Newly published by Kelp Books.
In Pool Fishing, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett brings us into a world with characters who live on the fringes of society—physically, psychologically, or financially. The setting is either the wrong side of town in coastal California or the California desert where characters have the freedom to act out dark schemes they wouldn’t imagine, or even dare, in the dense confines of the city.
The stories are woman-centered, location-driven, and connected by place—a converted motel in Orange County, California, and the desert in and around Palm Springs, two hours away. Bodies of water figure in most of these pieces while quirky, sexy, and dark characters are held captive by their own desires, until something shifts and they break free, finding or creating opportunities where none seemed to exist, and making choices, though not necessarily the best ones …
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Hear Barbara discussing Pool Fishing on these podcasts:
Dream Chasers and Eccentrics: A Podcast by Paul Trammell Episode #110
Paul and Barbara talk about her book Pool Fishing, the Noir genre, breaking the law, making bad decisions, creating characters, setting and how it affects story, eliciting an emotional response, Stephen King, her father’s secret other family, bad relationships, first sentences, writing and emotions, poetry, endings, collecting typewriters, ways of dealing with sadness, when writing surprises us, writing novels, writing in third person and first person, past tense and present tense, mistakes new authors commonly make, the importance of reading, practice, journaling, sailing, the Panama Canal, and more.
Paul’s Web Site
Writers on Writing
Barbara joins Marrie Stone to talk about her latest story collection, Pool Fishing. Barbara’s venture into noir fiction began with the short story, “Crazy for You,” originally published in Akashic Book’s Orange County Noir, later included in USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series. She’s also the editor and contributor to Palm Springs Noir (Akashic) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her short story, “Rowboat,” in Kelp Journal (Dec. 2023). Both “Crazy for You” and “Rowboat” appear in her latest collection.
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Palm Springs Noir
Available now wherever you buy books, including:
Barnes & Noble
Scribd (Audiobook)
Amazon
“As the 14 stories in DeMarco-Barrett’s fine noir anthology set in Palm Springs, Calif., and vicinity show, swimming pools are meant for more than leisurely dips, and Frank Sinatra songs are an ever-present soundtrack to the desert landscape of abandoned dreams and broken hearts … It’s rare to find a group of stories without a bad one, but DeMarco-Barrett has chosen well and there’s not a dud in the bunch.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“In Los Angeles, the rich don’t know the names of their pool “boys,” but in Palm Springs those men have a past, a motive and a weapon — the pool itself. The well-off and the working class sometimes form a tenuous alliance, as in DeMarco-Barrett’s “The Water Holds You Still.” Several characters are trying their best, or worst, to exit the ranks of the working poor … For all the playfulness of the genre and the location, the wisecracks and the kidney-shaped pools, there is an unmanageable darkness waiting to seep in, like so much blood in the pool water.”
—Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times
“Brilliantly conceived, DeMarco-Barrett and the other contributing authors effortlessly transport the reader to the edgy, moody, and sleazier side of one of Southern California’s most renowned and iconic locales. A sure thing bestseller and a must-have summer read, Palm Springs Noir unquestionably brings the heat. Bravo!”
—Michael Thomas Barry, New York Journal of Books
“As editor DeMarco-Barrett points out, it’s hard to think “noir” in a landscape that offers 300 days of sunshine a year. But unrelenting heat and light can do funny things to your brain. An engaging mix of the good, the bad, and the off-kilter.”
—Kirkus
Reviews
- Publisher’s Weekly
- Kirkus
- Palm Springs Desert Sun
- New York Journal of Books
- Los Angeles Times
- Mystery Scene
- LGBTSR
- Coachella Valley Independent
- Bookchase
- Alta
- Reviewing the Evidence
- Beverly in Movieland
- Point Blank: Hardboiled, Noir, & Detective Fiction
Features/Interviews
- Palm Springs Life
- Los Angeles Review of Books
- Orange County Register: Bookish
- CrimeReads
- Authors Guild
- Stu News Newport
Videos/Coverage
Pen on Fire:
A Busy Woman’s Guide Guide To Igniting The Writer Within
Los Angeles Times bestseller and winner of the 2005 ASJA Outstanding Book Award
In her years of teaching, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett has found aspiring writers–especially women– blocked not by fear of the blank page but by the lack of time. We’re sure we need an afternoon to do any real writing, yet finding even an hour free of work, children, or chores seems impossible.
But you don’t need an hour. Start looking for just fifteen minutes a day–minutes spent stalled in traffic, waiting for water to boil, stuck on hold with the phone company–and DeMarco-Barrett will help you turn them into productive sessions that get and keep your creativity flowing. In short, inspiring chapters, she offers classroom-tested exercises and innovative techniques for generating ideas, as well as advice from well-known authors.
Give her fifteen minutes: She’ll ignite your pen and help you become the writer you have always wanted to be.
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Palm Springs Noir, an anthology published by Akashic Books, edited by Barbara, also features her short story “The Water Holds You Still.” Order anywhere you buy books.
Amazon
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Pen on Fire:
A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within
Los Angeles Times bestseller and winner of the 2005 ASJA Outstanding Book Award
Music for Typing
Get in the flow with typewriter music by Travis Barrett.
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