It Seems to Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column
in The World.

It’s here!  Death Rides the Midnight Owl is published and available for sale!  Check out all the books on the Book Page on the right of your screen.  Read a preview, and order the softcover or ebook on the Products Page.  And so, my vision, my story, my characters live on in the adventures of my mystery series—the original mystery series starring Dorothy Parker and her friends, the famous members of the Algonquin Round Table.

Yes, there is a knock-off series, but my series is the true and original reflection of my vision, a vision manifested in the product that I present to the public, and I have dared to tell the stories in the first person voice of Dorothy Parker herself.  I think she’d be pleased.  I do try to show her humanity, because she was not simply the author of clever, tossed-off quips that initially made her famous, or for her humorous poetry.  She was a complex, wonderful and highly moral human being, so she deserves my care in representing her spirit.  And so, my books must show respect.

A book should be a beautiful thing, from cover to cover, inside and out, from the design, style, and the guts, nothing cheap about it.  Attention is paid to everything: the choice of every word, picking out every one of the forty photos and illustrations scattered throughout the text from thousands.  Even the choice of the font, which is a special one—Hoefler Text, chosen to be kind on the eyes, classically elegant against a cream paper, and appropriate for the voice of Dorothy Parker for a book written in the 1920s. And the paper!  It has weight, and not what you’d find in most cheap paperback editions.  Yes, my books are softcover because I want to make them affordable, but not cheap.  And when I hold the lovely reflection of my work, I see that it is a good thing, as Martha Stewart might say.

I think that when you write a fiction novel where the action takes place during a specific period in the past, it is important to depict the mood of the times, the influences on the characters’ lives, but without making it a main character, just a secondary character.  It shouldn’t divert the reader away from the action, and those of you who have read my series know that the action in my stories flows rapidly, and that’s where the fun is.  But I want the reader to be transported back in time when they open my books, so that for a few hours they are on a ride in a time machine.  Again, I choose carefully.

So I have produced a book—manifested by my trusty team.  I hope you enjoy these journeys through the New York City of the 1920s—Dorothy Parker’s world—during a time when a great city was being built, speakeasies were the places to imbibe and socialize with your friends, the Broadway Theatre was enjoying its heyday, women struggled to find their places in new, liberated roles in our society, and sex became an acceptable topic of discussion at fashionable cocktail parties.  Enjoy the books.  After all, I write them for you!

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems to Me . . .  was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

In a few days, my new book, the fourth Dorothy Parker Mystery, Death Rides the Midnight Owl, will be published. The final weeks before each book is readied for release are times of great expectation and great fun! The story that I have kept to myself for many months has been read by my editor, Shelley—copyedited and historically fact checked—and by my designer, Eric, who typesets, designs the covers, converts the dozens of photos and illustrations in each book, creates the ebook files, and generally “puts” the book on the market in all the various venues. With the addition of a couple of trusted family members and friends who have a first read, I will sometimes get a suggestion or two—usually to include a small bit here or there for clarification or to embellish a point. Although I always go with my gut when it comes to content and scene structure—I write my novels as if they were screenplays, with the addition of Dorothy Parker’s interior dialogue, and the unfolding of a story must be tempered with the building of characterizations, and other narrative—I consider these ideas carefully, because they come from people I trust, so I know they are thinking in my best interest, to make my work shine. Because each novel stands alone, and my books do not necessarily have to be read in order of publication, I must introduce my real life characters in each book. That means devising a dozen descriptions of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Aleck Woollcott, Jane Grant and Harold Ross, Tallulah Bankhead, and the other half-dozen Round Table members who regularly show up in my books, in a new and interesting way. When I am uncertain about the inclusion of something—a sentence, a paragraph—I will ask Shelley if I should omit the section, after highlighting it in red. I do this rarely, but I do ask. As an avid reader, I kind of know how boring it can be for a reader of a series to have to go over the same material written in previous books. Also, I try never to refer to the murder cases occurring in other books, possibly not yet read by my readers. It only serves to pull the action away from the immediate action of the current book.

Talk about immediate: I felt there was just something, well, lacking and dull about this book’s title. It was Shelley’s suggestion to change the title from Death on the Midnight Owl to the more active and immediate, Death Rides the Midnight Owl. Why didn’t I think of that??? Thank you, Shelley! Eric suggested adding a little something about a major fictional character appearing in Mystic Mah Jong. I thought about it, and knew he was right, so without diverting or slowing the action, I was able to devise a satisfying solution with the addition of one short, but telling, paragraph at story’s end. I am happy to say that, although big macho-man that he is, Eric was teary-eyed when he read it. Thank you, Eric.

I have been fortunate to have two wonderful people who work hard to help give my work a polished finish. They are experts in their fields, and we have a mutual admiration society going, which is very satisfying. And recently, I have met a wonderful artist, Rob Smith Jr., who is a great fan of Parker and Benchley and the members of the Algonquin Round Table. I met him when I asked permission to include a marvelous illustration I found in an on-line search of Heywood Broun photos. I visited his website (included below) and was amazed at the man’s artistic diversity. He is an illustrator, newspaper cartoonist, embracing varying styles to suit any situation. We chatted on the telephone, discovered we were of like mind about a lot of things, and I hope to have his marvelous illustrations grace the pages of my future books. Check out his masterful artwork at his website: www.robsmithjr.com.

For now, I will send out my press releases, continue the ongoing marketing I do most days on-line, and publish my blogs, because although the book is now a material reality, available for readers to enjoy, the public must know about it. And of course, there is the fifth book to research and write, and so the process begins all over again.

Lest we forget, today is the anniversary of Robert Benchley’s death. Below I have republished a visit to his grave on Nantucket two years ago. Goodnight, sweet prince!

“Oh, no!” I whined. “I left my change purse back at the house.”

My friend, Lisa’s, eyes widened as she patted imaginary pockets at the hips of her shorts. “All I have are twenties,” she said, pulling out a neatly tucked wad of cash from her bra.

“All I need is a penny,” I said. “Last time I left a penny, tails-up—you know, like a toast—‘bottoms up’?”

“But, a penny facing heads-down is bad luck.”

“Well, yeah, when you see one tossed on the sidewalk, sure, if you believe that crap! But I always pick it up, anyway. How else am I going to make my fortune? You know what they say: ‘every penny counts’!”

“I think it’s, ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’.

“All right smarty-pants: that is the correct cliché.”

“Well, that explains it,” said my friend, nodding with a tight-lipped, ‘I told you so’ expression.

“Whattayamean? Explains what?”

“All the nasty things that’ve been happening to you.”

“The Universe is simply testing me,” I said, discounting the Doomsday prophesy. “Last time I was here, back in October, when I finally found the grave, people had left stones atop the tombstone—”

She interrupted me. “So why’d you leave a penny, then? Why not a rock?”

“Couldn’t find a rock—not a stone, not a pebble—anywhere around! They were all on the tombstone. Had I a chisel, I might’ve knocked out a chip off that boulder over there, but it came to me in a flash—like a gift from heaven! Like a Benchley pun. I had a penny in my pocket, and what is more appropriate a celebratory toast than saying, ‘Bottoms up!’”

“Should’ve brought flowers…”

“I think he’s allergic.”

“Think it matters now?”

“There were some hydrangeas blooming back up the road…”

“Look, I don’t think we want to get arrested—”

Now this is part of the story of my visit to Robert Benchley’s grave in Nantucket that you may find hard to believe, but I take an oath on all things good and true that my friend, Lisa, stopped in her tracks on the side of the road we were walking along, leaned down and picked up a quarter that had fallen from somewhere, heads-up. This is true; you think that these things are made up, as it strains credulity, but it is the truth.

“Oh, my God!” I said, as she picked up the coin. “Well, that proves Divine Intervention!”

“Shouldn’t that be saved for floods, famine and blight?”

“Well, it goes to show that Mr. Benchley doesn’t come cheap. He’s raised the ante to twenty-five cents!”

“Anything you say…” said Lisa, as if humoring a crazy woman.

We walked up the slight incline from off the road to the family plot. I perused the top of the tombstone for my penny left half a year ago amongst the dozen or more stones. “It’s gone! My penny is gone,” I announced, feeling violated.

“The one you left there, tails up?” asked my friend, as she moved back a distance to take a photo of me with my camera. “Someone building their fortune, I suppose…”

“Grave robbers!”

“Well, if it’s any comfort, Agata, I told you before, picking up a penny that’s tails-up is bad luck.”

As I placed the quarter heads-down in the gravestone, I smiled wickedly. “So it is,” I said as Lisa snapped a photo. “So it is.”

It Seems to Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

I spend most of my time writing each book in my head.  That is to say, the effort spent in thinking about my story is the majority of the work that I do before I ever sit down to write my opening sentence.  This may take months of just sitting, walking, showering, or driving around while the various elements of my story orbit around inside my head.  I’ll do a bit of preliminary research on a topic or a theme.  This stirs my interest in the history of the times I am about to write about.  But generally, for the first weeks and months, I just think.  I am a Rodin “Thinker”, staring out into space like a zombie.  Then, I just feel the tension–a sort of anxiety, the impatience rising within me, like a physical squeeze.  I’ve decided my approach by now, and I know what I will accomplish to grab my audience with the first words and scene.  All of my books are a kind visual media in the sense that I write as if I am writing a stage play or screenplay.  And with the addition of the internal thoughts and attitudes of Dorothy Parker’s life, I kind of create a 3D film.  But I write with a definite visual approach and my structure is always influenced by the ancient Greek theatrical guidelines for tragedy and comedy.  I was an actress, so the form is in my blood.

I am often amazed at the creative process.  To tell you the truth, although there are times when I am struggling against the constricts of plot lines I may find myself entangled within, I more often find myself writing the words that seem to come out from the blue, travel down through my fingers and onto the keyboard.  I wonder for a moment, where am I going with this?  What am I writing myself into? And then it dawns on me:  By some kind of magic or blessing, I’ve just been given all I need for my characters to proceed towards the solution of the mystery in a unique and interesting way!

Although I write my novels with a sense of time and place, my research ongoing (before and during the writing of each book), the central characters sketched out, the modus operandi, a few venues at which the plot may unravel, and the historical influences upon the consciousnesses of the everybody involved, I keep things loose. I might create a storyboard with post-it notes for complicated main plot and sub-plot lines.  But, I often tear off the notes or rearrange them or put away the storyboard completely.  I don’t want to be too tied down to previous ideas that might hem me in, because that limits my fun and spontaneity.  In this way, I can draw from instances depicted casually, as occurs in real life, to advance my plot, to aid me in dropping in my clues and red herrings.  And when inspiration strikes,  WOW!

Such was the case while writing my new book, Death Rides the Midnight Owl.  As I began writing a Round Table luncheon scene in which I had simply intended to advance the plot,  I found myself typing what I thought was an introductory line of dialogue spoken by Harpo Marx.  I wanted to bring him into the action, but had not decided just how he would play a part in the book.  For some unexplained reason, I wrote that Harpo snatched a half-eaten carrot off of Dorothy’s plate.  Dorothy’s response led to Harpo’s, and Eureka!  The book’s direction and climax  unraveled before me–the venue, the action and the fun.

It is like that sometimes.  When you least expect it, “the gift” just drops down before you, proving once again that creativity is essentially Divine.

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems to Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World

In a couple of weeks my new Dorothy Parker Mystery, Death Rides the Midnight Owl, will be available for purchase, and it’s been a fun ride, all right, chasing murderers by trains, fast cars and on horseback.

I find so much joy in crafting my adventures with Dottie, Mr. Benchley, the Marx Brothers and the rest of the gang of the Algonquin Round Table. In a series of three posts, I will tell you more about my own creative process and the actual production of the book—the text, the design, the artwork, the physical end result of my many months of writing. Today, I will share a little about the beginning of the process. I’ve not spoken about it before. Artists don’t often like to discuss these things. There is an underlying fear that they may lose the illusive “magic” of their art, that their personal muses will feel betrayed and then abandon them, or some such nonsense. It’s true that talking about how one finds inspiration can inhibit one’s free flow of expression. Over-analysis is not a good thing, because there is the danger of falling into the dreaded “formula hole”. Lots of series suffer from this. Often, by the time the fourth or fifth novel in a series gets written, the work has lost its freshness, and is tiresome to write and for the audience to read. If the time comes when I feel that happening I will end the series.

On structure of my books: As each novel focuses on a particular year in the life of Parker and her friends, I choose a particular event, be it political or societal,  occurring during that time, and I like to use the pervading feelings, and the reactions to those events in the lives of my characters as the broad backdrop of the book. For instance, during 1925, Clarence Darrow had just defended the young teacher in the Scopes Trial, and Ku Klux Klan membership was three million strong and active. I use the national climate to underscore the plot for Chasing the Devil. In Mystic Mah Jong, you will become immersed in the metamorphosis of women in society, and people’s interest in the paranormal. The Broadway Murders brings the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, and the heyday of Broadway Theatre into the plot. My new book, Death Rides the Midnight Owl, takes place during the summer of 1927, and because Dorothy Parker voiced her protest during the last appeals to save the lives of the condemned Sacco and Vanzetti, the anarchist movement is featured through various characters in the telling of the story. And, because I write my stories in the first person, in Dorothy Parker’s voice, I am able to use these influences as a sort of sub-plot, and a means by which Dottie can express, through me, of course, her opinions and attitudes about the news of her day. With this kind of layering of fact, the inclusion of the building of a city, the national mood and world view, I can give the reader a very real vision of what it was like to live in New York City during the Roaring Twenties. I try to do this inconspicuously. I’m not, after all, writing a history, I’m writing a humorous mystery! Without the grounding depiction of the world as it was, a humorous series, such as mine, can fall flat.  And in order to truly understand the very real people about whom I write, one has to understand the times they lived in.

Like a comedian delivering his stand-up routine, a writer has to know how best to phrase “the joke”, have intuitive timing, and the ability to hear exactly when the laughter has waned before beginning the next round of jokes. In comedy, in film and theatre scripts, timing is everything. So it is in novel writing. In serious works of fiction, there needs to be some comic relief; when writing comedy, there must be an underlying serious drama to bring humanity to the humor. I try to bring humanity to the manic lives of my characters and their escapades. Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and their friends, were human beings, after all, and I try to write with respect for their spirits.

Feel free to join in a live chat, or leave a message or a question, and I will get right back to you!

Next time I will talk about inspiration in Part Two, My Muse and I.

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems To Me . . . was the byline of
Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

Diane

My profound sadness today to hear of the death of a beautiful young woman named Diane Naegel.

We had never met  face-to-face, and yet, through numerous emails I learned a little bit about her and her work and interests, and perhaps it is regret that gives me this feeling of loss, not going to meet her at her club last spring, I don’t know . . . .

Diane was my daughter’s age, twenty days younger, actually, and perhaps it is her passing at such a young age that has struck me.  How fleeting life is; how precious my daughter is in my life. Diane was also the Keeper of the Flame, so to speak, of all things bright and gay of the 1920s, with her Wit’s End Jazz Club and her delightful Zelda Magazine. I don’t have many friends who love, or even know about the music, the culture and the way of life back then, but Diane and I had that interest in common. She was just thirty-one years old, but, she had, as few people her age do, an appreciation for the art and history of a time few people her age find much value in. Diane had style and grace, that I could tell without ever having met her. I wish I had. I regret I hadn’t.

Well, dear Diane, I hope that Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and Aleck Woollcott and the other luminaries of the Algonquin Round Table are toasting your arrival tonight.

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems to Me . . .  was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

The fourth book of my Dorothy Parker Mystery series to be released in November, Death Rides the Midnight Owl, opens on the night of Dorothy Parker’s thirty-fourth birthday and minutes before the executions of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco.  Today, while watching the newscasts covering the tentative execution of Troy Davis, I can feel the tremendous anxiety Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Heywood Broun must have experienced as they awaited decisions on the appeals, and the moments leading up to the executions of the two anarchists.  Parker was, after all, in Boston for several weeks prior to that day, demonstrating and organizing rallies and marches.

As in the Sacco and Vanzetti cases, there has been substantial evidence pointing to the innocence of Troy Davis.   Ninety-odd years after the anarchists were convicted by a hostile court, a clearly prejudiced judge, on shoddy evidence, and coerced witness accounts, it is a tragedy that these kinds of lynching still taking place.  Tell me it’s not a lynching, even though five jurors have said that they would not have convicted Davis had the ballistic evidence been correct.  Tell me it’s not a lynching even though seven witnesses have recanted their accounts.  Tell me it’s not a lynching when the Governor of Georgia and the State Supreme Court of Appeals refused to stay the execution.  As in the Sacco and Vanzetti trials, eye witnesses for the prosecution have recanted testimony after the conviction.  So I ask today, what kind of justice is there for the murdered police officer if an innocent man, the wrong man is executed?  It just compounds the crime with yet another one.

It Seems To Me. . .  was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The New York World

              September 15th marks Robert Benchley’s 122st birthday.   He was born in 1889, and he, Dorothy Parker and I have at least one thing in common:  we were the babies of our families.

Robert Benchley was a surprise blessing and thirteen years his brother, Edmund’s, junior.  Dorothy Parker’s astonished parents—and mine, too—dusted-off cribs and rocking horses that had been tucked away in attics for nine years.  And so, when one arrives in the world to be greeted by a houseful of nearly grown kids, one tends to be denied some of the joys of sibling rivalry.  Rather, one is spoilt with sibling revelry.  One is petted and indulged and declared adorable.  Good for a little while, but by the time you are six or seven or eight, conversation tossed gently, or in a high-velocity pitch, across the dinner table is adult in nature, an exchange of independent ideas and opinions, sometimes political, often philosophical, if not both, which are determined more often by world events read about in the newspaper than by the carrying-on in the schoolyard.  It’s no fun being the baby anymore.  The “baby” has to step up, if not in height, than through cunning; catch-up, if not in years, than by acquiring conversational skills, if its voice may be heard at all, and if he/she will ever be taken seriously.

How can anyone take you seriously?  After all, you are the little character for which your sisters called in the neighborhood children to watch you have your morning bath!  You were always the baby when the older kids wanted to play “house”.  Ooops!  Sorry, I regress. . .

And so, the “baby” reads with a vengeance, listens and absorbs everything, develops opinions until there is nothing left to do but spend the rest of its life off on its own in creative pursuits.  Of course, there is the birth placement issue: you will always be the baby in the eyes of your adult siblings, and that in itself is a head-trip you must overcome, because you are sixty-years old, and they stopped changing your diapers fifty-eight years ago. . .

So there is no rivalry when you’re so far apart in years, although there is a different sort of pressure that follows all the days of your life: living up to a standard that you sometimes feel you may never achieve.  From all I’ve read about Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, they, too, felt the burden of living up to the qualities portrayed in their older siblings.  In spite of their achievements, neither ever felt they had really succeeded.

As I did, they found in their older siblings, heroes.  Robert Benchley adored his older brother, Edmund, who doted on him from the time he was a baby.  Edmund’s death during the Spanish-American War was a devastating blow to young Robert, who spent his youth wishing to emulate his big brother.  Robert would not follow in his footsteps; Edmund went to war via West Point, and for the rest of his life, Robert Benchley deplored the warmongers of the world, and all things military.  Dorothy Parker was close to her sister, Helen, and when their mother died when Dorothy was four it was Helen, not her brothers, that she clung to.  When Helen married and moved to her own apartment, it was she who was more mother to her than the step-mother to whom Dorothy took an instant disliking.  Helen was to Dorothy the lovely example of a successful wife and mother.  Helen’s death later in Dorothy’s life shook her world to pieces.

Robert Benchley once alluded to the paradox  that we become that which we most deplore, the antitheses of the human being we most desire to become.  Youth naively sets out with noble purpose, and then we encounter the world, and we are not always the victors over our struggles.  As amazingly successful as Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker became, they took a turn, somewhere along their paths, and were unable to fulfill their initial intentions.  Dorothy wanted a loyal, loving husband and children, like her sister Helen, and to write great novels like Edith Sitwell; Robert Benchley wanted to write serious histories, but instead got struck writing humor (which he was really good at) and became an unwilling movie star.  The problem is, we rarely achieve living up to our heroes.  So why do we struggle so?  I suppose we cannot do without them.

Put away in hat box until May 15th

For your information, today is also Felt Hat Day.  See David Trumbles blog at Ready Writers

Benchley Photo: Corbis

It seems to me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

On this tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the crash into a lonesome field in Pennsylvania,  I find that the media saturation that has me reliving the event, hitting me, painfully, like a dentist’s drill on a tender nerve.  With every picture of the beautiful memorial pools at Ground Zero, I find myself crying.

Ten years ago, I watched the drama unfold when I was tuned in to the interview of a guest on the Today Show.   We all know exactly where we were that day.  My disbelief upon viewing the foreboding approach of the second plane about to crash into the other tower sent me dashing to the telephone to call my sister who lives in Manhattan.  Were more planes coming to bomb my beautiful city?   I got through right away, and she couldn’t understand why I was so frantic, so worried when I asked if she was all right, and then for two days afterwards, I couldn’t get through to her. My other sister was stranded out of the country as flights were cancelled.  I turned back to the TV and watched as the first tower fell, and wondered, why?  How could this happen?  How could this be?  Two planes?  An error caused by air traffic controllers?  I suppose I wanted to believe that, and not the unthinkable!  What nation was attacking us?  Who had we challenged, maddened, hurt so grievously that we should be attacked and that so many innocent people should die?  I mourn now not just for the great human toll this tragedy has cost our nation, but also for the change wrought to our world because of it.

World War l has always been seen as the marker in the timeline of history when an abrupt shift from an age of innocence occurred to a time and place of grim reality.  To say the least, it was a time when buried heads emerged from the sand and eyes shot open to see the insidious injustices within the structures of governments and societies around the world, resulting in the advent of well-intended revolutions and malevolent wars against humanity for generations to come.  The most violent and deadly of centuries was the Twentieth.

But, in 2001, with the new millennium, with the fall of communism in the past, with a more tolerant racial vision and an ever-expanding global market, I was naïve enough to think that perhaps mankind could join together in a world-wide brotherhood.  See what I don’t know?  See what I failed to truly understand?

I’ll tell you:  There is within our nature a resistance to learn from the mistakes of previous generations.  Inherent stupidity, I call it, which follows us from one generation to the next like a genetic memory.   If an individual is not directly responsible for the mistakes of his ancestors, it is still necessary for the new, and then the next generation to pop-up the stupid gene, to again and again repeat the idiocy, while never bothering to heed the warnings from those who stumbled before.  For how long can our species survive on this planet with that kind of failure to learn the basics?  When will people stop being irrationally influenced by totally irrational religious dogma that views every non-believer as an evil threat to be destroyed?   I sound like an inexperienced child, I know: “Why can’t we just play nice and share our toys?”
Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and their friends emerged from the genteel world of their birth into a world of disenchantment.   Their disillusionment was palpable; their reaction, frightening in their devil-may-care behavior.  But, after a while, after they realized that their escapades were pointless exercise, their fighting spirits rallied.  They began to see that they could at least try to affect change in the tumultuous times they lived in.  I admire that spirit in human beings that rises to make things better, to reinvent a troubled world into a more tolerant one.  When we ask, “What can I do to make things better?” we become better.

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems To Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

It was a dark and stormy night, all right.  What better time to tuck into bed with a good mystery novel?

How exciting is a storm.  The tree branch tap-tap-taps at the window; the wind sighs like ghostly voices; the fire crackles in the hearth; the house creaks like old bones, and you turn the lock of the closet door to keep the monsters where they belong.  A storm is exciting, yes, if you are hunkered down in your cozy home and everyone you love is safe from harm.  That’s why so many mystery stories are set against the atmosphere of stormy weather.

So, which mystery book to read, even by candle and firelight when the lights go off?  You put aside the Kindle, because for some reason a paper book seems more conducive to the mood of the night.  You like the smell of the aging paper, its tactile quality, the way the spine is cracked, and the overall heft of the book.  Will you read a Christie or a Marsh or a Wilkie Collins or a Doyle?  Perhaps go back in time with a Jack Finney?  Or over to the dark world of the occult with Stephen King? Best to choose a Dorothy Parker Mystery, so you can laugh between the shivers.

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems to Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

August 22nd marks the anniversary of Dorothy Parker’s birth.  To celebrate the occasion, an ebook trilogy of the first three novels of my Dorothy Parker Mystery Series will be launched on that date for all ebook readers. The First Three ISBN:  978-0-9827542-6-9 $12,99

My new novel, the fourth in the series, is finished–that is, the story is told and written down! Now it goes to other gentle hands (Shelley’s, Eric’s) for review, and where it will be washed, dressed and presented for sale in time for Christmas.   I had a blast running around with Dottie and Mr. Benchley through the summer of 1927.  This one is titled, Death on the Midnight Owl. Expect it in time for Christmas!

Happy reading!

Agata