Remembering Kate Duffy

The Women of Mystery would like to express their sorrow over the loss of romance editor extraordinaire Kate Duffy. Kate passed away from cancer this past Sunday.

I worked with Kate for four years at Kensington Publishing. My first day there, I knew she was a force to be reckoned with. Since I was a health editor with little knowledge of the romance genre, I didn't yet realize how much of a force she was in the industry. All I knew that first day was that she was frighteningly intelligent, highly respected, and extremely sharp witted (and tongued).

Anyone who thinks romance editors walk around with their heads in the clouds, mooning over the male models smiling down from the book covers lining their office walls, wearing chiffon and lace and four-inch heels, and signing their names in flowery script with little hearts in place of the dots over the i's and j's, didn't know Kate Duffy. Kate was a skilled fiction editor who was adept at finding bright new voices and nurturing them along. She also firmly understood the business side of trade book publishing, and she was a whiz at negotiating contracts. The authors she first published or worked with include some of the genre's best known writers, such as Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood, Lori Foster, Heather Graham, Judith McNaught, Mary Jane Davidson, Jacqueline Frank, and Mary Jo Putney.

A graduate of Trinity College and George Washington University, Kate also attended Oxford University. She began her career at Paddington Press in London. In the United States, she worked at Popular Library; Dell; Simon & Schuster, where she was the founding editor of Silhouette Books and later an editor with Pocket Books; and Harlequin, where she founded the Worldwide Library imprint. At Kensington, she established Brava Books, which broke new ground at the time with its risque storylines and descriptions.

Honored with numerous awards from national and regional writers' organizations, Kate was the first recipient of the RWA's "Industry Award," in 1991. Recently, RT Book Reviews magazine announced that she would be the 2010 recipient of its annual Melinda Helfer Award, presented for outstanding support of and contributions to the genre.

Image courtesy of Shane Gericke.

Two Sentence Tuesday: The Adventurer's Friend

I'm going to go visit my mother in California next week, and apropos of nothing, I found myself looking through her old Girl Scout Handbook, Intermediate Program, circa 1953. Imagine the snap of the fall air, and tell me this doesn't make your heart pitter-pat:

Because a bandanna has many uses it is called the adventurer's friend. It can become a kerchief, potholder, bandage, signal flag, trail marker, or a bag in which to carry food or treasures.

I was raised to love just that sort of upbeat and practical non-fiction, the sure-footed, smiling guides that hinted at the wonders which would be loosed like slip knots beneath our capable fingers. I tell you, the tone itself makes me want to pick a troop's worth of pomegranates, safety check the badminton equipment, chisel my own tambourine, dig a trench, and sew raincoats for underprivileged jaybirds. However, what I did instead yesterday was write. Here are 2 from something I've whittled down so lean, I'm not sure what's left is a story anymore:

The larger part of her, the part that needed to breathe and eat, seemed weak and slow in comparison to the formless knowledge pricking the back of her skull. Since she was seven years old, she'd felt the mismatch, like a stupid rag doll with one shiny pin stuck in it.

Post 2 sentences you recently read/wrote in the comments, or let us know where to link to them.

The image above is of dolls that the Greater Seattle Chapter of the American Sewing Guild has made for Honduran children. Truly Scout-like can-do and virtue!

MTM: Merestead

Not far from our house is Byram Lake, and right across from that fabulous fishing spot is Merestead, a turn of the (20th) century Georgian Revival estate built in 1906 by William Sloane and his wife, Francis. Sloane belonged to the family that founded W&J Sloane, a famous rug and furniture store in New York City that furnished such famous homes as the Vanderbilt mansion and the White House.

Unlike many of their colleagues who had country manors to visit while they lived in the city, William and Francis lived at Merestead, which is the Scottish word for farmland, and William commuted to work every day. Despite its name, Merestead is an estate, not a gentleman's farm. William and Francis bought acreage encompassing two farms and cleared a good deal of it for their house and gardens. Still, the farmland does remain, and it was farmed for years by members of the estate staff.

Although the families knew each other for years, William and Francis married late in life and had only one child. They did, however, have plenty of dogs, and they buried them in a small pet cemetery in the trees between the manor house and the farmland. You can see in the picture at left that before the storms a year or so back, there was even a fire hydrant for the dogs.

The Sloane's daughter's name was Margaret. She married a doctor from the city named Robert Patterson. Patterson had moved to New York from Georgia, and he added peaches to the apples and pears already being grown on the Merestead lands. He also arranged for the only "off-site" use of the products grown on the farm: the gift of apples to the hospital where he worked. The apples were harvested by local youths, packed into barrels and shipped down to the city.

The Pattersons created a living trust that designated the property to go to Westchester County's Parks department after the last heir died, which happened in 2000. Unfortunately, Westchester hasn't done nearly enough with this property. The apple trees are not replaced when they fall down, nor are the peach trees. The staff who manage the estate do still plant tomatoes, peppers, flowers and berries in the gardens. The tomatoes were suffering from the local blight when we went, and the peaches were still hard, but the raspberries and blackberries were yummy!

The interior of the house is maintained better than the grounds, but Westchster isn't doing anything to maximize usage. Many other historic homes have grounds that can be rented for weddings, etc, which would be wonderful at Merestead if they needed the money for maintenance, but it's not happening.

Recently, Westchester County decided that Merestead would become part of the Copland House complex. While this has some benefits--bringing more people to the grounds with concerts, etc, and giving musicians practice space in some of the Merestead outbuildings--it's problematic for those of us who like to go through historic buildings and who believe the historicity of those buildings has value in and of itself. At the moment, while the bottom floor is a bit bare for various reasons, the upper floors are furnished. You can see the bedrooms as they were, imagine the people living in them. The furniture is, of course, W&J Sloane, and the house itself and the rooms were used in advertisements for the company.

Currently, the art on the walls, the books on the shelves, everything is original. But when the Copland deal gets finalized, people will be living in the house, which means that it must, perforce, be renovated. It has to come up to code for a residential hotel since the people living there would be "musicians in residence," transients, not owners. Will tours cease completely? I have no idea. But certainly they won't have the poignancy or immediacy they do now.

So whatever is in your neighborhood, go see it now while you still can! And see more My Town Monday posts over at the My Town Monday blog.

Bury Me Deep: The Winners

Grand and glorious thanks to all who posted such imaginative comments on my recent blog giveaway offer of two signed copies of Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbot.

I am delighted to tell you that the winners are:

Cathi Stoler and Jack Bates

In keeping with the theme of the enlightening post Lois put up on Saturday announcing that November 7, 2009 is the first annual National Bookstore Day, I’ve arranged for signed copies of Bury Me Deep to be shipped to the winners directly from Aunt Agatha’s Mystery Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So, please go out and find an Indie bookstore near you and wander in to buy something--your own copy of Bury Me Deep, perhaps--to let them know how happy you are to have the bookstore in your town or neighborhood.

Come on back to Women of Mystery for a visit now and again as I suspect there will be at least one more book giveaway in the coming weeks.

Terrie

Travels With Laura: Crete

Travel tips if you're heading to Crete:

1) You should know this one by now: be prepared to walk a lot of hilly terrain!

2) Crete's a large island, so you'll want to rent a car.  They're all standard shift, but rent the smallest thing you can get because a lot of these roads won't accommodate anything larger.  In fact, several won't accommodate that and you'll find yourself backing down what you *thought* was going to be a street, only to find that it petered out after you went around a blind corner.

3) Speaking of blind corners, something else to remember: early Greeks and Romans were fabulous cartographers.  Their modern, tourist-agency counterparts aren't so good.

4) Repeat after me: "Olive oil is good for me.  Olive oil is good for me. Olive oil is good for me."

Now, you're ready!

Posted via email from laurakcurtis's posterous

We've All Got a Stake in National Bookstore Day

Publisher's Weekly has announced that Saturday, November 7 will be the first annual National Bookstore Day. PW is spreading the word early in hopes of making the day a huge success, but it seems that the onus is on booksellers to promote themselves.

I'm not sure that fliers and posters will draw hordes of readers to the doors of our beloved indie bookstores. Book giveaways, however, just might help; in fact we've proven the popularity of freebies right here at Women of Mystery. (Tip: Terrie will be announcing the winners of the Bury Me Deep Giveaway in tomorrow's post!)

Greenleaf Book Group's Big Bad Book Blog suggests that, in preparation for the big day, authors help drum up enthusiasm for the bookstores that stock their books by (for example) offering workshops, providing copies for giveaways, and spreading the word online about local events. Writers are a creative lot; we can no doubt come up with dozens of ways to participate. I'm thinking food. I'm thinking wine. I'm thinking calendar entries in the local paper and free babysitting services. (I do, however, have a niggling concern that here in Warwick, NY, buyers at our very own Baby Grand Books won't have a chance to elbow their way through our town's earnest authors.)

Which brings me to author etiquette, and a slightly-off-topic PW article I found back in June called Soapbox: How to be a Great Local Author. It's full of advice about how and why to avoid bullying the very booksellers upon whom authors depend. Like: stop by and say hi when you're in town, but don't bug the owner about how many copies of your opus she's sold. Send people in to buy your book (stop telling your friends and neighbors it's on Amazon!), but don't try to talk customers in the shop into buying your book. Don't harass your bookseller when you see her at the bank or local liquor store. Don't beg her staff to read your book. Don't move your book around every time you enter her store.

Let's do what we can to protect the coffers of the indie booksellers we know.

- Lois

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott: The Giveaway

Welcome to the giveaway of not one but two signed copies of Megan Abbott’s wonderfully noir novel, Bury Me Deep, which I reviewed here on Wednesday.

Once again, I am dragging out my faithful Irish Trifle Bowl to stash the bounty of your entries.

If you’d like to have your name tossed in the Trifle Bowl for a chance to win, please say so in the comments. It might be fun if you could toss in a “bury” title for a book or a short story that you hope to use some day, like “Please Bury Me Wearing My Gold Sparkle Shoes,” or the every popular “Buried in Debt, Not in Bucks.”

Alternatively, you may wish to contribute a sentence that makes perfect sense in your world, as this one does in mine: “I buried the double Hot Fudge Sundae under a mountain of sugar free chocolate sprinkles.”

Entries will be accepted until noon on Sunday, September 27th. Winners will be announced later Sunday afternoon. Please remember to let me know how to reach you if you don’t have a blog where I can comment the good news or if your blogger ID doesn’t have an attached email addy.

Terrie

Is There a Hyphen in Anal-Retentive?

It's that time of year again! The day to celebrate semicolons, applaud apostrophes, and praise parentheses. Yes, it's National Punctuation Day!

If you find punctuation provocative, hop on over to www.nationalpunctuationday.com and join the celebration. This year it's extra special thanks to the inaugural National Punctuation Day Baking Contest. The rules are on the home page. If you're not good at developing recipes, don't worry. Just prepare a Punctuation Meat Loaf (recipe provided) as your holiday dinner.

The website also features a guide to punctuation do's and don'ts, as well as photos of incorrectly punctuated signage and a list of resources for people who want to improve their punctuation skills. In addition, it offers ways to teach punctuation to kids and suggestions for celebrating the holiday ("Read a newspaper and circle all of the punctuation errors you find [or think you find, but aren't sure] with a red pen.). It also has an online store selling punctuation products--mugs, T-shirts, greeting cards, and posters with sayings such as "A comma is not a state of being."

Founded in 2004, National Punctuation Day is the brainchild of Jeff Rubin, a newsletter publisher and professional speaker. A former copyeditor, Rubin wanted to rid the world of dangling modifiers and errant apostrophes. He has ended up also promoting literacy, with his holiday and website becoming popular tools for teachers and parents.

Reading Workshops—Here to Stay??

As a grandparent, the thing I worry most about is the same thing I worried about as a mom. Will the kids love to read? As a lifelong reader who started out with an addiction to comic books, I believe reading is the key to all things entertaining and many things astonishing. I also believe in going to any length to hook ‘em on the habit.

Pssst, kid, (opening jacket just a little to show off wares stashed inside) you want a little Junie B. Jones? Just take a look. I’ll throw in some Tootsie Rolls.

How about some Pokemon? Come on, give it a try. What could it hurt?

I got some nice Wizards of Waverly Place. Today only, free for you if you want a little taste.


Well, now according to the New York Times, schools are getting on the “as long as the kids are reading we can’t go wrong bandwagon.” In a recent article Motoko Rich talks about the collective concept of reading workshops as a method of increasing students reading skills and comprehension by allowing a wider latitude of choice in what the children read as part of their school reading assignments. In some schools and classrooms, the concept is as narrow as having some free reading periods a few times a week, and in others students are fee to choose the books they read as part of the class curriculum.

And while some education professionals fret that given the choice, no student will ever again pick up a copy of Moby Dick, there is growing excitement among teachers that real choice is the key to motivating kids to read.


I agree. And tossing some candy or cookies into the package with the books, certainly doesn’t hurt.

Terrie

Travels With Laura: The Sporades

Hello from Skopelos! We are actually staying in Skiathos, but we decided to take a day trip today. The manager of our hotel told us not to bother..."if you think Skiathos, is boring," he said, "Skopelos is 60 times more boring." But, actually, it's beautiful. Some things I have learned:

1) Before traveling to Skiathos, you should embark on an extensive workout program concentrating on stairs. (The coastline is skinny, so the beaches are all there while the hotels sit high above them.) (Are you seeing a pattern here?)

2) Practice showering with a hand-held shower without making a mess of your bathroom. No fair using a shower curtain that covers more than half the enclosure.

3) The temperature on the coast is considerably cooler than the temperature inland. And by "inland," I mean by the time you've gotten as far inland as your hotel, it's warmer.

More when I find the next internet connection, which will probably be Crete a few days from now.

Two Sentence Tuesday: Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott

Last July I had the luxurious pleasure of reading Bury Me Deep written by Megan Abbot, who has won both an Edgar and a Barry, and has been nominated three times for the Anthony Award.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was recovering from surgery and Megan’s mother, my dear friend, Derringer Winner Patti Abbott asked Megan to send me a signed copy to help while away the hours spent in the recliner. Well, I polished the entire book off in two days and then was disappointed because there was no more. At that moment I decided I would have to share this remarkable book with all of you. This past weekend I took Bury Me Deep down from the shelf, planning to thumb through it for a quick refresher, so that I could give you a couple of sentences to ponder and an honest review. There I was, back in the recliner reading for all I was worth. I read the entire book, cover to cover for the second time in two months. Yes, it is that good.

I stand in awe of Megan Abbott’s ability to present her characters so clearly that I felt as though I was a minor character hanging out with the group and watching it implode. Bury Me Deep is noir in its purest form. The reader feels every nuance of immediate adversity and impending tragedy. Megan’s deep, moving prose dazzles on every page, and when the reader is certain all has been revealed, there is so much more.

I am far from alone in my assessment of this astonishing novel. Recently on a writers message board in response to a thread asking for names of novels recently read in which the writing is strong enough and the story intriguing enough to be read all the way through, the excellent writer, Anita Page, responded:

“Most recently Megan Abbott's ‘Bury Me Deep.' She's taken noir and made it her own. A brilliant writer.”

Laura Lippman calls Megan Abbott “one of the most exciting and original voices of her generation.”

Here’s a two sentence sample, which will help you judge for yourself.

“This was no way for a strapping man of thirty-five, handsome-faced, broad of chest, fast of grin, strong of heart, to live, night after night in the airless mahogany and velvet house his wife had chosen eight years ago and which was now the most expensive gingerbread-trimmed sickbed the town had ever seen. This was no way to live when each evening the streets filled with burbling office girls and waitresses, librarians and students, dancers and school-teachers, all bright –eyed and twitchy-tailed, little canaries with Jean Harlow puffs of hair, cheeping and twittering to him, “Come and get it!’ ”

I am so sure that you want to read more, that I’ll be back on Friday to launch a giveaway of two signed copies of Bury Me Deep.

As to two sentences I wrote, I will avoid quoting from a letter I wrote to my bank complaining about their new phone system, and show you the only two fiction sentences that I have written since June First:

“None of it would have happened if that idiot McSweeny had just stayed in his seat. But you know McSweeny—he always jumps in the middle of a thing, particularly when he has no idea what is actually going on and is dead wrong from the start.”

What about you? Have you read or written anything you’d like to share with us? Please use the comment section to let us know. We'll update throughout the day with links to other Two For Tuesday posts around the blogosphere.

***UPDATE***

Over at The Goat's Lunch Pail, Leah has an entertaining "two sentences I read" and a provocative "two sentences I wrote." Click here to take a look.

Terrie

MTM: Going To The Wolves

For as small a state as it is geographically speaking, New York has an astonishing variety of landscapes. Where I grew up, on the eastern tip of Long Island, the soil is sandy until it turns loamy. Where I live now, it's rocky and hard to plant. We have urban, suburban, sub-suburban and downright rural areas. We have beaches and plains and mountains, farms and forests and fishing villages. So it's not surprising, really, that we also have an amazing variety of wildlife.

Some of the animals around here aren't so unexpected. Deer, turkeys, ducks, beavers...all pretty standard fare. Even the occasional bear or big cat or rattlesnake in the outlying areas doesn't raise many eyebrows. But you might be surprised, just a few minutes from my suburban house, to find a large population of wolves.

Yes, wolves. Over at the left, that's Lukas. He's a Canadian/Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf and he's one of the "Ambassador Wolves" of the New York Wolf Center. Despite what you might have heard, wolves are actually quite shy and although the Wolf Center has a fair number on hand, only the ones that have been raised by humans from birth and bottle fed (they are separated from the pack at 6 days old) can become "ambassadors," available for the public to view and interact with. There are four at the center--Apache, Atka, Kaila and Lukas--and of all of them, only Atka leaves the Center and travels to schools, libraries, community groups, etc, to teach people about wolves.

The Wolf Conservation Center's mission is not just education of the public, but also reintroduction of wolves into their natural habitats. (When the Endangered Species Act went into effect, one of the first animals on the list was the Mexican Gray Wolf, which had a mere seven animals left alive at the time.) To that end, as well as the caring for the ambassador wolves, the Center runs an extensive breeding and repopulation program for endangered wolf breeds. Those animals are not available for viewing because they will eventually go back into the wild and need to remain as shy and scared of people as they would naturally be.

You can't play with wolves, even the ambassadors. They stay behind the fences. Not because they'd mean to hurt you, but because they're far too large and strong to understand what they're doing. Among themselves, wolves play rough, and they'd assume you could, too. You can, however, let them sniff you. And if you're lucky, as I was, they'll lick your hand. It's very sweet, and I don't care what anyone else says, it feels like an affectionate "hello." (That's not me, it's my sister-in-law getting her hellos from Atka.)

My nephews, who came with us, were fascinated by the wolves. They were even more fascinated by the large freezer in which the wolves' food is kept. "Why," I can hear you asking, "that never occurred to me. What do you feed these animals?" You feed them the deer that get hit on the highway, as it turns out. The highway department drops off the deer at the Center, as effective and efficient a recycling program as all the rest of the nifty stuff that goes on there. (The wood-chipped trails are resurfaced when the various nurseries and landscape companies donate the wood chips they don't know what to do with. ) Of course, if we hadn't eliminated the wolf population so thoroughly to start with, there probably wouldn't be so many deer (or turkeys) on the side of the road. So the wolves are just getting what they'd get otherwise.

Wolves, as I said, are naturally more afraid of people than we are of them, and there has never been an incident in the US where a wolf killed a person. But still, I don't recommend trying this at home. After all, Henry, who started the shelter, raised Atka from a pup:

From New York Wolves to San Diego Chameleons, check the My Town Monday blog for more.

Travels With Laura: Athens

A few, very brief words about traveling in Greece.

1) Athens is great, but before you go, you should embark on an extensive workout program concentrating on stairs.

2) Don't trust any US provider who tells you they have ay-as-you-go international coverage in Greece. Just resign yourself to buying a temporary SIM card and getting a Greek phone number. They're dirt cheap. You do have to have a SIM card capable phone, but even that's inexpensive if you don't have one yet.

3) Some hotels may, indeed, have wi-fi, but the wireless router is likely to be hooked to a dialup modem, and the prices can be prohibitive.

We now in Skiathos. More if/when I can find a computer to log onto!

Posted via email from laurakcurtis's posterous

More than one way to tell a story

When a friend sent me a link to the video of Ukraine’s Got Talent 2009 winner, Kseniya Simonova, I wasn’t sure whether I was watching a performance artist, story teller, magician, or dancer. Turns out she’s all of the above.

Simonova is a sand animation artist. Using a light table and projector, creating unspeakably fabulous drawings with a fluid kind of finger painting, she sweeps sand over glass into pictures. In a sinuous, performance...in front of an awestruck audience...she paints to music, forming new pictures out of the ones already on the canvas, changing scenes using time, character, setting, and mood.

I was mesmerized by the speed and beauty of her drawing, by the way she involved her whole body, and by the haunting story she created.

I learned more about Siminova and the story she painted here. I learned a lot about the history of sand animation here. I found wondrous other sand animation artists as well: Joe Castillo, Ferenc Cakó, Ilana Yahav.

- Lois

New Homes for Cozies, War Stories, and Sea Yarns

Joyce Images.

Via Sara Weinman, I read that former noted London bookseller Maxim Jakubowski has been tapped to launch a new crime imprint for John Blake, already a huge true crime publisher. maXcrime will begin publishing next year, and I found the Bookseller's quotes from Jakubowski almost the most interesting part of the story:

"The list must fit in with John Blake so it will be a commercial, not personal, list—something to appeal to all crime readers without being downmarket. Having been on the frontline as a bookseller, I think I know where the gaps are."

So, there are gaps? Well, as a book-buyer, I'd agree with that.

Nine maXcrime titles will be published in 2010, all mass market paperbacks priced at £7.99, in what is described as a "commercial" but very varied list, covering hard-boiled, historical, cosy, women-oriented crime and crime in translation.

Do you write any of the above? This may be an early indication that the market is turning to shine its face upon you, though I think translations have been something of a passion for the past season or two. Closer to home, our blogpal David Cranmer is making a call for submissions for his Beat to a Pulp anthology. First, yay for him, because they've been putting out some great stories there and I think it's a terrific idea. But second, read how he wants, like Jakubowski, to provide variety for his readers, too:

To round out our usual, diverse array of pulp genres, we are actively seeking war stories, sea yarns and cozy mysteries. 4,000 words or less. The BEAT to a PULP print collection will be released in 2010.

If you happen to write a flavor of fiction that you love, but which seems currently out-of-favor, just keep making it great, because anything done well can return to fashion.

TLA Pirate Day Meets Technology

The year zips by, it seems, because it's already Talk Like a Pirate Day again. So, Arrrrg to ye, and let's reflect upon how things have changed since the early, filthy olde days of high seas treachery.

Well, the updated TLAP official website, now has embedded You Tubery courtesy of PNN, the Pirate News Network. You can befriend other scallywags on Facebook, My Space, or follow their Tweets. You can buy their book on Pirattitude which claims to help you lose weight, find a mate, and be a candidate, now available on Kindle. Here's a list of places they're celebrating with special online offerings in various multiplayer role-playing games and webcomics, not to mention the various online translators to help you get your parrot on. And, of course, this year we have the launch of the iPhone Pirate Talk app.

So, bring your stack of doubloons to the nearest internet cafe, dust the sand fleas off your skinny rum latte, and get that authentic Pirate Experience!

Waiting for Dan Brown

Have you bought Dan Brown's newest book yet? The reviews of The Lost Symbol seem to be decent so far. Put another mark in the Win column for Mr. Brown.

The wait for this new book was six years, however. Brown, of course, had no need to hurry. He's been raking in a fortune from his first four books. And since he'll probably earn enough from this newest book to feed a small country--over one million copies were sold on the first day alone in the U.S., Canada, and U.K., breaking the one-day sales record--the next wait may again be six years.

For those Dan Brown fans who find the wait between books to be torturous, Slate has come up with a palliative: the Interactive Dan Brown Plot Generator. Just go to Slate's website and choose a city and a group from the drop-down menus. You have a choice of 13 cities from around the world and 14 groups including the Boy Scouts of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and Major League Baseball. Then let Slate do the rest.

Have fun! And let us know if you make the New York Times Best-seller List.

Achieve Zenlike Detachment, with Curse Words

Image from Kenny Pittenger.

Enlightened posts by Neil Gaiman and Lee Goldberg discuss popular perceptions of an author's obligations to readers as well as their perceived obligations to other writers. Conclusions?

George R. R. Martin is not your b*tch, and no,

I will not read your f--king script.

Liberate yourself from the agony of expectations, or worse, suffering crap.

When Will I Die, and Why Do Dogs Eat Poop?

It all started when when I wanted to use my silicone Bundt cake pan for the first time. Just before placing it in the oven, I wondered: Should I use a baking sheet to support the wobbly pan, or is this pan designed to use alone? I decided to do what anyone with a computer does: I Googled it. I intended to Google: “Should I use a baking sheet under a silicone pan?” but as soon as I typed, ”Should I,” a drop-down of popular suggestions appeared. I couldn't ignore the juxtaposition of these responses. Some of the highlights (beware a graphic one) as they appear on Google:

“Should I...”

• should i refinance my mortgage
• should i stay or should i go (55.9 million results)
• should i call him (85.4 million results)
• should i shave my pubic hair
• should i file bankruptcy
• should i get a divorce

I didn’t know that Google had become a substitute for the Magic 8 ball (The Mattel Magic 8 ball, a toy used for seeking advice, was invented in 1946 by the son of a clairvoyant. You can even try an online version here).

(Concentrate and ask (Google) again....)

Typing “Should we...” in Google reveals a drop-down of the following:

"Should we...."

• should we break up
• should we get married (25 million results)
• should weed be legal (over 45 million results)
• should we have dropped the atomic bomb
• should we file jointly
• should we eliminate fats from our diet altogether and increase our proteins
• should we move in together
• should we get back together (99.9 million results)

Should I check “Does...”? (It is decidedly so.)

• Does he like me (114 million results)
• Does Obama smoke (over 30 million results)
• Does hydroxycut/extenze/smooth away/alli work (responses condensed)
• Does he love me
• Does UPS delivery on Saturday

How about trying “Why”? (Without a doubt.)

“Why...”

• why is the sky blue (25.2 million results)
• why do men have nipples
• why did the chicken cross the road
• why do cats purr
• why men cheat
• why did chris brown beat up rihanna
• why do dogs eat poop
• why did I get married (26 million results)

What kind of answers are Googlers expecting? (Reply hazy; try again.) What kind of answers are they finding? (Cannot predict now.)

I was on a roll. A peek at the results of “when," “when will,” “how can," and "how does":

“When...”

• when is the superbowl
• when will i die (893 million results)
• when i grow up
• when will the world end (176 million results)

“When will...."

• when will i get my tax refund
• when will the recession end
• when will the economy get better
• when will i get married (30.7 million results)

“How can...”

• how can you tell if a guy likes you
• how can i make my hair grow faster
• how can you tell if a girl likes you
• how can i get pregnant
• how can you tell if a girl is a virgin
• how can you tell if someone is lying (over 9.2 million results)

This is like eating potato chips...

“How does...”

• how does a bill become a law (173 million results)
• how does birth control work
• how does david blaine levitate
• how does google make money
• how does unemployment work

Questions surrounding finances, birth control, the end of life, relationships, and hair growth seem to be of utmost concern for so many inquiring minds. I thought the popular question about how a bill becomes law was promising.

Is anyone finding meaningful answers to such major life decisions online? (Cannot predict now.) Will Googlers stop asking such questions? (Very doubtful....)

Just one more? (Yes, definitely.)

“Can I...”

• can I has cheeseburger
  
• can I have your number
• can I get pregnant on my period
• can I afford a house

Oh ~ and the answer to my question about silicone bakeware? A baking sheet is recommended to stabilize. The chocolate cake came out just great!

How Could WoM Forget?

Thanks to messymimi (who does not have the most boring blog in the world), I was reminded today is the birthday of the criminal fiction's Grande Dame herself, Agatha Christie.

Before you snuggle under your covers with late-night tales of mayhem, have a cuppa and contemplate killing your neighbor. It's what she'd want, I think.

Image via Wikipedia.

Two Sentence Tuesday

I tried a book this week that was decidedly out of my usual style. It's called The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker and it's sort of a Victorian paranormal Gothic romance. It was written by a member of my RWA chapter. I couldn't find two sentences that would really give you the flavor, but here's a paragraph:

Before the horrified parents or the priest, midscripture, could react to this additional invasion, Elijah fixed each with an intent stare. The three relaxed at once, and their gazes misted contentedly over. Elijah patted each on the head, satisfied with their submission.

My own sentences are decidedly more gruesome. I give you two:

The body--for there was no mistaking the fact that what now lay in the truck’s bed had once been a man--had been dismembered. But before that, it had been…skinned.

What about you? Did you write something interesting? Something workable? Something you promptly erased? Did you read anything? Let us know and we'll update this post with links to your posts.

Leah J. Utas has two glowing sentences on her blog.

Late MTM: But a Lovely Day for a Festival in Brooklyn

Sunday's Brooklyn Book Festival was wonderful. Dry, and sunny off and on, but not too hot. That made it exceedingly pleasant to stroll around the attractive environs of Brooklyn Borough Hall, so lots and lots of people did. I'll be posting a more detailed write-up for our local Sisters in Crime chapter site, but here are some preliminary photos to give a little taste.

Above the heads of the gathered crowd near the festival's center, you can see the gorgeous classical architecture, the treetops of Columbus Park with its statue of Henry Ward Beecher, and the tips of the Manhattan Bridge. That's actual blue sky, appearing after days of rain. Nice scene, huh?

There were over two hundred exhibitors arranged in promenades that kept people moving through. We started having conversations with interested passers-by half an hour before the festival opened at 10am, and were talking to more until absolutely the end at 6pm. Our own cute little canopied table's coming up.

An outdoor stage is on the right border of the picture, and there were a few of these (most with chairs, not stairs) hosting readings and discussions all day, as well as many more happening inside various rooms of the public buildings. There were also areas devoted to kids' books and activities, too, so there was plenty of entertainment freely available to the intrepid wanderer.

This was our stretch of the promenade, right near the intersection with Joralemon St. It was great spot, and I took this picture as we were setting up. The walkway was never this empty afterward.
We had authors from our chapter appearing in 2-hour slots throughout the day, signing and selling books. After Robin Hathaway (seen above), we had Lina Zeldovich and Peggy Ehrhart, Laura Joh Rowland and Cynthia Baxter, plus k.j.a. (Ken) Wishnia and Jill Brock. Our spanking new indoor/outdoor banner is simple, but eye-catching, as it turned out. People definitely noticed and walked closer to find out what we were all about. Expect to see it a lot more if you're local- we intend to make ample use of the investment : )

Stacked on the left in this picture is our chapter's first short story anthology, published last year. Between the chapter copies I brought, and another member's own author copies, we sold 25+ copies of Murder New York Style (see cover/link on our sidebar, or click here for Kindle version!), great news for the authors inside no matter how you slice it. There were loads of enthusiastic New Yorkers who wanted to talk about books and were interested in local writers and local writing. Even if people weren't buying, many took down information to look titles up in their libraries or to request them- also fantastic! I couldn't help it, I brought home a few irresistible ones myself. We met lots of aspiring/fellow writers, too, and made connections with resources for future programs.

It was a big, friendly crowd of all kinds of book-fans and buyers in a lovely setting on a gorgeous day. What more could a writer ask?

This week, the My Town Monday blog also hosts sunset beaches, steam trains, and a Queen's Tower. You know you'll have to visit them all.

"Denial": Accepted!

I just learned that my 50-word story, “Denial” was accepted at the 50-to-1 blogspot by Editor Glen Binger. This cool blog publishes only 50-word stories and first line inspirational sentences that are meant to get the reader hooked into the rest of the story.

“Denial” appears in this September issue entitled, “Head Under Water,” and also includes work from Judith Kelly Quaempts, Jon Harahan, Ryan Harron, J.S. Graustein, Elizabeth Wylder, and Phoenix Likely.

The site allows comments after each story or first line.

If you’d like to submit a 50-word story or a first line to the 50-to-1 blogspot, see their submission guidelines.