Award for Little Bird and the Tiger

Congratulations to Ellis Amdur for winning first prize in the mainstream/literary fiction category for Writer’s Digest‘s self-published book awards! Little Bird and the Tiger is a historical novel about a real-life woman warrior in Meiji Japan. I was lucky enough to edit and blurb this searing novel, and I highly recommend it.

I occasionally take on book editing projects, so if you have one that you think I’d be a good match for, please contact me at cynthiagrallabooks@gmail.com.

I Made a Promise Today

A few months ago, I started using Reddit. At first it was to see what the online BPD community was like. But I was surprised to find a fairly positive social media site. So I signed up for subreddits related to cats, books, Twin Peaks, fashion, dance, cooking, lupus, and endometriosis. I have a gift for puns, which found appreciation on the cats sub in particular.

This morning, a woman on the cats sub asked, “If I leave a suicide note, will someone take care of my cat?”

I didn’t even read her entire post because I rushed to answer it. But I saw that she lived on the street with her disabled cat Kafka, that she’d tried to get a shelter to take him because she’d used her last money to feed him, that they wouldn’t accept him because he was disabled, that she had a history of being sexually abused.

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