Sunday Feature – C. Jean Downer: A Wonderful Poet and Novelist

Literary Revelations is thrilled to present you with the wonderful work of C. Jean Downer. I hope you enjoy the feature. Have a great week ahead everyone.

Bio

C. Jean Downer is a poet and novelist formerly from the US Southwest now living in the Canadian Pacific Northwest with her wife of twenty years, their two fabulous teenage daughters, two lazy dogs, and three chill cats. She loves to write poetry, especially short form, with work featured in journals and anthologies, including Hidden Childhood, Wounds I Healed, Autumn Moon, Modern Haiku, Heron’s Nest, Presence, Wales Haiku, Akitsu Quarterly, Failed Haiku, Canada Haiku Review, and numerous others. Downer also writes traditional detective fiction with a magical twist. She’s a self-proclaimed expert in the genre with thousands of mystery books, television episodes, and movies to her reading and viewing credit. Even her family refuses to watch mysteries with her unless she promises to zip it.

Her debut, Lies Are Forever, A Sloane West Mystery is available for pre-order and will be released on December 19^th, 2023.

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Years Later

Her summer scent
escapes my memories
sun-kissed mornings
sugar sands
nights of salt and sweat
ocean’s ebb and flow
within our fingertips.
Into days and nights
softer, quieter,
evening snow
white blanket meadows
hothouse peonies
unfurling our love
familiar and complete.

Pandemic House Guest

I apologize out loud
for the annoying fly
buzzing in the house.

I named her Alice
after she appeared through
a tear in the screen door.

She hangs with me
like the necklace around my neck
with my daughters’ names.

The one I will only take off
when they eat enough to be
whole again.

The one I rub between my
finger and thumb and pray
they desire to live again.

So please don’t ask me to swat
Alice dead, not in this year full
of so much sadness and death.

Short form

after all this death
waiting for her to smile
daylilies

uncovered
in a dried-up stock pond
upright boots

Lies Are Forever – released on December 19^th, 2023 – blurb

Ex-New York City cop turned private investigator Sloane West’s penchant for Irish whiskey isn’t assuaging the worst month of her life. Her mother recently died, and her ex-best friend and ex-girlfriend have sent her an invitation to their upcoming nuptials.

Thankfully, a solicitor arrives and distracts her faster than a night of drinking Jameson neat with news that Sloane has inherited her late grandparents’—whom she didn’t know existed—island estate.

When Sloane refuses her inheritance, the solicitor encourages her to at least visit her mother’s birthplace. Eager to discover her magical roots and a birthright her mother hid, Sloane agrees. As she’s finalizing travel plans, a man kicks in her door and turns a gun on her, but Sloane kills him with her unchecked magical strength. Now she must figure out who wants her dead.

On Vancouver Island, Sloane delves into the mysterious and deceptive lives of her suspects. And as the attacks on her and her newly found coven intensify, she must choose whether to embrace her power as a protector or flee from her birthright.

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Please do not forget:

Literary Revelations will release Building Sandcastles: A Book of Short Poems by C.X. Turner and James Welsh on August 11. Please stay tuned for more updates.

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