Writers Read: Randee Dawn

Randee Dawn is a Brooklyn-based author and journalist who writes speculative fiction at night and entertainment and lifestyle stories during the day

for publications like the New York Times, NBCNews.com, Variety, The Los Angeles Times, and Emmy Magazine. Her debut novel, Tune in Tomorrow, was published by Solaris. Publishers Weekly said of Tune in Tomorrow: "Dawn balances over-the-top drama and comedy with genuine intrigue to create a fun story with plenty of heart." Lightspeed praised it as "an excellent read if you're looking for something to make you smile... well worth your time."

Dawn's new novel is Leave No Trace.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Dawn's reply:

I have several stacks or shelves of to-be-read material, all of which has good intentions behind it – but much of which gathers dust. I am often attracted by the latest shiny new acquisition, but I also derive great pleasure from finally getting to that thing I've been staring at longingly for so long. One of these days, N.K. Jemisin and your Broken Earth trilogy, one of these days!

All of which means there's rarely rhyme or reason to what I pick up – but here are the last several titles I've torn (not literally! Don't tear books!) through.

The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale

This legend of the horror genre had mostly passed me by until I attended a panel at ArmadilloCon (in Austin, TX) in which friends, fans and Lansdale's literary son talked about what made his stories so visceral, scary, and often funny. (Among many other things, Lansdale is the author of the short story "Bubba Ho Tep," about an old man who may just be Elvis battling a mummy.) The book is not for the squeamish; Lansdale goes there and a few steps beyond in ways that made me chuckle darkly, but might not be dinner reading for others. I picked up this book right after the panel in the dealer's room of the convention, and finished it up just a few weeks later, delighted at having found a new (to me) author whose work I wanted to chase down more of.

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

Picoult is important, in that she gets big ideas and moral quandaries into mass-market novels that are widely read, and I applaud her for that. But this one, oh, man, this one … in essence, it's a tale of elephant behavior, grieving rituals and mother-child bonding. Oh, and there's also a human daughter looking for the mother she believes abandoned her, a disenchanted former cop, a failed psychic (or is she) and a massive twist at the end you won't see coming unless you think throughout the whole thing, this teenage daughter does not behave like a 13 year old at all. Oh, and elephants. Did I mention the elephants? So many elephants. Maybe too many elephants. I'm fairly sure I picked this one up for free from a giveaway pile, but I don't recall where.

The Mind Worms by Nicholas Kaufmann

Kaufmann's a friend, so I picked this up from him when he read at a reading series I run in New York City called Brooklyn Books & Booze. This is the third in his trilogy of Dr. Laura Powell books (all of which are worth reading), and all of which involve in some form or the other corporations infecting locals with their toxins. People die in horrible ways, but it's also a mystery – how will the curious coroner Dr. Powell (who also has the worst luck in the world) figure out this particular disaster?

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

When my friend Lynda tells me "this one's a rough ride" in a bookstore as we pass a book, I know it's the one for me. In a futuristic world where animals develop a transmissible virus that prevents them being eaten, it's vegetarian/vegan heaven! Except, it's not: Human desire for flesh means cannibalism is not only fashionable, it's trendy. I'd like to think the world where we decide that eating people (and raising them in herds, as well as hunting and experimenting on them) is more sensible than just becoming vegans is too awfully fanciful to happen, but I live in this world, right now, where people are now deciding that established, verifiable, effective science experiments now need to be tried all over again, like vaccines and fluoride in the water and pasteurization. A rough ride, indeed.

If Wishes Were Retail by Auston Habershaw

A simple premise – what if a genii (or djinn) set up a shop in a mall to dispense wishes (at a reasonable price)? It's much harder than you'd think to get people what they wish, as it turns out, even when he has a helper in 17-year-old Alex, who has one wish of her own: To get out of town and go to college. Auston, who also read with us at Brooklyn Books & Booze, was kind enough to hand me an advanced reading copy of this when we chatted at WorldCon in Seattle in 2025, and I love finding a truly funny author and premise. Not a lot of books make me laugh aloud (even if I enjoy them) and this one has at least one gag that did exactly that.