Author Candi Sary graduated from the University of California, Irvine. She has been in the finals of several writing competitions, including the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards, and the Dahlonega Literary Festival Novel Contest. Her novel Black Crow White Lie won Reader Views Literary Award, the Dante Rossetti Award, and was named first runner-up in the Eric Hoffer Book Award. It was made into a short film by Chase Michael Wilson. Sary lives in coastal Southern California with her husband now that her two children are grown. Sary can often be found surfing and paddle boarding in the waters of Newport Beach, or riding her bike to her local indie bookstore, Lido Village Books. She is a proud owner of a little free library. littlefreelibrary.org
Novel-in-Progress Magdalena is her latest novel, currently being submitted. It was on the short list of finals in the William Faulkner William Wisdom Novel Competition. Here's a brief description: Magdalena takes an intimate look at a woman who changes her life by changing her story. Diversity and women’s issues are gently woven into the fabric of this unusual novel. Sam’s Town is a small, secluded town that thrives on gossip and superstition. Dottie offers plenty of both when the scandal breaks about the missing girl, the ghost, and the affair that started it all. After four tragic miscarriages and an accident that left her husband unresponsive, Dottie, a lonely, thirty-five-year-old outcast finds solace in the mysterious neighbor girl’s company. The young Magdalena is a self-proclaimed “sensitive.” She comes to conjure Dottie’s dead boyfriend even though it is against the town’s rules to interact with ghosts. Dottie eventually becomes less intrigued with Magdalena's supernatural abilities than with having a real child in her childless home. In a blur between fantasy and reality, Dottie tries to heal her long broken heart by pretending the fifteen-year-old is her daughter. Make-believe motherhood miraculously gives Dottie new life until she discovers Magdalena’s secret motive that will ultimately tear them apart. A mail lady who walks through town followed by a murder of crows, a curious centenarian who proves to know more about Dottie’s story than even Dottie herself, an ex-mobster who is now in the witness protection program, and twin sisters who run a haunted inn all play into the peculiar tale of how Dottie finds her truth deep in her imagination. |
Black Crow White Lie “This is a praiseworthy, poignant work.” Publishers Weekly "Sary succeeds in portraying teen angst without melodrama, in depicting compassion without sentimentality, and in creating a world of characters on the margins of society whose depth and complexity outshine any Hollywood hero." Chanticleer Book Reviews "Few novelists can arrestingly channel the voice of a neglected fourteen-year-old boy, half street urchin, half spiritual shaman, and emerge with an engaging first-person narrative that doesn’t drip with sentimentality or patronize teen culture. Candi Sary can…” Foreword Reviews Magazine The novel was made into a short film by Chase Michael Wilson. Check out the trailer: |
