What's Happening? A LOT!

First off, the long-awaited print version of Barefoot Girls will be available within the next few weeks! For those of you who prefer the heft of a book in your hand, you'll finally be able to get it in the format you prefer.

Personally, I'm still a paper-book girl. Even though my husband has been sucked over to the alternate universe of ebooks, I'm hard to sway. Let's face it, I'm a late adopter, not an early adopter. You probably won't be able to drag me away from my paper books until they stop printing them!

The other piece of news is.....
(drum roll, please)
My short story collection, Earth and Air, is on sale now in ebook stores! Woo hoo!

This collection contains one of my favorite short stories ever, the title piece, and I really think readers will love it, particularly if you love darker spookier fiction (well, there's a comic story at the end that leaves you laughing, or at least I hope it will).

The cover is at the top of this post and the description is as follows:

A handsome singing gypsy who has the power to make girls sleep, sometimes forever, decides to rest from his journeys in an old Victorian house in suburbia with two mesmerized sisters. A broken jukebox leads a girl into uncharted territory, a wilderness in the back of a bar where the colorful neon lights of a working jukebox beckon and where she learns terrible things from a dragon-like woman breathing fire in the dark. A thirty-something career woman trying to rediscover her purpose on an island retreat is attacked in the still of the night by a neighbor whose greatest wish is for her to leave.

Tara McTiernan's stories resemble twisted modern fairy tales, full of real-life magic and Grimm-like darkness. Containing three unforgettable short works, Earth and Air, like her novel Barefoot Girls, illuminates and explores the lives of women with rare eloquence, keen insight, and a sharp wit.

By the way, the last part of that description was a combination of all the wonderful reviews I've received so far for Barefoot Girls, so, no, I couldn't write something like that about myself.

Very exciting times!

Hittin' the Beach - On Book Blogs!

Love the beach? Then you'll adore this week's book tour stops for Barefoot Girls! 

As you know, my novel definitely qualifies as a beach read (see my post whats-beach-read-anyway.html for details). As you might not know...I love the beach. One of my favorite places in the world! There is no sound more relaxing to me than the sound of waves crashing on the shore rhythmically, and I live for the feel of cool salt air washing over sun-warmed skin and the gritty tickle of sand between toes, the sight of a jaunty parade of colorful beach umbrellas lining the shore and children running and playing in the waves, the sweet childish pleasure of a sno-cone or Italian ice, and the comforting memory-filled scent of Coppertone in the air. 

This week, two book bloggers who obviously love the beach, too (as you can see if you visit their sites), are hosting virtual book blog tour events on their blogs. Be sure to check them out and get a little taste of sun and surf along with great book suggestions and many fascinating conversations in the comment sections of their posts.

Escape with a Good Book (Link: http://www.escapewithdollycas.com/2012/06/12/special-guest-tara-mctiernan) hosted me yesterday and, wow, was that a fun mini-beach-vacation-getaway! Such great comments and stories about readers' relationships with their mothers and friends...it was truly inspiring. Lori (Dollycas) is also running a giveaway of a free ebook of Barefoot Girls for the next twelve days, so if you want a chance at a copy, don't forget to enter!

Kathleen at Jersey Girl Book Reviews (Link: http://jerseygirlbookreviews.blogspot.com/) is hosting me this Friday and I am psyched! Her book blog is also fantastic, well-written, and very beach-themed with lots of photos and beautiful images of the shore. Can't wait to see how the event goes and hope you can drop by and join in the conversation. 

What a fun week! Now I'm really dying to go to the beach....Ash, honey? Can we? Pretty please?

Who's Talking Trash About Chick Lit?

The short answer: lots of people. And it pisses me off.

What got me thinking on this was an internet surfing session a few days ago when I stumbled on a great post on Jennifer Weiner's blog, her keynote address about blogging at a recent blogging expo. In it she talked about her battle to defend her writing and her genre: chick lit, which is also sometimes called women's contemporary fiction (though that is a more generalized term). Let's face it: chick lit is often made fun of, the words said with a sneer. But as Jen pointed out: 

"As anyone who’s taken a women’s studies class will tell you, as long as there’s a woman writing about her own life, there’s someone – sometimes a man, sometimes another woman -- to tell her that what she’s written is unworthy, unimportant, beneath notice, that it’s not real literature and not worth taking seriously."

Link the the whole post here: http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com/2012/06/let-me-start-by-saying-that-i-know-im.html

 That is the issue with some people's crappy attitude about chick lit: it dismisses women, says that our silly little problems aren't important. It's insulting and the people who have to start standing up against it are women, because all too often it's a woman doing the sneering. And if we sneer at each other, aren't we validating the argument that is being made against us?

Case in point: after reading Jen's post, I Googled Jen's earlier post