Happy Holidays to everyone from Maggie and the gang at Jackson Sugar!

So very thankful for all of Maggie's readers! 

Thanks!

Crazy Red has three NEW reviews today. 
Thank you so much!
Please take a moment to post your review of Crazy Red or Wanted Dead if you haven't. Other than buying the book, its the best thing you can do for a an indie artist!

An illustrated novel would make a great stocking stuffer for the women on your holiday list.

River Ad Wanted Dead Chapter 4

Thank you.

Crazy Red Trailer Nov 2015

CRAZY RED (Book 1 of the Jackson Sugar series) will be FREE on Amazon Kindle tomorrow (Nov 4) through Sunday (Nov 8).

Maggie Does Vegas!

Maggie's Journey Continues

Jackson Sugar: WANTED DEAD - Reviews & Previews

Oct 15, 2015  Countdown to Halloween

Maggie's Swiss Journey

Maggie's Journey Jackson Sugar: WANTED DEAD

Wanted Dead's Maggie as Mona Lisa

Oct 7, 2015

Both Jackson Sugar books are now available EVERYWHERE!
In paperback on AMAZON
On eBook at Kindle, Kobo, B&N Nook and iTunes or Mac!
Maggie's loving it!

New trailer for WANTED DEAD

October 3 - The new trailer for Wanted Dead!

Oct 2, 2015

Wanted Dead was #330 in Historical Fiction on Amazon this morning!

Hurrah!

Wanted is also available now on Barnes and Noble and ITunes!

Yay!

Much happiness.

Jackson Sugar WANTED DEAD is an illustrated novel for adults.

October 1, 2015 

Illustrated Novels

I've always been an avid, even compulsive reader. From cereal boxes to medicine labels, if it's in print, I'm compelled to read it. 

As a (of age to read) child of the 1960's, there was always the newspaper, and Readers Digest and McCall's Magazines (with Betsy McCall paper dolls)

and a set of World Book Encyclopedias that were a decade or more out of date. And the Information Please Almanac, and comic books (Superman and Archie were my favorites). And library books. I read all the biographies they had at school, and my favorite fiction book was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle.

And then there were the Readers Digest Condensed Novels. Sigh . . .I loved these. I began every novel in every book we received, and read to the end many hundreds of them. And to this day what I remember are that most contained at lest one full page, sketched illustration about halfway through.

I read somewhere recently that having images of your novels characters is not a good idea. That people need to come up with their own idea of how the characters in a novel look. I get it, and I agree overall. My favorite book of all time (my stranded on a desert island book) is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

A character like Owen, who is very, very small, growing up, might have looked comical in an illustration - and Owen was never for a moment comical. But I love the idea of the illustrated novel with some books. And obviously, the Jackson Sugar series is among them.

The Maggie books are illustrated because (a) I have an accomplished artist who was able to capture draw Maggie as I see her, and (b) because even grown-ups enjoy looking at pictures. I mean, what's not to like?  These are some of the images from Crazy Red. 

    

We see Maggie growing up, Going from a timid child to a young adult who learns to assert herself. Because she has to in order to survive.

In Wanted Dead, we also see a progression, a maturing, 

   

And in many of the images, we get to see the action. I like that. And I like putting a face on the bad guys, too.

Back to work.  

Kaley Craig

   

WANTED DEAD, Book Two of the Jackson Sugar Series, is NOW AVAILABLE!

September 30, 2015

Book Two of the series is finally available for sale in paperback and on eBook. There were many cover issues, as "Maggie" is so fair, and so red of head, and that doesn't always translate well to print. 

It took ten revisions to get that cover right.

Someone said to me the other day as I was struggling with this, and with reading and re-reading the text in this
almost 220K second book in Maggie's story for the fifth time, that if only everyone who was self-published went to such lengths to produce a quality product, there would be far fewer POD books out there, and most would be3 good ones!

Maggie is a good story. An immersive story. 

Where Book One, CRAZY RED, followed Maggie through a turbulent childhood and through the her marriage to Edmond, Book Two covers what happens next. And much does. Weird things. Funny things. Incredibly sad things.  And wonderful things, too.

Someone thought Jackson Sugar was a romance series.  No.  Far from it.  But there is romance in the books. And sex. 

Violence too. Maggie is living in 1971-1972 in WANTED DEAD. And those of us who were "of age" during that time period know how different things were then. 

For instance:

• My OB/GYN doctor smoked (and offered cigarettes to me) during our office conversations.
• Raping one's spouse was not illegal.
• "Wife-beating" as it was called then, was frowned upon but rarely prosecuted.
• Recreational drugs (pot, pills, LSD/MDA (and the like) were available most everywhere and cheap to obtain. Injectable and inhalable drugs were around, but not used by most people. 
• Women in law enforcement (as street cops) were rare, at least in the American South, and those that were in those positions (at lest in my experience) were not treated as "equals" to the men. Not at all.
• The Hispanic population was small, and as a rule (where I grew up) a "novelty". 
• Educated people still read a newspaper everyday, and watched the network news (1/2 hr) every night. There was no cable.
• Women wanting credit were routinely denied if they were not married. (I was. I was even asked if I had any "prospects".)
• Most people had a phone in their living room, and an extension in the kitchen and bedrooms. Most were hard-wired. If you were lucky they had a long cord so you could step away from everyone else for privacy. If you were a teenage girl you wanted a "Princess" phone with a lighted dial and a volume control. 
• The cool guys drove muscle cars. Oh yes. Most cars were large enough to fit three people comfortably on the front seat. Most cars would easily do 100mph.  Gas was cheap. I remember gas wars in Auburn, AL, where the gas was 13 cents a gallon.  
• It was easy to get fake ID (and authentic looking) if you had a few dollars. It was also easy to fake your age on your drivers license. I did.
• People still went on dates where you had to meet the parents before you took the daughter out the door and then walked her to the door for a kiss under the porch light at night's end. Drive-in movies were a popular destination, as were drive-in restaurants. 
• Many locales had a large "itinerant" hippie (aka freak) population. People hitchhiked routinely. People stayed with strangers they'd just met routinely. People "shared their stash" with people they'd just met routinely. 
• VD was a concern, but not really a serious one. A shot of penicillin would take care of most anything, and condoms (almost exclusively called rubbers then) were used for birth control. The pill was available then.
• A lot of people used "street names". I remember Rabbi and Sunflower and Apple. 
• Movies were either open to everyone or "Adults Only", and it was common to sit through the movie twice. You could smoke in the theatre. Ushers in uniforms walked through from time to time to make sure all was well. There was almost always a cartoon before the movie, and I remember watching newsreels as well. The movie theatres in my hometown were nice.  Art deco, fancy, large restrooms with couches and tables with lighted mirrors to check your makeup.  Sometimes there was an attendant.
• Shopping "downtown" was still a thing (though the new malls were coming in).  Many of the department stores were huge, multi-storied, lovely places with a nice restaurant or two. Gift-wrapping was usually free. Clerks helped you make your purchases ("May I help you?" "No, just looking" was the common exchange.) They carried your selections to the dressing room, hung them up, then checked back with different styles and sizes. Most of the larger stores had "bargain basements" and lovely window displays and a "bridal" department. 
• Everyone who had a car drove it to school. You took drivers ed in school, got your learners license when you were 15, and got your drivers license THE DAY you turned 16. You could buy a new car for a few thousand dollars and a used one for a few hundred.

Can you think of any more? 

Kaley Craig

SEPTEMBER  2015

Jackson Sugar: WANTED DEAD 

Available on AMAZON  & AMAZON KINDLE

Available late September 2015

Banished and left homeless by her mentally unstable mother, and devastated upon learning Will has married someone else, Maggie enters into a coerced marriage with the nefarious but charming Edmond Jackson. But as 1971 draws to a close, his suspicion that she still loves Will Marshall leads to an act of violent, unforgivable rage, and the threat of death should she betray him. 
 
Unable to leave, but determined to find a safe haven before her child is born, Maggie soon finds herself entangled in circumstances beyond her imagining, where even the voice of God cannot be heard. 
 
Set in the 1970's South, Maggie's story is smart, sexy, spiritual, sorrowful, violent, and absurdly funny. Rich in period detail, with unforgettable characters, bizarre happenings, and suspenseful situations, this chapter of Maggie's story is about the strength we find in love, and the power of promises kept. 
 
Accompanied by twenty hand-sketched illustrations, Jackson Sugar: WANTED DEAD is Book Two in the Jackson Sugar Series.

The release of Wanted Dead, Book Two in the Jackson Sugar Series, is set for the late summer of 2015. Have a look at the trailer.