Sandstorm - Audiobook Tour and Giveaway

​A pitch-perfect, heartfelt, and enthralling story of survival, coming-of-age and redemption. 

Sandstorm
by Joyce Yarrow
Genre: Urban Fiction 

​GOLD MEDAL WINNER - Cipa Evvy Award for Women's Fiction

When you trade the straight and narrow for the crooked pathways of crime, it's likely to become a permanent arrangement. Unless, like Sandie Donovan, you're a born grifter, determined to use your knack for deception and crime to restart your life and achieve success as an actor.

A pitch-perfect, heartfelt, and enthralling story of survival, coming-of-age and redemption. Sandstorm is a suspenseful, pacy read about a compelling character whose adventures and misadventures are dramatic and exciting.


**ebook is on sale for Only $3.99 OR is in Kindle Unlimited!**
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​Never go into a job cold. You’ve got to have a plan and be ready to handle whatever comes up. Russell and I had prepared meticulously and as a result, I’d been able to hold my anxiety in check when walking into a bank in Kansas City or Columbus, whether I was cashing a single forged check or cleaning out an entire account. Today was different. My chest felt tight and my thoughts were uneasy. Because what I wanted most could not be stolen. It had to be earned.
On the way from the subway to the producer’s address on West 28th, I stopped briefly to inhale the fragrance of a bucketful of white lilies displayed in front of a storefront sandwiched between two newly constructed glass towers. It was depressing to see Manhattan’s Flower District, an oasis of green and growing plants, being sacrificed to the gods of development.
My mood was not improved by the sight of my destination, a grey metal door smeared with graffiti. Maybe I should drop the whole deal. Why pin my hopes on an impoverished indie filmmaker who can’t afford to rent a decent rehearsal space? I was struggling to make up my mind when the door opened and Sloan came out. He’d substituted Nikes, sweatpants, and a tight-fitting blue t-shirt for the fatigues he’d worn in Brooklyn.
“Go on up to the second floor. I’ve got to run an errand. Be right back.” I watched him hurry down the street, One-Take Wonder printed in block letters on the back of his shirt.
Like the front door, the building’s grimy lobby and hallway were sub-par and left me completely unprepared, when the elevator door opened, to find myself on the threshold of a luxury loft with twenty-foot ceilings, complete with a décor copied straight from some house beautiful magazine.
A tall, gawky woman in jeans and a Rousseau-blue velvet jacket darted across the room to greet me. Her short black hair was combed behind her ears to set off shoulder-length silver earrings.
“Welcome, Sandie. I’m Leslie Ann, Executive Producer of Careless Love.”
I was embarrassed to have assumed the producer was a man. I was also fascinated by a large painting of four primitively drawn flowers, centered on the wall behind an antique couch upholstered in gold brocade and itself a work of art.
“That Andy Warhol silkscreen is the only real art we have left,” Leslie Ann said. “And as much as I love Sloan’s latest project, I’ve told him this is one piece that will never go near the auction block.”
I envisioned her coming home to find a dark rectangle where the frame had been, my fence suitably impressed, money changing hands—all in the second it took me to draw breath and say, “It’s beautiful.”
How incorrigible I was, for someone who had a steady day job and whose lawless days were supposedly behind her.
Leslie Ann escorted me into the rehearsal space, where floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls and four actors looked up at her from their seats around a glass-covered library table. Their faces were partially illuminated by rays of sun streaming from the skylight. It could have been a professionally lit set.
“I see you’re dressed for the part,” commented a rectangular-faced person with intensely cerulean eyes. “I’m Chris and I go by the pronoun ‘they.’ I’m playing Theo.
“Pleasure to meet you, Chris,” I said, ignoring the comment on my appearance. I’d made myself up as Janine, my hair hidden under a dark green silk hijab and now, seeing the casual attire of my fellow actors, realized my mistake. I took off the headscarf and draped it over the back of my chair, taking a seat at the table.

Joyce Yarrow is an award-winning author of literary novels of suspense that, according to Library Journal, “appeal to readers who enjoy unusual mysteries with an international setting.”

Her coming-of-age novel SANDSTORM, won a the 2022 gold medal in Women's Fiction at the CIPA/Evvy Awards and her historical thriller, ZAHARA AND THE LOST BOOKS OF LIGHT, has been awarded 5 Stars by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Joyce's other published novels of suspense include ASK THE DEAD, RUSSIAN RECKONING, and RIVERS RUN BACK (co-authored with Arindam Roy).

A New York City transplant now living in Seattle, Yarrow began her writing life scribbling poems on the subway and observing human behavior from every walk of life. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee with short stories and essays that have appeared in Inkwell Journal, Whistling Shade, Descant, Arabesques, and Weber: The Contemporary West and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Yarrow is a member of the Sisters in Crime organization and has presented workshops on “The Place of Place in Mystery Writing” at conferences in the US and India.


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Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
I started out as a poet in New York City, scribbling my observations of humanity while riding the subway and the bus. At the age of seventeen I saw my work in print for the first time when the Bus Poems were published in Niobe Magazine. Since I also played guitar and sang, songwriting came next and eventually short stories. Gradually the number of words I wrote each day multiplied until, to my surprise, I found myself writing my first mystery novel, Ask the Dead. I chose to write a crime novel because the genre requires a strong plot and structure. I had seen so many friends start work on literary fiction that they never finished.

What is something unique/quirky about you?
One summer I hitchhiked with a friend across the country, from New York City to northern California and back again. I felt comfortable doing this because as a child I’d hitchhiked with my dad to Orchard Beach in the Bronx, just like Sandie does in Sandstorm.

Tell us something really interesting that's happened to you!
In New York City, while I was waiting on the subway platform for a train, I was accosted by a drunk who threatened to throw me onto the tracks. “Your mother would be very disappointed in you,” I said, the words popping out of my mouth with no thought behind them. To my amazement, he started to cry and walked away. When we draw on innate empathy, magic happens!

What are some of your pet peeves?
I hate hearing writers complain about how badly they’ve been treated by the book business. As I see it, we’re privileged to have time to be creative when most of the people in the world are struggling to survive. If you love what you do, the world will reward you in unexpected ways.

Where were you born/grew up at?
I grew up in the Southeast Bronx, on a street that had one of the highest crime rates in the city. If it weren’t for the public library, I might have lost all faith in humanity—but as it turned out books saved my life. At first they were an escape – and then a stimulus to draw on my life experience and create worlds of my own.

Who is your hero and why?
Librarians are my heroes! Simply put, they are standing up to the pressure to ban books that certain people don’t like, risking fines and imprisonment as “rewards” for their love of literature and their belief that we all have a right to choose the books we read.

What inspired you to write this book?
Sandstorm began as a short story, The Ring of Truth, that was published in Inkwell Magazine and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. My original purpose in writing in the story was to show that crime does pay – that’s the point of it – but eventually the payment is exacted from the perpetrator. At first I thought it would be an easy transition from the short to the long form. In the end it took me eight years to finish the novel and find the right agent and publisher. And after all this, only a few words of the original story survived!

Do you have any “side stories” about the characters?
The protagonist of Sandstorm, Sandie Donovan, is based on a childhood “friend.” I place that word in quotes because in the beginning Sandie bullied me unmercifully, usually on my way home from school in the Bronx. She was a lot bigger than me and perhaps my quiet demeanor and bookworm habits led her to believe I was a sissy. I avoided her as much as I could but that became impossible when a circle of kids surrounded us in front of my apartment house and insisted we fight it out.

Sandie took a swing at me and all at once my anger and frustration boiled over. The next thing I knew I’d bloodied her nose and she’d rolled off the sidewalk next to a parked car. To my amazement, she picked herself out and reached out to shake hands with me. We did eventually become real friends. I had earned her respect according to the code of our crazy neighborhood.

Of course now I wish we’d stayed in touch so I could send her a copy of Sandstorm. I’m sure her life has turned out very differently than Sandie Donovan’s but perhaps she would appreciate the tribute.

Convince us why you feel your book is a must read.
When I talk with people at bookfairs and festivals I tell them that Sandstorm explores how difficult it is for someone who has committed a crime to return to the straight and narrow. Sandie’s skills as a con artist and thief are her sole possessions, whether she uses them for good or ill is the central question in the book. She comes up with some unique solutions to this challenge and that’s why I feel it’s a must read. According to one Amazon reviewer: “Yarrow nails the insecurity and grief, the poverty and temptations, and the ill-intentioned people who prey on those who fall into their paths. Sandie is an unusual heroine--never perfect, but ingenious and resourceful. Her journey will grab hold of you and twist you into knots--and sometimes tie you into bows--just like in real life.”

How did you come up with the concept and characters for the book?
In A Scandal in Bohemia, Watson admires Sherlock Holmes’ gift for transforming himself, telling us that his friend’s “very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed.” Watson might have been describing a professional actor and this made me wonder. What if Sherlock had marshaled his extensive skills to commit, rather than solve, crimes? Better yet, what if a talented thief and jewelry forger were to defy the odds and try to reinvent herself as an actress and make-up artist working in the legitimate theater? Could she ‘go straight’ when all she had known was a life of crime? This is the challenge faced by the character who came to life on the page for me as Sandie Donovan, a/k/a Sandie Doyle, the protagonist of Sandstorm.

My first clue to Sandie’s potential to learn new skills was how quickly she picked up the complex processes used to create fake jewels. She took great pleasure in mastering the craft under the tutelage of her self-styled “rescuer,” mentor, and boyfriend, Russell. The second hint was how enthralled she was with the acting classes she took at a community college. As she herself says: “It was in Darshon’s class that I learned how imaginary feelings can be the most genuine, especially for people like me who hate showing our emotions.”

Her decision to steal back and return a painting to its rightful owner is at the heart of the story. What she seeks to reclaim is much more than a painting. It is her right to live life without resorting to crime, to claim her true identity in the face of all the obstacles put in her path, including her own upbringing. I rooted for her to make a safe landing and I hope you will too.

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kickoff at Silver Dagger Book Tours
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