Winter is full of itself, at least in my part of the world. Snow the other day, howling winds, and more snow last night and today. I will be out shoveling after I post this piece. This has been a good time to concentrate on getting three books ready for their release. Three, really? Yes, and each is a different genre. Throw in an audiobook I narrated. And this doesn’t count the new book I am writing. Yes, I have been a busy author.
Here’s the lowdown.
THE TWIN JINN AND THE ALCHEMY MACHINE
This month, a release date to be announced, I will release the second in my magical realism series for middle grade readers featuring a family of jinn aka genies. My son Ezra created the artwork for the cover you see above.
Jute and Fina Jinn, brother and sister, and their parents, Mira and Elwin, are enchanted beings who move to a small town. They go to a school, where their parents hope they will learn more about people. The twins must pretend to be ordinary 11-year-olds, but they are impatient with the human version of the world. Who could blame them? They have the power to fly, be invisible, and use spells. Humans don’t.
Without their parents knowing, Jute and Fina create an alchemy machine for a science fair project. Their machine does indeed turn any metal into gold, but it also brings unwanted attention, especially from their former master who is desperate to find them.
THE SWANSON SHUFFLE
I began writing The Swanson Shuffle in 1999. Since then, I’ve made numerous revisions and oh-so-many queries. No more begging. It’s time to get this story out there to readers. And that’s what will happen in late March. Here’s a quick look.
Two years out of college, Bia Fernandes leaves a dead-end job to work and live in a psychiatric halfway house, where she learns more than she expects from its ex-patients — just as the Watergate scandal in the U.S. comes to a head in 1974.
Swanson House is a derelict mansion that will be torn down for a highway coming through a dying mill town in Massachusetts. The state, which is clearing out its mental hospitals, hires untrained staff like Bia to help people make the transition. The residents work menial jobs, take meds, and interact like family. The three other staff members at Swanson have their own problems, especially one who gets too close to the people they’re supposed to help.
Bia’s only previous experience was visiting her grandfather in a state mental hospital and talking somebody down from a bad acid trip. But where others have failed, Bia has it in her to help what the staff member she replaced called dented cans. She tries to see the good in them.
FINDING THE SOURCE: EIGHTH IN THE ISABEL LONG MYSTERY SERIES
Isabel Long’s next case comes from yet another unlikely source: a homeless man who approaches her outside a restaurant to say his mother was murdered 43 years ago and the case was never solved. Tom McKenzie was 12 when he found his mother’s body in their home.
Abby McKenzie was a well-liked person, who owned a secondhand bookstore and had a knack of finding valuable books for cheap. Actually, a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby is key to this case. Among the suspects are an avid book collector, a town official prone to stalking women, and her ex-husband’s second wife.
Besides the case’s age, Isabel finds other complications. The murder happened in the small town of Dillard, where Isabel would have to deal once again with a corrupt police chief who openly despises her. And many of the people connected to this case are dead. But Isabel is up to the challenge.
PROFESSOR GROOVY AND OTHER STORIES AUDIOBOOK
This audiobook is a collection of four stories I recorded in my son Nate Livingston’s Mudroom Sound Studio. Lenora Dias, her college hippie friends, and a notorious professor try to make sense of life during the late sixties. This was inspired by my experiment with the counterculture when I was in college. It’s a prequel of sorts to the novel Peace, Love, and You Know What. Just waiting for ACX to review the audiobook. Then I will announce its availability.