Tag Archives: Pittsburgh connection

Featured New Book Spotlight: Love Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me by Lyndi Alexander

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Featured New Book Spotlight

Let’s welcome Lyndi Alexander to West of Mars! Lyndi and I have known each other for years now and I think she’s pretty darn cool. I bet you will, too — and that you’re going to love her song!

Her book is called Love Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, and it’s been around awhile. We’re good with that because it’s new to me! It’s got to be new to some of you guys, too.

So what’s the song that makes you think of your book, Lyndi?

Anything from Phantom of the Opera. LOVE ME, KISS ME, KILL ME is the story of Sara Woods, who is innocently drawn into a mystery of deadly proportion, just as Christine was in the musical. I listened extensively to the soundtrack while writing the story, and can still suddenly be in the middle of one scene or another if I hear the music. Life is never what it seems, and trusting too soon can be dangerous.

The haunting quality of the Andrew Lloyd Webber creation inspires me–Sara’s journey will do the same for the reader.

But… but… there’s no one song I can link to! Here’s the theme song, such as it is, performed — by all people! — by Nicole Scherzinger. Who knew she had such pipes? She’s also lucky enough to sing with FOUR different men who played the Phantom (although damn, this one dude belongs in Les Miz and I wish I knew all their names ’cause I’d like to hear more of them). So enjoy this and check out the rest of the soundtrack.

(It has been so long since I’ve heard this, I’ve forgotten how powerful the music is. This is going to be a hell of a book Lyndi’s written.)

Ready for the description:

A bad divorce, a broken heart, a need to begin again.

These three things propel reporter Sara Woods to leave her comfortable position working for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and take the first news job that comes along, working as the new reporter for small-town Ohio’s Ralston Courier. Ralston is a sleepy little town that doesn’t seem to have much to offer this big-city girl, but her very first assignment is to investigate a dead body, a young woman found half-frozen on the side of a country road.

But soon the story on this body ties in with others, and she finds herself scrambling to come up with a common link among the dead other than the fact that they’re all young women Sara’s age.

Still recovering from a previous auto accident and struggling with chronic pain, she becomes a patient at the Goldstone Clinic, a local mecca of healing.

But all is not as it seems at the Goldstone, its doctors and nurses are all the picture of perfect beauty and health. Patients at the clinic first seem to get better, then they deteriorate. Sara enlists the help of Dr. Rick Paulsen, a doctor at the city hospital who shares her concern about the deaths of the young women, one of whom was his own patient. He teaches her through Eastern techniques how to access her internal power, skills she never knew she had, revealing secrets from her past.

Police officer Brendon Zale also takes an interest in Sara, but he stalks her, watching her every move, and he won’t leave her alone. He always turns up at the most suspicious times, especially where the dead bodies are found. What’s his interest in Sara?

As she digs deeper into the story, and more young women die without explanation, she tries to choose allies wisely, but not till the last confrontation does she discover the identity of her true enemy.

By then, it’s too late.

Yeah. I need this book. Do you need this book?

Get it at
Amazon
B&N

And connect with Lyndi!
Her website
Facebook

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Call for Submissions! Hot Metal Bridge

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Local-to-me college literary magazine Hot Metal Bridge is in the middle of one of its two annual submission periods, and if you have some short fiction (up to 6k words) that you’d like some eyeballs on, this is a good one to submit to.

They are looking for

fiction that turns out heads to show us a new perspective. Be it through formal invention, depth of insight, or strength of narrative, the fiction that grips us does so by revealing a little sliver of some idiosyncratic, particular human life. But we don’t want to get too specific here: we want your best story—your ire, your lore, your comic relief—whatever form it may take.

Yes, I’m guessing that’s a typo in those first few lines. (Hey, HMB staff, I’d be glad to come be an in-house copyeditor for you! I could possibly be convinced to work for O fries and Dave & Andy’s, although not on the same day.)

There is zero cost to submit, which is my favorite kind of submission.

AND.

If you have non-fiction or poetry or a visual art, they’re taking those, too.

Get busy, because the submission deadline is December 3, which feels like a long time from now but actually isn’t.

Did you miss the link to use to submit? Here it is again.

Also, be sure to stop in at the site and check out what they do and what they’re about. You might find a favorite new place to stop in for some literary escapism.

Still not convinced? Well, let me put it to you this way: if I had something to submit, since I never worked for HMB when I was a Pitt student (mostly because I don’t think it existed back then, in the Dark Ages when having a dot matrix printer in my dorm room was considered a luxury), I totally would.

Because Pittsburgh.

Because we’re a literary city.

Because it’s my home.

As always, if you submit and are accepted, be sure to let me know so I can cheer with you and help get word out of your excellent work once it’s available to the larger world.

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