, tilting her arm ever so slightly so that her daughter could see her brotherâs face. âAnd thatâs Trevor over there.â Cam took a few steps toward Hazel and smiled with pride.
âI thought we were going to name him August,â Hazel challenged.
Jane chuckled.
âLast-minute change. Give them both a big kiss, big sis.â
Hazel rolled her eyes and placed her lips on each baby and then huffed out of the room without another word. To Jane, her family finally felt full. But she could tell that for Hazel, something had emptied.
In her happiness of sharing this moment with Cam and welcoming her two new healthy babies, Jane had neglected to consider the impact on Hazelâs perfect love story. Cam came over and kissed her forehead.
âI love this family,â he said.
Jane let that sink in. Deep. And then wondered if he was including Hazel in his definition of family. And couldnât deny a shift within her own heart. It had expanded and made room for two more babies. And these two new sons deserved their own pure, simple, uncomplicated love story. And Jane would give it to them wholeheartedly. She felt resolute and focused about it.
Indeed, she forgot to wonder what it would mean for HaÂzelâs happiness. For her sense of family and her sense of self.
Bookshelf Goals
Blog tour! Scroll down for more information and an excerpt from The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season by Molly Fader!
THE BITTER AND SWEET OF CHERRY SEASON Author: Molly Fader ISBN: 9781525804557 Publication Date: June 6, 2020 Publisher: Graydon House Books
For fans of Robyn Carr, commercial women's fiction about three generations of women who come together at the family orchard to face secrets from the past and learn to believe in the power of hope and forgiveness.
In cherry season, anything is possible... Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from her late-mother's stories. So when she arrives at the Northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her ten-year-old daughter in tow, she's not sure if she'll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met. Hope's aunt, Peg, has lived in the Orchard House all her life, though the property has seen better days. She agrees to take Hope in if, in exchange, Hope helps with the cherry harvestânot exactly Hope's specialty, but she's out of options. As Hope works the orchard alongside her aunt, daughter, and a kind man she finds increasingly difficult to ignore, a new life begins to blossom. But the mistakes of the past are never far behind, and soon the women will find themselves fighting harder than ever for their family roots and for each other.
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Molly Fader is the author of The McAvoy Sisters Book of Secrets. She is also the award-winning author of more than forty romance novels under the pennames Molly O'Keefe and M. O'Keefe. She grew up outside of Chicago and now lives in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter, @mollyokwrites.
Author Website: http://mollyfader.com/ TWITTER: @MollyOKwrites FB: @MollyFader Insta: @mokeefeauthor Goodreads: Â https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18435981.Molly_Fader
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
 HOPE
       Night up in Northern Michigan was no joke.
Hope had never seen a dark so dark. It had heft and dimension, like she was driving right into an abyss. She thought about waking up Tink in the back to show her, but the girl had finally fallen asleep and she needed the rest. Â
And Hope needed a break.
Who knew traveling with a completely silent, angry and traumatized ten-year-old could be so exhausting?
Hopeâs phone had died when she got off the highway about twenty minutes ago. In those last few minutes of battery she had tried to memorize the directions:
Left on Murray Street.
Slight right onto County Road 72.
Your destination is five miles on the right.
But County Road 72 wasnât well marked and now she feared she was lost. Well, for sure she was lost; in the grand scheme of things she was totally off the map.
But she was clinging to the one ratty thread of hope she had left in her hand.
And then just as that tiny bit of thread started to slip out of her fingers, from the murk emerged a blue sign.
County Road 72.
The road took a long arcing right into the dark, and she unrolled her window, trying to keep herself awake. Adrenaline and gas station coffee could only do so much against two sleepless nights.
Her yawn was so wide it split her lip. Again. Copper-tasting blood pooled in her mouth.
âShit,â she breathed and pressed the last of the napkins against her mouth. She was even out of napkins.
In the back, Tink woke up. Hope heard the change in her breathing. The sudden gasp like she was waking up from a nightmare.
Or into one. Hard to say.
âHey,â Hope said, looking over her shoulder into the shadows of the back seat. Her daughterâs pale face like a moon slid into the space between the driver and passenger seats. Â âWeâre almost there.â Hope sounded like they were about to drive up to the gates of Disney World.
Tink rubbed her eyes.
      âDid you see the stars?â Hopeâs voice climbed into that range sheâd recently developed. Dementedly cheerful. Stepford Mom on helium. She winced at the sound of it. That wasnât her. It wasnât how she talked to Tink. And yet she couldnât tune her voice back to normal. âThere are so many of them. I donât think Iâve ever seen so many stars.â
      Tink ducked her head to look out the windshield and then turned to cock her head at an angle so she could look out the passenger windows.
      Theyâd gone to an exhibit about the constellations at the Science Center a year ago and Tink still talked about it. Pointing up at Sirius like sheâd discovered it herself.
âArenât those the pieties?â Hope got the name wrong on purpose, hoping for a snotty-toned correction from her miniature astronomer. Or at least a throat-clearing scoff.
      But no.
      âSooner or later youâre going to talk to me,â she said. âYouâre going to open that mouth and all the words you havenât said all day are gonna come pouring out.â
      Silence.
      âDo you want to ask me questions about where weâre going?â They were, after all, heading deep into Northern Michigan to a place she and Tink had never been, and Hope had never told her about until today.
      Tink rubbed her eyes again.
      âOr maybe what happenedâŠtonight?â Her gaze bounced between Tink and the road.
      When youâre older, youâll understand. When youâre a mom, youâll understand. She wanted to say that to her daughter, but she herself barely understood any of what had happened the last two days. Â
      Still silence.
      Hope tried a different angle. âIâm telling you, Tink. I know you and you canât keep this up much longer. Iâll bet you ten bucks you say something to me in fiveâŠfourâŠthreeâŠtwoâŠâ She pulled in a breath that tasted like tears and blood.
Please, honey. Please.
âOne.â She sighed. âFine. You win.â
Her beat-up hatchback bounced over the uneven asphalt and Tink crawled from the backseat into the front, her elbow digging into Hopeâs shoulder, her flip-flopped foot kicking her in the thigh.
The degree of parenting it would take to stop Tink from doing that, or to discuss the potential dangers and legality of it, was completely beyond her. She was beyond pick your battles, into some new kind of wild west motherhood. Pretend there were no battles.
They drove another five minutes until finally, ahead, there was a golden halo of light over the trees along the side of the road, and Hope slowed down. A gravel driveway snaked through the darkness and she took it on faith that it had been five miles.
âThis is it.â Â
Please let this be it.
The driveway opened up and there was a yellow-brick, two-story house.
The Orchard House. That was what Mom called it in the few stories sheâd told about growing up here. Actually, the words she used were The Goddamn Orchard House.
It was a grand old-fashioned place with second-story windows like empty eyes staring down at them. White gingerbread nestled up in the corners of the roof, and there was a big wide porch with requisite rocking chairs.
Seriously, it was so charming, it could have been fake.
The car rolled to a stop and Hope put it in park. Her maniacal new voice failed her, and she just sat there. Silent.
Suddenly the front door opened and a dog â a big one, with big teeth â came bounding out. Cujo stopped at the top of the steps and started barking. Behind the dog came a woman in a blue robe carrying a shotgun.
Tink made a high panicked sound in her voice, climbing up in her seat.
Hopeâs impulse was to turn the car around and get out of there. The problem was there was nowhere to turn around to. They had no place left to go.
âItâs okay, honey,â Hope lied. She went as far as to put her hand over Tinkâs bony knee, the knob of it fitting her palm like a baseball. âEverythingâs going to be all right.â
More desperate than brave, Hope popped open the door. The dogâs bark, unmuffled by steel and glass, was honest-to-god blood curdling. âHi!â she yelled, trying to be both cheerful and loud enough to be heard over the barking.
âGet your hands up,â the woman on the porch shouted. Â
Hope shoved her hands up through the crack between the door and the car and did a kind of jazz hands with her fingers. Â
âWhat do you want?â the woman asked.
âAre you Pegââ
âI canât hear you.â
She stood up, her head reaching up over the door. âAre you Peg?â
âNever mind, me. Who the hell are you?â She pointed the business end of the gun toward them.
Hope quickly side-stepped away from the car door, and Tink reached across the driverâs seat and slammed it shut.
The heavy thud of the engaged lock was unmistakeable.
âYou donât know meââ
âNo shit!â
âMy name is Hope,â she said.
The gun lowered and the womanâs face changed. From anger to something more careful. âHope?â
âYeah. Iâm Deniseâs girl. IâmâŠwell, youâre my aunt?â
 Excerpted from The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season by Molly Fader, Copyright © 2020 by Molly Fader. Published by Graydon House Books.
Blog tour! Iâm offering you information and an excerpt from Out Now by Saundra Mitchell.
Out Now: Queer We Go Again! By Saundra Mitchell On Sale:Â May 26, 2020 Inkyard Press YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Diversity & Multicultural | YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Romance/LGBT 9781335018267; 1335018263 $18.99 USD 416 pages
A follow-up to the critically acclaimed All Out anthology, Out Now features seventeen new short stories from amazing queer YA authors. Vampires crash promâŠaliens run from the governmentâŠa presidentâs daughter comes into her ownâŠa true romantic tries to soften the heart of a cynical social media influencerâŠa selkie and the sea call out to a lost soul. Teapots and barbershopsâŠskateboards and VW vansâŠStreet Fighter and Aresâs sword: Out Now has a story for every reader and surprises with each turn of the page! This essential and beautifully written modern-day collection features an intersectional and inclusive slate of authors and stories.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Now-Queer-We-Again/dp/1335018263 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/out-now-saundra-mitchell/1133810272 IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781335018267 Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Out-Now/Saundra-Mitchell/9781335018267?id=4861510030088 AppleBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/out-now/id1481649552 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Saundra_Mitchell_Out_Now?id=0SeyDwAAQBAJ
Saundra Mitchell has been a phone psychic, a car salesperson, a denture deliverer and a layout waxer. She's dodged trains, endured basic training and hitchhiked from Montana to California. She teaches herself languages, raises children and makes paper for fun. She is the author of Shadowed Summer and The Vespertine series, the upcoming novelization of The Prom musical, and the editor of Defy the Dark. She always picks truth; dare is too easy. Visit her online at www.saundramitchell.com.
Author website: wwww.saundramitchell.com Facebook: Â https://www.facebook.com/pages/Saundra-Mitchell/164136390442617 Twitter: @saundramitchell Instagram: @smitchellbooks Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52172088-out-now
Excerpt:
KICK. PUSH. COAST. By Candice Montgomery
Excerpted from OUT NOW: Queer We Go Again! Edited by Saundra Mitchell, used with permission by Inkyard Press, © 2020 by Inkyard Press.
 Every day, same time, same place, she appears and doesnât say a word.
Well, she doesnât just appear. She takes a bus. You know she takes a bus because you see her get off the bus right in front of 56th Street, just in front of the park where you skate.
You know she takes a bus and gets off right in front of the park at 56th Street because you are always at the park, wait-ing to catch a glance of her.
Sheâher appearanceâis a constant. Unlike your sexuality, all bendy like the way your bones got after yesterdayâs failed backside carve.
Bisexualpansexualdemisexualpanromanticenby all bleeding bleeding-bleedingâŠinto one another.
That drum of an organ inside your chest tells you to just be patient. But now, here you are and there she is and you canât help yourself.
Sheâs beautiful.
And so far out of your league.
Youâre not even sure what she does here every day, but you probably shouldnât continue to watch her while trying to nail a Caballerial for the first time. Losing focus there is the kind of thing that lends itself to unforgiving injuries, like that time you broke your leg in six places on the half-pipe or the time you bit clean through your bottom lip trying to take down a 360 Pop Shove It.
Youâre still tasting blood to this very day. Soâs your skate-board. That one got split clean in half.
She looks up at you from underneath light brown lashes that seem too long to be real. She reminds you of a Heelflip. You donât know her well but you imagine that, at first, sheâs a pretty complicated girl, before you get good enough to really know her. You assume this just given the way her hair hangs down her back in a thick, beachy plait, the way yours never could.
Not since you chopped it all off.
Thatâs not a look for a lady, your mom says repeatedly. But youâve never been very femme and a few extra inches of hair plus that pink dress Mom bought you wonât change that.
You hate that dress. That dress makes you look like fondant. Someone nails a Laserflip right near where youâre standing and almost wipes out.
Stop staring. You could just go introduce yourself to her.
But what would you say?
Hi, Iâm Dustyn and I really want to kiss you but Iâm so confused about who I am and how am I supposed to introduce myself to you if I canât even get my label right, oh, and also, you make me forget my own name.
And in a perfect world, she would make eyes at you. Sheâd make those eyes at you and melt your entire fucking world in the way only girls ever can.
Hi, Dustyn, Iâm in love with you. Eyelashes. All batting eye-lashes.
No. No, the conversation probably wouldnât go that way. Be nice if it did though. Be nice if anything at all could go your way when it comes to romance.
You push into a 360 ollie while riding fakie and biff it so bad, you wish you possessed whatever brain cells are the ones that tell you when to quit.
If that conversation did go your way, on a realistic scale, sheâd watch you right back. You would nail that Caballerial.
Take a break. Breathe. Breathe breathe breathe. Try some-thing else for a sec.
Varial Heelflip. Wipe out.
Inward Heelflip. Gnarly spill.
Backside 180 Heelflip. Game, set, matchâyouâre finished. That third fail happens right in front of her and you play it off cool. Get up. Donât even give a second thought to your battle wounds. Youâre at the skate park on 56th Street because thereâs more to get into. Which means, youâre not the only idiot limping with a little drug called determination giving you momentum.
Falling is the point. Failing is the point. Getting better and changing your game as a skater is the point. Change.
But what if things were on your side? What if youâd stuck with that first label? What if Bisexual felt like a good fit and never changed?
Well, then youâd probably be landing all these 180s.
If bisexual just fit, youâd probably have been able to hold on to your spot in that Walk-In Closet. But it doesnât fit. It doesnât fit which kind of sucks because at Thanksgiving din-ner two years ago, your cousin Damita just had to open her big mouth and tell the family you âmess with girls.â Just had to tell the family, a forkful of homemade mac and cheese headed into said mouth, that you are âhalf a gay.â
That went over well. Grams wouldnât let you sit on her plastic-lined couches for the rest of the night. Your great-uncle Damian told her gay is contagious. She took it to heart.
No offense, baby. Canât have all that on my good couches. You glance up and across the park, memories knocking
things through your head like a good stiff wind, and you find her taking a seat.
Oh.
Oh, she never does this. She never gets comfortable. Sheâs changing things up. Youâre not the only one.
Maybe she plans to stay a while.
You love that sheâs changing things up. You think it feels like a sign. Itâs like sheâs riding Goofy-Foot today. Riding with her right foot as dominant.
The first time you changed things up that way, you ended up behind the bleachers, teeth checking with a trans boy named Aaron. It felt so right that you needed to give it a name.
Google called it pansexual. That one stuck. You didnât bother to explain that one to the family, though. They were just starting to learn bisexual didnât mean you were gay for only half the year.
You pop your board and give the Caballerial another go.
It does not want you. You donât stick this one either.
If pansexual had stuck, youâd introduce yourself to the beautiful girl with a smaller apology on your tongue. Hi, Iâm Dustyn, Iâve only changed my label the one time, just slightly, but Iâm still me and Iâd really love to take you out.
And the beautiful girl would glance at your scraped elbows and the bruised-up skin showing through the knee holes in your ripped black skinny jeans. Sheâd see you and say, Hi, small, slight changes are my favorite. And then sheâd lace her bubble-gum-nail-polished hand with yours.
But you changed your label after that, too. It was fine for a while. Your best friend, Hollis, talked you through the symp-toms of demisexuality.
No wonder holding the beautiful girlâs hand seems so much more heart-palpitating than anything else. A handhold. So simple. Just like an ollie.
You take a fast running start, throwing your board down, and end up on a vert skate, all empty bowl-shaped pools that are so smooth, your wheels only make a small whisper against them.
A whisper is what you got that first time you realized sex was not for you. Not with just anyone. This wasâŠmmm, probably your biggest revelation.
It was like youâd been feeding your body Big Macs three times a day and suddenlyâa vegetable!
Tic-tacking is when you use your entire body to turn the board from one side to the other. Itâs a game of lower body strength, but also a game of knowing your weight and know-ing your board. You are not a tic-tac kind of girl.
You are not a girl at all. You are justâŠyou.
That.
That oneâs sticking forever. You know it all the way through to your gut.
You make one more attempt, which probably isnât super wise because you are so close to the spot where sheâs sitting that not only will she see you bite the dust, but sheâll hear that nasty grunt you make when you meet the ground.
You coast by.
The friction vibrates up through your bearings and you know youâre going too fast because you start to feel a little bit of a speed-wobble, that lovely, untimely, oscillatory behavior that means bro, you are about to lose control.
And you hate that word. Control. You hate that word be-cause it is so very rare that you have any. Over your life, your sexuality, your gender, your pronouns, your heartbeat when youâre around your beautiful girl.
But then you do.
You gain control. And you nail that Caballerial.
And the three guys whoâve been watching you make an ass of yourself all afternoon pop their boards up, hold them over their heads and let out wolf shouts.
And youâre smiling so hard. You get like that when you nail a particularly difficult one. Youâre smiling so hard you donât notice the someone standing behind you.
Beautiful girl. You donât even want to control your smile here.
âYou did it,â she says.
Blog tour! Today I present you an excerpt from Breath Like Water from Anna Jarzab.
Breath Like Water by Anna Jarzab On Sale Date: May 19, 2020 9781335050236, 133505023X Hardcover $18.99 USD, $23.99 CAD Young Adult Fiction / Sports & Recreation / Water Sports Ages 13 And Up 416 pages
This beautifully lyrical contemporary novel features an elite teen swimmer with Olympic dreams, plagued by injury and startled by unexpected romance, who struggles to balance training with family and having a life. For fans of Sarah Dessen, Julie Murphy and Miranda Kenneally. Susannah Ramos has always loved the water. A swimmer whose early talent made her a world champion, Susannah was poised for greatness in a sport that demands so much of its young. But an inexplicable slowdown has put her Olympic dream in jeopardy, and Susannah is fighting to keep her career afloat when two important people enter her life: a new coach with a revolutionary training strategy, and a charming fellow swimmer named Harry Matthews. As Susannah begins her long and painful climb back to the top, her friendship with Harry blossoms into passionate and supportive love. But Harry is facing challenges of his own, and even as their bond draws them closer together, other forces work to tear them apart. As she struggles to balance her needs with those of the people who matter most to her, Susannah will learn the cost--and the beauty--of trying to achieve something extraordinary.
BUY LINKS:
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Anna Jarzab is a Midwesterner turned New Yorker. She lives and works in New York City and is the author of such books as Red Dirt, All Unquiet Things, The Opposite of Hallelujah, and the Many-Worlds series. Visit her online at annajarzab.com and on Twitter, @ajarzab.
SOCIAL LINKS: Instagram: @ajarzab Twitter: @ajarzab Author website: https://www.annajarzab.com/
Excerpt:
PROLOGUE
1,063 days until US Olympic Team Trials
FINA World Aquatics Championships
Budapest, Hungary
Womenâs 200m Intermediate Medley Finals
The water is breathing. At least, thatâs how it seems. Iâve alÂways imagined it as a living thing, benevolent and obedient and faithful. A gentle beast at first, like a pony, but over time something faster. A thoroughbred, maybe. A cheetah sprintÂing across a flat, grassy plain.
But, of course, the water isnât breathingâitâs rippling, with the echoing wakes of eight elite swimmers as they poured themselves into one last swim, one final chance to grab the golden ring. Now theyâre gone, and in half a minute, Iâll be right where they were, reaching for my own shot at glory.
This is my first international competition. I turned fourteen in May, so Iâm the youngest member of Team USA. In JanuÂary, nobody knew who I was, but by my birthday Iâd broken the womenâs 200 IM record in my age group twice and finÂished first in the same eventâmy bestâat World ChampiÂonship Trials. My summer of speed earned me a lane here in Budapest. All I have to do now is not screw it up.
Earlier, in the semifinals, I clocked my fastest time ever in this event, and Iâm coming into finals seeded third overall. I have to beat that by almost a second if I want to win.
The announcer introduces me over the loudspeaker. I wave to the crowd but my mind is far away, already in the pool, charting out my swim. I shake out my limbs and jump to get my blood pumping, then climb onto the block. I adjust my goggles, my cap, my shoulders. These little rituals feel solid and reliable. The rest is as insubstantial as a dream youâre aware of while youâre dreaming it.
âTake your markââ
The signal sounds and Iâm in the pool. My mind lags half a second behind my body, registering every breath, stroke and turn only after it happens.
First: butterfly, arms soaring over the water, fingertips skimming the surface.
Then: backstroke, concentrating on the lines in the ceiling while waves boil around me.
After that: breaststroke, stretching, pulling, kicking, gliding.
And finally: freestyle, bursting off the wall like a racehorse released from a starting gate.
I go six strokes without taking a breath and snap into my highest gear for a mad-dash last push, coasting along the raÂzorâs edge of my perfectly timed taper. No thinking, just doing. No drag, only flight.
My hand touches the wall, and my eyes begin to burn. Itâs over. Instinctively, I look for my coach. Daveâs on the sideÂlines, frowning, and I think: I blew it.
He notices me watching and breaks into a rare grin. HopeÂful, I turn to the board. I canât find my name, so I force myÂself to look at the top spot. There it is: RAMOS. Number freaking one.
I whoop and blow kisses at the people in the stands. Theyâre on their feet, chanting, âUSA! USA!â American flags billow like sheets.
It cost my parents a fortune to fly themselves and my sisÂter all the way to Europe on such short notice, credit cards stretched to their limits. I canât even see them in the crowd, but I know theyâre somewhere in that jubilant crush of people. My heart feels so full itâs like a balloon about to pop.
As soon as Iâm out of the water, Dave wraps me in a bear hug.
âHow do you feel?â he asks.
âGreat!â I sigh and shake out my arms. âTired.â
âGold, Susannah,â he says. His voice is tight with someÂthing like awe.
Gold. It doesnât feel real yetâwonât, until that medal hangs around my neck, until I can hold it in my hands while the national anthem blooms through the natatorium speakers with patriotic brio. Maybe not even then. I could have more wins here, but right now, this seems like more than enough.
âYouâre a world champion,â Dave says. âNext, Iâm going to make you an Olympian.â
 Excerpted from Breath Like Water by Anna Jarzab, Copyright ©2020 by Anna Jarzab. Published by Inkyard Press.
Blog tour! I present to you details, and an excerpt from The Secrets of Love Story Bridge by Phaedra Patrick.
THE SECRETS OF LOVE STORY BRIDGE Author: Phaedra Patrick ISBN: 9780778309789 Publication Date: April 28, 2020 Publisher: Park Row Books
Fredrik Backman meets The Cactus in THE SECRETS OF LOVE STORY BRIDGE (Park Row Books; April 28, 2020; $25.99 US/$32.50 CAN), in which a cynical single father has a surprise encounter on the famous love lock bridge, sparking a journey of self-discovery that may lead him to a second chance at love.
Single father Mitchell Fisher hates all things romance. He enjoys his job removing padlocks fastened to the famous "love lock" bridges of Upchester city. Only his young daughter, Poppy, knows that behind his disciplined veneer, Mitchell grieves the loss of her mother, Anita.
One fateful day, working on the bridge, Mitchell courageously rescues a woman who falls into the river. Heâs surprised to feel a connection to her, but the woman disappears before he learns her name. To Mitchellâs shock, a video of the rescue goes viral, hailing him as "The Hero on the Bridge." Heâs soon notified by the mysterious womanâs sister, Liza, that she has been missing for over a year. However, the only clue to where the woman could have gone is the engraved padlock she left on the bridge.
Mitchell finds himself swept up in Lizaâs quest to find her lost sister. Along the way, with help from a sparkling cast of characters, Mitchellâs heart gradually unlocks, and he discovers new beginnings can be found in the unlikeliest places...
Buy Links:
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Phaedra Patrick is the author of The Library of Lost and Found, Rise and Shine, Benedict Stone and The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, which has been published in over twenty countries around the world. She studied art and marketing, and has worked as a stained-glass artist, film festival organizer and communications manager. An award-winning short story writer, she now writes full-time. She lives in Saddleworth, UK, with her husband and son.
Social Links: Author Website Twitter: @PhaedraPatrick Instagram: @PhaedraPatrick Facebook: @PhaedraPatrick Goodreads
Excerpt:
The Lilac Envelope
The night before
As he did often, over the past three years, Mitchell Fisher wrote a letter he would never send.
He sat up in bed at midnight and kicked off his sheets.Even though all the internal doors in his apartment were open, the sticky July heat still felt like a shroud clinging to his body. His nine-year-old daughter Poppy thrashed restlessly in her sleep, in the bedroom opposite.
Mitchell turned on his bedside lamp, squinting against the yellow light, and took out a pad of Basildon Bond notepaper from underneath his bed. He always used a fountain pen to writeâold-fashioned he supposed, but he was a man who valued things that were well-constructed and long-lasting.
Mitchell tapped the pen against his bottom lip. He knew what he wanted to say, but by the time his words of sorrow and regret travelled from his brain to his fingertips, they were only fragments of what he longed to express.
As he started to write, the sound of the metal nib scratching against paper helped him block out the city street noise that hummed below his apartment.
Dearest Anita
Another letter from me. Everything here is fine, ticking along. Poppy is doing well. The school holidays start soon and I thought sheâd be more excited. Itâs probably because youâre not here to enjoy them with us.
Iâve taken two weeks off work to spend with her, and have a full itinerary planned for usâbadminton, tennis, library visits, cooking, walking, the park, swimming, museums, cooking, a tour of the city bridges, and more. It will keep us busy. Keep our minds off you.
Youâll be amazed how much sheâs grown, must be almost your height by now. I tell her how proud I am of her, but it always means more coming from you.
Mitchell paused, resting his hand against the pad of paper.He had to tell her how he felt.
Every time I look at our daughter, I think of you. I wish I could hold you again, and tell you Iâm truly sorry.
Yours, always
Mitchell x
He read his words, always dissatisfied with them, never able to convey the magnitude of grief and guilt he felt. After folding the piece of paper once, he sealed it into a crisp, cream envelope, then squeezed it into the almost-full drawer of his nightstand, amongst all the other letters heâd written. His eyes fell upon the slim lilac envelope he kept on top, the one addressed to him from Anita, that heâd not yet been able to bring himself to open.
Taking that envelope out, he held it under his nose and inhaled. There was still a slight scent of her on the paper, he thought, of violet soap. His finger followed the angle of the gummed flap and then stopped. He closed his eyes and willed himself to open the letter, but his fingernails dented crescents into the paper.
Once more, he placed it back into his drawer.
Mitchell lay down and hugged himself, imagining Anitaâs arms were wrapped around him. But, when he closed his eyes, the words from all the letters weighed down upon him like a bulldozer. As he turned and tried to sleep, he pulled the pillow over his head to force them away.
 1.     A Locked Heart
The lovers who attached their padlocks to the bridges of Upchester might see it as a fun or romantic gesture but, to Mitchell, it was an act of vandalism.
It was the hottest year on record in the city and the morning sun was already beating down on the back of his neck. His biceps flexed as he methodically opened and squeezed his bolt cutters shut, cutting the padlocks off the cast-iron filigree panels of the old Victorian bridge, one by one. Â
Since local boyband Word Up filmed the video for their international smash hit âLock Me Up with Your Loveâon this bridge, thousands of people were flocking to the small city in the North West of England. They brought and attached locks marked with initials, names, messages, to demonstrate their love for the band and each other, on the cityâs five bridges. Â
Large red and white signs that read no padlocks studded the pavement. But as far as Mitchell could see, the locks still hung on the railings like bees swarming across frames of honeycomb. The constant reminder of love surrounding him, other peopleâs, made him feel like he was fighting for breath.
As he cut off the locks, he wanted to yell, âWhy canât you just keep your feelings to yourselves?â
After several hours of hard work, Mitchellâs trail of broken locks glinted on the pavement like a metal snake. He stopped for a moment and narrowed his eyes as a young couple strolled toward him. The woman glided in a white floaty dress and tan cowboy boots. The man wore shorts and had the physique of an American football player. With his experience of carrying out maintenance across the cityâs public areas, Mitchell instinctively knew they were up to something.
After breaking away from his girlfriend, the man walked to the side of the bridge while nonchalantly pulling out a large silver padlock from his pocket.
Mitchell tightened his grip on his cutters. He was once so easy and in love with Anita, but rules were rules. âExcuse me,â he called out. âYou canât hang that lock.â
The man frowned and crossed his bulging arms. âOh yeah? And whoâs going to stop me?â
Mitchell had the sinewy physique of a sprinter. He was angular all over with dark hair and eyes, and a handsome dorsal hump on his nose. âI am,â he said and put his cutters down on the pavement. He held out his hand for the lock. âItâs my job to clear the bridges. You could get a fine.â
Anger flashed across the blond manâs face and he batted Mitchellâs hand away, swiping off his work glove. Mitchell watched as it tumbled down into the river below. Sometimes the water flowed prettily, but today it gushed and gurgled, a bruise-grey hue. A young man had drowned here in a strong current last summer.
The manâs girlfriend wrapped her arms around her boyfriendâs waist and tugged him away. âCome on. Leave him alone.â She cast Mitchell an apologetic smile. âSorry, but weâre so in love. It took us two hours and three buses to get here. Weâll be working miles away from each other soon. Please let us do this.â
The man looked into her eyes and softened. âYeah, um, sorry, mate,â he said sheepishly. âThe heat got the better of me. All we want to do is fasten our lock.â
Mitchell gestured at the sign again. âJust think about what youâre doing, guys,â he said with a weary sigh. âPadlocks are just cheap chunks of metal and theyâre weighing down the bridges. Canât you get a nice ring or tattoo instead? Or write letters to each other? There are better ways to say I lovâ Well, you know. . .â
The man and the woman shared an incredulous look.
âWhatever,â the man glowered, and he shoved his padlock back into the pocket of his shorts. âWeâll go to another bridge instead.â
âI work on those too . . .â
The couple laughed at him and sauntered away.
Mitchell rubbed his nose. He knew his job wasnât a glamorous one. It wasnât the one in architecture heâd studied hard and trained for. However, it meant he could pay the rent on his apartment and buy Poppy hot lunch at school each day. Whatever daily hassle he put up with, he needed the work.
His workmate Barry had watched the incident from the other side of the road. Sweat circled under his arms and his forehead shone like a mirror as he crossed over. âThe padlocks keep multiplying,â he groaned.
âWe need to keep on going.â
âBut itâs too damn hot.â Barry undid a button on his polo shirt, showing off unruly chest curls that matched the ones on his head. âItâs a violation of our human rights, and no one can tell if we cut off twenty or two hundred.â
Mitchell held his hand up against the glare of the sun. âWe can tell, and Russ wants the bridges cleared in time for the city centenary celebrations.â
Barry rolled his eyes. âThereâs only three weeks to go until then. Our boss should come down here and get his hands dirty, too.At least join me for a pint after work.â
Mitchellâs mouth felt parched, and he suddenly longed for an ice-cold beer. A vision of peeling off his polo-shirt and socks and relaxing in a beer garden appeared like a dreamy mirage in his head.
However, he had to pick Poppy up from the after-school club to take her for a guitar lesson, an additional one to her music class in school. Her headteacher, Miss Heathcliff, was a stickler for the school closing promptly at 5.30pm, and it was a rush to get there on time. He lowered his eyes and said, âIâd love to, but I have to dash.â
Then he selected his next padlock to attack.
Excerpted from The Secrets of Love Story Bridge by Phaedra Patrick, Copyright © 2020 by Phaedra Patrick.Â
Published by Park Row Books