Pause by Sara Stamey

Pause by Sara Stamey

First Place, Somerset Award for Women’s Fiction

Dear Diary, Shall we pause to take stock?

Female (liberated, at least from fraught marriage). Age 52, height 5’5”, weight 120, bone density excellent, minimal cellulite, maximal hot flashes. One and ¾ breasts.

Months since sex: 27

Lindsey Friedland, former river-rafting guide and avid outdoorswoman, has hit the worst stretch of water she’s ever faced: divorce from an abuser, breast cancer, menopause symptoms that her friends seem to have paddled serenely by. And she’s lost sight of her dream of becoming an environmental journalist.

Lindsey needs to get her spark back.

Dear Diary, Disastrous blind dates so far: The walking cologne bottle. The “really want a gal to give me babies” guy. The pushy past-life reintegration facilitator.

Will Lindsey make it past the rocky shoals of family upheavals, job crises, sexism, and ageism… not to mention toxic love traps? Does “happily ever after” now mean settling for occasional (but hot!) sex with Mr. Maybe? Can she reclaim her journalism dream?

Dear Diary, I’m tired of being tragic. I’m sending off my article about the bulldozers versus the baby owls.

Award-winning novelist Sara Stamey’s “Cybers Wild Card” science fiction novels with Berkley/Ace received praise from Publishers Weekly, SF Chronicle, and Fantasy Review, and made the Locus Best New Novelists list. Her Caribbean psychic suspense novel ISLANDS—“A stomping, vivid ride” (Statesman Review)—won the Chanticleer Paranormal Suspense Award and Hollywood Book Festival Genre Award. Her near-future Greek islands Cygnus Ribbon & Ariadne thriller THEARIADNE CONNECTION won the Chanticleer Global Thriller Grand Prize, as well as Cygnus Awards for Speculative Fiction and Science Fiction. “A rocket-paced thrill ride that delivers complex, engaging characters in a laser-sharp plot.” (Chanticleer Reviews). She’s now writing a sequel, THE ARIADNE DISCONNECT.