Elizabeth Cunningham's Blog, page 2

Video Preview of The Book of Madge

Book of Madge Preview! Go to imaginationfuryarts.com to preorder.

Posted by Maeve Rhuad on Saturday, 18 November 2017

Check out this preview of The Book of Madge. Then go to imaginationfuryarts.com by December 1, 2017 to order your copy of this signed limited edition. If you live in the Hudson Valley, come to an even more lively live preview at The Dreaming Goddess in Poughkeepsie, Sunday, November 26th at 2:00!

The Book of Madge and Madge Returns Ready to Order!

Dear Friends of Maeve and mine,

Some of you may remember Madge, the bodacious character who took me by surprise, demanding her own novel-in-cartoon before she would consent to appear in a conventional novel–(if The Maeve Chronicles can be called conventional!) The Book of Madge sprang into being during the first Gulf War as commentary and outrageous humor. (“Read my lips” takes on a new meaning.) Busy being Maeve, Madge made no further appearance until…November 8, 2016! Older but just as irreverent, she offers her political wisdom (& smart-ass remarks) in Madge Returns!

The Book of Madge and Madge Returns are now available from Imagination Fury Arts in one limited edition, signed by Madge and me! Order before December 1st for December 14th shipping. Priority mailing is included in the price.

If you haven’t met Madge (she did spend an awfully long time alone on my bookshelf, 26 years!) I hope you will give yourself and others the pleasure. Am I happy or sorry to say that the commentary from 1991 still seems relevant? As for the present times, I believe we all need a friend like Madge. Feel free to forward this email and/or post this link on social media. http://www.imaginationfuryarts.com/titles/the-book-of-madge/

Thank you all for your interest and support. Wishing you fortitude and joy!

The Return of the Goddess has returned!

As you can see, the 25th anniversary edition of The Return of the Goddess has now been released. We had a beautiful celebration of this event at The Dreaming Goddess in Poughkeepsie. I will also be appearing at the NineFold Festival September 29-October 1st. It is not too late to register! Signed copies of all my books will be available.

The Book of Madge, the graphic novel that led to The Maeve Chronicles is in production. More soon!

Two new publications in 2017

Coming soon from Imagination Fury Arts the 25th anniversary edition of The Return of the Goddess, with an introduction by the author.

A limited, numbered printing of The Book of Madge, the outrageous graphic novel that opened the way for The Maeve Chronicles. The book will also include The Return of Madge, a sequel necessitated by these perilous times!

Book Group Discussion Questions for Murder at the Rummage Sale

Murder at the Rummage Sale can be categorized as a cozy mystery.  How does it fit that genre? In what ways does it differ from a traditional cozy?

There are four narrative points of view in the novel, written in the third person. How does the author establish the voice or tone of each character?

This novel is set in a church community that comes together around the annual rummage sale. The church is more than a setting. Most of the characters have religious quandaries. How would you describe these? Which of the characters best expresses your own beliefs or doubts?

What are Gerald’s strengths and weaknesses, as a priest? As a family man?

Like many children, Katherine misunderstands some of the things she hears grownups say. The adults are frequently unaware of these misunderstandings. What are some examples in the novel? In your own life?

How does the theme of parents losing children and children losing parents connect the different characters in the novel?

During life, Charlotte annoys—and even enrages—many people. How do perceptions of her change after her death?

In the last part of the novel, who committed the murder is not the question but rather will anyone believe Anne or Lucy. Have you ever discovered a truth that no one wants to believe?

What drives Anne and Gerald apart? What holds them together? Do you think there is hope for their marriage?

Lucy, quiet and unassuming, perceived as a spinster, has a powerful effect on all the other characters. How do people’s perceptions of Lucy differ from their experience of her. What is the source of her strength?

Murder at the Rummage Sale: August, 2016

I am delighted to announce that Murder at the Rummage Sale will be published in August, 2016 by Imagination Fury Arts!

Maeve on Audiobooks & the launch of New Poetry Collection

I am delighted to announce that The (entire!) Maeve Chronicles are available from Audible as audiobooks. The superb Irish narrator is Heather O'Neill, so the Celtic Magdalen is now even more Celtic. Despite my technophobia, I downloaded the books to my i-phone. Such an irony that 21st century technology gives us the story as Maeve always intended it to be experienced: her voice speaking aloud directly to us. I am thrilled! I hope you will be, too. Even if you've read the books many times, do take the opportunity to hear them. You can listen to samples here.

Forthcoming from Hiraeth Press on September 15th, my third collection of poems So Ecstasy Can Find You. You can read about the book here. There will be a book launch at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY on 9/15 at 7:00. If you live within a day's driving distance of the Hudson Valley, New York and would like to host an event in your area, let's talk. I am also willing (and will become able!) to do readings or talks on skype.

Please spread the word about the audiobooks and the poem collection. If you would like to host an online or in person event, please email me through the contact page. I am game for events within a day's drive of New York State's Hudson Valley. Thank you, combrogos!

Audible to record The Maeve Chronicles

Audible will be recording The Maeve Chronicles as audio books, all four of them. Production is about to begin. Heather O'Neill has been cast as narrator. I have heard a clip of her voice, a very rich, beautiful Irish voice. In case you are wondering, yes I would have loved to have recorded Maeve's story as would many other wonderful readers. Authors are kept informed but do not make decisions. I believe Heather O'Neill will do a magnficient job. And Audible has the means to distrbute the Audio Books widely. Rejoice, combrogos!

So Ecstasy Can Find You has a pub date September 15, 2015

I am delighted to announce that Hiraeth Press will be publishing So Ecstacy Can Find You, my third collection of poems, on September 15, 2015. If anyone would like to host an event, let me know. I am happy to travel anywhere within driving distance of New York State's Hudson Valley. I am also open to doing events online. Here is the title poem for the collection:

Ecstasy 

Ecstasy takes time, even if it lasts moments,
you have to slow down so ecstasy can find you
the way the light finds each plant in the sweep of a day
or the tide finds its secret way between dark rocks.
Stand still in the wood, on the shore, in your life.
Ecstasy will come, touch you, fill you, leave you changed. 

I am currently working on a new poem cycle with the working title Tales and Tails.

 

About Murder at the Rummage Sale, forthcoming August, 2016

 

Murder at the Rummage Sale  a new novel by Elizabeth Cunningham 

September 1960. Kennedy and Nixon race for the presidency, and the Women of the Church of the Regeneration, aka the WOR, scramble to prepare for the annual rummage sale, an epic event whose modern equivalent is Black Friday at a supermall.  Crowds will spill down the church driveway into the street for blocks, especially this year…when everyone will want to view the place where Charlotte Crowely, president of the WOR, was murdered.

On the day the WOR begin sorting donations sublime and ridiculous (a sweater without a neck hole, anyone?) Charlotte is discovered dead in the basement, smothered by a bag of coats still in wrapped in plastic from the drycleaners. The local chief of police quickly rules her death an accident, an unfortunate fall down a steep flight of stairs, a bump on the head, and the coats landing just the wrong way.  “Just one of those things, a damn stupid shame, pardon my French, Rev.“

Lucy Way, an older, not-quite-maiden lady with a mystical bent, has her doubts. The coats belonged to her late mother. She brought them to the parish house a week earlier. The church sexton, Frank Lomangino, an ex-con hired by the outspoken, liberal rector Gerald Bradley, carried the coats upstairs for her. Though Charlotte had a reputation for being light-fingered, pocketing little treasures, clothes were not her besetting sin. She had no reason to remove the coats to the basement. By the time Lucy confides her suspicion that Charlotte might have been murdered, Frank, who found the body, has already contaminated the crime scene by simply doing his job.

Though Gerald Bradley is loath to act on Lucy Way’s concern, he has to admit that Charlotte makes a perfect murder victim, the prying, officious woman everyone loved to hate. Who didn’t want to murder her?  Including his organist, the irascible German war refugee, Elsa Ebersbach; pesky, pious parishioner Mildred Thomson, who picks her soul as if it were a nose; and even his own wife, Anne, a quiet woman, locked in grief over the death of their son, whose rage smolders behind a dutiful exterior.  (Gerald considers the company of too many women an occupational hazard. He is grateful to have Rick Foster, a fellow liberal who is running for Congress, to turn to for camaraderie and advice.  He even envies his former sexton, Amos McCready, a misogynous Scot who lives at a home for old soldiers.)

Anne Bradley, a secret unbeliever, finds the unpaid occupation of minister’s wife onerous if not hazardous. She is horrified to find herself appointed head of the rummage sale in Charlotte’s place, another duty to juggle with all her others, including raising her remaining three children largely on her own.  (“When do you expect your husband back?” being a ubiquitous and often unanswerable question.)  When she realizes that Gerald believes her capable of murder, Anne is shaken from absorption in her grief and joins forces with Lucy in an unofficial, and perilous, amateur investigation.  

Unbeknownst to all the adults, the most determined sleuths are Katherine Bradley, the seven-year-old minister’s daughter, and her sworn blood-brother, Frankie Lomangino, Jr. They have seen something no one else knows about— a man in a black sweatshirt (possibly concealing horns and wings) running through the wood next door to the church, the wood with the NO TRESPASSING sign nailed to a tree.  From reciting the Lord’s Prayer, Katherine knows trespassing is bad. She braves the wood, anyway, because she is already guilty of a much worse sin, one she confesses to Frankie when they run away to the wood on the morning of the murder.

A vivid portrait of a vanished world, Murder at the Rummage Sale also brings to fresh life the timeless quirks and contradictions of human nature, both the comic and poignant, the murderous and merciful.