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Dear Reader,
Be sure to enter September's Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway, I'm baking cookies for three lucky readers. To enter, click here.
Today's guest author, Erin Lindsey, has lived and worked in dozens of countries around the world, but has only ever called two places home: her native city of Calgary and her adopted hometown of New York. In addition to the Rose Gallagher mysteries, Erin is the author of the Bloodbound series of epic fantasy novels and the Nicolas Lenoir series of dark fantasy mysteries. Her latest novel, A Golden Grave, follows the continuing adventures of housemaid-turned-Pinkerton agent, Rose Gallagher, as she and her partner track a killer with shocking abilities in Gilded Age New York.
Please welcome Erin Lindsey. Send an email and say hello.
Here's the thing about New York. No matter how much you love it, it's never going to love you back. That's true of most cities to some degree or another, but New York takes it to another level. The pure indifference of the place, whether you're a starving artist or a Wall Street titan or a movie star... It's like a superpower. And really, can you blame it? New York came into its own in the Gilded Age of Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.
Who can compete with that? Whoever you are, whatever you do, New York is far too cool for you. In spite of that, or maybe because of it, millions of people love the city. 'Desperately.' They crave its attention and approval--because, after all, if you can make it there, etc. etc.
I'd visited New York a few times in my early twenties, but I didn't properly fall in love until I moved there in 2004. I hadn't been there a week before I decided New York was The One. It was crude and loud and brutally honest, fascinating and random and positively 'thrumming' with energy. It was the center of the universe, and if it felt a little like it was tearing at you from all directions, that was just the price of standing in the vortex. I knew right from the start that if I ever left, it would be kicking and screaming.
I was right about that, by the way. It took almost a decade, but when I did finally move, it was with great reluctance. And every time I came back to visit, it was like bumping into an ex you never wanted to break up with in the first place. 'Take me back,' I wanted to cry. 'I still love you.' (I did move back eventually--sort of. I live there part-time. I guess you could say New York and I have an open relationship. But I digress.)
Small wonder filmmakers and novelists are obsessed with the place. Which is great, because until they invent time travel, it's the only way you can experience some of New York's most iconic decades--which is to say, all of them. The Gilded Age of Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, and the roaring twenties of The Great Gatsby. The gritty Depression of Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man, and the glamorous 1940s of Breakfast at Tiffany's. I honestly couldn't choose a favorite. In whatever form it takes, I heart NY.
-- Erin Lindsey
contact@erin-lindsey.com
* You could be featured as a guest writer in my column if your entry in this year's Write a DearReader Contest is chosen as a winner or receives honorable mention. Cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries, read all about them here.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
** AUTHORBUZZ **
MOON WATER (Fiction) by Pam Webber
Any lover of historical fiction who has experienced the throes of young love, endured a long, hot summer of discontent, survived tragedy, and learned life lessons along the way will love this poignant story. There is intense action, humor, soul satisfying courage and redemption on a scale that every human being understands. A novel that promises to stay with you a lifetime.
Go to AUTHORBUZZ click on MOON WATER to read more and to email author Pam Webber, you'll get a reply.
This month's Penguin Classics book is PENGUIN BOOK OF MIGRATION IN LITERATURE: DEPARTURES, ARRIVALS, GENERATIONS, RETURNS, edited by Dohra Ahmad. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.
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