Chased By Death

My new novel is coming out on October 1st as an eBook, and a week later as a trade paperback.  It's been a long time since I've had anything other than short stories published, so this is kind of special.
Here is the cover.  Isn't it cool?

Chased By Death is a woman-in-jeopardy novel and also a “road novel.” Maxine wants to find her long-lost sister.  Cartel kingpin Lotto wants to find Maxine and the two-million dollars her ex-husband skimmed. In a motorhome, Maxine, with new boyfriend Jeff, his young daughter, and a kitten,embark on a cross-continent trek to find the sister. Maxine is smart, but Lotto is relentless. Jack Kerouac wrote, “The road is life!”  Will Maxine reach safety before Lotto’s goons close in or will the road be death? 

I love road novels, and now I have finally written one.  This is the first novel I've written using three points of view, Maxine, Lotto, and the sister.  No matter how evil a character is, I always try to give them their humanity.

 On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, always impressed me.  "The Road was Life."  I grew up on the high plains of Colorado, and as a teenager, we drove a lot.  To Denver, to Greeley, to the mountains, always restless, always on the move, "racing across the Great American NIght," as Kerouac put it. 

Here's a link to Kerouac, if you're in the mood. A slightly embarrassing love for Jack Kerouac.   

Does anyone ever race through the night anymore or do they just stay home glued to their phones?  

My publisher is Wings ePress. Nice people!

Pleasingly Plump

Everyone hates the new first paragraph of Festival Madness, so guess I have to punt that. I always have big problems with the first part of the first chapter, then it falls into place. In the meantime, I write 10 or 15 beginnings. Makes me crazy.

Speaking of crazy, I have a friend who divides the world into fat and skinny and fat is bad and skinny is good. Never mind if you have a skinny butt or no breasts and your face is hanging down around your neck, skinny is still good. My friend is a New York City liberal but she likes Huckabee of Arkansas because he lost a lot of weight and kept it off. I don't know when she became so monomanical about a little extra weight. Old women look like hell when they lose weight. I am speaking not of 100's of pounds but maybe 30 or 40. Actually, have you noticed in all the weight loss ads, the people losing weight are always young. That's because the manufacturer wouldn't want to show the before and after of weight loss among the elderly. I mean they would look like , well, icky. This is something no one ever mentions, just like no one ever mentions the reason so many people are fat is that they stopped smoking.

Sometimes truth doesn't want to be told. Sometimes the truth is bad and isn't going to get any better. Sometimes there are only painful choices when a decision is to be made. Nobody ever talks about these things. Maybe writers that aren't being "inspirational." Chicken shit for the soul. I like that. It's probably not original. Don't think I'll Google it. You may have guessed I'm in a bad mood because everyone hates my new beginning. Maybe sometime I'll write a literary book and make it as weird and obscure as I please.

The cat tossed her cookies 3 times today. She has been having hair ball problems along with her tendency toward bulimia. The other cat is just fat and lazy. How did I get such strange cats? I know. I know. It's Monday and we all understand that FRIDAY is cat blog day.

What I really want to do is to attend a wonderful ENERGETIC celebration of Kerouac's On the Road 50th anniversary in September. Boston, Lowell, New York? Just gotta do it. The road is life. His energy was stupendous. Something I've noticed lately with 50's (not rock) music is that the beat is soooo slow. One wants to hurry the song up. I'm not talking about slow dance music, but sort of zippy songs. Except they don't sound zippy. Life has speeded up or didn't you notice?

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