Dear Friends,

Welcome to our first e-newsletter! KOMENAR will have a lot of news to report in the coming months as we prepare to publish our next two titles, and gear up for another busy fall tradeshow season. We hope you will enjoy receiving these periodic email updates, but you can also unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of each email.

This is an exciting time for KOMENAR Publishing, and we look forward to sharing it with you!

Sincerely,
The KOMENAR Team

KOMENAR Publishing is excited to announce that our third title will be Outside Child, Alice Wilson-Fried's debut novel of murder and New Orleans. Read on for an introduction to the book and its author, then watch for excerpts to be posted on our website at www.KomenarPublishing.com later this summer. Look for Outside Child at your favorite community bookstore in September.

A First Look at Outside Child
Ladonis Washington thinks that success means discarding her past in the Magnolia Housing Project and making it in the New Orleans business world. But after her mentor, Tim Ganen, dies a grisly death in the paddlewheel of the company's prize steamboat, Ladonis is caught in the churning of family relationships, her own objectives, and the depths of corporate corruption. Lucky for her, her brother HeartTrouble understands the underbelly of New Orleans business. But he doesn't understand his sister's ambitions. So it's up to Ladonis to meet her bosses' demands and determine what happened to Tim without getting herself or HeartTrouble killed.

Meet Alice Wilson-Fried

A native of New Orleans, Alice grew up in the Magnolia Housing Project, like Ladonis Washington in Outside Child. After accidentally discovering a love of reading in middle school, Alice went on to attend Grambling College and Tulane University. She then worked in administration for Louisiana State University and Tulane University, with Judge James McKay in Criminal Court, and finally in public relations at the Delta Queen Steamboat Company. While Outside Child is Alice's first published fiction novel, she is also the author of a nonfiction book, Menopause, Sisterhood, and Tennis, released in 2003 by Basic Health Publishing Company.

For the past sixteen years, Alice has lived in California with her husband, Frank. She is a mother of two, stepmother of three, and grandmother of eight, and enjoys playing tennis and reading. Alice also continues to study and to write, and is currently working on the sequel to Outside Child.

KOMENAR Publishing President Charlotte Cook and Manager of Marketing Jasmine Nakagawa are in New York City this week for BookExpo America, held May 31-June 3 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Now in its 106th year, BEA is the largest annual book trade fair in the United States, usually drawing over 30,000 attendees and more than 2,000 exhibitors. While KOMENAR will not be exhibiting this year, we will be distributing preview minis to promote our upcoming 2007 titles. See below for more details.

Last year, KOMENAR's innovative mini ARC (Advance Reader Copy), containing excerpts from each of our two 2006 titles, was our most successful marketing tool. This year, we will be continuing our multi-book marketing strategy with two editions of a new mini ARC. The preview mini, available now, includes four chapters of Alice Wilson-Fried's debut mystery novel, Outside Child, as well as a sneak peek into the first chapters of three forthcoming KOMENAR titles. Later this summer, the excerpt from Outside Child, complete with cover art, will be paired with an excerpt from Laurel Anne Hill's Pact of the Kren in an updated version of the 2007 mini.

We have good news regarding our second title, Jana McBurney-Lin's My Half of the Sky. Jana has signed with New York literary agent Jean Naggar, and Book Sense Pick My Half of the Sky has received two more important industry accolades. It has been shortlisted in the Literary Fiction category of the 2006 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, as well as the Popular Fiction category of the 2007 PMA Benjamin Franklin Awards. Winners will be announced June 1 and May 31, respectively, at awards ceremonies held in conjunction with BookExpo America 2007 in New York City.

Have you visited www.HabitualReader.com? Launched by KOMENAR in January 2007, the Habitual Reader is an online fiction book club featuring reader profiles, book reviews, favorite community bookstores, and promotional opportunities for authors. It's a lot of fun, so check it out!