My Facebook family was instrumental in helping me develop the list that you’ll find in the e-book of Single Edged Blades: 7 Stories for a Broken & Angry Heart. Each story has a sound track and a thorough listing appears at the end of the book.

I’m going to put my top choices in each category here for your listening pleasure or derision. The full list runs from Punk to Country to Hair Metal — every genre. Feel free to add suggestions for other songs in the comments.

Misery

Rage

Revenge

You can pick up the story collection for 99 cents at your favorite vendor, Amazon, Nook, or iTunes.

Review from Dead Baby Club:

“This book is different than anything I have ever read before about the loss of a baby… Grief isn’t painted as a pretty picture in this book, but as something that is real and that affects far more women than people realize or care to acknowledge.”

Review from Caring for Carleigh:

“This book is a MUST READ. Once I started reading the book I wanted to keep reading it until I finished. I became involved in each of the characters and hoped for them like I do for any of my baby loss friends.”

From Goodreads member Valerie:

“I repeatedly found myself relating to each of the women in the novel Baby Dust.  At times I felt like the author had read my mind and penned my thoughts and emotions.”

Valerie also took the time to pull her favorite quotes from the novel–SO AMAZING:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4999150.Deanna_Roy

It’s been a great launch so far.

Don’t miss: The Baby Dust Official Book Launch on Oct. 15 (Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day) here in Texas!

Learn more about Baby Dust, including where to get a copy!

Since we can’t give Casey the things he would have liked, instead we’re giving things to YOU!

Head on over to the site of Baby Dust, my novel on pregnancy loss that will be released Oct. 1, and comment on any of the titles that you might find helpful. We’ll give away the books on October 1 to kick off Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Month.

We’re also taking this special day to celebrate the completion of the Baby Dust Book Trailer. Women from Ireland, London, Australia, Mexico, and the US talk about their babies, and the women of Illuminate, a photography class for grieving mothers, took the images that are used.

Has marrow in its spine

Heart blood in every line

When you turn the last page

Then flip to the front

And start again

Read the sample. You’ll buy the book.

And send it to your mom.

Goodreads is giving away five copies of Baby Dust between now and Sept. 15!

Go put your name in the hat!

Cynthia Lord. Her book Rules is probably the most re-bought and gifted book of my life. It’s about the sister of a boy with autism, and the voice is so great, the story is so wonderful, and the lessons so keen, that I can’t help but pass it to friends and family touched by autism, including my own niece and nephew.

Sonya Sones. I read What My Mother Doesn’t Know several years ago and now I anxiously await each new title. Sones’ stories are told in verse, and are so funny, so emotional, and so true. You don’t have to be a teenager to be affected by her characters.

Margaret Atwood. Atwood had me at The Handmaid’s Tale decades ago. I own almost all of her books. I got The Year of the Flood for Christmas and can’t wait to tackle it. When I forget how lovely language can be, how intricate a sentence, how delicate a description, I read Atwood.

Annie Dillard. I knew about The Writing Life but had never picked it up until this year. The first chapters resonated with me so much that I immediately began rewriting drafts of some of my novels, searching for words that were better than the ones I had chosen, hoping to elevate each paragraph beyond an idea to be communicated and into prose poetry. I’m reading A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek now, and enjoy so much how she obviously labors over every choice of a word.

Betsy Byars. I read Summer of the Swans as a girl and I still pick it up again and again as an adult to remind myself that just because a story is written for younger readers, doesn’t mean it can’t be languorous and full of meaning. I don’t have to make the book hurtle along if I don’t want to, but the story can move by its tension, not its breakneck pace.

I look forward to the authors and books 2010 will bring!

The fourth-grade class hustled to pack up their bags and sit on the floor around my chair, more motivated than they had been all day.

I hadn’t served as a substitute in ages (although last time had been memorable), but their teacher had taught my daughter, and personally asked for my help. I tucked the pink hair away as best I could and at the last minute tossed my middle grade manuscript Jinnie Wishmaker into my bag.

The students had worked quickly and quietly in order to get a chance to hear a story no one had ever read. I told them I needed help editing my book, because something was wrong with it, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. This happens, I explained, when you edit your own work.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I began reading aloud. The class had been antsy all day. But the idea that they were doing something “for real,” not just as an assignment, really motivated them to finish their work and pile onto the carpet to listen.

I reminded them what was important to the beginning of a novel: a character that interests you enough to read a whole book about. And a story that doesn’t just sit there, but moves forward, and makes you worry about what will happen next.

So they settled in, twenty nine-year-olds curled around backpacks and lunchboxes, more riveted than I ever expected. The opening scene unfurled, a girl and her younger bother plotting to run away rather than to be taken to live with their snobby rich aunt and uncle, characters taken from a page of Roald Dahl, where the grown ups are hyperbolic and the kids represent the voice of reason.

At the end of first chapter, I asked them what they thought.

“Is Jinnie going to be mean the whole time?” a boy asked. “She seems mean.”

“Yeah,” a girl said. “She’s angry.”

I couldn’t believe it. Why hadn’t I seen it? The Jinnie I knew was sensitive and fairly shy, but in this first impression, with just her little brother to tug around, they were right. She was mischaracterized in the opening scene.

The story had been through four critique group grillings, read by five or six other writers, and even several agents had nurtured it though some revisions, and yet still, I hadn’t seen it until now. No one had been able to just say it.

We lined up by the door, my head buzzing. I knew I could fix it. And I couldn’t wait.

One of the boys tapped my arm. “Ms. Roy? Will you be back tomorrow?”

I had no idea. “Not unless your teacher still needs me. Hopefully she’s better.”

“If you come back tomorrow, will you read some more? I want to know what happens.”

Are you kidding? “You can count on it.”