Sunrise…Sunset: Not Missing Snow, Wind, and Weather
Dear Friends,
Welcome to March’s Substack.
I hope you’ll enjoy this month’s blog Sunrise…Sunset: Not Missing Snow, Wind, and Weather. The audio version is available by clicking the link in the blog or clicking the link here for all podcasts. https://joanneleedomackerman.substack.com/podcast
Book News shares information, appearances, awards, and interviews on my latest novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert, including appearance and book signing at the upcoming Associated Writers Programs (AWP) conference in Baltimore.
The Writer at Risk section this month profiles British/Chinese publisher and author Jimmy Lai who has recently received a 20-year prison sentence in China.
The Books to Check Out section features Deborah Goodrich Royce’s new novel Best Boy and Kate Quinn’s recent novel The Briar Club.
In the Scene section you’ll find a photo relating to text from my novel The Far Side of the Desert. Words of the Month share a couple of words you may not use but might enjoy knowing.
Thank you to everyone who has come to bookstores, libraries, book clubs and online for my novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert. Word of mouth sells books so thank you for spreading the word!
If you’d like to have me speak at a venue or with a book club, click here. Thank you too for reading and sharing this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road. I hope you’ll stay in touch!
Sunrise…Sunset: Not Missing Snow, Wind, and Weather
I’ve come to a stage in life that I don’t feel guilty missing hardships. I can’t determine if that is progress or regression. Sometimes I ask what my 20-year-old-self would say. She was more certain about things, about the need to experience what others in difficult circumstances experienced. She sought out challenges, wrote about them, shared the talents she had to try to find remedies. How would she feel living in a lovely new condo in Florida while those she knew and didn’t know suffered the worst storms in decades? She lived through the 1996 blizzards in Washington, DC though she was in her forties then. In her twenties she went into the inner cities and worked and tutored. She is still in contact with one family she tutored and got to know. They taught her more than she taught them.
As a writer, I’ve always wanted to know experiences I haven’t lived. I wanted to understand people from all backgrounds and races and economic conditions and cultures. I have been privileged to have lived in many places and to have traveled with outstanding organizations who help on the ground in exogenous regions and parts of the world—with CARE, Save the Children, the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, PEN International, Refugees International. In large part, I’ve worked at the governance level and occasionally on the ground in the communities. I’ve been able to contribute financially and to share by writing the experiences I’ve witnessed. But none of that is the most challenging work.
I have been given far more than I have given because I have been given experience and friendship and an expanding point of view. Part of what I’ve learned is that I can’t solve the multiple problems of the world, but I can be a small part of a greater effort to connect. The real connection begins in the heart by recognizing the universal that connects us all.
Over the decades I let go of some of the guilt and replaced it with gratitude and have learned to enjoy the moments and to share them when I can, though I am still not certain what my 20-year-old self would say.
Upcoming Events and Talks:
Friday, March 6, 2026
4:00 pm EDT
Book signing
2026 AWP Conference and Bookfair
Bookfair Booth 931, Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, MDSaturday, March 7, 2026
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm EDT2026 AWP Conference and Bookfair
Room 325, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, MD
Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University: An Eighteenth Anniversary Reading with Gina Apostol, Jalen Eutsey, Michael Dumanis, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, and Dora Malech (moderator)
I’m honored that The Far Side of the Desert (Oceanview Publishing) was named a finalist in the Suspense category for the 2025 National Indie Excellence Awards. The novel was also awarded the 2025 Bronze medal in the Suspense/Thriller category by the Independent Publishers Association (IPPY) Book Awards.
Published in 2024, The Far Side of the Desert was released in paperback April, 2025. I hope you’ll order, read and enjoy. If you’ve already read the hardcover, I hope you’ll buy the paperback and give to friends!
“Alliances—familial, situational, political—gird this engrossing thriller from novelist Joanne Leedom-Ackerman. U.S. foreign service officer Monte disappears during a visit to Spain; the search to find her, spearheaded by older sister Samantha, ricochets from Morocco and Egypt to Washington. Monte’s captivity is brutal, but there’s resilience, too, as both sisters slay old demons and chart new paths.”
—The Christian Science Monitor (Best 10 books of March 2024)
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
“I was immediately engrossed in the lives of Joanne Leedom-Ackerman’s characters and their fascinating and compelling stories. Joanne has the ability to take the big issues of contemporary life (including the clash of cultures and a remarkable grasp of the weapons trade) and render them in the contexts of love, conscience, and the consequence of choice. She reminds us as did Donne that we each are a piece of the continent, a part of the whole of humanity, and that no matter how difficult the time, that love and peace and hope can be realities rather than abstracts.”
—Eric Lax, author of Faith Interrupted
Thanks to Monica Hadley and Writers Voices for the recent interview about The Far Side of the Desert. You can listen here.
Selected recordings of past events and interviews:
Interview with Monica Hadley, Writers Voices
Strategies for Living Podcast: Finding Resilience Through Story
Interview with Janeane Bernstein on NPR’s KUCI, Get the Funk Out!
Book Launch for Akram Aylisli's People and Trees with Plamen Press
Why Baldwin Matters Series, The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
Jimmy Lai (Hong Kong)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN Canada, English PEN, Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty, and BBC)
Renowned publisher, writer, and human rights defender Jimmy Lai was sentenced in February to 20 years in prison. He has already served over 1900 days since his December 2020 arrest on charges of ‘conspiracy to collude with foreign forces’ and ‘conspiracy to produce seditious publications’ under Hong Kong’s colonial-era sedition law. The 20-year sentence for the 78-year-old Lai is the equivalence of a death sentence.
A British citizen, Lai has spent much of his incarceration already in solitary confinement for his peaceful advocacy of democracy and freedom of expression in Hong Kong. He has been denied bail and denied his choice of attorneys and is said to be in failing health.
Founder of New Digital Limited and the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper along with other businesses, Lai was arrested December 2020 during the crackdown on Hong Kong’s widespread nonviolent protests for the freedoms citizens had long enjoyed before the handover of Hong Kong’s government to mainland China. He was arrested because of articles published in his newspaper and his meetings with U.S. politicians and foreign media.
Lai is the author of more than 20 books and the recipient of awards, including PEN Canada’s One Humanity Award for his courage and commitment to free expression.
In September 2024, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Lai’s detention was arbitrary under international law and called for his immediate release.
To Take Action for Jimmy Lai:
Please send appeals to the authorities of China, urging:
Immediate and unconditional release of Jimmy Lai and guarantee of his safety, wellbeing and human rights, including the right to freedom of expression.
Adequate health treatment
Send your appeals to:
Chief Executive of Hong Kong
Mr. John Lee
E-mail: ceo@ceo.gov.hk
Tel: (852) 2878 3300
Fax: (852) 2509 0580
Address: Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China
Chief Executive’s Office
Tamar, Hong Kong
Secretary for Justice of Hong Kong
Mr. Paul Lam
Office Tel: 3918 4111
Email: sjo@doj.gov.hk
Office Address:
5th floor, Main Wing, Justice Place, 18 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong
Send appeals to the Chinese Embassy in your own country. Embassy addresses may be found here: https://www.embassy-worldwide.com/country/china/
Write a message of hope to Jimmy Lai:
This solidarity action is in collaboration with English PEN’s PENWrites campaign. All letters will be subject to screening as a safety precaution.
PENWrites is English PEN’s international letter-writing campaign in solidarity with writers in prison and at risk around the world.
Please take a few moments to write a message of solidarity and support to Jimmy Lai
Social Media:
Raise awareness about Jimmy Lai’s case on social media, using the hashtag #FreeJimmyLai and tagging @pen_int and @SupportJimmyLai
Celebrated Guatemalan journalist Jose Rubén Zamora Marroquín, founder of elPeriódico, has been released from prison after three and a half years and transferred to house arrest while awaiting continued proceedings on his case. (Details of his case in Writers in Risk profile September 2024 Substack.)
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
Featured this month is a new novel Best Boy by Deborah Goodrich Royce and The Briar Club, a recent novel by Kate Quinn. Deborah and I first met at ThrillerFest in New York City several years ago. Her novel Reef Road, a psychological thriller, and my novel Burning Distance were published within months of each other, and we were both on our first ThrillerFest panels and learning our way around. I have never met and had never read Kate Quinn until this past month when I gathered in a book club for the first time and her novel The Briar Club was suggested. This murder mystery/historical fiction is an intricately woven tale well worth the reading journey. I’m glad to add these talented writers to my bookshelf.
“Can you outrun, overcome, outlive a tragic mistake of youth?
In Deborah Goodrich Royce’s novel Best Boy, Ingrid/Viveca tries. First, she runs, changes her name, her identity, invents a past, embarks on an exciting Hollywood career, marries, has a family. But the past lives inside her and haunts her and ultimately manifests in a chilling confrontation, spinning Best Boy into another Deborah Goodrich Royce intelligent psychological thriller that the reader is compelled to keep turning pages to finish.”
That’s the blurb I wrote months ago for Deborah Goodrich Royce’s fourth novel about a desperate teenage evening that follows the main character through her life, in part because she has avoided the memory she can barely recall and also the consequences, but those connected to her history do remember. In a well-paced building of tension as Viveca’s life unfolds, Royce brings the story full circle when the summer evening of the past and its impact on others follows her home.
From Best Boy:
INGRID 1998
Feeling returned in stages. Ingrid was asked to describe all of it to the nurses, the doctors, the female officer from the Special Victims Unit. The searing between her legs. The ache in her back and neck. The pulsing throb of her nose and the acid sting in her throat. It hurt to warm up. As cold as she was, the air felt like knives as she thawed in the hospital bed. They finally gave her a sedative.
“You might’ve died out there,” said the nurse as she tapped the needle. “Can’t believe it’s Halloween. Feels more like Christmas! If that boy hadn’t have… Well.”
The nurse did not say any more about it. She left that conversation to the cop. And converse they did. Like everything Ingrid was asked to talk about, she was asked to talk about it more than once. It was thoughtful to give her a woman detective. Ingrid didn’t know if it was policy or happenstance, but it definitely made sense. It would soften the shame she might feel in recounting the events of the evening. If she could remember the events of the evening.
But nothing came.
Ingrid’s memories stopped about an hour after she’d left her friend Emilia’s house—dressed up as Posh Spice with Em tricked out as Sporty—and before she came to on the cold hard ground.
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn weaves together a pastiche of characters arriving to live in a Washington, DC women’s boarding house in the early 1950s, right after World War II when women were beginning to enter the work force with more determination but were still restricted by the mores and customs of the times.
The story opens with a gruesome murder, set Thanksgiving Day 1954, but the victim and the murderer aren’t revealed till the very end. The story tracks back over the four preceding years as the house gathers its inhabitants and the stories from eight women and the resident son and daughter of the house’s cantankerous matron. Each character tells her story in a distinctive voice, crafted in part by their different geographic and social backgrounds—characters from Texas, New York, the Midwest, Ireland, England, some refugees from the war in Europe, all with their own secrets.
Quinn manages this complex structure and array of stories and history like an experienced symphony conductor, masterfully sharing the characters’ dramas, the politics of the day, the forbidden romances, and the dangers internal and external. The group finds cohesion in a Thursday evening supper gathering in one character’s tiny apartment under the eaves where everyone gathers and brings their own offerings—a can of beans, a salad, a dessert and their stories. Throughout the novel, each character shares a recipe.
The Briar Club is the first Kate Quinn novel I’ve read, recommended by others in a new book club we’ve started in Florida. Not till the very end of the novel do many of the threads of these women’s lives connect in an explosive and surprise ending.
From The Briar Club:
June sunshine poured over the street, the sounds of a jazz saxophone drifted over from next door, somewhere on Capitol Hill Senator McCarthy was waving lists of card-carrying American Commies, and a new guest had come to the Briarwood boardinghouse.
Her shadow fell across Pete where he knelt on the front stoop banging a nail into the flapping screen door, and he looked up to register a tall woman with a red beret over a tumble of golden-brown hair.
“Hello there,” she said in a soft midwestern drawl, nodding at the sign in the window. “I see you have rooms to rent?”
Pete scrambled upright, dropping his hammer. He’d thought he was being so alert: watching the street over his toolbox, eagle-eyed for any signs of a rumpus. Not that the square ever had much in the way of rumpus, but you never knew. What if some dirty no-good louse from the Warring gang shot up the Amber Club just off the square, making off with a bag of the long green? If that went down and the feds came sniffing, the word on the street would point to the shadowy figure across the way. You want the long and short, you talk to the shamus at Briarwood House. Nothing gets past Pistol Pete. And then Pete would rise, flicking his cigarette and straightening his battered trilby . . .
But instead a woman had walked right up to him while he was tacking down a screen, and he’d nearly dropped his hammer on her ribbon-laced espadrille.
“Mickey Spillane,” she said, nodding at the paperback copy of I, the Jury he’d set aside on the front stoop after his mother swooped in with a reminder about the screen door. “Your favorite?”
“I, uh. Yes, ma’am. I’m Pete,” he added hastily. “Pete Nilsson.”
Her wide mouth quirked, and she stooped to pick up his hammer. “Then maybe you could tell me how a lady can get a room here, Hammerin’ Pete.”
Image and passage of text from my novel The Far Side of the Desert:
Tayri led Monte quickly up the embankment to the highway, where they set off on the road to Gibraltar. Tayri also carried a cloth bag slung across her shoulders. They would either walk or hitch a ride to the border. To any passerby, they looked like local women up early on the way to market to sell their wares. At the border Tayri would leave Monte and spend her day in the Spanish markets nearby, while Monte, passport in hand, would get onto the Rock.
Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius.
Brumal
/ˈbro͞o məl/
Part of speech: adjective
relating to winter; wintry.
Examples:
“This singular fact in the history of the animal seems mot inexplicable to me, unless she remain concealed in her brumal slumber until after she has been delivered of her cubs.”
“He shivers in the brumal blast; hungry, he chirps before your door.”
Interstitial
/ˌin(t)ər stiSH (ə)l/
Part of speech: adjective
of, forming, or occupying interstices.
Situated between the cells of a structure or part.
Example:
“Adjusting to new music and refining the interstitial steps between big elements like jumps and spins is often a season-long process, not something a skater would typically do on a much shorter timeline with an Olympic berth on the line.”
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
