National award-winning author Penny Goetjen writes murder mysteries where the milieus play as prominent a role as the engaging characters. A self-proclaimed eccentric known for writing late into the night, transfixed by the allure of flickering candlelight, Ms. Goetjen embraces the writing process, unaware what will confront her at the next turn. She rides the journey with her characters, often as surprised as her readers to see how the story unfolds. Fascinated with the paranormal, she usually weaves a subtle, unexpected twist into her stories.
Month: July 2022
Erin La Rosa
Erin La Rosa has written many highly engaging… tweets, as a social media manager. But on her way to writing romance, she’s also published two humorous non-fiction books, Womanskills and The Big Redhead Book. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three daughters (one human, two felines).
Rebecca Stirling
Rebecca Stirling lives between Colorado and Kauai with her two children. She teaches creative art and writing classes to help spread the knowledge and ingenuity of world cultures. She continues to sail and travel, read and write, and has a love for the stories individuals, cultures, and our earth have to tell.
Jackson Bliss
Jackson Bliss is the winner of the 2020 Noemi Press Award in Prose and the mixed-race/hapa author of Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments (Noemi Press, 2021), Amnesia of June Bugs (7.13 Books, 2022), and the speculative fiction hypertext, Dukkha, My Love (2017). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Ploughshares, Guernica, Antioch Review, ZYZZYVA, Longreads, TriQuarterly, Columbia Journal, Kenyon Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Witness, Fiction, Santa Monica Review, Boston Review, Juked, Quarterly West, Arts & Letters, Joyland, Huffington Post UK, The Daily Dot, and Multiethnic Literature in the US, among others. He is the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University and lives in LA with his wife and their two fashionably dressed dogs.
Victoria Lilienthal
Since childhood, Victoria Lilienthal has been captivated by symbols, rituals and the myths that inspire growth. She studied Intellectual History at University of Colorado at Boulder and is a certified sound healer, a practice that uses sound to relax the mind and body. It is with an appreciation for silliness, sex and the sacred that Victoria draws upon her studies, and her mentorship with cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien as inspiration for her first novel, The T Room. She lives in Northern California along with her husband and their senior citizen dachshund, Luigi.
Kristin Marguerite Doidge
Kristin Marguerite Doidge is the author of NORA EPHRON: A BIOGRAPHY (Chicago Review Press). She is an award-winning journalist and professor based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Marie Claire, FORTUNE, Bustle, GOOD Magazine, and other publications. She holds a master’s degree in specialized journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism and teaches at Loyola Marymount University.
Abigail Cutter
Abigail Cutter started out as an artist/printmaker with a MFA from George Washington University, but during a long stint at the National Endowment for the Humanities she developed a deep love of American history. She married a man who came with a farm and an 18th-century farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The farmhouse came with a very active ghost. She currently lives at both the farm and in the small town of Waterford, VA, with her husband, a black Labrador named Emma, and a cat named Barnibi.
Rachel Howzell Hall
Rachel Howzell Hall is the critically acclaimed author and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist for And Now She’s Gone. A New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister with James Patterson, Rachel is an Anthony, International Thriller Writers and Left Award nominee and the author of They All Fall Down, Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. She is a past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America and has been a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers Programs. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
Natalka Burian
Natalka Burian is the cofounder of the Freya Project, a nonprofit reading series that supports community-based activism and the work of women and nonbinary writers. She is the author of Welcome to the Slipstream, a young adult book, and the cocktail cookbook A Woman’s Drink, and is the co-owner of two bars, Elsa and Ramona.
David L. Bluder
David L. Bluder holds a degree in Business from Northern Iowa University and received his MBA at St. Ambrose University. Before becoming an author, David was a banker, politician, business owner and investor, as well as taught Business at the University of Iowa.