WORK IN PROGRESS - ANTHOLOGY CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

WORK IN PROGRESS Find out the story behind the stories!

Have you ever finished a book and wondered, “What made the author think of that?” Or wondered if there was a chapter in the original manuscript that didn’t make it through the final edits?

Maybe you’d like to get a sneak peek at what an author is currently working on. Work In Progress includes excerpts from some talented authors’ works in progress in different stages of the writing process, followed up with the story behind the story of the piece, and the story behind the author who wrote it.

Where did the idea come from? What were they thinking during the writing process? Why did they delete a chapter, or change a character?

Find out the answers to these questions and more inside! Available everywhere December 14th or you can pre-order your copy today and save s/h!

Want to know more about who you’ll find in WORK IN PROGRESS? Turn the page to see the faces behind the names, read abbreviated bios, and take a look at the Table of Contents…

Laura McHale Holland has loved the musicality of language since she was a tot. She has won gold medals in the National Indie Excellence Awards and Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and was a finalist for INDIES Book of the Year. In addition, four of her short plays have been produced in Northern California, where she lives with her husband and two goofy little mutts.

Kathleen M. Rodgers is a novelist whose work has appeared in Family Circle Magazine, Military Times, and in several anthologies. A professional writer for more than forty-five years, her novels have garnered many awards and favorable reviews from readers. She’s been featured in USA Today, The Associated Press, and Military Times.

Mandy Haynes lives on Amelia Island with her three dogs, one turtle, and a grateful liver. She is a contributing writer for Amelia Islander Magazine, Editor-in-Chief of Reading Nation Magazine, Executive Director of The International Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Book Club, and author of two short story collections.

Tom Shachtman has written or co-authored forty books, mostly non-fiction including the awardwinning science history, ABSOLUTE ZERO AND THE CONQUEST OF COLD, which became a two-part Nova documentary. He has also written documentaries for ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and for British and French television.

Kathryn Brown Ramsperger is an award-winning author and book coach. She began her writing career with National Geographic and Kiplinger. She also directed the publications department for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva, Switzerland. Her debut novel The Shores of Our Souls received awards from Foreword Indies and America's Best Book Awards, and it’s a 5-Star Reader’s Favorite.

Jeannette Brown’s novel, The Illusion of Leaving, was recently published by Texas Review Press. It was voted one of the "Top Ten Texas Books for 2020" and is an October Bonus Book for the Pulpwood Queens Book Club. She has enjoyed residencies at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Rivendell Writers’ Colony and Hedgebrook/India. A Texan, she now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Mary Helen Sheriff is the author of the awardwinning southern women’s fiction, Boop and Eve’s Road Trip. She serves as the CEO of Bookish Road Trip and a blogger at “...the gift of story.” After 14 years teaching elementary school, middle school, college, and professionals, Mary has taken a break from the classroom to focus on writing.

Claire Fullerton is the multiple award-winning author of four, traditionally published novels and one novella. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines including Celtic Life International, Women in Writing, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She lives in Malibu, California.

Susan Wingate’s book, How the Deer Moon Hungers, has won several awards, including a First Prize in the CIBA Somerset Literary Award, a Silver Award in the 2021 eLit Book Awards, the 2020 SABA Book Awards for the Judge’s Selection “Best Fiction Author,” Best Fiction in the 2020 Pacific Book Award, a Silver Award in the 2020 Moonbeam Children's Book Award, and July 2020 Book Cover in the Book Cover of the Month Awards.

Julia Carol Folsom is a writer and attorney, born and raised in Georgia. She holds M.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina and served in the U.S. Navy JAG Corps prior to entering private law practice. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in three anthologies and numerous online journals. Her first novel, Nice Girl, was published in 2019. Her work, like her life, is southern to the core

Scott Semegran is an award-winning writer of nine books. BlueInk Review described him best as “a gifted writer, with a wry sense of humor.” His latest novel, The Codger and the Sparrow, is a comical yet moving story about a 65-year old widower’s unlikely friendship with a 16-year old troublemaker.

He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, four kids, two cats, and a dog.

Linda Rosen’s books are set in the “not-too-distant past” and examine how women reinvent themselves despite obstacles thrown their way. A central theme is that blood is not all that makes a family– and they always feature a piece of jewelry! Her debut novel, The Disharmony of Silence, released in March 2020.

Suzanne Kamata is an American, most recently from South Carolina, who has been living in Japan for over thirty years. She earned a BA in English from the University of South Carolina and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She is now an associate professor at Naruto University of Education.

Carolyn Haines is the USA Today bestselling author of over 80 books in a number of genres. Her latest book is INDEPENDENT BONES, the 23rd Sarah Booth Delaney mystery. She has been honored with the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence as well as being inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.

Debra Thomas is a writer, teacher, and immigrant rights advocate. Originally from Binghamton, New York, she has lived in Southern California most of her adult life. She taught literature and writing at James Monroe High School, a Los Angeles public school, as well as English as a Second Language (ESL) at adult schools in LA.

Debbie Baldwin is a successful print media and television writer. She is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Virginia School of Law. Debbie and her husband live in Saint Louis, Missouri with their puggle, Pebbles. They have three children in college.

Johnnie Bernhard was chosen as a selected speaker in the 2020 TEDx Fearless Women Series.

She also supports young writers in public schools through the Letters About Literature program with the Texas Center for the Book and with the Write for Mississippi program. In 2021, she was named a teaching artist with Gemini Ink Writing Arts Center and the national TAP Summer Institute 2021.

Judith Teitelman has straddled the worlds of arts, literature, and business since she was a teenager. Her first job as a salesperson at a B. Dalton/Pickwick Bookstore. Life’s journeys took her from bookstores to commercial fine art galleries to the nonprofit arts and cultural sector, in which she has worked as staff, consultant, and educator for more than three decades

Joe Palmer is a former newspaper reporter and columnist and author. A sailor, terrible surfer, unapologetic beach bum, he was raised in Waycross, Georgia, he's lived in Florida most of his life. He and his wife, Pam live in Fernandina Beach with a huge Great Dane named Harley, who is the owner of their home.

Brenda Sutton Rose is the author of Dogwood Blues, a novel that earned her a reputation as a writer of southern fiction with a focus on the changing South and small town life. Brenda was nominated for a Georgia Author of the Year Award in 2015 and for a Pushcart Prize in Fiction in 2018. She is currently working on her second novel.

Janet Oakley, “I write historical fiction that spans the mid-nineteenth century to WW II with characters standing up for something in their own time and place.” Her work has received a 2013 Bellingham Mayor’s Arts Award, the 2013 Chanticleer Grand Prize, the 2014 First Place Chaucer Award, and many more.

Nancy J. Martin was born in San Francisco, raised in Marin County and migrated north to the Valley of the Moon, where she has resided since 1976. She is the author of a memoir-From the Summer of Love to the Valley of the Moon.

Eileen Harrison Sanchez is now retired after a forty-year career in education. She started as a teacher and ended as a district administrator. A reader, a writer and a perennial – a person with a no-age mindset – Sanchez considers family and friends to be the most important parts of her life, followed by traveling and bird watching from her gazebo.

Jessica James is an award-winning author of historical fiction and suspense/thrillers who loves old houses and big trees. She lives in Gettysburg, Pa.

Rebecca Rosenberg is a triple-gold awardwinning author of CHAMPAGNE WIDOWS, champagne historian, tour guide, and champagne cocktail creator for Breathless Wines, and American Historical Novels facebook groups.

Zoe Disigny holds a master’s degree in art history and taught college courses for thirty years. She also worked as an art gallery director, a lecturer for The Norton Simon Museum of Art, and most recently, as a lecturer for Road Scholar, an educational travel organization for adults.

Trace Conger is a Shamus award-winning author in the crime, thriller, and suspense genres. He writes the Connor Harding (Thriller) series and the Mr. Finn (PI) series. He is known for his tight writing style, dark themes, and subtle humor. Trace lives in Cincinnati with his wonderfully supportive family.

Jan Moran is a USA Today bestselling author of heartfelt women’s fiction series, family sagas, and 20th-century historical novels. She dreams up her popular, contemporary beach books on sunny shores in Southern California, not far from where she lives.

Fiction author, freelance journalist, fiction writing instructor, blogger and former newspaper reporter, Anju Gatani was born in India but grew up in Hong Kong. She has also lived and been published in Singapore, India, Australia, and USA in cover stories, fiction, feature, news, interviews, travel, perspective pieces and more.

J. Lawrence Matthews has contributed fiction to the New York Times and NPR and is the author of three non-fiction books as Jeff Matthews. "One Must Tell the Bees" is his first novel.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Duke Law School, James Garrison practiced law until returning to his first loves: writing and reading good literature. His first novel, QL 4 (TouchPoint Press 2017), based on his experiences as a military cop the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, has won awards for literary and military fiction.

T. K. Thorne has been passionate about storytelling and writing since she was a young girl, and that passion only deepened when she became a police officer. She served for more than two decades in the Birmingham police force, retiring as a precinct captain and then as the executive director of a downtown business improvement district focused on safety, retiring to write full time.

Rebecca Barrett writes historical fiction, cozy mysteries, and short stories of life in the South. An avid reader all her life and a product of “front porch” socializing, she became a story-teller at an early age.

Her current project is a detective series, Hugo August, set in the deep South amid the upheaval of the Vietnam War and the social unrest of the hippie movement.

Jodie Cain Smith is a graduate of the University of South Alabama and Northern Michigan University because earning a degree on both the southern and northern border happened by pure chance and a bit of study. Her debut novel, The Woods at Barlow Bend, based on the true story of her grandmother’s tumultuous adolescence in rural Alabama

Patricia Sands lives two hours north of Toronto, but her heart's other home is the South of France.

She spends part of each year on the Cote d'Azur and once a year leads a women-only tour of the Riviera and Provence based on her novels. Her awardwinning 2010 debut novel, The Bridge Club, is a book club favorite.

Kimberly Packard is an award-winning author of edgy women’s fiction. When she isn’t writing, she can be found running, asking her dog what’s in his mouth or curled up with a book. She resides in Texas with her husband Colby, a clever cat named Oliver and a precocious puppy named Tully.

Debra Bowling’s debut novel, THE MEMORY OF

FLIGHT received the 2015 Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel. She has published essays, short stories, poetry, and photographs.

Bowling has also produced numerous video documentaries, including series on Southern authors, Tina McElroy Ansa, Terry Kay, and Sara Flannigan, funded by the Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs.

Susan Cushman’s seven published books include John and Mary Margaret (novel), Friends of the Library (short stories), Cherry Bomb (novel), Tangles and Plaques: A Mother and Daughter Face Alzheimer’s (memoir), and three anthologies she edited, A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We are Meant to Be, Southern Writers on Writing, and The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate 20 Years!

Carol Van Den Hende is an author who inspires readers with her stories of resilience and hope. Her novel Goodbye, Orchid has been awarded thirteen times,and her work has been featured in Glamour, Buzzfeed, Parade, Travel+Leisure, POPSUGAR, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, WABC Radio among others.

Laura Davis is the author of The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story, the story of her loving yet tumultuous relationship with her mother, and six other non-fiction books. Her first books, The Courage to Heal and The Courage to Heal Workbook, paved the way for hundreds of thousands of women and men to heal from the trauma of sexual abuse.

Lovelace Cook is a storyteller, writer and podcaster who lives in Fairhope, Alabama. She worked in NYC for magazine publishing and television and then moved to LA where she worked on feature films while attending film production and screenwriting classes at UCLA and the American Film Institute.

Stephanie Chance is the International Bestselling Author of the Mamma Mia! series and an awardwinning pick of the largest book club in the world, The Pulpwood Queen's International Book Club, receiving the official seal of approval for her Mamma Mia! trilogy of hair-raising adventures.

“I grew up near downtown Los Angeles, close to the skid row area. Much of my writing is influenced by that area and the people living there. I write about over-looked women, primarily Latinas, whom I feel have not yet had a voice in published literature.

These women’s stories often speak to isolation, confusion, and bitterness,” Francine Rodriguez

Joanne Kukanza Easley lives in the Texas Hill Country on a small ranch with her husband, three rescue terriers, and abundant wildlife. Retired from a career in nursing—with dual specialties in the cold, clinical operating room, and the intense, emotional world of psychiatric nursing, she devotes her time to writing fiction.

E. V. Svetova is a life-long New Yorker. She lives at the edge of the last natural forest on the island of Manhattan with her husband, a digital animator, sharing their old apartment with an ever-expanding library and a spoiled English bulldog. She studied psychology as an undergrad and received a Master’s in humanities from NYU, and her curiosity for the workings of the mind is reflected in her fiction.

Mickey Dubrow is the author of American Judas, a Finalist for the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year Award in the category of First Novel. For more than thirty years, he wrote award winning television promos, marketing presentations, and scripts for various clients including Cartoon Network, TNT Latin America, HGTV, and CNN.

Joe Formichella is a multiple literary award winner, including a Hackney Literary Award (short fiction) and a Foreword magazine nonfiction book of the year (Murder Creek). He was also a finalist for a national IPPY award for true crime (Murder Creek), a finalist for a New Letters Literary Prize, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Suzanne Hudson is the internationally prize-winning author of three novels (one, In the Dark of the Moon, submitted by the publisher for a National Book Award and a Pulpwood Queen International Book Club pick) and two collections of short stories (the first, Opposable Thumbs, a John Gardner Fiction Book Award finalist).

A graduate of Florida State University, Robert Gwaltney presently resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his partner. By day, he serves as Vice President of Easter Seals North Georgia, Inc., a non-profit organization that strengthens children and their families during the most critical times in their development. Through his non-profit work, he is a champion for early childhood literacy.

Heather Frese is the author of the novel The Baddest Girl on the Planet, winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize. Her work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Review, Front Porch, the Barely South Review, Switchback, and elsewhere, earning notable mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Essays.

Grace Sammon is recognized in “Who’s Who in Education” and “Who’s Who in Literature,” Grace is utilizing skills built up over decades as she reinvents herself with her award-winning fourth book and debut novel, The Eves.

Beverly Willett is a former NYC entertainment attorney and stay-at-home mom. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Salon, AARP Magazine, Woman’s Day, The Guardian, and many more. Appealing to a diverse audience, she’s written on a wide variety of topics – everything from friendship, divorce, and parenting, to homelessness, midlife, and meditation.

Susan Y. Tanner blends her passion for horses with her passion for writing. In Trouble in Summer Valley, she introduced readers to the rescue horses of Summer Valley Ranch where they prove their worth in therapeutic riding. In Turning for Trouble, her own rodeo experience brings that rough and tumble world to life.

Linda Carrillo is a former English teacher who lives in Keller, Texas, with her husband, a merry little beagle, and a grumpy kitty. She is working on her second novel, The Solace of a True Center, which is set twenty years earlier than her first book, In the Light of Silence.

Barbara Conrey is the USA Today Bestselling author of NOWHERE NEAR GOODBYE. Barbara worked in the health care industry before opting for an early retirement, which lasted all of three months.

She then accepted a finance position, for which she had absolutely no background, and four years later, she decided to write a book. But not about finance.

Penny Hagner Koepsel has a PhD in psychology and has provided psychological services for many years.

She has been writing creatively since childhood. She has also authored and co-authored research-based articles and a dissertation. Her experiences and career in psychology are often reflected in her fiction, as she continues to be a voice for those less fortunate.

Claire Hamner Matturro has been a newspaper reporter in Alabama, a lawyer in Florida, and a legal writing teacher at Florida State University and University of Oregon. She is the author of seven prior books including a comedic legal thriller series published by HarperCollins, and co-author of Wayward Girls (Red Adept Publishing 2021) with Penny Koepsel.

Ruthie Landis believes life is an opportunity to learn and grow. She is dedicated to helping people become their own best friend, loving and accepting themselves and others better. She is a best-selling author of Beyond the Bookclub: We are the Books We Must Read, My Musings, Acting Lessons for Living and its accompanying Guided Journal.

Kathy L. Murphy is a one-woman phenomenon in the worlds of literature, literacy, and literary promotion. Starting with one book club in a tiny Texas town she is now the CEO of The International Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Book Club Reading Nation. She is THE Pulpwood Queen and continues to do everything she can to promote authors and connect readers.

If you think these shortened bios are impressive, wait until you read the full ones inside the pages of WORK IN PROGRESS. You can see why I’m so excited to share the anthology with you.

I can’t wait to hear what you think!

As an added bonus, after you’ve read WORK IN PROGRESS you might want to know more about a particular author or authors.

Reach out to us - Kathy L. Murphy loves connecting authors and readers and all of the authors inside would love to meet you. We’ll set something up!

Table of Contents On Shinbone by Laura McHale Holland Johnnie Come Lately by Kathleen M. Rodgers Papa Jewel’s Chosen One by Mandy Haynes The Insistence of Memory by Tom Shachtman News on a Sunday Afternoon by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger Dallas Aftermath by Jeannette Brown Boop by Mary Helen Sheriff Through an Autumn Window by Claire Fullerton Story 18 by Susan Wingate The Sign by Julia Carol Folsom The Codger and the Sparrow by Scott Semegran Through the Peephole by Linda Rosen

How Audrey Became an Academic by Suzanne Kamata Touched by Carolyn Haines From Pangaea by Debra Thomas Buried Beneath by Debbie Baldwin The Black Sheep by Johnnie Bernhard Guesthouse for Ganesha by Judith Teitelman Of Locusts and Wild Honey by Joe Palmer Samuel’s Wife by Brenda Sutton Rose In the Sanctuary of Hell by Janet Oakley Those Colorful Streets by Nancy J. Martin Ferry to Freedom by Eileen Harrison Sanchez Lacewood by Jessica James Champagne Widows by Rebecca Rosenberg

The Art of Traveling Strangers by Zoe Disigny Five Will Die by Trace Conger Hepburn’s Necklace by Jan Moran A Coffee Stain by Anju Gattani They Killed Papa! by J. Lawrence Matthews The Poisoning by James Garrison The Old Lady by T. K. Thorne Murder at the Thunderbird Inn by Rebecca Barret Lulu by Jodie Cain Smith Simone and the Sweetness of Sound by Patricia Sands This Time Around by Kimberly Packard The Bridge by Debra Bowling Spandex and Leg Warmers by Susan Cushman

Before He Heard Her by Carol Van Den Hende The Trip by Laura Davis Meet Me in Mumbai by Lovelace Cook Mamma Mia! Here We Come Again… by Stephanie Chance Encounter by Francine Rodriguez Slice of Suburbia by Joanne Kukanza Easley The Book Of Fairfax by E. V. Svetova Those Who Live by the Sword Should Die by the Sword by Mickey Dubrow Immortalizing Hudson by Joe Formichella Hiding out with Holden Caulfield by Suzanne Hudson In That Quiet Earth by Robert Gwaltney A Hollow Light by Heather Frese

They Walk Among Us: A Mini-Memoir by Grace Sammon Gowns and Crowns by Beverly Willett The Orphans by Susan Tanner The Solace of a True Center by Linda Carrillo In Less Than A Year by Barbara Conrey Aucilla Hall Wilderness School by Claire Matturro and Penny Koepsel Me and my Shadow by Ruthie Landis The Pulpwood Queen’s Work in Progress by Kathy L. Murphy

My hope is that you’ll pick up a copy to support an author you recognize, but when you put it down you’ll have lots of new Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Authors you’ll want to follow.

Maybe you’ll want to join us! If you’re an author, I promise, you won’t find a support group like this one. If you’re a reader we invite you to participate on every Zoom meeting and online event until we can safely meet in person.

Kathy L. Murphy started her book club over twenty years ago, and she’s still going strong!

If you’d like to know more Go to www.thepulpwoodqueens.com