Get Magnetic Woman on Sale!

Guess what! University of Pittsburgh Press is having a 30% off sale on all titles! This means you can order Magnetic Woman for just $70 until January 9, 2022. Go to https://upittpress.org/books/9780822946472/ and in your order use the code PITTBOOKS.

Take Dada Daily for Best Results

"The times are dark and hard, and I know no better means to overcome the chaos of the day than reading about Dadaist appearances.” Rudolf Lothar, “Der Dadaismus.” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 3 October 1918.

2022 Debuts Winter Roll Call Day 12

Day 12 of the 2022 Debuts winter roll call... writing quotes! Early in In Search of the Magic Theater, narrator Kari ponders the husband she left:

Magnetic Woman in New Zealand

Magnetic Woman makes it to the Kelburn Library at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand! So says Worldcat.org.

Some Comp Titles for In Search of the Magic Theater

In publishing, as in real estate (but unlike in theater), we talk about comps. Comparables. Comparisons. And as the debut novelists of 2022 are doing themed posts all through December about our forthcoming books, one of them is for our comps. Some of us are posting on Instagram, others on Facebook, and others, no doubt, on Twitter or TikTok. My post on Instagram ran into a computer glitch of some sort, so I'm doing it here too.

Two of my comps are "old" but perfect, two are recent enough that we're using them as "official" comps (published in the last five years). So...

1) Hermann Hesse's STEPPENWOLF was the inspiration for my novel IN SEARCH OF THE MAGIC THEATER, which will be out June 1. I switch the genders of the main characters and set the novel in 1999. Mine is also happier overall than STEPPENWOLF and gives the landlady's niece a major role.

2) Robertson Davies's THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS. Not only is Davies one of my favorite authors, but he wrote so well about the arts in general. THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS is about a group of quite different people (who don't all even like each other) collaborating on finishing an opera by the Romantic writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann. I took many useful lessons from this novel in writing the theatrical portions of my own novel (along with having worked in theater myself and having composed small musical pieces in the distant past). Oh, and also, like LYRE OF ORPHEUS, the theater piece in my novel includes text from long-dead authors and lots of music.

3) Jan Alexander's MS. MING'S GUIDE TO CIVILIZATION. Jan is now a friend and we're in a writing group together, but I first learned of her and her novel through a mutual friend. MS. MING sounded like a book I needed to read--two young women, one American and the other a poor kid from China scraping a not-so-savory living in the US, get involved with the mythological Monkey King and scheme to improve the world--and it also led me to my publisher, Regal House! So MS. MING means a lot to me. It's about women's lives, about big dreams, about myth, and it's lively and fun and often satirical.

4) Carmen Boullosa's THE BOOK OF ANNA. This too is a good comp for my novel, as it uses a classic novel (ANNA KARENINA) as a launching point for a new and wildly imaginative work that also includes a work of fiction by the character Anna Karenina.

Follow along with the hashtag #2022Debuts to see what my other fellow debuts are saying and give a follow to @debutauthors, which will showcase all our books coming out in 2022!