It's Official!
FIREBIRDS is on its way out into the world:
Firebirds
September 2021
After an amazing experience with Pitch Wars, my debut mystery novel (now retitled FIREBIRDS) is represented by Joanna MacKenzie at Nelson Literary Agency. I have spent the summer reworking it into a completely different novel than the one I started eight years ago, and blithely ignoring Joanna's advice not to get too attached to the title as she shops it to potential publishers.
(Cover art by Robin Grenville-Evans)
I am a Pitch Warrior
February 2021
My mystery novel HOT STREAK has been selected for the 2020-2021 Pitch Wars mentorship program! Under the expert tutelage of Kristen Lepionka and Ernie Chiara, I have thrashed the ever-loving hell out of my novel in preparation for the February agent showcase, at which time I may very well get no requests at all and have to head back into the querying trenches. BUT... I will do so with a vastly improved manuscript, a polished query, and the knowledge that if I can rewrite a novel during a global pandemic, a national crisis and the presence of two isolation-crazed children, I am damn near invincible.
My name is Lina Chern and I write stories on my phone while sitting in traffic. I have also written trivia questions, word puzzles for a TV game show, paranormal romances, dialogue for...
Gina's Greatest Hits
December 2020
Everyone who has read this sweary, violent short story has asked me, with varying degrees of apprehension, "Is this... real?" Sorry to disappoint, but no, I was never a teenage leg-breaker for a cut-rate gambling outfit. I'll take the compliment, though. Check out "Gina's Greatest Hits" in the December 2020 issue of Mystery Weekly.
Caveat Lector
August 2020
Did I ever tell you that I met legendary speculative fiction author Harlan Ellison when I was a kid? I did. It's a pretty good story, with side-forays into my brief career as a Hollywood writer and my better-late-than-never defeat of a lifelong case of writer's block. Check it out online at The Coil.
(Image: Harlan Ellison. Wikimedia Commons/Pip R. Lagenta.)