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“Reading Mandy Haynes’s collection of short stories, Sharp as a Serpent’s Tooth, takes me on a journey down red clay backroads to the gothic South where Flannery O’Connor rides shotgun and whispers in my ear. Haynes takes her fiction into a world I love–a South of conmen, snake handlers, and individuals with unsettling courage. She brings fresh insight into characters I’ve met and places I’ve visited in real life and in fiction. There’s no better journey–highly recommended.” USA Today bestselling author Carolyn Haines, 2010 Harper Lee Distinguished Writer Award winner

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Click images below to purchase Mandy’s books from your favorite online retailer:

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“Author Mandy Haynes has a wide reputation for being one of the most authentic voices of modern-day America’s Deep South. Set in the complex rural South, her stories are alive with spot-on vernacular, her character’s are self-assured and quirky, and the predicaments they find themselves in are quintessentially Southern experiences. Reading Mandy Haynes work is an education in all that goes into the cultural hotbed of the romantic South. Her work takes you down long country roads where anything can and does happen.” Claire Fullerton, author of Little Tea

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Was honored that my story was deemed worthy of being a story that empowers… Listen to it (Episode 244) on the STORIES THAT EMPOWER podcast.

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I was very excited and honored to be asked by author Cynthia Newberry Martin to write an essay for her blog, Catching Days.

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Very happy to be chosen as the debut episode for this fantastic podcast, Desideratum by Theresa Bakken. “Desideratum is a Latin word meaning ‘things that are desired as essential’. The Desideratum Podcast celebrates storytelling as an essential thing – the art of telling and the journey of listening. Join me audiobook narrator Theresa Bakken and my wordsmith friends for new episodes every Friday showcasing the talents of authors and narrators. Listen to conversations with writers and scenes from their audiobooks. Tune in to hear an artist you love or to find your new favorite storyteller. “

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Today’s guest on Authors Over 50, celebrating your success in Life’s Sweetest Third spent hours on barstools and riding in vans listening to outrageous tales from some of the best songwriters and storytellers in Nashville, Tennessee. She traded a stressful life as a pediatric cardiac sonographer for a happy one and now lives in Fernandina Beach, Florida, with her three dogs, and one turtle. She is Editor in Chief of Reading Nation Magazine, and author of two short story collections, Walking the Wrong Way Home, which was a finalist for the Tartt Fiction Award, and Sharp as a Serpent’s Tooth Eva and Other Stories, which was voted the 2021 Best Bonus Book for The International Pulpwood Queen Book Club. Like the characters in some of her stories, she never misses a chance to jump in a creek to catch crawdads, stand up for the underdog, or make someone laugh. She’s always making us laugh, so Welcome to Authors Over 50, Mandy Hayes!

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