Free stories from the new collection THE MOMENT OF TENDERNESS

Dear ones,

The response to the short story collection The Moment of Tenderness has been wonderful — I knew that I loved these stories and saw something in them, and that others do too is such a beautiful thing. There have been several notable recent reviews, including from The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Associated Press, and Hypable, and four stories are available for free right now:

• The Fact of the Matter from the publisher (a horror story)
• Summer Camp at Salon (the short story that prompted her first editor to enquire about a novel)
• A Room in Baltimore at LitHub (fans will recognize this story from Two Part Invention)
• Charlotte’s introduction to the collection at The New York Times (please read this: it sets the stage for understanding the individual stories and the collection as a whole).

Also, there’s a podcast! You can hear archival audio of Madeleine herself, as well as my conversations with Jamie Quatro (author of I Want to Show You More and Fire Sermon) and Karen Kosztolnyik (editor at Grand Central Publishing).

I’ll be doing a Facebook Live broadcast on Thursday, April 23 at 12:30PM. Tune in if you can! I’ll be coming to you from an attic bedroom at my grandmother’s house “Crosswicks” in Connecticut, a bedroom we always thought of as Meg’s room, complete with a ping-pong table and brass bed (no patchwork quilt, alas).

It’s a difficult time for everyone, though certain people are more affected than others (front-line workers, the incarcerated, communities of color), including small businesses and their employees. Bookstores fall into that category, and so I encourage you to show your love for books by supporting your local indie bookshop. You can do that by ordering books directly from your favorite,  using bookshop.org, contributing to Save Indie Bookstores.

Stay well and safe and connected.

Charlotte