Thank you to Robert Lopresti for including “When I’m Famous” in his round-up of the year’s best stories. I’m deeply honored to make the list. Congratulations to the other writers highlighted as well. Check out his “All the best from me to you” column on SleuthSayers:
www.sleuthsayers.org/2015/01/all-best-from-me-to-you.html
Thank you Bill Crider and Mystery Scene Magazine
Where’s the champagne? Am thrilled by a nice mention in Mystery Scene magazine about my short story, “When I’m Famous.” In his column, “Short & Sweet,” Bill Crider writes: “Dara Carr makes a notable debut with her first short story…” and “When I’m Famous’ is Dara Carr’s first story, but the voice of the narrator here is so distinctive and assured that it sells the story from the first paragraph.”
YAY! The column mentioning my story begins, “Now and then I read an article about the importance of ‘voice’ in fiction. If you want to get a master class in practical examples of how voice can make a story work, just pick up in the June 2014 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (EQMM).”
Super cool to be mentioned in an impressive round-up that includes Dave Zeltserman, Bill Pronzini, Liza Cody, Marilyn Todd, Robert Lopresti, Roger Jones, and Amy Myers.
Keeping me up at night
Now that my mom’s eye surgery is over, Jo Nesbo’s latest novel, The Son, is keeping me up at night. Scary good. I think it’s his best yet, which is quite a feat.
Congratulations ABNA semi-finalists!
Today Amazon announced the five semi-finalists for mystery/thrillers. Alas, my book was not among them. One thing is for certain: it has been an exciting and fun ride. I’m happy to have made it into the quarters, which works out to be about the top 5% of entries.
Favorite cherry-picked excerpts from the Publishers Weekly review of The Overthrow:
“This thriller starts off as a taut tale of two female Oregon detectives hired to remove a troubled teen girl from a religious cult’s forested compound, but it takes a Hitchcockian twist when the liberation of Sierra Langford results in a shooting and increasingly deadly pursuit by sinister unnamed forces.”
And another:
“The torture, fighting, and shoot-em-up sequences are entertaining…”
I’ll take that as a compliment. In any event, it sounds like I wore out the reader by the end, at least in the reviewer’s opinion. Thank you to the awesome reviewer, who wrote such a badass summary. Great feedback. Great contest. Onward and upward….
Thank you Little Big Crimes blog
Such a pleasure to encounter a nice blog post on my recently published short story, “When I’m Famous.” A big thanks to writer and blogger Robert Lopresti.
Horrible men who make me laugh
Ken Bruen’s The White Trilogy is genius. I have such a weakness for his brutal but hilarious Detective Sergeant Brant. Please, Ken Bruen, write more Brant books! Another brilliant novel is Mick Herron’s Dead Lions. And of course I can’t get enough of Herron’s character, Jackson Lamb, described in reviews as “despicable” and “irascible.” Good thing I tend to go for nice guys in real life.
Japanese “doll”: Creepy, creepy, creepy
Chilling news item that seems straight out of a novel:
Japan woman’s body sent by mail marked ‘doll’
news.yahoo.com/japan-womans-body-sent-mail-marked-doll-072124155.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory
A wet, haunted house
I recently moved into a 102-year-old house. My first official day as a home owner was spent with termite remediation guys. Since then, I’ve had the chimney rebuilt, the furnace fixed, and the plumbing tweaked. The biblical rains we’ve been having in DC have left their mark in my basement. Most recently, a neighbor told me the house is haunted. Wish it were a handy ghost!
Onto the quarter finals for the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
Super excited to see The Overthrow make it to ABNA’s top 100 in mystery and suspense this year. And OMG actual reviews.
A big thanks to the kind and exceptionally hard-working Amazon Vine readers and reviewers.
Buddy will not steal my story
My new work-in-progress has a pit bull named Boo in it. Boo is a bald rip-off of Buddy, my friend’s pit bull mix and the sweetest, most playful creature on the planet. Sadly, Buddy died a few years ago. As I write this novel, I keep telling myself I will not let Boo take over the book. No, I won’t. No! But he is so adorable….
