My first audiobook! FREE copy offer…read on

Posted on by - The Dana Hargrove Novels

My first Dana Hargrove novel, Thursday’s List, has just been released in audiobook.

Narrator? Me. Turned out pretty good, too. You can hear Lillian’s lovely voice in the opening and closing credits.

It’s a challenge, reading an entire book into a microphone. Stops and starts, stumbling on words, redoing parts for appropriate inflection. All the glitches are edited out! Very smooth.

Am I crazy? I want to narrate all my Dana Hargroves. I’ve already started Homicide Chart.

Audible has bestowed many “Promo Codes” for free copies. I’m posting a few of these codes here, below. If you like audiobooks and want to give this one a try, redeem the code through THIS AUDIBLE LINK.

If these three codes have been redeemed by the time you give it a try, send me a message through my website contact form and I’ll send you another.

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4U6XBC73TALTH

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Thanks for reading…and listening!

VSK

P.S. In other news, I was recently interviewed by the fabulous Peter Okonkwo. You can see the interview on his YouTube channel, P. English Literature.

P.P.S. My latest crime fiction short story, “Counting Windows,” is scheduled to appear in the November/December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. I’ll let you know when the issue is out!

 

Reflections on Launch Day

Posted on by - The Dana Hargrove Novels

Today, Seven Shadows goes live.

Little did I suspect that Dana Hargrove would be hanging around this long. I wrote the first draft of Thursday’s List in the mid-nineties, during a period of stay-at-home momming after years of working a big investigation at the NY State Organized Crime Task Force. Dana was born but didn’t see a bookshelf until 2013. In the years since, her world keeps growing—a web of fascinating cases, intriguing colleagues, complex adversaries, and family dramas.

Here are Dana’s stories and the years in which they take place: Thursday’s List (1988), Homicide Chart (1994), Forsaken Oath (2001), Deep Zero (2009), and Seven Shadows (2015). The sixth novel, planned for 2022, will bring Dana into the present. As for the time gaps between the stories, one reviewer calls this “a bold strategy to show how much a lawyer can change over the course of her career” (Kirkus Reviews). I call it, simply, interesting and fun.

In a lifetime, the delicate balance between career and family is in perpetual flux, just as societal views and hot button issues in criminal justice are ever evolving. In Seven Shadows, Dana returns as a trial judge, in midlife, dealing with the empty nest at home as she weighs her views on incarceration, now that she wields the power of the gavel. She’s conflicted over a tough sentencing decision in a high-stakes murder case when an unpleasant past comes calling. Who is lurking in the shadows?

Ask your favorite independent bookstore and lending library to order the Dana Hargrove books and Your Pick: Selected Stories (2019 Eric Hoffer Award, Best Story Collection) from Ingram ipage. If you happen to be a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, the first four Dana Hargrove novels are now free on Amazon (Dana Double 1; Dana Double 2). Please help spread the word!

 

A special note to fellow authors, reviewers, and bloggers:

If you’d like a free review copy in e-book or paper, please email a request through my contact page. I’d love to get your feedback. You may find the ending of Seven Shadows, as one reviewer put it, “Surprisingly different” (“Recommended” by The U.S. Review of Books).

You will also find this on a page near the end:

“All works published by Opus Nine Books are dedicated to the nine members of the family headed by John and Kate Swackhamer at 3 South Trail, Orinda, California — a large world under one small roof.”

Thanks for reading!