New Releases for Just About Write

In the sequel to The Choice, Clinical Distance begins six years later with Mina Thomas, who has finished medical school. After divorcing her husband, Sean, and losing Regan Martin, the love of her life, Mina sets out on a quest to make her way in the world and to find the love she lost. Mina dates—a lot—but after many meaningless rendezvous with nameless women, Mina decides to give up on finding love and devotes her time solely to her career as chief resident at City Hospital. However, one night after having dinner with her best friend and confidant, police Sergeant Rosemary Rosetti, Mina discovers that the love she was searching for might possibly have been right under her nose all along. That’s when Regan steps back into Mina’s life. Will Mina sacrifice her heart for another chance at love, or will she keep a clinical distance?

Echo Radar is outgoing and happy, working as an advertising executive in a reputable firm with a bright future for promotion. Karen Thompson, from a poor unstable background, works at the same advertising firm as Echo. Where Echo prefers a relaxing environment in her free time, Karen helps others through the Greystoke Project, which caters to the very people she had once been—destitute and down on her luck. Two women form a bond and look forward to the prospect of a romantic relationship when the disturbing events of a Thanksgiving holiday bring the walls tumbling down around them. Echo is now on a quest, and with the help of Detective Roan Keating, searching for justice becomes Echo’s crusade.

Jesse and Jennifer Branson try to balance the demands of their growing family with the demands of their work responsibilities. The two, wanting a change, but are hesitant to start up the dreaded conversation. Also, the elder Bransons are getting used to living on a ranch again and becoming a part to Jesse and Jennifer’s life. And a trip to visit an old friend puts them in the middle of a danger again.

At last, a resource for writers, novice and veteran, interested in writing lesbian fiction.
In chapters by Fran Walker, L-J Baker, Nann Dunne, Sacchi Green, and Andi Marquette you’ll learn . . .

The teaching careers of lifelong friends Harriet (Hat) and Elise have come to an end in spectacular style, with the two women leaving more than burning bridges behind them. Now they are looking menopause straight in the eye--and they don't care one bit for what they see. Fight, they vow, we'll fight the interloper tooth and nail. More than a tad bruised and battered from the struggle, Hat and Elise undertake a journey to Bryson's Mill, Indiana, birthplace of Elise’s mother, Rose, who by any definition was inadequate to the simplest tasks of motherhood.

Stella May and Margaret, old friends of Rose, hold keys to a past very different from Elise's memory. When Elise adamantly refuses to accept their conflicting reality, Hat is confronted with choices--and risks--about what friendship with Elise actually entails. For both friends the journey to Bryson's Mill becomes a pilgrimage of a different kind: into the past lives of women, into truth, into sisterhood, and most of all, into new possibility. Out of the Pumpkin Shell is one of the most affirming, humorous, and engaging novels you'll read this or any year.

In Without Warning, they fell in love. In Aftershock, that love was tested and reaffirmed. Now Anna and Lily Kaklis face questions about family and future when a homeless woman is killed in San Francisco, leaving a three-year-old, who happens to be Lily's nephew, in foster care.

Lily will not allow her birth mother to ruin another childhood, but ways to save the little one rapidly dwindle. She can't arrange for adoption herself, not when Anna is clearly terrified at the prospect of raising a child.

Anna is happy to let Lily do the temporary parenting necessary until a suitable adoption placement can be found. It won't last long, and then their lives will go back to normal. At least that was the plan, then Lily is called away. Anna finds herself alone with her worst nightmare: a toddler.

In this third book of The Shaken Series, 2007 Lambda Literary winner KG MacGregor continues the compelling tale of two women who discover that real love has no limitations.

Rachel Michaels is at the top of her profession, but she's grown tired of trading barbs with her co-host/ex-husband on their popular morning radio talk show. Eager to stretch her wings, she takes a second job as the color commentator for Denver's new professional women's soccer team.

Along with her new job comes an exciting assignment, travel to Venezuela to profile the team's sizzling star recruit, Miranda Gutierrez. But Rachel begins to long for a little of her old routine when her boss forces her to extend her stay to accompany team big-wig, Nora Butler, and the headstrong player on a "bonding" adventure.

Their journey gets off to a bad start, and things go downhill from there. All three women are tested mentally and physically as they fight for their lives. They must learn to depend on each other, shape their own destinies, and, ultimately, risk everything for what matters most.

After the death of her husband, Nicky McCloud is haunted by an emptiness she can not name. Setting out on a six month trek of self discovery, Nicky McCloud leaves the only life she has ever known as a trophy wife and mother to hike the great wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Realizing the freedom to choose her own path for the first time, she begins a journey of shin splints and intestinal distress while battling her own heart, a newfound love, and a mysterious murder on the trail.

To the point of giving up, she meets Jay Reisman, who has a mission of her own and a promise to keep. What started off as retribution, revenge, and justice for Jay turns into a narrow escape of the destruction of two women’s lives. Agreeing to team up together to reach their Canadian destination they fight their growing attraction to one another as well as a murderer on the loose. The plot twists and turns with the trail as together they find both beauty and danger.

This One’s Going to Last Forever reflects both the naïve optimism of those who have yet to learn about love and the cynicism of those who feel that by now they should know better. Clara, a university student working at the McGill Daily, discovers that in love and politics, commitment is often more imagined than real. Kelly and Sonya share a bond that has less to do with love than with their dependence on each other and a succession of “friends” who supply them with heroin. A middle-aged man who performs drive-through weddings dressed as Elvis realizes, as he marries his first same-sex couple, that the only domestic partner he is ever likely to have is his ailing father. But when he ends his latest relationship, an unlikely friendship results. The characters in these darkly comic stories and novella may be searching for love in all the wrong places, but they are also able to find love in the most unexpected places.

Newcomer Robbi McCoy tells a passionate coming-of-age story about a mature woman whose life is only beginning. Full of surprises and difficult choices, Waltzing at Midnight is a heartfelt, endearing story about a woman we all know and the love that transforms her life.

Trying to fill the empty places left by children going to college, Jean Davis decides to get out of the house and volunteer in the local mayoral campaign. It soon becomes obvious - though not to Jean - that she has a major crush on the candidate, Rosie Monroe.

Thrilled by the excitement of politics and strangely flustered every time Rosie calls on her for help, Jean has never felt more alive. Rising to every challenge with newfound passion, she surprises everyone, including her husband, by flourishing under the stress of the hard-fought campaign.

When dirty tricks by the other side damage Rosie's reputation at the worst possible moment, Jean finally realizes that her feelings are not entirely about the thrill of the job. Two decades of doing what was expected of her are abruptly turned upside down, and she realizes she may just be in love - for the first time in her life.

Anidyr Bycall is frozen in her past, regretting words never spoken to the woman she loves and the one impulsive act that cost her all her dreams. Running from the courts of public and academic opinion in Fairbanks, she has landed in Key West. The nights are hot but she is colder than the glaciers she once explored.

Tending bar by night, she spends her days immersed in the research of her only remaining passion in life: the ice fields of Alaska. But trends may be improving when news from home hints that those she harmed may have moved on, and she can at least recover the papers and books she left behind. The respect and affection she once saw in Eve Cambra’s eyes is gone beyond recall.

When a few innocent questions raise Ani’s doubts about what really happened three years ago, she realizes she may have a chance to clear her name and reclaim her career. But there’s no data to suggest that Eve has thawed and that the fire they once shared can be rekindled.

In this romantic story of the icy north, Karin Kallmaker explores the passion that can melt even a frozen heart.

Title: Winterkill
Author: Joyce K. Walsh
ISBN: 978-1-935226-00-0
Publisher: Bella Books, www.bellabooks.com
Available From: Bella Books, www.bellabooks.com; and SCP Books, www.SCPbooks.com
Price: $14.95 - Pages: 214
Genre: Historical Mystery

In the stone cold heart of a 1932 New England winter, Madeline visits her oldest and closest friend who resides directly across the lake, just over the New Hampshire border from Vermont.

Celia is seriously ill and seems walled away from the reality by several people who have seemingly won her confidence: Matthias, a lawyer; David, a writer; and the very attractive Mira, playing the unlikely role of nurse. Celia’s one protector appears to be the loyal but hapless handyman Georgie.

Celia soon dies, and Madeline’s every instinct cries out foul play. She vows never to rest until the truth of her friend’s death is revealed.

Matthias in particular is in her sights. Money inherited from Celia is funding his ambitions to win election along with the upstart Democrat running for the presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Madeline, in her zeal, cannot imagine the series of events she will set into motion—or how drastically they will alter the lives of every single person in Celia’s house that fateful day of Madeline’s visit.

Winterkill is the story you’ve been waiting to read—a compelling tale finely written, spun out in suspenseful, unpredictable, thought-provoking and unforgettable style.

Titles: Wrong Turns
Author: Jackie Calhoun
ISBN: 978-1-594931-48-2
Publisher: Bella Books, www.bellabooks.com
Available From: Bella Books, www.bellabooks.com; and SCP Books, www.SCPbooks.com
Price: $14.95 - Pages: 288
Genre: Romance

“You nearly killed me!" The last in a series of wrong turns propels Callie Callahan directly into the path of Vicki Browning’s speedboat. Her long-anticipated return to the lake of her childhood results in an uncomfortable tie to a woman she’s not sure she wants to call a friend. It’s the story of her life. She gave up a dependable job for a failing business that has wiped out her savings. Her nights have been lonely since her marriage ended eight years ago. Providing for her two teenagers is increasingly difficult when her business partner is spending the last money in the till.

Hoping to make a smart choice for once, she rents the upstairs of her farmhouse to Meg Klein. While the vexatious Vicki stirs up a hornet’s nest of feelings in Callie, it’s the elusive, sensuous Meg who transforms these unexpected feelings into a physical reality Callie can’t ignore. Finally, Callie feels as if her life could head in the right direction—if only she knew which way to turn!

Jackie Calhoun (Roommates, Seasons of the Heart) returns with a down-to-earth story of a woman struggling to find the right path - and the right woman - to finally make sense of her life.