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DonnaRae Menard is one busy author! She has not one but four novels coming out this year. Out this week is THE AFFILIATE.
It’s always a pleasure to welcome DonnaRae back to my blog. Below she offers her reflections on silence, followed by her bio, buy/contact links, and descriptions of her 2025 books:

                                       SILENCE IS FRUSTRATING

by DonnaRae Menard           

I have an issue with silence. It’s just so quiet. If you’ve ever met me, you might have noticed, I’m a talker. And why, you’re wondering? Ten younger siblings, five kids, 117 foster kids, farm life, and part of the workforce since age 16. Now, I’m an empty nester with a hard-of-hearing husband and senior cats. Finally, I can experience quiet. It drives me nuts.
I don’t work surrounded by noise, but I want it in the background, like in the other room. If I’m outside, I want birds, wind, occasional passing traffic. I’ve actually spent the last year or so trying to discern the meaning of the word. Silence. Is that like all white? Nothing filters through, totally shut down? I put myself in places where I can control the volume, the amount of noise. Finally, I’ve come up with my own conclusions.
When the world changed five years ago, when social media became so pronounced, when you had to live stream to see anything on TV that wasn’t repeated a gazillion times, evolution of the word silence changed. As in, what constituted silence changed.
I can be surrounded by a cacophony of blah-blah-blah, and not hear it. I believe that would be selective silence. Yet, if I’m out and a child cries out, or a dog yelps, I am laser focused on where the noise comes from. That would be hard-wired awareness in silence. Walking, driving, even at times casually watching a film, I will see a pixel of life that consumes all my attention, and the rest falls away. That would be acute sensory silence.
I love the trains and ride whenever I can. Going into the city, the clackity-clang is so loud it deafens me to everything. More silence. As in perpetrated silence. Here comes the conductor. I can see he’s talking, but can’t hear the words. Yet, within my mind, the way his jacket moves raises a remembered rustling, the swing of his metal key fob, raises another. Sweat on his brow brings the scent of toil. His cherub cheeks make me smile. All things I see, because I am looking at him. Really looking, because his mouth is working but his words are lost in the silence created by the train.
All these things for me come from silence. The place I end up in when I clear, or maybe open, my mind. Silence within is frustrating because it allows the flood of outside sparks to enter. These small flashes find a place to lodge in my internal ethernet, and stay until the day I re-home them to the page.
Silence. What I hear when there is nothing.

BIO/BUY/CONTACT LINKS:

DonnaRae Menard began writing in junior high school and has been scribbling since. DonnaRae is a hybrid author with both self-published books and working with Level Best Books Publishing, as well as with Of Metal and Magic Publishing. She is the author of Murder in the Meadow, 1970 cozy mystery series, In the Shadow of Pharoah, historical fiction series, The Waif and The Warlord, and the Detective Carmine Mansuer series. New on her list are Beneath the Fountain, Dropped from the Sky, Murder on the Small Farm, The Morality Issue, and Snuffling Up Bones, Book 1, in The Pig & I Series. She splits her time between Vermont and New Hampshire, has an affinity for odd jobs, rescued cats, and talking about her 450-pound lap pig. Check out her website donnaraemenardbooks.com. Find her on facebook and Blue Sky. Follow QR code to webpage.
DonnaRae Menard
menarddonnarae@gmail.com
facebook, bluesky @ drmenardbooks_blsky_social

COMING IN 2025:

THE AFFLIATE, March 25, 2025 – Jan Hoyer had a good life, but a little boring. She wanted to be James Bond in stilettos and a trashy trench coat. Enter Don Wilson, Postal Inspector. Now she’s got all the excitement, but when the bullets fly and she hits the ground, she wonders if it’s worth it. Book 1, A Postmaster on the Case Mystery Series.
MURDER ON US RTE 116, June 19. 2025, Level Best Books. A nemesis from high school shows up while Katie Took is working. The woman is loud and obnoxious, and soon forgotten. Until she shows up dead. Katie wants to help Marlie, but she’s knee deep in trouble with the sheriff again. A new guy in town wants Katie’s job, and there’s an escaped con hiding in her barn. Is she going to lose her animal control job? Run amok of the con? Who is Sheriff Lewis going to send to jail? Book 4, An It’s Never Too Late Mystery Series.
THIS MORGUE OR THAT! August, 2025. Glenna Woodward is still busy delivering unclaimed urns of human remains. But Mr. Slater has upped his game and she’s falling behind. She’s moved to a loft where she is the caretaker during building renovations, and within sight of the drop zone for four new files. Three homeless women and an unknown male, all found together on the same freezing January night. What’s their secret, and how do the relate to a case where she has a name, but no urn? Book 2, Currier of the Dead Mystery Series.
IN A PIG’S EAR, October 20, 2025, Level Best Books. Doris Flynn is financially driven back into the work force. Sheriff Nebbits is called to a body-in-a-freezer dump, and Doris discovers that her boss’s husband has been missing for weeks, and her new neighbor’s boyfriend, for longer than that. Somehow, she and Buttercup are visiting questionable sites. But when Buttercup plays tag with a realtor, no amount of classy showcasing can hide the truth. Book 2, The Pig & I Mystery Series.