Category: Giveaways

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May giveaway: Rob Roberge’s The Cost of Living

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Gil in Berkeley, Calif.! ***

I was first introduced to when I heard Rob Roberge read at Roar Shack. The excerpt — about an addict called Bud Barrett whose friend talks him into digging up a relative’s grave to steal jewelry to hawk for drug money — was disturbing and intense and sad and unexpectedly hilarious! “She was dead,” the reluctant Bud rationalizes —

So of course, I had to read the novel. Every page of The Cost of Living is an entertaining ride: Reckless musicians on tour, hooking up with strangers and going on drug binges. Recovering addicts going to all the uncomfortable places in search of redemption. The heady ecstatic highs of mania, the soul-wrenching lows of depression. The characters go all over the place — geographically and emotionally — and take you with them —

Enter your email below for a chance to win a free copy of The Cost of Living. Already signed up for my newsletter? Then you’re already entered! US addresses only; giveaway ends May 31 at 11:59 pm.

Enter to win!


Come back mid-month to read a Five Firsts interview with Rob Roberge.

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April giveaway: Cake Time!

Cake Time by Siel Ju

Cake Time by Siel Ju*** Winner selected! Congratulations to John in Quincy, Mass! ***

This month’s giveaway is my own book! After many years of wanting and waiting, I’m beyond excited and grateful that Cake Time is finally coming into the world on April 6, 2017.

When people ask what my book is about, I say this: Cake Time is about a smart girl who makes risky choices about men and sex in Los Angeles.

Here’s a longer description:

Daring yet aimless, smart but slightly strange, Cake Time’s young female protagonist keeps making slippery choices, sliding into the dangerous space where curiosity melds with fear and desires turn into dirty messes.

In “How Not to Have an Abortion,” the teenaged narrator looks for a ride from the clinic between her AP exams. In “Easy Target,” the now-college-grad agrees to go to a swingers party with a handsome stranger. A decade later, in “Glow,” she is suddenly confronted by the disturbing and thrilling fact of her lover’s secret daughter.

Ultimately, Cake Time grapples with urgent, timeless questions: why intelligent girls make terrible choices, where to negotiate a private self in an increasingly public world, and how to love madly without losing a sense of self.

Get a copy of now, or sign up with your email below to be entered to win a free copy! Already signed up for my newsletter? Then you’re already entered!

Enter your email below for a chance to win a free copy of Cake Time. Already signed up for my newsletter? Then you’re already entered! US addresses only; giveaway ends April 30 at 11:59 pm.

Enter to win!



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You can also enter to win one of 15 copies on Goodreads — so technically, you have 16 chances to win this book!

And I hope you’ll join me at my book launch, happening at Skylight Books in Los Angeles on April 5 at 7:30. If you can’t make it there, catch me on book tour —

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March giveaway: Louise Wareham Leonard’s 52 Men

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Gary in Dallas, OR ***

“I find a list of pros and cons about me. Pro: Great sex. A good person. Con: Needy, both emotionally and financially.”
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52 Men is a thinly veiled memoir by Louise Wareham Leonard, written in tiny, flash pieces. Each of the 52 snippets features a guy with whom the narrator had a relationship — some affairs brief, some longer, some intimate, some cruel.

The 52 men glimpsed through this book all are so unique — there’s one guy that sounds curiously like Jonathan Franzen, another who jousts with the narrator so she’ll remember him, several who die young…. The book’s like an ode to ex lovers but also an ode to the fragmentary memories of them.

After the flash pieces, this book ends with a longer short story about a girl who has a sexual relationship with her older step brother — at first as a young teen who’s being molested by him, later as a woman, consensually. This story goes to all the uncomfortable, murky, in-between places around consent, desire, history, and power and is sure to make you think and feel intensely for a long time after you’ve finished the slim volume.

*** This giveaway is now closed, but join my email list to be entered into future giveaways! ***

Come back mid-month to read a Five Firsts interview with Louise Wareham Leonard.

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February Giveaway: Julia Scheeres’s Jesus Land

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Daniel in Murray, KY ***

What’s it like growing up white — with an adopted black brother — in 1980s rural Indiana? Tough — and much, much tougher if the two of you are not only taunted by racist peers at school but abused and neglected by your religious, punitive parents at home.

In her searing memoir Jesus Land, Julia Sheeres tells the story of her and her brother David in painful and riveting detail. The kids try to fend for themselves while caring for each other in an increasingly turbulent environment — enduring physical and sexual abuse — until they’re sent to a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic. There, the siblings are disciplined with draconian rules that shame and isolate and silence students, subjugating them into obedience.

Raised by religious parents myself, reading Jesus Land was a cathartic experience for me. It’s a fascinating and disturbingly close look at key social issues that still plague us today: racism, sexual assault, and child abuse carried out in the name of god, both in the quiet secrecy of family homes and the formalized settings of religious institutions.

Get a copy of Jesus Land now, or sign up with your email below to be entered to win a free copy! Already signed up for my newsletter? Then you’re already entered!

*** This giveaway is now closed, but join my email list to be entered into future giveaways! ***

Come back mid-month to read a Five Firsts interview with Julia Scheeres.

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January Giveaway: Clancy Martin’s How to Sell

how-to-sell*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Taryn in Los Angeles! ***

Cocaine and Philosophy. Fake coins and real jewels. Diamonds and Rolexes. Get all that and more when you read Clancy Martin’s first novel, How to Sell.

This novel follows Bobby Clark, who drops out of high school and goes into the jewelry business — the double-dealing, customer-swindling, insurance-scamming kind of jewelry business. He grows up quickly, cheating out of their money the rich and poor alike, learning to ply his customers with what they want to hear, show them what they never knew they wanted.

How to Sell is a fast-paced, entertaining tale of deception — both of others and of the self — peppered with philosophical ideas that’ll make you think about life and desire and ambition. After all, Clancy Martin, in addition to being a novelist, is also a philosopher and professor of business ethics. In How to Sell, we learn a lot about what drives people — their strange motivations and rationalizations for spending outrageous sums of money on what are ultimately pretty rocks and small clocks.

Get a copy of How to Sell now, or sign up with your email below to be entered to win a free copy! Already signed up for my newsletter? Then you’re already entered!

*** This giveaway is now closed, but join my email list to be entered into future giveaways! ***

Come back mid-month to read a Five Firsts interview with Clancy Martin!

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December Giveaway: Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Kristy in Los Angeles! ***

girl-in-the-flammable-skirtThe first lines of Aimee Bender’s stories often set up strange, fairy-tale-esque worlds. For example: “There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice.”

Other first lines are surreal but with an eerie sense of reality: “Steven returned from the war without lips.”

And yet other first lines just make you keep reading to find out more: “I’m spending the afternoon auditioning men.”

Aimee Bender’s first book, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, is filled with stories unafraid to meld the real with the impossible, the grotesque with the funny, the sacred with the profane. There’s a man who develops a hole in his stomach — and becomes very proud of it. There’s a woman who falls in love with a robber — but even more in love with a stolen ring that dyes everything red. Then there’s a librarian who fucks every guy that comes in — to get over her grief over a father’s death.

*** This giveaway is now closed, but join my email list to be entered into future giveaways! ***

Come back mid-month to read a Five Firsts interview with Aimee Bender!