BOTH MY NEW BOOKS ARE UP AND RUNNING ON AMAZON! WAHOO!
(Do I sound excited?)
Mazal’s Luck Runs Out is for ages 8-11.
My life is being taken over by marketing (What? Did you say there’s a Jewish holiday coming? More than one? You mean I have to cook, too? ARGH!). Also, I’m working on no budget here, but at least people can actually buy both Mazal’s Luck Runs Out and Sliding Doors and other stories online now.
With no further ado… Continue reading
When my husband checked the mail after Rosh Hashanah had ended, he found a couple packages for me in our mailbox from Createspace. In one, we found the proof of the anthology that I’ve been working on, Sliding Doors and other stories, and the other package contained the proof of Mazal’s Luck Runs Out.
I’ve been spending the last couple days proofreading those books. In Sliding Doors, the font size suggested by the template was so small, I was afraid no one would be able to read it. I went back and increase it. I also had do a lot of clean-up on the italics. The stories in the collection were from different magazines, with different policies about how to handle foreign words. With so many Hebrew and Yiddish terms throughout the text, punctuating these terms consistently was a big job, and I didn’t catch them all before uploading files to Createspace.
Mazal had some similar issues, but I also discovered that I didn’t like the cover I’d designed. I spent a lot of time tinkering with it to get it right.
Sliding Doors is still not quite ready for release, but duh-duh-dah:
Here’s the link to Mazal’s Luck Runs Out!
It’s available already in paperback via Createspace and Amazon. If you order it now, you should receive it by Sukkos! And if you buy it…please post a review on Amazon! And tell other prospective readers if you like it!
The target audience is Jewish kids 8-11, the kids who like the stories in Mishpacha Junior, Binah Bunch, and so on. The main character of this novella is Mazal, a Persian girl living in Los Angeles. The average Orthodox girl will identify with her misadventures, but it was especially important to me to represent a strong Persian Jewish character, something rarely seen in kids’ fiction.
I hope to have news about the other book soon.
Here’s me, with the proof of Sliding Doors and other stories. It’s not quite ready yet for ordering.
Looking for some Shabbos/weekend reading?
I’ve got a new story in this week’s Inyan Magazine, inside Hamodia (dated August 26, 2015). The story is called “The Favorite Uncle,” and it’s a sorta reversal of real-life situations between my kids and their beloved uncles, as well as a paean to my own awesome uncles, Ira and Larry.
Synopsis: 11 year-old Alex Silverstein’s favorite uncle frums out (becomes Orthodox), and Alex is not amused.
I’d love feedback from anyone who reads the story!
I also thought this would be a great opportunity to answer a question I’ve been getting a lot lately, included from professional (non-fiction) writers:
How do you write a short story?
Usually, the first step for me is Continue reading
My reviews of Bina Lobell’s Super Secret Diary by Ruchama Feuerman and Not for Sale by Bracha Rosman are on page 16 of the most recent edition of The Jewish Home L.A. You can find those reviews here.
Tablet’s running my essay about the weirdest thing that happened to me due to my OCD, which is so freaky that it’s taken years for me to write about. The only reason I finally did so was because I’ve seen some talk about these symptoms in Orthodox magazines, but none in mainstream media, and almost all of it was written either anonymously or by a non-sufferer. It became important to me that people know they are not alone, not losing their minds, and that they get help and understanding that they need.
I’m getting incredible, supportive feedback, thank G-d. A couple people have reached out to me because they or a relative have scrupulosity or OCD in general, so I thought it might be good to share a few more resources. Continue reading
Would you like to hear the perspectives of seven different female Jewish bloggers about haircovering? Melissa Amster, the Merryland Girl, is hosting Orthodox Women Talk today, and we’ve got plenty different opinions represented: from those who cover, those who don’t, those who found it challenging to get used to, and those who love it. We have women who wear wigs, scarves, and everything in between.
Care to check it out? Read here.
Rebecca Klempner 