An Offer Kindle Users Can't Refuse

I am not sure how long it will last, but the Kindle version of Lee Child's Persuader is FREE from Amazon for the moment. Check it out!

UPDATE: Thanks to Charles for this tip -- Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice is also free at the moment!

Two For Tuesday - Practice Practice

Yes, New Yorkers, there is such a thing as sunshine. I'm writing from North Carolina with bronchitis, having tagged along after my husband who is researching at Duke U. Yesterday I spent most of the day inside Duke’s incredible library. Not looking at books, unfortunately...I had to work. But the library is heaven. I strapped on my Nano and was good to go.

I have a friend here in Chapel Hill, a deserter from my writing group who moved, a few years ago, to escape New York’s cold climes. She and I spend our brief time together doing bookish things. Last night at The Regulator Bookshop (add this one to your book tour) we wedged our way into a packed space to hear a writer - who writes about writing - speak about writing practice. Ahem. You guessed it; Natalie Goldberg whose "Writing Down the Bones," I would hazard a guess, has been read by 99% of writers at some point in their lives. (They might not admit it, as I have done here.)

Her constant refrain, one she sang at her book signing, is that practice keeps the writing juices flowing and that as writers we must exercise daily. She doesn't mean 3,000 words of our manuscript, she means taking up a pen and a writing prompt and going at something totally unrelated to our daily grind for fifteen minutes. Hmm. Something else to cram into the day. On the way to the car I complained to my friend about my hectic schedule. But in addition to writing, my friend is an artist, and as we climbed into the car she said, “She’s talking about sketching. No matter how famous or fabulous, artists need to keep sketching. All the time.”

Okay. I’m here at my computer at 6:30 a.m. because it’s Tuesday, and I promised a 2X Tuesday post. I had one in mind, but The Regulator Bookshop threw me. Because they had books, naturally, and I bought a couple of Elmore Leonard’s, and here I am newly charmed and wanting to share from an early scene in "Be Cool," about a Hollywood filmmaker whose very good friend Tommy has just been bumped off at a sidewalk cafe. Moments before, in his mind, our hero Chile had been writing Tommy into a new film. But now....

“He kept his mouth shut looking at the scene again, starting to rewrite it in his mind, the guy playing Tommy no longer the lead. You couldn’t have the star get popped ten minutes into the picture.”

As for me...I told you I’m working. So here’s some web content, written yesterday in the beauteous Duke library:

“To manage the RETS server’s use and performance, the MLS may restrict the number of listings a user accesses in a single session or within a particular time-frame. Frequency and time-of-day access may also be limited.”

I’ve got bronchitis, after all.

Let us know what Tuesday Twofers you post today, and I’ll share the link.

They're rolling in:

• Check out David Cranmer's blog for his 2-fer. But...gross-out alert.
• Crystal Phares' 2-fer is stirring.
• See Barbara Martin's for her inimitable combo of history and wilderness
• And Linda McLaughlin's who calls WOM 'wondrous,' has her own wondrous tale, and an excerpt from Travis to boot.
• Travis Erwin came through too late to post here on Tuesday...I'd give you the gross-out alert except that humor makes it quite palatable...
  

- Lois

Perfect v. Publishable

You may remember that last summer I told you that Michael Bracken announced on his blog that he had published a story for each and every of the previous sixty months. In the comments of that post I said “His blog is very business like-sent out a story, got a rejection, got an acceptance, tally of acceptances this year, and now and again a sage piece of advice.”

Just this week, Michael and Sandra Seamans got into a great conversation about “Perfect” versus “Publishable.” You can read all about it here.

Terrie

MTM: Alley Pond Park, New York City

Last week I wrote about being home (finally) and getting “Back in the New York Groove.”

Our dear friend Leah, who blogs over at The Goat’s Lunch Pail commented that my “apartment complex looks quite nice, perhaps even peaceful.” And I responded that the entire tone is set by Alley Pond Park which sets the northern border of our development. I opined that the park deserves its own post and well, here it is.

I am always bragging about how I love living in New York City but that doesn’t mean I love concrete more than grass and trees. I live a block away from Alley Pond Park, which provides 657 acres of wetlands, forest, tidal flats, meadows and plenty of places to play for those of us living nearby. The “Alley” was created about 15,000 years ago when an ice glacier receded and the area of the park became the Harbor Hill terminal moraine.

The northern part of Alley Pond Park is estuarine, i.e., a place where a river current meets the tide. Fresh water moves into the Alley from the hills and bubbles up from natural springs. The fresh water flows northward and merges with the salt water of Little Neck Bay.

I live south of the wetlands where the park widens into a forest and the hills are dotted with boulders that fell when the glacier melted. Some of the boulders are still sitting around. We also have a number of kettle ponds, formed when the water and rock gushed from the melting glaciers. Many are dry now and I have climbed down them and up again. And I always think, “Not bad for a city girl.”

Right behind my house, at the very edge of the park is a remnant of the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway, built between 1908 and 1911 by William K. Vanderbilt Jr., a great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. The private 45 mile road stretched from Flushing, Queens in New York City to Lake Ronkonkoma in eastern Long Island. The parkway was originally constructed so that Vanderbilt and his friends could have daring automobile races.

Then it became a private toll road with gate houses at every entry point. During prohibition rum runners frequently used the Vanderbilt since, as a private road, it was not patrolled by the police. Finally the construction of the public access Northern State Parkway in the 1930s, ended the colorful career of the first highway in the nation to use bridges and overpasses. The City of New York took over a section of the motor parkway when they created Alley Pond Park and it is where I have taken many a morning walk over the past twenty something years. For great pictures of the motor parkway, I have linked to the NY Bridge and Tunnel Club website. Click here.

For more My Town Monday excitement, visit Travis Erwin, who started it all.

Terrie

The Gnawing Suspense is Ended

Just over a month ago, we shared a momentous announcement.  Since then, you've doubtlessly been biting your nails with anxiety as I have.  As many of you frankly favored this competitor, I'm happy to report, from no less a personage than custodian Horace Bent himself:

"I'm thrilled that the public steered clear of smut...and turned the supermarket chiller into the Petri dish of literary innovation."

Bubbly all around for you smart cookies.

More-ange of What Rhymes With Orange

Image Source Wikipedia

If you’ve linked here from the original What Rhymes With Orange post, you already possess a fine list of options, generally applicable for simpler poetic needs. But what, you ask, about dazzling allusions to world culture and history that differentiate the truly erudite wordsmith? Women of Mystery humbly offer these hand-picked specimens:

Areorange 51- Controversial New Mexican site where exceedingly strange fruit is rumored to be stored, awaiting a ripe time for disclosure.

Boer Warange- Conflict between British Empire and independent republics in South Africa during late 19th century. Involving the so-called Orange Free State, the issue was never juice itself, but imperialism versus self-determination, embodied in the battle cry ‘Power to the Pulp!’

Cri de coeurange- Zesty French expression describes a drain on every segment of one’s being.

David Gilmourange- Seminal rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Accused of graft, he’s cultivated his own grievances against the sour hue-bris of his bandmate and their plainly grapefruit-favoring name.

The Fab Fourange- Nickname for a band whose sonic experiments while smoking Mandarin peels led to well-received studio albums during their citrudelic period.

Michaelangelorange- High-yield painter, sculptor, poet, architect, and engineer of the Italian Renaissance. Bruised over the number of syllables in his name, he inspirationally transformed his bitterness into the sweet marmalade of precocious artistic excellence.

'Nevermorange'- The pithy, yet haunting refrain from a poem by Edgorange Allen Poe, a navel-gazer who famously saw the glass as half-empty.

Nightingale, Florange- English nurse, writer, and statistician who came to prominence during the Crimean War by astringently advocating Vitamin C and cleanliness. The grateful wounded reported she always smelled of well-polished furniture.

Sir Thomas Morange- English lawyer, author, and statesman of the Renaissance. An acid wit, he invented the term ‘utopia’ and the related adjective ‘utopiorange.’ Remained ethical, even as the squeeze was put on him by King Henry VIII. Though he was later canonized, his rind is still chapped about the beheading. Ain’t that a pip.

Thorange- Norse god of thunder, whose magical weapon Mjolni-juicer was a short-handled reamer that devastated the flesh of the Frost Giants, turning them into Creamsicles.

Hope we've helped.

UPDATE: Not working so hard, these orange creations are just standing around looking purty.

Friday Fun - March 27, 2009

Welcome back! Made it through another week!

Hope this brings a wry smile!

A local Oklahoma City boy was on trial for the armed robbery of a convenience store. In court, he took everyone by surprise when he fired his lawyer.

The assistant district attorney was impressed when the 47 year old accused man did a fair job of defending himself. That was until the store manager identified the defendant as the robber.

The accused jumped up, shouted that the woman was lying and then said, "I should of blown your [expletive deleted] head off."

He stopped dead in his tracks and quickly added, "-if I'd been the one that was there."

The jury took 20 minutes to convict the and recommended a 30 year sentence.

Dumb-de-dumb-dumb ---- DUMB!

Thanks to www.legal-forms-kit.com
Thanks for the laughs, Uncle Jimmy!

Thaaaaat’s all, pals!
Thanks for stopping by!
Nan

Tender Moments

I have witnessed brief moments, which to the average passerby would not appear tender or emotional, but they were to me; I feel compelled to write about such moments. 

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, I was advised to speak with my young children (whose photo appears here; a tender moment captured by my husband, Joe Ryan, during a beach clean-up in Stony Brook several years ago) about the subject of death; after all, if my son, for instance, was to mention to a classmate that his mother has breast cancer, a classmate may reply, “Mine had it, too; but she died.”

That fall, when my son Patrick entered second grade, he did have a classmate who had recently lost her mom to breast cancer. This classmate has an older sister (who happens to be the same age as my daughter). I never knew their family personally. Their dad had become a widower left to raise them alone because of the very disease that somehow chose to spare me. 

On the day before Father’s Day a few years later, my son and I went to the supermarket to shop for some of my husband’s favorite items -- steak, corn on the cob, and a Carvel cake -- to prepare for our Father’s Day celebration the next day. While walking past the aisles and cash registers, we noticed the widower pushing a cart with his daughters silently flanking him, just ahead of us. Patrick and I exchanged glances when we both realized who was in front of us.

It was a quiet, tender moment that struck me; to anyone else it was an ordinary scene: a family shopping together.  I held back tears, thinking about his wife who couldn’t be there with her daughters to do this shopping for their father. Being a survivor sharpens your appreciation of life, but my trip to the supermarket that day was another reminder of how fortunate I am. 

Last week, I attended the evening parent-teacher conferences at my daughter’s junior high school. My husband was home recuperating from knee surgery, unable to join me.  I leaned on a row of lockers opposite the classroom of my next appointment, reading over some notes as I waited for a couple to finish their ten-minute allotment with my daughter's Spanish teacher. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a man in a suit walk past me to wait for his time slot in the classroom next door. 

It was the widower. 

He was alone, as he has been for each of the parent-teacher conferences over the past five years. A wave of sadness came over me. I thought about what a caring, dedicated parent he is, and how proud his wife must be.  His presence in the hallway was a tender moment that gently reminded me once again how grateful I am to be alive. 

Have you witnessed a tender moment that has stayed with you? Have you been inspired to write about it, or have you incorporated it into a story? 

Joe Konrath's/Jack Kilborn's Fraidy Blog Tour

Crime author and blogger extraordinaire Joe Konrath is currently touring other sites throughout the month to promote his new horror novel.
Afraid is written under the terribly-kept secret pseudonym Jack Kilborn and will launch on March 31st. Buy it from your favorite bookseller if you dare.

Due to his e-popularity and disinclination to say No, Joe's ended up at multiple sites daily, and at his blog, you can track all of his travels. Via the blogosphere, you can be everywhere without going anywhere at all. We at Women of Mystery are delighted to be one such virtual speed bump beneath the wheels of his speeding tour bus. In order to add extra value and joy for our readers, I tried-- and it wasn't easy-- to formulate:

9 Questions No One's Asked Konrath (yet)

1) Caesar or Waldorf? Or is it wussy to eat things without faces?

I hate salad. The closest I get to vegetables is french fries.

2) The adrenaline rush of horror is partly shock and surprise, but unlike movie viewers, readers pace books themselves. They can short-circuit the thrills by closing the covers as their hearts race and they imagine the scary music swelling. You've even said you expect some readers won't finish, especially people who don't typically read horror. Is it as much of an authorial triumph when readers have to stop reading to grab nitro pills or a nearby pail?

I strive to entertain. To entertain with words means to somehow affect the reader. Make them smile or laugh, make them cry, make them think, and, in some cases, scare the holy hell out of them. So when someone emails me saying they have to get therapy because my book was so frightening, I count that as a win.

3) During your funny interview with sometime co-author Jeff Strand, I especially enjoyed the uncomfortable silence. May we have one?

No. But I can give you a thoughtful pause.

.


.


.

How was that? Good for you?

[Break for sandwich and cigarette- ed.]

4) Related to the earlier question about shock and surprise, even though I know what's coming, William Peter Blatty books still make me clammy. Who still chills you after multiple reads, and what makes certain horror stand up?

There are so many books I love, it's hard to pick. Blatty's LEGION is a really creepy book. I'm also in awe of MASTER OF LIES by Graham Masterton. Scariest first chapter ever. PRESSURE by Jeff Strand is one of the scariest books ever written. I love DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS by Blake Crouch.

5) I'm also a Columbia College of Chicago grad (1995), and I lived there for almost 20 years! Now that we've e-fived and bonded, may I have one of your kidneys?

I'm sorry, I've already promised it to a stranger I met on Facebook. If only you'd asked me yesterday. I do have some bone marrow left, however.

6) During your stop at Erica Orloff's blog, you sketched a brief history of horror including the Marquis De Sade. That reminded me of reading his 120 Days of Sodom. The later chapters, which he only bothered outlining, read as if even their creator was getting bored with the permutations of mutilations, poop-ery, and degrading sex. However, he was required by his concept to keep rearranging his players and their orifices like so many Tetris pieces. Over the course of a novel with serious amounts of carnage, not to mention several different death-dealers in action, how do you keep the scenes feeling fresh and immediate for you and readers?

AFRAID has a high body count, and some terrible things happen, but the point of the book isn't to catalog atrocities. It's an adventure novel, and hopefully the reader cares about these characters and wants them to survive. So it's not really about coming up with unique ways to kill people, and more about dropping characters into bad situations and ratcheting up the tension.

7) How much more awesome is my version below than your current author photo? You may use percentages to estimate. My mom likes knowing the art-school tuition's not going to waste.


It is 73.3% more awesome than my current photo. How did you know that in real life I speak in dialog balloons?

8) I loved the list of your Twittered jokes from Charlotte Hughes' blog. Consider them stolen. Your crime novels employ a lot of humor. Should people expect Jack Kilborn to ease the nastiness and fright with moments of levity? Do you think that kind of contrast's necessary, like adding salt to a cake batter, to make the horror feel more horrible?

For AFRAID, I wanted to evoke one emotion only; fear. I think the relentless tone of the book makes it scarier. Though, if you look really close, there's probably some dark humor in AFRAID, which will make you grin while shaking your head and saying, "That is just soooo wrong."

9) You began this month-long virtual blog tour with the candid preconception that they don't work. WoM's own Terrie Farley Moran lent her actual condo for a previous tour when you road-tripped in the flesh to 600 bookstores. I know this month's not over, but have you revised your opinion, or should Terrie start boarding up the windows and refreshing the Scotch Guard on her furniture?

I've already seen the benefit of this blog tour, and I think it's actually working. To what degree, I'm unsure, but I've noticed some bumps in my Amazon numbers, and my website and blog are getting more hits. Also, if you Google "JA Konrath" I'm getting several thousand more hits than I was last month, which means more people are linking to me.

Will this tour catapult me to the top of the bestseller lists? I doubt it. But it will sell a few more books than if I hadn't blog toured.

Hi, Terrie! :)

Two Sentence Tuesday

Most of the sentences I read this week had things to do with tax codes. NOT what I feel like sharing! But I did struggle through a book called Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance. Richard Restak has some great information in this book, but when I got to the part where he describes the actual exercises for improving brain performance...erg...well...I think I may just have to suffer with the one I've got! I don't have the patience to do most of them on a regular basis. He's got very interesting points about diet ("if it's good for your heart, it's good for your brain"), exercise (physical exercise improves mental acuity), and the necessity of sleep, however, that I think a lot of us could benefit from attending to.

To give you an idea of the exercises, here's one called forward digit span:

Ask a friend to read to you in succession strings of numbers starting with five-digit spans ad working upward (six digits, seven digits, etc.) until you can no longer correctly repeat back the number sequence. When they've finished, repeate the numbers back in a precise order.

Useful stuff, but not particularly thrilling!

And two sentences from almost the end of my current WIP:

Heat flared in his eyes, but it wasn’t the heat that practically melted her into a puddle right there on the cold hospital floor. It was the hope. She walked to the bed and lowered herself onto the edge.

So what did you read this week? What did you write? What shape is your brain in?

----------
Barbara Martin has some slaying sentences on her blog.

Twitter

Bill Crider has the best video I’ve seen so far on the subject of Twitter. You can link to it right here. Thanks Bill!

Terrie

MTM: Back in the New York Groove

Since you were nice enough to listen to me complain about my life in Florida, even though I was living right on the water and wearing shorts all the time while some of you—were not, I am honor bound to let you celebrate with me because I’m back, back in the New York Groove. And if you click here, Ace Frehley and KISS will tell you how that feels.

Every time I come home from anywhere at all, I actually sing New York Groove (lyrics here) as I walk off the plane. I would dance off the plane, but what with the carry-on bag and the tote . . .

So, where exactly is home? I live in New York City, Borough of Queens, about twenty miles east of the corner of Third and Forty-three mentioned in the song. Times Square is a few blocks west of Third and Forty-three.
I live in a garden apartment complex. Generally that means attached two story buildings, each with two apartments, one up and one down set in a common area with lots of green space. The above picture is of my development, not my exact apartment.

This is a picture of the commercial intersection a block from my house. What you see is my branch of the Queens County Savings Bank. The other three corners have all sorts of shops and stores, so I can take money out of the bank and buy lots of cool stuff and even more great food.

It may not look like much to you, but it is Home Sweet Home to me.

“And baby, you'd better believe
I'm back, back in the New York Groove.”

For more My Town Monday posts, visit he who started it all, Travis Erwin.

Terrie

Meditations on Speculations

Image from A Balling Ape.

I came across a modest mention on Charles Gramlich's blog that he'd been nominated for the Rhysling Award in the category "speculative poetry." His nominated piece is a dark haiku from his chapbook, Wanting the Mouth of a Lover. Wonderfully suggestive title. Way to go, Charles!

I had to look up 'Speculative Poetry' in Wikipedia, which says: "Speculative poetry is often published by the same markets that publish science fiction, fantasy, and horror.... Suzette Haden Elgin, founder of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, defines speculative poetry as being 'about a reality that is in some way different from the existing reality....'" (Well now. That clarifies things.)

Okay, so then I had to go look up Wikipedia's definition of Speculative Fiction: "...it generally overlaps with one or more of the following: science fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalypic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history." (Not to put too fine a point on it.)

The fact that Margaret Atwood refers to some of her work as speculative fiction makes the category even harder to wrap one's head around. She says: "For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do.... speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth. "

Given such broad strokes, I can gratefully assign the label to my new - and heretofore unpigeonholed - wip. Not exactly sci fi. Not exactly post-apocalyptic. Not utopian or dystopian, either. But it takes place on Earth and the means are to hand. It quite conceivably could happen, since humans are wont to make really big messes. So, ta da, speculative fiction it is.

Apparently the powers that be at Wikipedia think the definitions for spec poetry and spec fiction need improvement. I agree. Anyone want to take a stab?

- Lois

Free Reads from a Great Guy

Now and again, I have mentioned to you that Tony Burton, publisher of Wolfmont Press and Honey Locust Press is a really, really nice guy. The entire Toys for Tots publishing project developed because Tony wanted to do some give-back by helping provide holiday presents for kids. Then he encouraged us all to lend a hand.

His tireless efforts brought the Toys for Tots anthology, Dying In A Winter Wonderland to the number eight spot on the Independent Mystery Book Sellers Association Top Ten list for 2008.

Now we have another example of Tony being a really nice guy. For some years, he has been publishing the e-zine Crime and Suspense, an inexpensive zine filled with reviews, articles and short stories. Tony announced a few months ago that it is getting too cumbersome to balance all his work, so he anticipates shutting down Crime and Suspense no later than the end of the year.

Rather than boo-hoo about the end of a great e-zine, Tony does what he does best--he shares. He has decided to open up Crime and Suspense for all to enjoy. Here is the email I received the other day.

"Hello there, my fellow crime fiction fans! Here is the access information to get into Crime and Suspense. Things have changed somewhat. I'm not going to putz around with the password stuff any more. At this point, the future life of the ezine is growing shorter by the day, so why not let you have free access to the ezine? You can feel free to share the link with anyone you like. Simply go to the Crime and Suspense ezine site and click on "Subscribers' Area" and you will see the link to the current issue. Of course, drawings and certain contests (if any) are still restricted to actual subscribers, as is the voting on the Readers' Choice story for each month. I hope you enjoy the ezine in its waning days! We'll try to keep it interesting and informative up to its last gasp. Fondly, Tony Burton, Chief Editor, Crime and Suspense "

So, hop on over to Crime and Suspense and read some great stories and a review or two, available for free through the generosity of a great guy.

Terrie

Friday Fun - March 20, 2009

PHEW! Got past the Ides of March!

But, not everybody's so lucky. Witness the following:

Michigan:

A pair of robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers.
(Obviously this happened some years ago!)

The first one shouted, "Nobody move!"

Terrified customers followed orders.

His partner headed for the cash register.

The startled first bandit shot him.


........Well, he was warned, after all!

Thanks to www.legal-forms-kit.com
Thanks for the laughs, Uncle Jimmy!

Thaaaaat’s all, pals!
Write On!
Nan

On Skimming

First off, let me thank Crystal Phares, blog pal and frequent contributor to Two Sentence Tuesday, for awarding the Women of Mystery a Fabulous Blog Award. That icon is by far the chic-est thing I've ever been awarded! I do feel a bit peculiar about sending out these awards, a bit as if I am participating in a chain letter, so I don't usually pass them on. We share fabulous blogs on here all the time, so I don't worry too much about people not getting traffic from us.

Next up, the title of this post. You may notice that a number of our categories are labeled "On [whavever]. I'm afraid that's my fault. It's from my days as a medievalist. In fact, the first mysteries I wrote were called Of Saints and Sinners and Of Cops and Killers. Both with Latin title translations.

And finally, the actual subject matter...

The other night I found myself skimming through a few pages in a book on my new Kindle. This is not as easy as it is in an actual book, but I'm getting better at it because skimming is a part of my reading life. Unless I am reading academic texts of one sort another, I probably read every word of only about 15% of the books I read. (But to give you an idea of what that means, my annual book count totals somewhere around 150-175 books/year.) Sometimes, I just skim a paragraph, sometimes it's a whole scene.

I find myself skimming if an author repeats something I already know from previous books or previous scenes in the same book. I skim if the scene doesn't seem to be going anywhere, which leads to me skimming a lot of sex scenes in the thrillers and Romantic Suspenses I read because often they aren't moving the story along either in plot or in emotional development. I skim descriptions of clothing, but never of environment. I don't know why that's true, but it is. I guess I just don't care about clothes. (No big surprise there; just ask my mother.)

Now, I have friends who read every single word of everything they read, and when I tell them I don't, they think I am saying something negative about the authors whose books I've skipped a word of here and there. That's not it at all. If I don't like a book, I don't bother skimming, I just put it in a box. There are too many books out there to suffer through ones I can't stand, which is why I have an "unreadably bad" note-to-self on certain books in my LibraryThing library.

Skimming allows me to concentrate on the parts of a book that are the most compelling to me. I read every word of John Connolly's books, but I have a friend who rushes out to buy his books and then proceeds to skim the historical bits in them. That might make no sense to some people at all, but she loves everything else about them...why should she have to focus on the stuff she doesn't find so intriguing?

I can't help but wonder as I write what bits and pieces various readers will skim over. Ultimately, it doesn't make any difference because I am going to write what I write and they're going to read what they read, but the question still nags now and again.

What about you? Do you skim? What kinds of things turn you into a speed reader?

Doubt

A successful stage actress I knew did me a favor once and read a play that I wrote. She liked it, but asked, "Have you ever thought of making this a novel instead?"

I looked at her in puzzlement, as she knew my orientation, like hers, was for the stage and film. She went on to warn me, "I can feel that what you wrote is very personal. You don't want an actress to change the meaning. You really have no control over her delivery once that curtain goes up." (This very intelligent actor ended up winning an Oscar a few years later)

That piece of advice got me thinking for the first time about the different formats one can use to tell a story, and after deciding which one best served my material, actually led me to transposing some of my play into a novel.

Now I've always like to read the book before seeing a movie adaptation, and 9 times out of 10, I enjoy the book more. That is one of the reasons why I have never been drawn to screenwriting. You would think that I would with my film background, (editing) but it has never appealed/called to me. Besides, my mind doesn't work in that code.

Which doesn't mean I couldn't learn the code, but why bother. Every screenwriter I know has had their work, at worse, massacred into unrecognizable pulp by either the producer or other screenwriters, or at the least, tampered with by the actors, producers and director on the set.

Which leads me to the movie, 'Doubt' starring one of my favorite actors, Meryl Streep. I throughly enjoyed her performance but I was genuinely confused at the end of that film when her character breaks down and cries and say she has doubt. I asked myself, 'What is she in doubt about? Is it her religion itself because her church knowingly shuffles sex offenders around? Surely it can't be whether the priest is guilty because she is relentlessly relentless, should I say it again?, relentlessly hammering away in her conviction and judgment of the priest from the beginning of the movie to it's bitter end.

So I asked a playwright/screenwriter friend of mine who saw the play on Broadway how it ended. He proceeds to tell me that the lead actress in the play, Cherry Jones was brilliant in it and displayed such subtle, nuanced moments of doubt throughout the whole play about whether she was right or not, that when her armor cracks in the last scene the audience completely understands what she's going through and what she is in doubt about.

And there you have it.

Was it the play that was performed in the way the playwright intended or was it the movie? You would think it was the film since the writer also wrote the screenplay and directed it.

But I seriously DOUBT it.

I haven't been published yet so I don't know what kind of compromises lie ahead. I just hope I can hold on to my intention.

Two For Tuesday - Happy St. Pat's Day!

As part of my being ensnared by a chain letter recently, a great gal named Melissa, in Idaho, sent me her copy of Carl Hiaasen's NATIVE TONGUE. Hiaasen's works had come highly recommended in the past, but the one book of his that I picked up didn't work for me at all. I figured I'd give him a second chance. Little did I know how much "fun reading" was ahead!

Here's a couple lines Carl wrote in NATIVE TONGUEl:

"When the man from the Witness Relocation Program told him that Miami would be his new home, Frankie King thought he had died and gone to heaven. Miami!...When Frankie [later] complained about the place, FBI agents reminded him that the alternative was to return to New York and take his chances that John Gotti was a compassionate and forgiving fellow."

And, for something I recently wrote:

"After a decade or so of high profile teen suicides, the storyline got old. The media listened to the experts and cut suicide coverage to a minimum. Media hype turned to other issues, like the Columbine massacre. And now it’s all about teachers having sex with their students. -- Teaching ain’t all it’s cracked up to be."

That's it for now! What story lines are buzzing through your head?

Write On!
Nan

UPDATE: Barbara Martin offers gods and dirt.
Linda McLaughlin's feeling her Irish with brief wishes to lie, cheat, and steal.

Handwritten Letters

It’s truly an honor and a privilege to be joining my fellow “Sisters in Crime” on the Women of Mystery blog. My heartfelt gratitude to the talented writers for inviting me along; I’m thrilled to be here. 

Nearing the first anniversary of the death of their only son, I wrote a letter to a former coworker and his wife. A handwritten letter, not a typed one. I lost my 37 year old brother in 2001, and I know how it feels when anniversaries approach, especially that first one. The man who lost his talented clarinetist son in a tragic car accident called me to say how touched they were. “No one writes handwritten letters anymore,” he said. 

Afterward, I thought about some of the handwritten letters of my past. 

In Mrs. Luciano’s fourth grade class at St. Patrick’s School in Huntington in 1970, we wrote letters to soldiers in Vietnam. Two soldiers responded, and I will never part with those letters.

During my teen years, I had as many as fifty pen pals. I remember the most letters I ever received in one day -- fourteen.  Most of my pen pals were fellow Osmond Brothers fans. Kindred spirits find a way to be together, I guess. Besides, what kid doesn’t like to receive mail?

In the late 1970s, I chose “Ethnic Studies” as one of my electives at Huntington High School, specifically for the long-term project: a family tree. Upon learning that my mom knew little of her Irish roots, she suggested that I write to her Aunt Mary.

Aunt Mary’s five-page response sparked a flame that’s been burning for over two decades. Genealogy became a passion for me, as well as my mom and my Uncle Jimmy. Our obsession has taken us to Ireland, Pennsylvania, and New York City; to libraries, cemeteries, and genealogy research centers -- and to think it all started with a letter. It’s amazing how much we still glean from Aunt Mary’s letter.

In 1979, I wrote a letter to Andy Gibb asking him to take me to my prom. I never heard back; I guess he just didn’t want to be my everything.

My mom wrote to her Aunt Gert in 1980 in search of family photos. Aunt Gert wrote back to say that she had packed the photos away, “in a rare fit of domestic activity,” and wasn’t sure where they were.
 

Gert remarked, “I know one of these days they’ll come to light (like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Tut-Ank-Amen’s Tomb, Veronica’s Veil and Howard Hughes’ will), but at the moment I think it would take the combined efforts of the FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol to give me the faintest clue. I know the day will come when suddenly my hand will touch a crumbling cardboard box and upon opening it and seeing the contents, I’ll stagger back and shriek, “Eureka!”, rush to the phone and dial your number and say, “It’s all yours, baby, come and get it.” Until then, darling, bear with me, I beseech you.”

She could have written, “I’m not sure where they are, but when I find them, I’ll let you know,” but I’m so glad she didn’t. Aunt Gert’s letter is a gem.

Do you still write handwritten letters? Are there certain letters from your past that you won’t part with? Is it a lost art?

MTM: Yonkers Raceway

I am still editing like mad, trying to scrape off those barnacle typos before shipping out my MWA anthology submission. I know at least a few of you are in the same boat.

But, I planned a Saturday pm adventure to make up for the fact I've been an un-fun keyboard blob, and knew I would have to be one again on Sunday.

Even though it's only 15 minutes away. I'd never been to the Yonkers Raceway. The name may elicit a certain motorsports feel, but it's a historic landmark from 1899, when the ponies were the only lap-racers around. (Here's my picture of what it looked like before sunset). No crowds as we arrived, though the Empire City Casino, a Vegas-sized slot parlor that's attached, was hopping.

The game here is harness racing. (close-up via Wikipedia). The horses, who are either pacing or trotting, are pulling their drivers in what look like aerodynamic rickshaws. Even if I'm not betting a nickel, I enjoy seeing the horses and the spectacle of the track.

We managed to get a little table on the glass (My own picture) and in an unprecedented bit of luck, my $2 bet to win-place-or-show in the first race came in at 46 to 1! Dinner and wagers on me.



It's good that we had so much fun, because Sunday was twelve more straight hours of editing. I know, I know, but I'm a bad writer and it takes longer. I hope I stay lucky.

Genre-Bending Friday

As you may or may not know, the Women of Mystery are all members of the New York/Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime. As one might guess, Sisters in Crime is chock full of women interested in writing crime fiction. However, many of them write other things as well, and recently here on the blog we've been discussing cross-genre stuff a great deal.

Today I have for your reading pleasure a brief interview with another member of the SinC NY chapter, Pearl Wolf, whose historical romance, Too Hot For a Spy, came out March 3. Since even those of us in the WoM who write romance/romantic suspense don't venture into historicals, I hardly knew what to ask! If you have questions for Pearl, be sure to post them!

LKC: Given that you write both mystery and romance, what is your favorite thing in each genre?

PW: Suspense in a mystery is the key to a novel that satisfies readers. In a romance, readers expect a happy ending, a prerequisite when one writes in this genre. The challenge for a writer is irresistible.

LKC: What do you find most difficult?

PW: I begin a work with detailed studies of my characters, such as their strengths, weaknesses, flaws, backgrounds, etc. The challenge is to create a setting (plot) in which my main characters overcome impossible odds. I work through five or six drafts until I get it right. It helps to think like a reader. My favorite historian, Barbara Tuchman kept a sign over her desk that said, WILL THE READ TURN THE PAGE? I ask myself that question many times over no matter the genre.

LKC: Your character is determined to be the “first female spy”. Was her ambition based on any real character from history?

PW: So she fancied, but my heroine Olivia was wrong. In my research, I discovered she was by no means the first, but I let her keep her dream because it is consistent with her personality.

LKC: Did you submit your novel to Zebra yourself, or did you have an agent?

PW: I have an agent, thanks to successful mystery writer Shelley Freydont who also happens to be my critique partner. She introduced me to literary agent Evan Marshall. I sent him the requisite three chapters and a synopsis of TOO HOT FOR A SPY and two weeks later, he called to tell me he sold it to Kensington--a two-book contract no less. That’s what every writer prays for.

LKC: Do you have future plans for crime novels as well as romance novels?

PW: I’m full of plans for both, but not necessarily as separate works. Crime, or rather suspense, is an essential component in my romance novels just as romance adds color to my crime novels. As to the immediate future, I’ve just finished Book Two in my Fairchild Family series: TOO HOT FOR A RAKE, scheduled for publication in 2010. In the works is book three in this series tentatively entitled TOO HOT FOR A SCOUNDREL, as well as a Russian historical saga that takes place in the time of Catherine the Great. Its working title is, FORBIDDEN STEPS.

LKC: Anything else you feel like talking about?

PW: Two themes inform all my novels. The first is the challenges women face and the second is the historical era in which they exist no matter where or when. I weave all my heroines into their actual historical world because it adds another layer for the reader. Many of them prefer reading novels that take place in a world they’ve never known, for it enriches their life.

Pearl also wants WoM readers to know: "I am seventy-nine years old. I look forward to reaching middle age when I turn eighty next year."

Friday Fun - March 13, 2009

Happy Friday the Thirteenth!

Here's one to ponder:

A man successfully broke into a bank's basement through a street-level window. Unfortunately, he cut himself up pretty badly in the process.

He then realized that he could not get to the money from where he was.

Try as he might, he could not climb back out the window through which he had entered.

When blood started flowing steadily he realized he was bleeding pretty badly.

Thinking quickly, he located a phone and dialed "911" for help ...

Thanks to www.legal-forms-kit.com
Thanks for the laughs, Uncle Jimmy!

Thaaaaat’s all, pals!

Thanks for stopping by!
Nan

Soldier Stories

Soldier given flowers

A couple of years ago, a few friends and I began offering writing workshops for Vets, through the Arts for Vets program of the Orange County (NY) Arts Council. The idea is to encourage soldiers to tell their stories, in hopes it will help them to process and share the experience of war.

It’s been a thrill to work with these men. It's a privilege to share their sometimes intimate stories. Mostly, what we as facilitators do, is to stand out of their way. Read aloud an excerpt from a finely crafted book or essay, along with a writing prompt, and their memories flood onto the page. Not only do they race to write, but they write incredibly well, and they’re brave enough to share with us all on the spot.

Today we read an excerpt from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Before we’d finished pointing out how O’Brien’s words do double-duty...before we finished exploring how he moves from the physical to the metaphysical within breathless minutes...they were heads down, pens racing.

One of them wrote about all the possessions a fellow soldier burned as his unit prepared to move out. Letters. Mementos. Books and CDs. Juice powder that rose in a green cloud from the flames. Another wrote about his unit’s shared effort to carry, wherever they went, a blow-up doll. Ahem. One who wore “a perpetual look of surprise.” On the road, they propped her in the back seat of their Humvee, wearing full military dress and goggles. (Incredibly, she was the only one of their company to survive a roadside attack unscathed.) A WWII Vet described how his crew’s B-17 was hit by flak over Zagreb, Jugoslavia. The things they jettisoned. How their pilot kept the bomber level, as the engines died one by one.

Such humbling, hilarious, heartbreaking stories need to be told. These guys need little encouragement but almost no editing. They make real what would otherwise have remained, for me, fable or fiction.

Afterthought. I'm wondering...if the story's compelling enough, the experience recent enough, does the writing take care of itself?

- Lois

Time and Timing

On my birthday my husband treated me and our daughter to 'an evening with Mike Nichols' at a small theatre in Nyack. The night was special to me, as Mike Nichols had directed two out of the five films which had set my soul on fire to go to film school many moons ago. ('Carnal Knowledge' and 'Catch-22')

Among many of the fascinating points of view and opinions that he expressed that evening, there is one in particular that I'd like to share: He believed that he had tapped in and created from the mindset and time of his culture and spoke for many people without knowing or even needing or wanting to analyze what he was doing.

When 'The Graduate' came out many people and many critics alike told him that it was about the generation gap, but as far as he was concerned, he was the generation gap.

He said that as time has gone by and he has gotten older that it is much harder for him to be an artist of the time and that it is the same for most other artists. He said he finds himself always perplexed by what is going on in a TV show and is constantly asking his wife, Diane Sawyer, to explain what people are talking about and why they're doing what they're doing. "Are they really saying that?" "Do they really mean that?" "What's going on?"

And it is this not quite understanding the behavior, this not quite getting it that causes the creative work that he does to be so much harder for him to accomplish. But he is content in the knowledge that he has had his time.

I found this fascinating because when I finished writing my book and took a good look at it I felt the story had a sort of throwback quality to it that I liked but I wondered on a whole if it was just a tad too serious for these times. Am I, as Elvis Costello also says, 'a man out of time'?

I mentioned this to a fellow writer friend and he said that Horton Forte's plays about his family in a small Texan town went out of style for a few decades and are now suddenly in demand again because of the economy.

Yeah! There's hope for us all. If we missed our time, if we're lucky, we might just catch it on it's return. I have a feeling Mike Nichols will get a go at another round.

(On another note: Thanks to all who have kept me in their prayers and thoughts. My operation went smoothly (removal of left ovary) and I just heard this morning that it was a benign tumor.) Life is grand. "We're living large", as my daughter says.

Two Sentence Tuesday - EQMM edition

We here at Women of Mystery are just so excited to have been mentioned in Bill Crider's Blog Bytes column at Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine! Two Sentence Tuesdays are tons of fun, and we're hoping the exposure will encourage more folks to participate. The "rules" are simple--just post two sentences (or thereabouts) you read this week, along with two you wrote. You can put them in the comments here, or you can put them on your own blog and just let us know they're there. We update the Tuesday post periodically as the day goes on to add links to those posts.

For this week, I have two sentences from my current WIP. Since my agent just sent me a "hi, what's up, I haven't heard from you in a while" letter, I figure I'd better get it finished!

The bleeding from his shoulder had slowed; the impromptu bandage was holding. Or maybe he just didn’t have enough blood left inside him to force its way out.

Clare mentioned Neil Gaiman's post on the Kindle audiobook capabilities. Gaiman is one of my all-time favorite authors, and these couple of sentences from Neverwhere, which I re-read on my vacation last week, are a sample of the kind of description I think he does better, quite possibly, than anyone else out there.

Varney looked like a bull might look, if the bull were to be shaved, dehorned, covered in tattoos, and suffered from complete dental breakdown. Also, he snored.

So...what did you write this week? What did you read?

---------------

• Crystal Phares has sentences that will motivate women to go to the gym.
• David Cranmer has sentences he swears will be noir. All I am saying is "you be the judge."
• Barbara Martin has sentences on creeping, slipping, and catching.
  

REJOICE! CHAIN MAIL DEFRAUDED!

Without warning they show up in your mailbox: the dreaded Chain Mail letters. Your best friends, your dearest family members – they all know how much you detest such responsibility-laden dispatches, and yet they end up sticking you with the despicable chore. And what happens if you drop the chain letter into your trash? A plague on your home! Misery incarnate will visit you to the end of your days. Or some poor child will remain shackled to a noxious, malfunctioning machine to the end of HER days – all due to our haughty disdain. The letters tout the efforts of this particular Chain to make the world a better place. Don’t let the chain falter!

My latest chain letter came via snail mail. As soon as I opened the envelope I felt the heavy chain rope its way up my arm, wrap itself around my neck, and tighten. Poison pen letter? Nope. Worse.

This letter was different. It invited me to join the “Informal Book Club.” (No, it wasn’t an Infernal Club. Not this time.) All I needed to do was 1) send a paperback that I liked to the gal identified on the back of the letter; and 2) forward the letter to 6 different people. Within a month (or so) I’d have 36 books flooding into my mailbox. Consider the delight of 36 FREE books to compare, contrast, enjoy, and find shelf-space for!

I caved. On January 1st, 2009 my letters and one paperback went out. (I sent a signed copy of MURDER NEW YORK STYLE to the gal identified on the back of the letter.) For the six targets I wrote a cover-letter apology, delivered a slightly edited and revised version of the chain letter, and sent off my 6 invites. One of my friends responded with a “Thanks, but it’s against my religion.” She didn’t need to add the smiley face. The others remained mum.

Ever wonder how many chain-mail letters fulfill the hopes of their inventors? Here’s a little surprise: I took notes on this chain mail experience. It’s now March, 2009, and I have received, to this date, 4 (count ’em, f-o-u-r) books. On top of that, one of the gals sent me 2 books. Do the math. After a 2 month interval I received books from 3 people, not 36.

Well! That answered a lot of questions for me. Never again will I quiver at the sight of a chain letter. Never again will I feel like the lone member who destroyed a magical, valuable chain single-handed.

Something good did happen, however. The gal who sent me 2 books (from Idaho!) included Carl Hiaasen’s NATIVE TONGUE. What a great discovery! I don’t like all things Hiaasen, but I sure did love reading this. I’ll look for more. She also included WHERE THE HEART IS, by Billie Letts, a zany, quirky writer whose story takes off from page one. The others I’ll be reading: Nora Roberts’ BY MY SIDE appeared from Flower Mound, Texas; WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WOMEN PRAY arrived from Memphis, New York (not Tennessee!); Rosamund Pilcher’s WILD MOUNTAIN THYME promises to take me to Scotland, one of my favorite places. It arrived from Irving, Texas.

The unexpected addition: that “2 book” gal (Melissa) wrote a great note and added photos. Turns out Melissa and her mom are BEST friends with Ann W. – one of my favorite teaching buddies ever. Ann’s a brilliant writer/observer of humankind. I await Ann’s Christmas cards every year. Now I feel like a member of an extended family, all thanks to a chain letter!

Was it worth doing? Absolutely. I’ve learned a few lessons. #1: Lots of folks drop the chain letters as soon as they arrive, and that does not lead to mass destruction. #2: I discovered that I like Carl Hiassen and intend to read more. #3: Books can bring people together from all over the place. This was fun.

Does that mean you can send me your chain letters? Sure! Just don’t expect them to go anywhere further than my trash.

Good luck with your mail. May it all be worth your attention – and may the bills be magically paid!

Until next time-
Nan

Barbara Parker

Barbara Parker recently passed away after a long illness. Oline Cogdill wrote a beautiful obituary in the Sun-Sentinel. Barbara's "suspicion" series has Miami lawyers Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana as a very sharp couple of protagonists who may be in love but don't always see eye to eye.

Everyone agrees that Barbara was a very talented writer. I only met her once, several years ago at the tenth anniversary party of the Murder on the Beach bookstore, and I am sure that anyone who has ever met Barbara Parker will agree that she was a kind and lovely person.

May Barbara rest in peace, and may her loved ones find solace in the fact that she was highly regarded by so many.

Terrie

Audiobooks versus Text-to-Speech

Study for Ingres' Grand Odalisque found here.

Perhaps you've been following this particular tempest in a teapot, but if not, here's the deal. The Kindle e-reader has always been able to play MP3 files, one format used for audiobooks. However, the new Kindle 2.0 was launched with limited text-to-speech capabilities, so once you're past the navigational menus, it will read content to you in a robotic voice. That facility raised hackles among some who worried about possible infringement upon audiobook sales when purchasers could attain both eye and ear service in one tran$action. Since the announcement, Amazon says that any book publishers can disallow the feature per title, if they wish. From the jump, I didn't consider the added capacity to be muchness worth concern, but then, one of my numerous former careers was with devices to address various handicaps, also called assistive technology.

One of the things we sold and serviced for the visually impaired was the Arkenstone reading machine, which was then basically a high-res, flatbed scanner accessorized with quality OCR (optical character recognition) and better pronunciation than the average robot. Not saying a whole lot there. These were machines that clients purchased on the strength of their need to know, not their desires for pleasure. Most for-sale audiobooks are read by actors or storytellers, people who use tone, timbre, pitch, volume, pauses, speed, intensity, and the occasional accent to communicate authorial intent, to vivify the word. But should you find yourself in the dingy waiting rooms of Hell, I can assure you the piped-in soundtrack will be a synthetic voice mangling syntax and proper nouns while orating the operations manual of a foreign-made dishwasher.

To me, it's analogous to the divide between an efficient female icon, designed merely to impart the gist, and an exquisitely rendered, even purposely exaggerated, work of draftsmanship which communicates the essence of a woman. The shoppers for one aren't a lost market for the other.

Neil Gaiman, prolific author and award-winning audiobook performer, closes the conversation on his blog with links for those who like better examples than mine.

Still Shiny for Me

Lately I've been hearing some people grousing about blogging. As eventually happens to most things, the new-toy shine has begun to wear off. People who were blogging every day have been falling back to once a week, then to once a month, and finally to whenever the mood strikes them, which for some is never. Personally, I still think blogging can serve some wonderful purposes.

I agree that blogging can be a time eater. Writers who should be working on their books or short stories often find themselves spending far too much time composing a blog post. And malcontents? They spend waaay too much time complaining about everything under the sun. Some people use their blogs to get garbage out of their systems. Dumped spouses, people fighting stubborn illnesses, people trying to come to terms with something--they may not have many readers, but I don't think that's the point of their blogging to begin with.

Blogging for me has been a boon. When I started blogging with the Women of Mystery again after a short hiatus, it got me back into the habit of writing regularly. I blogged just once a week, but I did it every week, and this got me to write once a week whether I felt like it or not. That helped to ease me into writing more than once a week whether I felt like it or not and I actually started making some headway on my book. Now I'm writing daily, and guess what--I usually feel like it. It's become a habit.

But the biggest benefit blogging has given my household is that my younger son is now writing. He's a college student majoring in psychology, so you know he's no slouch. But writing was never his thing. Then he became interested in martial arts about a year ago, began following a certain martial arts teacher, subscribed to that teacher's website, and finally started his own blog on that site. He writes about jujitsu and training schedules and deadlifts, but in doing so, his grammar, composition, punctuation, and spelling are all improving, and he's learning to enjoy the act of writing itself. How can you grouse about that?

Now if I could just get him to do his own laundry. . . .

Friday Fun - March 6, 2009

Ready to save some daylight this weekend? Don't give this a try:

An eager young man full of himself, and filled with a few brews, walked into the local sheriff's office.

"I want to become a deputy!" he shouted.

“Good!” the old sheriff said as he leaned over, snagged a yellowed paper from the bottom drawer of his desk, and said, “I want you to catch this man." The sheriff handed the wanted poster to the would-be deputy.

The kid read the poster. “Last seen wearing a brown paper hat, brown paper shirt, brown paper pants, and brown paper boots.”

He frowned and looked up. "What's he wanted for?" asked the hopeful young man.

The old sheriff’s face remained serious. "Rustling," he said.

Ba-dah-DUMB!

Thaaaaat’s all, pals!
Thanks for the laughs, Uncle Jimmy!
Thanks to http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/scanner/jokes/police/cops.html

Thanks for stopping by!
Nan

Under the Covers

The other day I was up until the wee hours absorbed in Sci Fi, and the cat – who prefers a set schedule – was spitting nails. I was engrossed, however, and when I finally did wend my way to bed it was with the realization that it’d been a long time since I’d been tempted to pull a late night read-a-thon. It felt delicious, and I wasn’t even sorry when I had to face work the next morning.

Used to be that mysteries and thrillers satisfied the urge for an under-the-covers read. (I left adolescence and True Confessions behind a long time ago, so we won’t go there.) When I started writing crime fiction, though, it became my steady diet. Sometimes Noir feels too much like beans and carrots – the stuff that’s good for me. I’m thinking we need to indulge in reads that breathe new energy into our staid lives. Well, my staid life, anyway...I’ll speak for myself.

So are you reading something that would trouble your mother? Please share so that we may all take delight.

Fisheye photo from Arkworld’s Flickr photostream.

- Lois

Psst: Want Some Bad Thoughts?

A couple of months ago I told you how much I enjoyed Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman. I remember raving. I could not put the book down. Loved the writing. Loved the plot. Was awestruck by the ending.

Well, Dave’s publisher has just decided to remainder Dave’s well-acclaimed novel Bad Thoughts.

Being a great guy who always shares, Dave decided to turn this lemony news into lemonade and let us all have a sip. Click over to Dave’s blog to find out how you can get an autographed copy of Bad Thoughts at a great price. But hurry, this offer ends soon. And, hey, leave some copies for me.

Terrie

The Occasional e-Clare: Anton Strout

The result of my slapdash but (to me) amusing interview with urban fantasy author Anton Strout, conducted within the scrum of the New York Comic Con, is posted at BookSpot Central if you're so inclined to visit.

Two For Tuesday: How they get you

What I mean is, they give me a free book on the Kindle, and if I like the series, I'm back for more. That's how they get me, at least when the book's a good time.

That's precisely what happened with Deanna Raybourn's free Victorian Silent in the Sanctuary that grabbed me and sent me back for the newly released Silent on the Moor.

(Thanks to Laura and Smart Bitches for the tip.) Raybourn's are almost more romantic suspense to my mind than historical romance. The characters are interesting as people not just He and She, and they have important central mysteries and murders to investigate and solve, not just angsty heartbreak in the wuthering. As for the history, the socioeconomic perspectives and social conventions and geographical elements are more fully explored than in many such titles, and the deliberate pacing lets me soak it all up as we travel. These have been an enjoyable break from the ultra-modern fantastic-ness I've been reading and trying to write. While the tone isn't all wry sauciness, here are two from Moor that happen to be:

Our maids, Morag included, were usually taken from the reformatory our aunt Hermia had established for penitent prostitutes. It seemed a luxury akin to sinfulness to have a maid who was not old, foul-mouthed, or riddled with disease.

I've also finished the draft of my surreal short and have a little less than two weeks to gather and incorporate critique from trusted readers, but here are two more from it:

I can’t hear any of the alleged street drama, but I don’t know if small enough caliber gunshots would carry. Still, I don’t care if I’m sending her back into a Gambino Family feud outside.

Share two you've read from anywhere this week and any two you've written. Tell us where to find them, or put them straight into the comments. Laundry lists, comment cards, thank-you notes, bill disputes, we're taking all comers.

UPDATE: Crystal Phares shares the clamminess of attraction and witchery.

MTM: Deerfield Beach, Florida

From Thursday, February 26th until Sunday, March 1, 2009, I was fortunate enough to call the Hilton Hotel in Deerfield Beach, Florida my home sweet home. Hundreds of members of the mystery writing community gathered at the Deerfield Hilton not to take advantage of the glorious weather, although that was nice too. We were there to celebrate Sleuthfest 2009.

Okay, so it has been said before but it stands repeating: Sleuthfest, organized each year by the Florida Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, is one of the finest mystery writers conference in the world. And if you weren’t with us at the poolside cocktail party Saturday night, well then, I guess you missed Sleuthfest 2009, because it officially ended Sunday at noon.

I first attended Sleuthfest in 2006, met a lot of wonderful people in the mystery writing community and got a lot of outstanding advice. I also took a quick look at how the business end of writing and publishing works. I learned a lot, so I used to say, “Every mystery writer should go to Sleuthfest at least once.”

Well, I finally had the opportunity to immerse in Sleuthfest for a second time, and from now on I say, “Every mystery writer should go to Sleuthfest as often as possible.”

Yes, it is that good.

Sleuthfest workshops are specific, intense and focused. In one workshop, Kris Montee of PJ Parrish fame, literally rolled up her sleeves, and showed us how she and her sister Kelly keep track of the pacing as they write their novels. Agent Dianna Collier discussed the ins and outs of query letters. There were several workshops on “getting press” and promotional tools. Need a discussion about Kindle and other electronic readers? Sleuthfest had one or two. Want to know how to read like a writer? A couple of writers got together and explained it all to a very curious audience. Want to write great characters. Well, first you have to understand what makes them memorable and of course there was a panel for that, and the next day the inimitable SJ Rozan did a how-to workshop on characters that really rocked the house!

I couldn’t attend SJ’s presentation because (Hooray! Hooray!) in the exact same time slot, I was presenting on the Short Story panel, along with Murder New York Style authors, Anita Page and Lina Zeldovich, as well as Floridians Buck Buchanan and Becky Swets. Considering we were competing against, not only SJ Rozan, but also a really strong panel teaching the art of writing about Private Eyes, we were delighted that our panel had an audience. And a grand audience it was! The questions and comments proved to me that there is a strong and growing interest in writing and marketing short stories.

And back to the cocktail party—I can’t prove it here because, as everyone knows I don’t own a camera, not even a cell phone with the capacity to take pictures, but I warn you now, you are going to see pictures popping up all over the internet of John Hart, Neil Placky, Josh Geltzer, Brad Meltzer and Jim Born draped in pink feather boas and strutting their stuff for all to see. You may think the pictures have been photoshopped, but I guarantee they have not. It was that kind of party.

For more My Town Monday posts, click on over to Travis Erwin’s blog. Travis invented My Town Monday and, thankfully, keeps us all organized.

Terrie