Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

A practical and inspiring guide for busy women offers a range of exercises and techniques on how to write meaningfully in fifteen minutes a day, counseling aspiring writers on how to achieve serious writing in between demanding life responsibilities. Original. 30,000 first printing.

A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within

Pen on Fire

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett offers fifteen-minute exercises designed to help aspiring writers find the time, and motivation, to write.

Palm Springs now joins Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley in California’s Noir Series arena. "An appealing anthology of 14 stories about life and crime in the Mojave Desert's playground to the stars." --MysteryScene Magazine "As editor DeMarco-Barrett points out, it’s hard to think 'noir' in a landscape that offers 300 days of sunshine a year. But unrelenting heat and light can do funny things to your brain...An engaging mix of the good, the bad, and the off-kilter." --Kirkus Reviews Included in Publishers Weekly's Adult 2021 Announcements (Mysteries & Thrillers) Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the geographic area of the book. Palm Springs Noir features brand-new stories by: T. Jefferson Parker, Janet Fitch, Eric Beetner, Kelly Shire, Tod Goldberg, Michael Craft, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Rob Roberge, J.D. Horn, Eduardo Santiago, Rob Bowman, Chris J. Bahnsen, Ken Layne, and Alex Espinoza. From the introduction: The best noir writers make us feel the heat of the sun, the touch of a lover. Setting can be gritty but can also be sublime, no longer relegated to urban locales and seedy hotel rooms but also mansions and swimming pools. Hence, Palm Springs, which may seem like an odd setting for a collection of dark short stories--it’s so sunny and bright here. The quality of light is unlike anywhere else, and with an average of three hundred sunny days a year, what could go wrong?... The stories in this collection come on like the wicked dust storms common to the area. More than half are by writers who live here full-time; all have homes in Southern California. They know this place in ways visitors and outsiders never will. These are not stories you'll read in the glossy coffee-table books that feature Palm Springs's good life. There is indeed a lush life to be found here, but for the characters in these stories, it’s often just out of reach.

Palm Springs Noir

Gerald Martin

Barrie Summy

Pam Clark

Carl Vonderau

Greta Boris

Lauren Avenius

Cornelia Feye

Cheryl Garrett

B. J. Graf

S.J. Haworth

Kim Keeline

Kathy Krevat

Melinda Loomis

Jo Perry

“This splendid collection of border fiction is haunting and intense. Bravo to San Diego Sisters in Crime.” —T. Jefferson Parker, Edgar Award-winning author of The Last Good Guy Good stories start with characters crossing borders and finding themselves in worlds filled with hurt, harm, and danger. In Crossing Borders, the first anthology from Partners in Crime, the San Diego Chapter of Sisters in Crime, fifteen stories capture moments before, during and after characters cross borders and find themselves stumbling around strange lands that abound with saints, sinners, and monsters. Crossing Borders explores that liminal space—the place where people cross from not just from one place to another, like national boundaries, but the dividing line between life/death, stability/insanity, or innocence/guilt. This anthology contains stories that look at the duality of our lives, as we cross borders between people, values, and beliefs. Join us as we explore crossings, where a character, involved somehow in a crime, must pass over a border, literally or figuratively. As Rachel Howzell Hall says in our foreword: “Be prepared to hold your breath” as we enter that special space of crossing, transitioning, change, and death. Welcome to the border. Contributors: Lauren Avenius, Greta Boris, Pam Clark, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Cornelia Feye, Cheryl Garrett, B. J. Graf, S.J. Haworth, Kim Keeline, Kathy Krevat, Melinda Loomis, Gerald Martin, Jo Perry, Barrie Summy, and Carl Vonderau.

Crossing Borders

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

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