It's Independent Bookstore Day!

I'm not great at keeping track of obscure holidays and festivals, so I was thrilled to learn of Independent Bookstore Day before the actual day. And yes, it's today, April 30!

My city is sadly devoid of independent bookstores that sell new books for general audiences. Yes, we do have a Barnes & Noble (we used to have two but one lost its lease, which is a crappy reason for bookstore closure and I gather that Barnes & Noble seeks a new location). We also have several stores devoted to used books, which is a wonderful thing. But there is no independent bookstore with a quirky, individual mix of old favorites and exciting newly published titles, and this is a sad thing for the community. It also eats at me as I try to determine where to celebrate my novel's launch in just one month. Will it work out to launch at Barnes & Noble? (Maybe, but they're just now trying to remember how they used to do in-person events.) Could I launch at the library or my local cafe instead? (Maybe, but neither has much of a history of author events to draw in people who don't know me.)

And so I say to you, if you have a local independent bookstore, or more than one, go forth and visit them today. Let them know you appreciate them.

The Goodreads ARC Giveaway Is Almost Over!

The Goodreads giveaway of ten advance reader copies of In Search of the Magic Theater is almost over--it concludes at 11:59 PM on May 1st. So if you'd like to enter to win a copy and have not yet done so, hie thee to the giveaway signup page right now!

Wondering why you should enter to win this enchanting novel (if I do say so myself) narrated by two strong but very different women, one in midlife and the other just entering adulthood? Well, why not live dangerously?

“A sophisticated, queer-friendly, and feminist take on Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Although loosely set in the late 1990s, Huebner’s meditation on repression, instinct, and the creative drive is fresh and timeless.” —Gabriella West, author of Time of Grace and Once You Are Mine

Montana Legacy

Katie Frey's romance Montana Legacy is a 2022 Debut launching April 26th. Now that Nick Hartmann is the guardian of his orphaned niece, he needs to hire a tutor, and Rose Kelly is the answer. However, not only is he impermissibly attracted to her, but she may not be who she seems. No less than control of his family’s land and legacy hangs in the balance. Will divided family loyalties, a fierce estate battle and Rose’s shocking secret cost Nick everything?

The Sleepers

The Sleepers, a thriller by British writer K.M. Kelly, is a 2022 Debut launching April 26th. Sylvie is running--from so many things! From memories of a terror attack in London in which her brother died. From her abusive boyfriend. And from someone who, she's been told, is trying to kill her. Meanwhile, Corran is an undercover agent with a list of names that includes Sylvie's. Is it a hit list connected to the long-ago London attack?

When We Fell Apart

When We Fell Apart, by Soon Wiley, is a 2022 Debut launching April 26. When the Seoul police inform Korean-American Min that his girlfriend Yu-jin has committed suicide, he’s sure it can’t be true. Devastated by her death, Min throws himself into finding out why seemingly happy Yu-jin could have secretly wanted to die. As he learns more about her and her family and friends, the more he doubts he ever really knew her at all.

Using Overdrive Through Your Library

These days, many of us are reading e-books that we get from our local libraries. I may have been late to the party on this, as I didn't get an e-reader (in my case, a Kindle) until the pandemic hit, when the library became off-limits physically for a significant period. I've found, however, that checking out e-books is really great! They're available in several forms, and I never have to worry about returning the books overdue--they're renewable but unless I renew, they're simply no longer readable on my device. Overdrive, which is the system that my library uses, keeps a record of what I've checked out, so I can easily get a book again if I should have renewed but didn't.

I'm sure the above is old news to many of you. But do you know how to take your Overdrive checkouts to the next level?

If you read a lot of classics plus newer books that are not bestsellers, you may be frustrated that you aren't finding everything you'd like at the library, even via Overdrive. I know that I've found it quite tedious to look up book after book that's on my Goodreads want-to-read list and find that none of them show up on my library's Overdrive. The author's name usually does, but none of their books.

Each library chooses which books it wants from Overdrive's catalog. In other words, when you're on your library's Overdrive site, you aren't searching Overdrive in totality--you're just searching within what your library has decided, in its wisdom, that local borrowers are likely to want. But you can request the library offer books from Overdrive that it does not currently show!

I just did this today, as I'd discovered (via a simple Google search) that my forthcoming novel In Search of the Magic Theater is listed in Overdrive. I wasn't at that point looking to see if it was in Overdrive, I was just looking for any pre-publication reviews that might have surfaced, and discovered that the Somerset County Library (New Jersey) has it listed in Overdrive. So although they won't have the book until it launches June 1, they've already got it in their system. I therefore went over to my own local library's Overdrive site and typed in my name in Search. While my name didn't show up in search, I was nonetheless able to get the e-book of In Search of the Magic Theater to come up as something I could recommend to the library, which I then did.

Therefore, I tell you, go forth to your local library's website and proceed to its Overdrive site (while not all libraries use Overdrive, it is a very commonly used e-book service). Tell it that you recommend In Search of the Magic Theater and whatever else you may be itching to read that isn't already in its catalog!

Words We Cannot Say

Sita Romero's 2022 Debut Words We Cannot Say launched April 19th, and as this is one I had the opportunity to read pre-launch, I'm delighted to say that this is definitely worth checking out. Three very different women--Penelope, Nia, and Lotus--navigate friendship, motherhood, pregnancy, and loss together. Labor and delivery nurse Penelope doesn't intend to get pregnant herself. Nia, a first-generation American and former model, has three years of fertility treatments and pressure from her family to deal with. Lotus, who has a toddler from her polyamorous and bisexual marriage, tries to keep life sane when her husband's ex comes to stay.

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary

The nineteenth of April appears to be the most popular day of the year (so far) for book launches, and so it's perhaps no surprise that today's featured 2022 Debut, Laura Stanfill's historical and magical realist Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary is an April 19 launch. Georges Blanchard is a master builder of high-pitched barrel organs that train songbirds to sing human melodies, but his son Henri has no interest in following in his father's footsteps, and instead prefers making bobbin lace with the local girls. Will Henri find his place in the world? What happens when he discovers he has a half-brother in America?

Pay Dirt Road

Pay Dirt Road, a small-town mystery about an unlikely private investigator searching for a missing waitress, is a 2022 Debut by Samantha Jayne Allen that launches April 19. If you enjoy mysteries, you won't want to miss this one--it won the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize for the best debut mystery novel set in the Southwest!

The Things We Lost

The Things We Lost, by Canadian author Maggie Giles, is a 2022 Debut launching April 19. Maddie Butler finds herself suddenly in a parallel universe version of her life in which her dead friend is still alive and she hasn't had children. Is it a better life, a worse, or just different?

Shadows in the Mind's Eye

Shadows in the Mind's Eye, a 2022 Debut by Janyre Tromp, releases April 19. It's a historical tale in which in 1946, a soldier returns to his young family and no one knows if he’s actually seeing criminals in the hills or whether his battle scarred mind has made him the true danger.

Not Your Child

Not Your Child is a 2022 Debut thriller by Lis Angus launching April 18. When a Canadian mother discovers that a strange man is following her daughter, she's startled to learn that he believes the girl is his granddaughter, abducted as a baby. Things get even weirder when mother and daughter don't match when DNA-tested and the daughter disappears...

Magnetic Woman Expands its International Reach

Through the magic of Worldcat, and the Polish NUKAT (Union Catalog of Polish Research Libraries), I see that a copy of Magnetic Woman can now be found in Łódź at the Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego!

This is in addition to library copies in the British Isles (Maynooth, Fife, London), elsewhere in continental Europe (Paris, Leioa in Spain's Basque country, Barcelona, Lausanne, Berlin, Stockholm, Munich, Heidelberg, Würzburg, Zürich), and Wellington, New Zealand. This is in addition to copies at many US university and public libraries and one in Montreal.

While I've sent copies to a good many Czech institutions, apparently none of them report to Worldcat.

If your library doesn't yet have Magnetic Woman, do ask them to order it! You can point out that it is a prize-winning study of a fascinating gender-ambiguous surrealist. And if you've read it, please consider reviewing it, whether for a scholarly journal or on Amazon or Goodreads!

Spread the word about Toyen and Czech surrealism!

The Echo Man

The Echo Man is a 2022 Debut crime thriller by Sam Holland, launching April 14th. Two detectives are working on a series of horrific murders that copy famous murders of the past, while a woman on the run discovers a link between her own case and that of the copycat killer.

Don't Forget to Check NetGalley!

If you read and review via NetGalley, this post is for you! It's also for you if you're up for helping get new books noticed.

My novel In Search of the Magic Theater--a tale of music, theater, generational tensions, strong women, and a bit of romance--is still available for pre-publication review on NetGalley. Reviews that appear prior to publication, whether in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, NetGalley, Goodreads, or elsewhere, help readers learn about books they may be interested in. That encourages pre-orders, which encourages more support from publishers. The more buzz, the better!

The Sign for Home

Blair Fell's The Sign for Home, a 2022 Debut, launched April 5. Arlo Dilly, a young deaf-blind Jehovah's Witness, looks for his lost love from boarding school with the help of his gay interpreter and Belgian best friend. The author is an ASL interpreter and TV writer, and the book is getting lots of attention!

Portrait of a Thief

Grace D. Li's 2022 Debut novel Portrait of a Thief is a heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums. It's about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity. As an art historian, I think I've got to put this one on my soon-to-be-read list! The novel launches April 5th.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

Lisa Roe's Welcome to the Neighborhood is a 2022 Debut novel about family, romance, and neighborhood dynamics in an upscale New Jersey suburb. It launches April 5th.

Sari, Not Sari

Sonya Singh's Sari, Not Sari, which launches April 5th, is a 2022 Debut rom-com about a woman trying to connect with her South Asian roots. Manny Dogra's great at helping people break up, but how is she at handling love?

Fool Me Once

Fool Me Once, a 2022 rom-com Debut by Ashley Winstead (author of the 2021 thriller In My Dreams I Hold a Knife), launches April 5 and features a heroine who's the communications director of a woman-owned electric vehicle company--but who doesn't trust love.

Gold Mountain

Betty G. Yee's 2022 Debut novel Gold Mountain, which launches April 5th, is a historical tale of a fifteen-year-old girl who disguises herself as a boy to travel from China to the United States and work on the transcontinental railroad in 1867.

And the Goodreads Giveaway Begins!

The game's afoot, and throughout the month of April, Goodreads members can enter to win one of ten advance reader copies of my novel In Search of the Magic Theater.

Through the voices of two women with overlapping lives but diverging paths, Karla Huebner explores the tension between control and surrender, reason and ecstasy, dreaming and choosing. This engaging, erudite, yet accessible novel takes us on a cultural journey spanning millennia, from Greek mythology to Jimi Hendrix, from Elizabethan lyric poetry to performance art, revealing along the way the joy of self-discovery. –Julie Wittes Schlack, author of This All-at-Onceness and Burning and Dodging

Goodreads Book Giveaway

In Search of the Magic Theater

by Karla Huebner

Giveaway ends May 01, 2022.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Starting Tomorrow...

This is no April Fool--the Goodreads Giveaway of ten advance reader copies of In Search of the Magic Theater has been okayed to begin April 2nd. So, all you Goodreads readers, you have the month of April to enter to win a copy! If you have marked the book as "want to read," you'll automatically be asked if you want to enter the giveaway. Otherwise, go to the giveaways section.