New Nonfiction-From the Sweet and Inspirational to the Edgy and Irreverent

Here is the official press release for my latest publications. Publishing Syndicate is planning a book tour for authors featured in the debut book in the Not Your Mother's Book Series.  I don't have details as yet, but will let you know where and when I will be reading and signing.

"A Catholic Schoolgirl's Primer" is an excerpt of my memoir Someday I'm Going to Write a Book: Diary of an Urban Missionary.  It appears in Not Your Mother's Book: On Being a Woman, which was released on October 9 and already has five star reviews on Amazon. Not for the easily offended, this book will make you laugh out loud and is a great gift for like minded girlfriends--and guys who really want to understand the down and dirty details of what being a woman is all about.

For the less intrepid, a tribute to my dear Grandma Clo, who died on November 18, 1999, appears in A Quilt of Holidays, an anthology of sweet, inspirational stories. This one is work and family safe.

The press release also contains links to my new fiction: urban fantasy stories set in the world of my novels, featured in the Ten Tales Series Anthologies edited by Rayne Hall.

I have copies to sign for anyone who'd like them so please email caroleATcaroleannmoletiDOTcom for details.

Carole Ann Moleti is a nurse-midwife in New York City, thus explaining her fascination with paranormal and urban fantasy that infuses everything she writes. Her newest fiction is featured in Beltane: Ten Tales of Magic. Excerpts of Carole's memoir, Someday I'm Going to Write a Book: Diary of an Urban Missionary range from the sweet and inspirational in A Quilt of Holidays to the edgy and irreverent in Not Your Mother's Book: On Being a Woman.

My Life Is A Three Ring Circus

In the First Ring:  Fiction. In the Middle:  Non Fiction. In the Third Ring: Doctoral Program. And I'm juggling the full time job, the per diem job,  one husband  three kids, a dog, a cat, and a garden.

Publicity tours, readings, signings-it's great to be famous.  Seriously, I love meeting readers and other writers. World Con rocked. So did the "Ghosts and the Afterlife" Panel in Portsmouth, N. H.  with Renee Mallet, Chelsea Cameron, hostess Terri Bruce, and Me.

Got to visit Salem gearing up for Halloween and Samhain.  (all right pay back was finishing and submitting my Philosophy paper with free in room Internet  at 1 am in the Courtyard by Marriott, Andover but you only live once).

So far, I'm keeping up. Staying up, too. Average bedtime is midnight with the outliers being 10 pm and 2 am. Wake up is 5:30 am, except for one Sunday in the last three weeks that I slept until 8.

Lost five pounds. That's good. Lot of aches and pains--all stres related. Not so good. Trying to schedule in some yoga and dance classes to limber up and lighten up the mood.

What am I reading? Ha! About 150 pages of peer reviewed research and academic articles a week, plus writing at least one major paper a week.  Sometimes two. In APA format. In third person, passive voice. In a scholarly voice. (The last one is the hardest)

New electronic medical records at work+ Lots of training sessions=Decreased productivity=Angry bosses+Cranky, tired midwife who doesn't get lunch or go to the bathroom all day.

How am I doing it? Not sure. But since I got a lot of writing done over the summer, most of my creative writing has been editing. And when I get the chance to write fiction, like the short story I polished yesterday called "Dance With the Devil," it's a relief rather than a burden.

There are three new releases out or coming out, and one in the pipeline. Here's the line up:

Kudos and Thanks to Rayne Hall for putting together yet another great anthology. My story "Mishmash Magick" is an excerpt of Boulevard of Bad Spells and Broken Dreams adapted to a short story format (as is "The Dhampir's Kiss" in Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires).  All Ten Tales books are PG13 and in most electronic formats.

Buy it here

Very suitable for all audiences, these gentle anthologies contain stories about life. This Path features two of my favorite excerpts of Someday I'm Going to Write a Book, including "The Dance Class" and "Endless Possibilities."
It was published a few years ago but just re-released as an ebook

A Quilt of Holidays contains "Artichokes," a tribute to my grandmother and family memories.

I have signed copies. Contact me for details.









And finally, on October 9, "A Catholic School Gir's Primer" will
be published in Not Your Mother's Book: On Being a Woman
Warning, this book, and my true life account about "becoming a
woman" is not for the easily offended.
But it's all true, edgy, and funny--if you have a sense of humor.

Stay tuned for details. There is a huge publicity tour in the works for this, one of the first in PS Publishing's Not Your Mother's Book Series.

And I'll catch you, and catch you up when I can!

A New Endeavor

Today was back to school day. For me! I logged on early this morning, worked out the technical glitches, and started my on line doctoral program at Walden University.

I have this coffee cup sitting in my closet, chipped, broken, stained.

It shows a harried woman in a business suit, holding a briefcase, baby hanging onto her ankles and toys scattered all around her.

The sentiment:

I am working woman

I hold down a job

I am nuts

Only now I have three jobs plus a husband, three kids,  a dog, a cat, a garden and a car sporting three bumper stickes: Peace, Not a Republican, and I'm in the 99%.

The black one with flashy red letters proclaiming "This IS My Brilliant Career"disappeared from the office I shared with about fifteen other people. Either someone stole it or broke it--but it doesn't matter. Fact is, I stepped off the fast track in 1990, when I was pregnant with my first child, knowing I could never do it all. And that a career is never as important as family. A lesson learned the hard way when my first marriage ended in divorce.


It's all in my two memoirs Someday I'm Going to Write a Book: Diary of An Urban Missionary and Karma, Kickbacks and Kids.

So, my am I going to spend the next 15-18 months researching and reading the most boring, dense, and academic material one can imagine then re-synthesizing it into my own theoretical framework for clinical research?  Because I know that my fledgling theory of management of psychosocial risk can help clinicians like me take care of the toughest, most vulnerable patients--and help them get off a path that leads either nowhere or to self destruction. And unless I prove it, no one will pay any attention to it.


So in about two years, I will be Dr. Carole Ann, and still be doing what I love: taking care of patients., focusing on creative writing, and reading for pleasure instead of work.  It goes by in the blink of an eye, especially when you're back on the fast track.

In the meantime, fiction sales are humming along. More about that on my other blog. I just got back from Chi-Con, the World Science Fiction Convention where I met up with many of my like minded writer friends

And non fiction ain't doin' too bad either.

Two of my favorite essays, "The Dance Class" and "Endless Possibilities" are in This Path, just reissued as an e book. And a tribute to my grandmother is coming out in A Quilt of Holidays in the next couple of weeks. Sometime this fall, an excerpt of Someday, "A Catholic Schoolgirl's Primer" is due out in Not Your Mother's Book: On Being a Woman. Not for the shy or easily offended, but I've never been one to sugar coat things.

Time to sign off now and get to that 150 pages of reading and two papers due by next Friday. I still owe my editor two short stories. It will all get done. It always does.

This Path: Free Today

This Path is a collection of essays that was just re-released today. It contains two of my favorites: "The Dance Class" and "Endless Possibilities."

If you'd like a free copy on Kindle, you can download it today only. If you have a Nook, contact me.

And please let me know what you think.

I have two new essays coming out this fall, so stay tuned.

After sending out six excerpts of Someday I'm Going to Write a Book, my next nonfiction project will be a book proposal for Silent Echoes, a collection of essays on pregnancy loss and the death of newborns, infants and young children.

I've worked in Perinatal Bereavement for many years and hope to edit an anthology that might offer comfort and closure to many families.

If you'd be interested in contributing, please let me know.

Shit Happens--An Update

According to a note I got from Credo, the Delaware River Commission meeting for November 21 has been cancelled, signaling that the plans to allow hydrofracturing in the Delaware Basin did not have the support of President Obama and the Governors of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. 

Thank you to everyone who wrote, called, or clicked on the Credo button to send your public comments to the President and to your Governor. Surely our collective voices were heard, but as always, we must remain vigilant and guard the back door.

For more insight on the plight of Upstate New York residents in the wake of Hurricane Irene, please see my previous post. I still can't believe what I saw in those pictures, and similar scenes of devastation can be found in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 


The time for denial about the truth of climate change is over.  It is time to stand up for the environment before things get any worse. Hopefully, it will not be too late to remediate the damage that has already been done.


On a more personal note, I am recovering well from my arm injury, enough to be able to make my acting debut on November 5 as Hannah Townsend Lawrence at the Bayside Historical Society's tour of Lawrence Cemetery. And on November 21, right after my lecture on OB/GYN emergencies for the Emergency Room Nurses  Course at Montefiore, I'll be headed to Manhattan.


Fellow urban fantasy author April Gray and I will be chatting about the genre of urban fantasy and I'll be reading from my novel in progress Boulevard of Bad Spells and Broken Dreams at the Columbus Library.  I will sign copies of anthologies containing excerpts of Someday for your holiday gifts.


Next week, I plan to muse about the Occupy Wall Street movement and another example of  the government  mishandling a situation by not responding to the concerns of We, the People.

Shit Happens

I apologize in advance for the language, and the idioms you are about to endure, but I'm in a morose Brooklyn/Bronx mood these days. The frozen shoulder I woke up with on September 10 turned out to be tendonitis. I'm better since the steroid injection, but am still limited in my range of motion and how long I can type before the pain—from right thumb to my neck—roars back. Physical therapy is a slow process, with some good days interspersed with a few bad ones. Shit happens and, this too, shall pass.

Seems like nothing in comparison to the sights on a recent trip upstate to close our summer cottage: The devastation wrought by Hurricane Irene on the already depressed towns in the Catskills where floods wiped out whole towns, roads, bridges, and a lot of farmland and livestock. At one low lying intersection, at the bottom of a hill, next to a stream between Cobbleskill and Middleburg, remnants of hay bales dangled from treetops, where they were deposited by raging flood waters. I can only imagine what it was like since more than a month has already elapsed with most roads at least passable, but many homes and businesses damaged or in ruin and fields underwater.

This courageous homeowner, somewhere between Potter Hollow and Preston Hollow, has chosen to count his/her blessings and remain positive though the property is a total loss.

The Preston Hollow Little League field, home to a team that once made the Little League World Series, is a mudflat and the playground equipment a tangled ruin, testament to the power of floodwaters in one of those rare weather events that come along once in a lifetime—we hope.

Has over development, acid rain denunding the northern forests, and global warming caused major changes in the ecology, the environment, and weather patterns, which caused this area to suffer more damage from Irene's wind and rain than Coney Island, Brooklyn where the storm made landfall (another cosmic joke, though none of this is really funny)? Yes, I think so.   

( Locust Point, Throggs Neck (Bronx) after tidal surge from Hurricane Irene. This area was under mandatory evacuations but obviously not everyone left. Thanks for the photo Karl, Jr.)

Which might mean that this sort of shit will happen more often in places that it has never happened and no one is prepared for or equipped to handle it. Like the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, Buchanan, New York, which is up for license renewal and advertising like hell, using a female engineer who sounds far too young and naïve (and brainwashed) to reassure me and others in the fall out zone (approximately the surrounding 250 miles, which is just about where Potter and Preston Hollow are) that the plant has been built to withstand hurricanes, floods, is protected from aerial terrorist attacks or airplane accidents at nearby airports, and is "perfectly safe."

I ain't buyin' it—though I'm from Da Bronx, not Brooklyn. Floodwaters with the power of those in the Catskills would surely create another Fukushima Daiitchi scenario and we ain't got the Fukushima Fifty kamikazes around here to go in to try and fix it. Hell, we can't even get home on Friday nights never mind evacuate the tri-state area about to experience nuclear meltdown. And in upstate New York, "you can't get there from here'" right now with many bridges still badly damaged.

Who knows what the proposed hydraulic fracturing (say it isn't so, Governor Cuomo) will do to the topography and environment, exposing this area and our watersheds to pollutants and further degredation and ecological and environmental systems? Big business has paid for a smooth talking, snake oil salesman to sell the idea, but the signs are all over the muddied lawns upstate, and I concur. "No fracking way!" "No drill, no spill!"

Fugetaboudit. Give up those gas guzzlin' cars, turn out the lights, reduce your own carbon footprint, and reuse and recycle. We can do without "alternative energy sources" which could kill us all either the quick and dirty way, or the slow and insidious evolutionary way.

Yeah, shit happens, and we're shoveling, pumping, and mopping enough of it in New Yawk these days.