Category: Publishing News

On the Shore (Vine Leaves Press, 2017), a novel about an immigrant Jewish family thrown into turmoil when a son lies about his name and age to fight in World War One, was submitted to the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) for its new adult fiction award. Judges are looking for work that grapples with Jewish thematic content including religion, history, culture, and identity. Books published in 2017 are eligible for the 2018 award. Winners will be announced in late February or early March 2018 (a long time to keep my digits crossed). To read more about On the Shore, watch the trailer, and order copies, see NOVELS.

I’m entering my short story collection Between the Wars in contests and submitting it to prospective agents and publishers. The collection’s fourteen stories span the years from World War I to World War II (1911-1946) with narratives that go beyond the battlefield to examine how extraordinary events change ordinary lives and how, conversely, minor happenings can affect actions, feelings, and relationships. For example, “Jamming” pits the journals of an overbearing husband and his stifled wife at the founding of the Women’s Institute in Wales during World War I. In “Undark,” a budding artist paints her family’s reluctant acceptance of her older sister’s poisoning as a “Radium Girl” in the mid-1920s. A woman scriptwriter in “So I Did” battles sex discrimination and family disapproval to break into 1930s radio. Set in the Capone era, “Blood and Sand” portrays a girl’s confusion upon discovering her adored Uncle Al is behind the killing of her best friend’s father. Five of the stories have been published in journals (see STORIES) but I’d love to see the entire collection in print.

Tada! I’m sending out my new novel Nine in Ten to prospective agents and publishers. Inspired by a bizarre chapter in Toronto’s history, and set in 1976, Nine in Ten asks whether an overbearing father deserves a chance to make amends with his alienated offspring. Widower Emm Benbow, told by his doctor he can no longer live alone, must move in with one of his many children or go to a dreaded old age home. Fifty years earlier, Emm pressured his wife Izora to enter the Toronto Stork Derby, an actual contest which offered a sizable cash award to the woman who had the most babies between 1926 and 1936. They had a large family, but it was hardly the happy one Emm envisioned. Now, living in turn with each of his adult children, Emm discovers that the true value of fatherhood is not measured in big prizes, but in small rewards.