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Maud’s House by Sherry Roberts #atozchallenge

The A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2013   is chugging along on both my blogs, and I’m visiting as many bloggers from the sign-up list as I possibly can! I’m co-hosting it on Amlokiblogs, so drop me a comment there if you have something to say about the challenge itself. On this blog, I’ve been featuring mostly indie-published book excerpts for all of April. I love reading, and supporting author-friends, and this is a good way to do both.

Today, for M, I give you a charming contemporary novel: Maud’s House by Sherry Roberts. This novel about lost and found creativity was originally published by Papier-Mache Press in 1994, then went out of print when the company closed. Sherry brought it back out as an eBook.

Elevator Pitch:

A brilliant artist struggles to paint again.

The town is depending on her. Because its art is disappearing.

Creativity lost. It’s as ugly as mud season in Vermont.

Maud's House

Maud’s House

Excerpt:

Once this house was covered with tattoos.
Pictures of trees and monsters and animals trickled from my fingers like blood. They spread over the walls and the furniture and the dishes. Scenes slithered across the undulated siding. Portraits yawned on downspouts, like the mirror faces in a carnival fun house.
On my fourth birthday, my father gave me the house, home to the Calhouns for generations, the place where my father and grandfather were born. “Gave her every nail, board, and shingle,” my father used to tell our tourists. Papa became rather possessive about the people who used to stop and admire my house; he felt a responsibility to “our tourists” and their sightseeing pleasures. He never minded when they interrupted him milking a cow or repairing an ax handle. He had public relations in his blood. “Twelve rooms,” he told them. “And Maud’s painted every square inch.”
 
 Buy the book on Amazon and Osmyrrah Publishing.
Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

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