Saturday, April 20, 2013

Pre-Sales for Beaver Soul and Farm Fresh and Fatal


Cover image of Beaver Soul, both Russian and English editions; Drawing by Mikhail Bazankov, the Russian editor.

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I'm happy to announce that Farm Fresh and Fatal, the Penny Weaver mystery which follows Killer Frost, will be published October 1, 2013, not in November, as I had thought earlier.  Beaver Soul will come out in early September, and I’ll be hosting a launch at my Hoganvillaea Farm on Sunday afternoon, October 20.  If you’d like to come, contact me, but I will be inviting quite a few people.  I’m accumulating fans.  Hurray.  

I’m setting up readings and signings now beginning October 24 at the Pittsboro Farmers Market, Thursday, 3:30-6 PM, and then my first bookstore reading at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, 2 PM, Saturday, October 26.  I’ll keep you posted as I schedule other readings.  You get two books for one reading.  I’ll read some from each.

Pre-sales will be available for both books.  For Farm Fresh and Fatal, you may order now from me for picking it up or having it shipped as soon as I get them, probably in September. $17, includes tax, to pick up; $20, with postage and handling, for shipping, to Judy Hogan, PO Box 253, Moncure, NC 27559-0253.

Pre-sales for Beaver Soul begin May 13, Monday, and last through June 28, Friday.  These orders will go directly to Finishing Line Press, PO Box 1626, Georgetown, KY, 40324, and will cost $14.49, including shipping.  The book sells for $12, and shipping is slightly marked down, which is also true of pre-orders for Farm Fresh and Fatal.  In the case of Beaver Soul, the pre-orders will determine the print-run.  I need 55 pre-orders for them to print 250 copies, etc.

Beaver Soul was first published in Russian in Kostroma, Russia, by the Kostroma Writers’ Organization, and we’re using the same drawing on the cover of the English version.  

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Here are the back cover quotes, to give you an idea about the book.  I think you’ll like it, whether you normally read poetry or not!  Many of you will receive a postcard at the beginning of the pre-sales period.  Others, an email.

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Judy’s writings about the natural world use metaphors as a way of exploding the bounds of perception.  Her poems are informational, compressing experiences, and continue over a span of thirty years to help us see the likenesses between systems of human, plant, animal,  and celestial worlds.  Judy teaches us how to use our poet eyes, how to guide us to truths beyond the scientific way of seeing, weighing, measuring, abstraction, and dissection. 
–Jaki S. Green, 2003 winner of the North Carolina Award, 2009 Piedmont Poet Laureate  

These are love poems.  The heroine-hero is the Earth.  In this way, Judy Hogan’s poems remind me of Thoreau’s journals.  Like Thoreau, she is a natural-born lover of anything that grows, anything original, most particularly the earth that looks after itself continually... You hear Emerson’s world in the background, that yearning to transcend the self.  To do this the poet must keep open house to the world.  So Judy Hogan writes within the romantic sensibility.  She is a passion child.  Her structure is the old and classical kingdom’s.  
--Shelby Stephenson, Playing Dead and Play My Music Anyhow, Finishing Line Press.

Judy continually weaves the golden thread of her lyric meditation and her philosophical comprehension of nature, its creatures, and people, into the fabric of her observations.  Her own soul in her poems is associated with the image of the beaver–a builder, patient and persistent in its work and in taking care of its family.  And everything that takes place in the beaver’s life–its joys and sorrows, its misfortunes and successes–corresponds to events in her own life.  The motto of Judy Hogan is creating and overcoming.
–Nonna Slepakova, Russian translator of Beaver Soul

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Here is our first back cover quote for Farm Fresh and Fatal from our own Chatham entrepreneur, Lyle Estill.  I’m so proud.  More blurbs are coming.

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Photo which I hope to see used in the cover of Farm Fresh and Fatal.  Real local vegetables at the Pittsboro Farmers' Market.

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In Farm Fresh and Fatal Hogan serves up a complex dish that is flavored with community and family drama.  It is spiced with intrigue, finished with mystery and delivered right off the vine.
–Lyle Estill, President, Piedmont Biofuels and author of Small is Possible

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Here’s a short plot summary of Farm Fresh and Fatal:

When Penny Weaver joins the new Riverdell Farmers’ Market, things go from bad to worse.  The county’s poultry agent is poisoned, apparently after drinking fruit punch provided by the abrasive market manager, who claims innocence but is arrested.  The state ag department threatens to close the market.  Penny and her friend Sammie work to uncover the real poisoner.  Kent is unpopular with the quirky farmers, with the exception of the genetically modified seeds man and the baker/jelly maker.  Penny and Sammie discover that the poison was black nightshade, but which farmer grows it and who put it in the punch?

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I feel very lucky to have two books coming out this fall.  I hope you’ll want to read them and come to some of the events/readings.  I love having readers and hearing what they have to say!

Judy Hogan

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