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Coming Up:
LITQUAKE 2024: UNFORGETTABLE SLEUTHS – SAN FRANCISCO, OCT. 18
I will be moderating a panel of four stellar authors: Nordic Noir master Thomas Enger (Stigma), National Book Award nominee Ramona Emerson (Exposure), aMichelle Chouinard (The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco) and Nina Simon (Mother-Daughter Murder Night) will speak of what makes a sleuth unforgettable. Tickets are available here.
SISTERS IN CRIME NORCAL FALL SHOWCASE: ORINDA BOOKS, NOV. 2
This year’s Sisters in Crime Northern California Fall Showcase will be at Orinda Books. I’ll be among 10 authors doing a reading and discussion about the craft of mystery writing. My story will be “Tone Deaf” from Tales of Music, Murder, and Mayhem: Boucheron Anthology 2024. Other authors include Michele Drier (Resurrection of the Roses); Stacie Grey (She Left); Vinnie Hansen (Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Anthology); Victoria Kazarian (Drop Dead Bread); Ellen Kirschman (Call Me Carmella); Claudia Long (Murder Without a Duck); Ana Manwaring (The Kickback), Faye Snowden (Killing Rain); Robin Somers (Eleven Stolen Horses).
The event runs from 1-3pm at 276 Village Square, Orinda.
Read Now:
“TONE DEAF” in MUSIC, MURDER, MAYHEM AND MYSTERY
Selected for inclusion in Bouchercon Nashville 2024’s anthology, my short story “Tone Deaf” is in Down & Out Books‘ TALES OF MUSIC, MURDER AND MAYHEM. Edited by bestselling author Heather Graham, the limited-edition hardcover anthology benefits the Nashville Public Library and is available through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
The judging committee selected the stories through blind selection, so it’s splendid for this tale of Chinese American music school noir to make the cut.
Quiescent Fung was a reverse prodigy. She was color-blind, had two left feet and couldn’t string two notes together without tripping over the chord.
That had to amount to something, she told herself.
When she was nine, she Googled female colorblindness and found her condition was uncommon (one in two hundred girls, versus one in twelve boys.) She’d written the mutations down in a yellow hardbound notebook, OPN1LW and OPN1MW, and adorned the silk-finished page with glittery butterfly stickers.
The discovery made her feel special. It had taken a few years for her to understand that she saw things differently and a few more for mother to believe her. Her mother Miriam sourced high-end textiles for home design and was often jetting to places like Thailand or Indonesia or Kazakhstan and wasn’t around enough to notice. Her frequent absence in fact required Quiescent’s life to be scheduled and pre-ordained, down to coordinating the clothes — and colors — that she wore.
Every print copy comes with a complimentary digital e-book.
“THOSE POOR MOTHERS” in THE LOS ANGELES REVIEW
2023 Short Fiction Award winner Vera Chan, final judge Carlos Allende
They look like my daughter. Sixteen or seventeen, blonde hair that touches their shoulders, pale faces. The newspaper runs their photographs in black and white. I don’t know if their eyes are the same translucent blue, like the veins in her forearms. “Lucy,” I tell her, “they look so much like you.”
The Los Angeles Review print issue featuring all winners is available summer 2024.
“MURDERERS’ FEAST” in MIDNIGHT HOUR
Men had been murdered for less. And yet techpreneur John Manley, a sneering braggadocio who has left a trail of duped VC investors, bankrupted cohorts and damaged women, still lived. What could possibly happen when two hundred of his closest enemies gather in a five-day exclusive gourmet retreat, in this tale of Silicon Valley noir?
Under the pseudonym of H.C. Chan, Vera Chan joins 19 stellar authors of color in MIDNIGHT HOUR: A CHILLING ANTHOLOGY OF CRIME FICTION FROM 20 AUTHORS OF COLOR with her short story, “Murderers’ Feast.” Edited by USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Abby L. Vandiver, the anthology is published by Crooked Lane Books.
The paperback and ebook were published on Nov. 9, 2021. Order a copy today.
Audiobook released March 1, 2022 by Dreamscape Media. Listen now.
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