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Pool Fishing

Coming September 16, 2025, from Kelp Books. Pre-order here.

Pool Fishing

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 …

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

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.

Buy Now

“Pen on Fire has got a wonderful mix of the practical and the inspirational, which can only come from a writer who knows what she’s doing and what it takes to get things done. She understands that hard work is at the bottom of good writing, but she also points out that a certain lightness and sense of exploration and play are important, too. Pen on Fire helps them to see that writing, although difficult, can be fun.”

—T. Jefferson Parker

“We all know what it’s like to have that fierce drive to do something remarkable … and no idea where or how to start. Pen on Fire is a beginning writer’s dream cocktail of fortitude: equal parts compassion, inspiration, and fabulous limbering exercises. Want to be a writer? Drink deeply of Barbara DeMarco-Barrett’s hard-earned wisdom.”

—Jodi Picoult

“So many people have told me they are burning to write, but can’t seem to find a spare moment. I wish I could track them all down and hand each of them a copy of Pen on Fire. Barbara DeMarco-Barrett shows us how, even in our fast-paced, overscheduled, culture, we have more time than we realize to realize our creative dreams.”

—Gayle Brandeis

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Official website of Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Author, Radio Show Host, and more…

Pool Fishing

Palm Springs Noir

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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

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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

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