Where Paper Reigns

The best to-do list manager? Not any e-Gizmo MacOrganizer 2.0.

Good old paper. As one commenter on this lifehacker survey says, "Paper just works because it gets the hell out of your way."

Like the word 'said'.

Does TV Revenge Make You Hate Yourself in the Morning?

Most links within actually have something to do with writing...or shame or revenge. Mwahaha.

From Houston Press blogs comes this image with a rad collection of cool video clips of revenge songs.

J. Steven York posts about what writers (might) need from publishers. What he's got to say about Publicity/Advertising/Sales Support, Copyright Enforcement, and Legal Protection from Nuisance Lawsuits is worth reading. Legal revenge is the cold gazpacho that gives lasting heartburn.

In the WSJ, Amy Chozick reports on revenge and the one-eyed devil-box:

In television, the writer rules. Writers often make the creative and day-to-day managerial decisions, even if their work weeks can be unglamorous, pulling late nights in their sneakers surrounded by empty take-out pizza boxes. They also possess a little-talked-about power: the written word as a way to settle scores, keep high-maintenance actors in line and poke fun at anyone who gave them a hard time in junior high.

Katherine Powers of the Boston Globe wants to confess and discover the guilty pleasures of reading and I'm glad she branches out from the typical paperback ghettos, since one man's genre gutter is likely my Taj Mahal:

"One person confessed to nutrition and weight-loss books and another to the memoirs of rock-band groupies (“can’t put them down’’). Young-adult fiction, super-hero comic books, accounts of disasters and animal attacks, guides to music and movies (“that tell me what I should like, thus saving me the trouble of thinking for myself’’), all there, all excellently discreditable."

My mom read cookbooks or the Sears catalog with her cereal every morning. I've got a friend who adores self-help. I can always get down with a good Weekly World News. You?

Horror Flash Fiction Challenge

Chuck Wendig over at terribleminds.com has posted a horror flash fiction challenge/contest.

The story should be 1000 words or less, fiction set in and around vacation and travel. The deadline is October 11, 2010. You are free to cross-post your entry on/after Chuck has posted the stories.

Some prizes are being offered, with free shipping if you live within the 48 "upper" states. International writers can participate, but would have to pay for shipping.

You can follow Chuck on Twitter @ChuckWendig.

For inspiration on writing flash fiction, read this article by Pamelyn Casto, or check out these horror writing tips from The Horror Writers Association.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Two Sentence Tuesday - Fast Drafting At Last

I finally started fast drafting yesterday. I think it will be more like fast outlining, but we'll see what happens! I've been reading Kiss Me If You Can by Carly Phillips. Here are a couple of sentences:

Half an hour later, she'd showered, put on a touch of makeup, and blow-dried her recently cut hair. She added a thin orange headband that matched her dress, spritzed her favorite perfume, and was ready to go.

I probably won't read a thing for the next two weeks, if this drafting process is as consuming as I suspect it will be. Here are two sentences from yesterday.

By the end of the day, her voice was shot and her jaw ached from keeping a pleasant smile on her face, but she’d sold every romance in the rack along with a couple of Vegas-themed mysteries Patricia had recommended. They’d even had a chance to go over the list of new titles and publishers Evie had drawn up--with help from Celia--and Patricia had agreed to order almost all of them.

As usual, we'd love to hear from you. What are you reading? Writing? Up to?

• Leah J. Utas has some leggy sentences on her blog this week, along with interesting thoughts on banned books.
• Taryn Kincaid shares two hot (too hot?) sentences in the comments!
  

MTM: Westerly, RI

This week, for our anniversary, my husband and I drove a couple hours north to Westerly, Rhode Island. I grew up in a beach town, but rarely make it out to a beach nowadays because it's such a remarkable pain to get out to Long Island. And once you're there, you find that so many other people have had the same idea at the same time that you wonder what got you so excited.

But some friends my husband fishes with on the LI Sound recommended Westerly instead. It's a couple hours from where we live--shorter in both time and distance than Montauk, where a friend of ours has a little place we've visited in the past. (Even from NYC, Westerly is farther in distance, but not as far in time--there's too much traffic on the Long Island Expressway!)

The town of Westerly is quaint and cute. The beachfront is, well, beachy. Gulls fly overhead constantly, and if you stand on your balcony at the Pleasant View Inn, you can watch the fishermen chase the gulls as they flock over he water, for where there are birds, there are fish. And, naturally, where there are birds and fish, there are fishermen! Our friends who fish out here, do so all the way through Thanksgiving, and they come back in March. As so many tourist-dependent towns do, Westerly slows down considerably in the snowy winter months, but business doesn't come to a complete halt. Some of the inns and restaurants are open year round.

One of the interesting things about Westerly is the wide variety of architecture. Victorians, Colonials, Capes, Tudors, Ranches, all mashed up against one another. Developers have taken hold in some areas, with the hideous McMansions dwarfing the older buildings, but most of it is relatively unspoiled. And the prices of the houses vary wildly, depending on how close the property is to the water. The hotel we stayed in was owned by a family who also sells real estate, so there were listings at the front desk. Mike and I were surprised to see how inexpensive they were when we first arrived. That was before we figured out how the pricing worked--the further you are from the water, the cheaper the property. The funniest property we saw a listing for: a 240 square foot house with 1/2 bath (yes, that's right, no shower), on 1/3 of an acre. No heat, but it is on the beach. Care to guess how much it costs? 1.1 million dollars. That's right. For a mere million dollars, you, too can have a house that doesn't have a full bathroom.

Westerly is nearby the well-known town of Mystic, CT. We took the opportunity to hit the Mystic Aquarium. What can I say? I have a thing for fish and penguins. (I also ate at Mystic Pizza one day while Mike was out fishing with his buddies.) The day we went to the aquarium, they were taking a blood sample from one of their Beluga whales. The whales--1600 pounds--are trained to lie on their backs, completely still, while the techs take blood from the only possible vein. It's really impressive to watch.

We also drove up to Newport, RI. Once upon a time, Newport was probably a pretty little town, but the huge number of buses bringing in tourists, along with the gigantic cruise ship in the harbor, turned us off.

Mike fished a lot (this time of year, you can surf cast and catch bluefish, stripers, and "false albacore" right from the shore), and I mostly hung out. The weather cooperated, and hardly anyone was on the beach because we went in the middle of the week. I'd recommend Westerly to anyone looking for a quick, reasonably priced fall getaway in the Northeast.

Catch up with other faces and places on the My Town Monday blog.

Criminal Inspiration: Did Google Spy a Murder?

It's been a while since I did one of these. I title a post Criminal Inspiration when I find the kind of crime, criminal, or situation that seems to offer up fresh, imaginative possibilities for a tricky crime fiction writer.

... so, has the world experienced its first Google-fied homicide? Fortunately, no, reports Andy Dolan at the Daily Mail. The ten year-old girl above was captured by the Google StreetView's camera car while she was goofing a playmate. Though it might have caused momentary concern among their neighbors, I admit my inner Prankster enjoys even unintentional mischief as the appropriate response to a surveillance society.

Banned Book Week, part two

Our own Kathleen Ryan did a fabulous job yesterday telling us all about the American Library Association’s pledge to keep us informed about the number of challenges (an attempt to restrict or remove material from public reach) and bannings (the actual removal of material.) Read her post here.

Kathy gave us a look at the ALA list of 100 books that were challenged or banned books between 2000 and 2009.

I’ve read about half the books on the list. In fact I’ve done Forgotten Book Friday posts on at least two of them: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

My favorite John Grisham novel, A Time to Kill is on the list, as is To Kill A Mocking Bird. What bothered me most about the list is the number of children’s books. Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret and others by Judy Blume, not to mention the entire Goosebumps series by RL Stine and the entire Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey. As the perfect grandmother, I’ve already bought many of these books for my various grandkids. One thing I know for sure is that different grandkids like different books. But the key is to let the grandkids try any book and decide if they like it. I want them to develop their own taste. I don’t want some person who decides to ban books make the decision for them.

Many thanks to Kathy Ryan for bringing Banned Books Week to our attention. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I have to run out and buy a few more banned books for the grandkids

Terrie

Banned Books Week Sept 25-Oct 2, 2010

Today marks the start of Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.

For online, library, and bookstore events, check here.

For a real treat, check out "Rain," a poem by Billy Collins on censorship and banned books.

Here's a list of suggestions of what you can do to celebrate Banned Books Week, which runs from September 25 through October 2, 2010.

The American Library Association explains the difference between a challenge and a banning. The ALA also has a page on Facebook.

For a list of Top 100 Banned Books between 2000-2009, click here.

The New York Times lists "10 Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week."

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) offers a free "Banned Books Week Handbook."

So, have you read many "banned" books? Which ones would you like to read?

FBF: The Recycled Citizen

The title may sound like just another one of the non-fiction tomes I love to read, but The Recycled Citizen is a mystery written by Charlotte McLeod, who has been frequently referred to as "the queen of whimsical whodunits." Published in 1988, this book is part of the series featuring amateur sleuth Sarah Kelling and her very eccentric Beacon Hill family.

This entertaining novel has the entire Kelling clan gathering together to sponsor a charity auction to help fund Cousin Dolph’s pet charity, The Senior Citizen’s Recycling Center. Before the auction, one of the center’s recyclers is found dead and the contents of his will puts the Kellings squarely in the line of suspicion. Then mystical Cousin Theonia sees something in her tea leaves that causes her to smash an antique tea cup against the wall. Less than a month before she is due to deliver her first baby, Sarah, her husband Max and all the endearing and the one or two not so endearing Kellings, are determined to solve the crime and save the recycling center.

If you like fast moving mysteries with quirky characters, The Recycled Citizen will help you while away an hour or so on a rainy afternoon.

Please visit Patti Abbott, keeper of the Forgotten Book list, to read about other great selections. You can find her here.

Terrie

Call for Submissions: Thanksgiving Mystery Anthology

Jay A. Hartman, the Editor-in-Chief at Untreed Reads Publishing, an e-books publishing house, is looking for short stories for a Thanksgiving Mystery Anthology. Stories should have a humorous angle, with a word count between 3,500 and 5,000 words.

Jay, who will serve as Editor for this anthology, is requesting stories "geared around the most popular Thanksgiving dishes: turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, etc. As long as it's a regularly-featured food at Thanksgiving, we're open to how you work it in. Please note that it is unlikely we will publish multiple stories of the same food (i.e.: no two stories where pumpkin pie is featured)."

The deadline to e-mail a story is around the corner, however: Thursday, September 30, 2010. The release date will be November 1st, 2010.

For submission information and further details, check here. Questions regarding the anthology can be directed to jhartman@untreedreads.com. You can follow @UntreedReads on Twitter.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

The Muddle Puddle

As children, most of us enjoyed the forbidden delights of the proverbial mud puddle. It always presented an invitation to jump right in, getting wet and dirty to our knees and possibly falling down to enjoy the overall effect. Eventually, however, we’d have to go home and face The Mother, who did not approve of mud puddles.

In writing, it’s just as necessary to avoid “the muddle puddle” so you don’t have an editor tossing your manuscript due to it being bogged down in the middle. Unlike the aforementioned child, the editor will not enjoy getting stuck in thick, slow-moving text.

We all know a story has three parts that are equally important. The beginning presents the mystery, with tiny hints of what’s to come. It cracks the door open so that light is reveal, but does not give you a glimpse of what’s inside. The middle is inside the room and reveals another door before your goal, but it is not a place to rest and wait. The end is a satisfying climax, where all the questions are answered and the knight in her shining armour gets the guy.

If you put your readers in a muddle puddle in the middle, however, they’ll avoid it and skip parts of your book or they’ll never (cover your ears and eyes if you’re sensitive) finish your book.

What are the ingredients of the muddle puddle? Passive verbs, too much tell and not enough show, no change or conflict for your character, and dialogue that doesn’t move the story forward.
You may have heard all this before, but if you catch yourself bogged down in a muddle in the middle, you may want a quick review.

Show, don’t tell is a significant rule in writing fiction. Readers don’t want to be told what’s happening, they want to see it revealed through your character’s eyes. Example: I drove home from the doctor’s office and didn’t speak to my husband, who sat beside me looking at nothing in particular. Better: “We’re home,” I said, speaking for the first time since leaving the doctor’s office, but Colin was unresponsive, his eyes glazed and unfocused.

Same message but the reader is in the midst of the action.

Change is the one constant for your character. John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” Keep this in mind whenever you’re propelling a character through a story. It will allow you to create a map that will frustrate, excite, disappoint, compel, and draw in your reader. They will experience every pain and joy the character does. Using the story example above, you would have the character in the middle of planning a big anniversary party when she receives this devastating news. How could she stand this big change in her life? Her plans were retirement and travel with her husband. To quote the inimitable Frank Sinatra, “That’s life.”

Conflict is the source of change. How many times have you wished you could deal with one problem at a time? Your washing machine dies and while you’re cleaning up the water in the laundry room, your six-year-old son falls down and needs stitches, and on the way to the hospital a cop pulls you over for speeding. Yes, that’s a run-on sentence, but I was creating atmosphere. Before you can handle one problem another pops up. A picture map of your book or short story would probably look like this: Character walking—bam! Obstacle slammed in front—character climbing toward a summit—bam! Obstacle slammed in front—character nearing the goal—bam! A bomb explodes—character finds alternative route—bam! His plane is grounded! You get the idea. The heroine in our little story has to face spending the rest of her life alone while continuring to plan her anniversary party. To avoid the muddle in the middle, conflict that creates change is essential to any story.

Dialogue is the engine of your story. It's intended to keep things moving forward. If it doesn't, it's useless. Instead of saying: After holding each other and crying for a few minutes, Colin and I talked about how the diagnosis would affect our lives now. We would see the oncologist on Monday and wouldn’t know until then whether we even had hope or not. It was obviously going to be a miserable weekend. Try this:

When we stepped into the house, we fell into each other’s arms weeping.

“What happens now?” I asked, dabbing at my eyes with a tissue.

“I don’t know,” Colin said quietly. “We can’t make any plans until we see the oncologist.”

“I can’t believe we have to wait until Monday. Why didn’t that damn doctor call us yesterday?” I asked angrily.

“He didn’t get the test results until this morning,” Colin said with a crooked smile. He
was always more reasonable than I.

“How will we get through this weekend?” I said, stepping back into his arms.

“Together. The way we do everything.”

Their questions and fears are still in the forefront but already you see a glimpse of how they’re going to face the tragedy.

What happens once your overcome the muddle puddle? Your character needs active verbs, actions, change, conflict, and dialogue to get to the end.

But you knew that, didn’t you?

Beyond Gender, Let's Talk the Dollar Divide

This Seattle Times article by book editor Mary Ann Gwinn has some interesting stats on book buying habits.

Besides the gender divide, you may also notice, as I did, how books are significantly a pleasure of the modestly-incomed. Almost a third of publishing's customers reside in households earning less than $32,000 annually, and they spend 20% of that budget on children's books. (Big ups for that on tight budgets!)

When these readers turn down expensive hardcovers, looking instead for deeply-discounted titles or paperback options, it isn't because they're mean old meanies trying to starve us authors and steal from publishers. What we should be considering is not how we can coerce them to conform to the established market, but how we can better serve this audience for books now we know who they are.

Tuesday Twosome: The Fakers of Non-Fiction

Right now, in between writing something exciting but new, I'm reading some adventurous non-fiction.

In Jadoo, John Keel, later and better known for The Mothman Prophecies, writes about his wild times abroad. A young man, he left the Armed Forces Network after the Korean war, and went to find exotic "cliffhanger" articles that his New York agent could sell. Hitting dry bottom with upheaved political stories, this amateur magician with a keen eye for cons began digging into the strange and fantastic. In the process, he collected a million hoaxes and lies, which is the funny thing about non-fiction sometimes. When you write fiction, people often assume you're actually writing your own true story or that of people you know. When you write non-fiction, they lie to you like it was a religion. Per Keel:

"Soon after I'd moved into Zamalek in the fall of 1954, word circulated quickly throughout the city that there was an eccentric American writer on the island who was looking for bizarre people. Gradually my apartment became a club for a crazy assortment of freaks, Gali-Gali men, snake charmers, misplaced writers and poets, and plump belly dancers who were jobless after King Farouk had been booted out of Egypt."

I don't want to give too much away about what I'm working on, but here's a taste:

"Hold your hand sideways, the palm at 5 o'clock and your fingers pointing up toward eleven. It was that kind of hill."

So, are you writing the most delicious lies or the most awful truths? Confess two sentences of what you're reading and/or writing this week in our comments, or tell us where to link. We want to believe.

UPDATE: Leah J. Utas joins us with wildness and dangers of her own. Charles Gramlich and Lois Karlin offer up pharmacology, handkerchiefs, and animal husbandry in the comment thread. Dorte adds more wooly trouble to the comments as well.

Last Overt Furriness, Now I'll Tuck the Pups Shut

Another pm edition of nonsensicality- consider it a follow-pup to the expired Pedigree post this weekend. (See what I did there?) To my ears, this song isn't quite as solid rock-sugared a pop ditty as their launch, but the video of White Knuckles by OK Go with friends is as delightful a no-cut flow of charm as their earlier treadmill antics.

On Skipping And Stripping

And no, those have nothing to do with writing sex scenes! Get your minds out the gutter! Sheesh, the readers of this blog...

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, on to a serious topic that came up around the web this weekend. It involves bookstore economics, and what it takes to be successful as a bookstore. Not as an author, mind you, but as a bookseller. The subject came up because of people getting upset that their books had been "skipped"--not picked up to be carried in certain chains. The distress is understandable, especially given that one of the reasons many authors choose to go the traditional route, with all the pain that involves, is the assumption that they'll get carried in Borders and Barnes and Noble.

In many genres, first books are actually relatively easy sells to chains, so in that respect the yet-to-be-published readers of this blog are correct in their belief that they'll probably be able to find their books in the chains. But the books after that first one...well...that's another story, and one that unfolded over several days. Two posts on the topic--well, one directly on target, and the other tangentially related--that I highly recommend reading in toto.

The first post, therefore, is a must read for anyone who hopes to go the traditional route in getting published. It's by Andrew Wheeler, and in it he discusses, in detail, the exact number of chain bookstores and their breakdown in terms of size and buying. How many books do you have to sell in Borders for them to be able to carry your next book? Andrew can't answer that specifically, but he gets a lot closer than most people are willing to. The baldest fact, as he states it, is this:

I market books for a living, so I can tell you an unpleasant truth: the order for any book, from any account, starts at zero. The publisher's sales rep walks in the door with tipsheets and covers, past sales figures and promotional plans, to convince that bookseller's buyer to buy that book. In many categories -- SFF is still one of them -- the chain buyers say "yes" the overwhelming majority of the time. But not all the time. Sometimes, that buyer is not convinced, and the order stays at zero.

The second post is by J. Steven York, and he talks about the difference between being a booklover and a bookseller, and why the two are not necessarily the same thing. It's a beautifully written piece, and gets to the heart of why some Indie bookstores simply cannot survive.

They're not cheerful posts for a Monday morning, but they're thought-provoking.

The Page 99 Test

Jason Boog of GalleyCat wrote about next month's Page 99 test at the Beyond Page 99 blog. Authors and aspiring authors can upload page 99 of their book and see what readers think. The idea stems from Ford Madox Ford's quote, "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

If you enter your e-mail address here, you will be notified when the site goes live. You can follow them on Twitter @page99test or find them on Facebook, where their mission is stated, "Discovering new writing talent. One page at a time." Their company overview reads:

Writers upload page 99 of their book(s) - published or unpublished - and readers get to read and rate it.

The goal? To help writers understand if their writing - judged by the reader, who has access to just that one page - was good enough to compel the reader to a) turn the page and 2) buy the book.

Simple. Fun. Addictive for readers & writers.

(Phase II will have full chapter uploads + agent/editor view... to help undiscovered writers get agented - or even sold - without query letters, rejections, etc.)

Marshall Zeringue has been running his own Page 99 test blog since 2007.

Something to consider ~ are you game?

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Pedigree Donates Dog Food, and I'm a Sucker-

The G-man's signature, woeful look makes me feel like I have overdue library books.

--A Sucker For Pooches. As is our Laura, which is how I learned Pedigree will donate a 20lb bag of food for this post highlighting their adoption program before Sunday. Okay, here it is, with more info snipped and linked from ILoveRescueAnimals.org

"For every blog that writes a post about their adoption drive from now until next Sunday, which is September 19, Pedigree will donate a TWENTY pound bag of their brand new Healthy Longevity Food for Dogs to a shelter."

But wait, there's more! If you're on Facebook and "Like" the Pedigree page over here, they'll give another bowl of food. Have you ever before delivered *pounds* of crunchy lurv in two clicks? That's value right there! [Edited to correct FB info; earlier info saying they gave a bag per "like" was incorrect.]

I have had purebred, stray, and shelter dogs, and I can't say their different origins affected my love for them, though I sometimes wonder how they'd rate me. If you suspect you're ready for a permanent pal (perhaps even a furry nag- yeah, I'm talking to you, Grover) please consider adopting one.

Dressing Your Criminals

If you're setting your crime story in or around New York City, you might want to have your criminal wear a Yankees cap. Sounds awful, doesn't it? But it's factually accurate. From yesterday's New York Times:

Since 2000, more than 100 people who have been suspects or persons of interest in connection with serious crimes in New York City wore Yankees apparel at the time of the crimes or at the time of their arrest or arraignment. The tally is based on a review of New York Police Department news releases, surveillance video and images of robberies and other crimes, as well as police sketches and newspaper articles that described suspects’ clothing. No other sports team comes close.

The Mets, forever in the shadow of their Bronx rivals, are perhaps grateful to be losing this one: only about a dozen people in the same review were found to be wearing Mets gear.

The article lists a number of possible reasons for the choice of apparel, ranging from coveting the team's success to identifying with rappers who wear the clothing. But whatever the reason, the fact is that if you want to put your character in suitable attire, you should dress him as a Yankees an, not a Mets fan.

I wonder how unlikely a suspect I'd appear to a cop walking down the street in my Red Sox gear.

Murder to MIL-SPEC

Hear ye! Hear ye! Murder to MIL-SPEC, this year’s charitable anthology by Wolfmont Press, is on the horizon.

As I mentioned on Monday, this year’s charity is Homes For Our Troops, a wonderful organization that provides adaptive houses for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans whose injuries require accommodation.

As is the custom with Wolfmont charitable anthologies, each writer donates a story and Wolfmont publisher Tony Burton donates the editing and publishing, so all profits will go directly Homes For Our Troops.

Each of the following authors has contributed a mystery story set within a military milieu.

• Terrie Farley Moran
• Dorothy B. Francis
• "Big Jim" Williams
• Elizabeth Zelvin
• Lina Zeldovich
• Charles Schaeffer
• Howard B. Carron
• Brendan Dubois
• Janis Patterson
• Barb Goffman
• S.M. Harding
• Diana Catt

If you pre-order through this link prior to October 1, 2011, not only will you be able to buy this fabulous anthology for $11, saving one dollar on the list price of $12, but you will automatically be entered for a chance to win either a Homes For Our Troups tee shirt, or a white insulated Homes For Our Troops mug. Wolfmont is giving away one of each.

This giveaway is sponsored by Wolfmont and is in addition to our Women of Mystery tee shirt giveaway, which will occur after the book is released.

Very shortly, Murder to MIL-SPEC will be available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and an independent bookstore near you. We'll let you know.

Terrie

The sun, the moon, but no stars

It has come to my attention via a Nathan Bransford post and author Ally Carter’s blog, that out of the 126 celebrities who have hotfooted across the stage on Dancing With the Stars, not one of them has been an author. Actors, athletes, reality stars, models and journalists, yes. Authors, no.

This got me thinking that maybe the producers need a little nudge in the right direction. Would they go for Johathan Franzen tossing away those Clark Kent glasses and quick-stepping to Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down? How about Mary Higgins Clark waltzing her way across the stage in the arms of Derek Hough? Or Charlene Harris vamping it up in a hot-blooded tango?

Well, it’s just a thought. And I’d like to hear yours. Which author do you think would make a good contestant on DWTS? Let us know and maybe we can get the mirrored ball rolling.

Image from: http://media.photobucket.com/image/dancing%20feet/144thousand/dancingfeet.jpg?o=59

Two Sentence Tuesday

This week someone said to me that the plot of my new WIP, sex toys aside, sounded too much like other things they'd read. They mentioned one book in particular that was just released--Susan Andersen's Burning Up. So, of course, I immediately downloaded that to my Kindle to check.

And what did I learn? I learned that I need a better description of my WIP, because aside from "girl goes back home to small town," they really have nothing in common. On the surface, I can see why someone might consider them similar, given the description of Andersen's book on Amazon, but the two are completely different.

That said, here are the first two sentences of Burning Up:

Gabriel Donovan knew Macy O'James was trouble the minute she rolled into town.
Hell, he knew it even before she hit the city limits.

You've already seen the first two of mine, so here are two I wrote this week.

“Don’t you have savings? How could I have raised a child who would live paycheck to paycheck?”

And you? What did you read? What did you write? Let us know and we'll link to you!

• David Cranmer has two in the comments. If you haven't "met" Cash Laramie yet, you'll want to click over to his site for a link to the full story!
• Leah J. Utas is busy revising over at her place!
• Dorte has two delicious sentences in the comments.
  

Homes for Our Troops

In a blog post last spring I told you that Tony Burton, publisher of Wolfmont Press, has chosen Homes for Our Troops as the organization to be supported by the 2010 Wolfmont charitable anthology.

Well, the stories have been written, submitted and selected. Tony is working feverishly to get the anthology ready to roll off the press. And I promise to let you will know the minute that the anthology is available.

But for now I want to remind you about the service Homes for Our Troops provides. The organization builds specially adapted homes for our severely injured veterans, at no cost to the veteran or the veteran’s family. This monumental task is achieved through a variety of financial support mechanisms and volunteer work hours. So take a minute to visit the Homes for Our Troops website. Perhaps there is something you can do to help right now.

In the meantime, I just want to show you this very cool Homes for Our Troops tee shirt, because in a few short weeks, you may have a chance to win one right here at Women of Mystery.

For more My Town Monday posts, click here.

Terrie

Beyond the 11th

In the New York Times this past Thursday, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column entitled The Healers of 9/11 and introduced readers to Susan Retik. You can read it here.

If you don't have time for the entire article, at least read this quote from it:

In the shattering aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Ms. Retik bonded with another woman, Patti Quigley, whose husband had also died in the attack. They lived near each other, and both were pregnant with babies who would never see their fathers.

Devastated themselves, they realized that there were more than half a million widows in Afghanistan — and then, with war, there would be even more. Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley also saw that Afghan widows could be a stabilizing force in that country.

So at a time when the American government reacted to the horror of 9/11 mostly with missiles and bombs, detentions and waterboardings, Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley turned to education and poverty-alleviation projects — in the very country that had incubated a plot that had pulverized their lives.

The organization they started, Beyond the 11th, has now assisted more than 1,000 Afghan widows in starting tiny businesses. It’s an effort both to help some of the world’s neediest people and to fight back at the distrust, hatred and unemployment that sustain the Taliban.

On this sacred day, the anniversary of her husband’s murder, Susan Retik is visiting a mosque in Boston. Her intent is not to protest its existence or burn books. She is there to gain the support of the members of the mosque to join her battle against poverty and illiteracy in Afghanistan.

Like many New Yorkers, I knew people who died in the towers, and I know people who lost loved ones there. Once again I ask God’s blessing on all of the souls lost on 9/11. I pray for every single one, regardless of their religious faith, country of origin, or skin color.

Susan Retik is working hard to avoid another tragedy. Perhaps you’d like to help her. You can link to Beyond the 11th here.

Terrie

The Brooklyn Book Festival

The Brooklyn Book Festival will be held this Sunday, September 12, 2010. As described on the BBF website, the festival is "a huge, free public event presenting an array of literary stars and emerging authors who represent the exciting world of literature today." The list of authors scheduled to attend include Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, Kaylie Jones, Russell Banks, Alafair Burke, Philip Lopate, Sigrid Nunez, David Rakoff, Sarah Silverman, Peter Straub, Colson Whitehead, and so many others.

The event takes place between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and the schedule of events is here. Directions can be found here.

My fellow members of the New York/TriState Sisters in Crime will proudly have a table at this event ~ be sure to stop by Booth #167.

E-book pricing disputed

Image source here.

A recent Wired article discusses why producing e-books isn't as much cheaper as we all think. Publishers Weekly posted a teaser at their blog which I snipped:

“People vastly overestimate how much a publishers saves,” says Erik Sherman, an analyst who studies e-book economics. Turns out, the physical aspects of book production can account for a s little as 15 percent of the cost of the title. The rest can be divvied up among the author, editor, designer, marketers, publicists, distributors and resellers. A lot of fingers dip into that $14.99 money pie before the house takes a slice.

Even the tease was enough to draw out interesting debate in the comments thread. Settled issue? Not hardly.

Women Writers- Links from Here to Sunset

These girls know enough to laugh. Image courtesy of Urban75.org

If you haven't followed author Jodi Picoult's and Jennifer Weiner's commentary-rebuttal-commentary on Jonathan Franzen (tangentially) and the other mainly male, higher-brow writers most often reviewed by the NYT...well, you'll have several hours left of total consciousness on your deathbed that I've lost.

However, as the whole mess of tangents has now overflowed my scrounged links list, I plop them all down, undifferentiated save for the femaleness and scrivening involved. Enjoy what and which you may.

Jason Pinter's excellent interview of both authors for the HuffPo has background links and additional explanations. Get the gist and deeper gist from the kerfuffle's architects here.

Novelist Michele Gorman, writing here for the Guardian, embraces the chick-lit label and declares "light doesn't have to mean stupid."

Linda Holmes, at npr's blog, still hates the genre-labeling and explains why women are not marshmallow peeps.

Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic muses that there may be some unconscious gatekeeping going on and explains his subsequent efforts to branch out into undiscovered country.

Irin Carmon of Jezebel puts out the bleg to help some well-meaning dudes read books by women.

Crime writer JT Ellison attended the biggest romance writing conference, and posted at the Murderati blog how she learned all of her "preconceived notions about RWA were wrong, wrong, wrong." She'd heard tell, but it was still a shock to see with her own eyes how truly voracious and eclectic romance readers are.

But maybe it's all so much ado about nothing really. Because Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood cuts straight to the chase when commenting on an Entertainment Weekly article for the movie Eat, Pray, Love and its author, Elizabeth Gilbert. (That's my triple-lindy of attribution.) The offending sentence which is the daily bane of Silverstein's existence? If women like it, it must be stupid.

Two Sentence Tuesday

Sorry this is late today...it's been one of those weeks already and it's only Tuesday!

I've been in a reading slump, where I don't seem to enjoy most of the things I read. Nothing seems appealing enough for me to stick with, and I keep abandoning books halfway through. Projects, on the other hand, manage to get done, which I guess is something. I am learning to sew. That's me over on the right in the first thing I ever made myself to wear. Not bad! I won't show you the ones I made on the way to that one!

I bought a great book called Dare To Be Square Quilting and there's a fantastic quilt in it that I want to make for my nephew. It's a blue robot on a yellow background. You can see it in this video, which is the only book trailer that ever made me want to buy a book! Here are two sentences from that book:

"Warning! Warning! Worlds collide when robot technology meets a traditional Amish brickwork design. The colors also collide."

And two sentences from my work in progress:

Two years her senior, Sam had simply disappeared one day the summer after he graduated high school. Rumors abounded, but the Sheriff refused to confirm any of them. By the time Evie herself escaped, people had even stopped talking about Sam.

How about you? How are things going? As usual, let us know about your reading and writing, and we'll link to you!

Oh! And my first three sentences are over at the So You Think You Can Write contest--if you want to vote for me, I'm #2, and I'd appreciate it!

• David Cranmer plays along in the comments this week. His latest story comes out next week in Western Online!
• Leah J. Utas has big news and two sentences on her blog!
• Dorte plays along in the comments this week!
• Taryn Kincaid has sentences in the comments from a brand new project.
  

MTM: Enzo's Restaurant

I love food. I like to cook it, like to plan it and, most of all, like to eat it. I read cookbooks for fun, even knowing I'll never make anything from them, and I peruse half a dozen foodie blogs on a regular basis. In fact, I once said to my writing partner that I worried my characters at too much--I didn't want my book to have too many "talking head" scenes where the characters are all sitting around over dinner or drinks, but, hey, write what you know, right?

So it's only natural that when my husband and I moved to our new town we checked out all the restaurants. We found good sushi, good pizza and good Italian. No Thai or Indian or even Chinese, but we figured we could do without having those close by.

All too soon, however, both the Italian place and the Japanese place closed. It took a while, but we found a Japanese/pan-Asian place a few towns north that delivered. Still, we couldn't find "our" spot. That place where, as they used to say on Cheers "everybody knows your name." Until a friend recommended Enzo's Antichi Sapori in Armonk.

Armonk isn't precisely close, but as soon as we took our first trip to Enzo's, we knew we'd found what we were looking for. The restaurant is small -- there are only two waiters, Enzo and Dan, and a couple of busboys, Javier and Olivio, who will sometimes bring food out of the kitchen. The first time we went, they realized we'd never been there before (because the vast majority of their business comes from regulars), so when my husband ordered a glass of red wine, Enzo bought him a glass of "Enzo's blend"--which he blends from a recipe handed down in his family--on the house.

The meal was wonderful. The food was hot and plentiful and chock full of garlic, all things of which I am fond. Mike and I became regulars. Then, we became friends with Enzo. I put together a very basic website for him in exchange for food. (Yes, I'll work for food!) He's bought us dinners, let us try things in their experimental phase, and I even got to name a dish. (Farfalle Confetti, pictured above right: faralle with asparagus, zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, and toasted pinoli in olive oil and garlic sauce.)

We're very fond of Enzo's biscotti, and when he heard that my husband was beginning to try his hand at baking, Enzo gave him the recipe. But then he upped the ante. He said he hadn't realized we enjoyed cooking and asked us to come in and cook lunch with him one day.

So on Thursday, after the lunch rush was over, Mike and I went in and learned how Enzo makes his delicious marinara sauce. It's remarkably easy. We met the kitchen staff (the salad guy, the sous chef and the chef) and saw how screamingly clean Enzo keeps his tiny kitchen. I mean it. It's way cleaner than my own kitchen is. And the smells...oh, my, it smells so good in there! I could just sit in a corner and breathe. Not that there's room for anyone who's not working.

So that's what's on my mind this Monday. I'd love to hear about any restaurants or bars or hangout spots you all frequent. What seduced you about that particular place?

Check out more My Town Monday posts on the My Town Monday blog!

And Speaking of E-books...

Harlequin has a new e-only line called Carina Press. Why this matters, even if you don't write or read romance, is that one of their editors wrote a blog post about the technical side of the process and what actually takes time, despite the fact many of us tap our toes and harrumph when e-books in any way are less than instantly gratifying. Here's a nugget of news to me:

"... most ebooksellers will only accept files in big batches; so if there’s a typo or error in one file, the whole batch of 100+ ePubs waits until they’re all ready for public sale."

I didn't know they sit on prepared files for big ole batch processing. It makes sense, and would add time to the whole process. Not much, but some. It's not clear to me whether this group collection would also be the case when individuals are submitting their own files, but thanks for the informative post, Jenny Bullough!

*Sure the image is from the wrong imprint, but if you'd found it with an image search for 'impatient,' could you have resisted?

Crimes by Moonlight e-book edition

You may recall that I am fortunate enough to have a short story published in the MWA anthology, Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris. The hard cover edition was released by Berkley Prime Crime last April. I bragged about it here.

A few people have asked me if Crimes by Moonlight is available as an e-book. I always say, “I don’t know. Haven’t seen it as such.” Well, now I do know. Both Amazon (click here) and Barnes and Noble (click here) are now carrying e-book editions. So, if you are inclined to e-readers, now’s the time.

Of course, if you want the paperback edition to carry on the subway or to the beach, you still have to wait until next spring.

Terrie

Various New(ish) Writing Technologies

Lately, for some odd reason, I've been talking to people about something I thought I was through with years ago--my Master's Thesis. My central idea was that whatever technology a culture uses to share information influences its concept of individual and selfhood. I won't bore you with all the things that have come up, but I will point you toward the most interesting, a New York Times article about language, and whether the language you speak influences how you think.

As many of you know, I am a fan of the fountain pen. It's my favorite writing implement, and I think most creatively when I'm using one. (I don't think most logically, however, so I don't tend to write non-fiction that way.)

I tried another new writing tool the other day courtesy of the wonderful Lisa Adams: the new Sharpie liquid graphite pencil. Since the demise of the Eberhard Faber Blackwing pencil, I haven't been much of a pencil user. (For you bizarro Blackwing fans, it's coming back...sorta.) I always liked pencils for underlining and annotating and, of course, for crossword puzzles, but the sound drove me a bit mad when trying to do actual writing.

So when I heard about the new Sharpie, I was anxious to try it. It was supposed to be smooth like a rollerball when you wrote, drying instantly to graphite--erasable like a pencil, and then becoming permanent like a Sharpie after a few days. Well, that sounded pretty good! Here's what I found:
Pros:

• definitely smoother than writing with a "regular" pencil
• erases easily (unlike those old erasable pens)
• works very well on porous paper

Cons:

• writes a bit unevenly, but I find this with all rollerball devices
• on shinier paper rubs right off. not good for crossword puzzles in magazines

So, in the long run, would I use a Sharpie liquid pencil? Well, if I were still in college or grad school, I probably would. As it is, I hardly underline and annotate any more. When I do, I use whatever's at hand. It won't replace my fountain pen for creative writing, though.

That being tested, on to the next piece of newish technology.

Recently, I mentioned that I had gotten an iPad. My first experiences with it were...rough. I didn't care for Pages, the word processing app that allowed you to use Word docs with your iPad. And the transfer system--how you got documents from your iPad to your Mac and back--was a disaster. Clunky, annoying...what if I didn't have my mac on hand and forgot to upload the latest version of something to the iPad? Too bad. Out of luck.

But then, things changed. Oh, how they changed. Dropbox changed them. I recommend that everyone who uses a computer have a Dropbox account. It's free, and it will save you so much angst. For those of you who understand jargon, it's a server in a cloud. For those of you who don't, Dropbox sits on your computer as a folder (directory) and anything you keep in that folder is automatically kept up-to-date in a folder on the internet. You never have to say "back this up." It's automatic and instantaneous.

That means I can access my Dropbox account not only from my own computer at home, but also from my iPad. Or, if I am stuck, say, at my brother's house, I can borrow his computer, go on the web to dropbox.com, and download any of the many things that are sitting in there. I can dump travel itineraries in there and access anything I need at any time. (Picture of Dropbox on the iPad. Click it to enlarge for details.)

You can create shared folders, as well, so you can, well, share things. Got a big file you want a friend to have access to? Put it in a shared folder and give them access. They won't be able to get to anything else in your Dropbox, just the folder you've invited them to.

Still, alone Dropbox wasn't perfect. I didn't have an easy way to open the files or update them in Word format. Enter Documents To Go. This is a product I used for years on a Palm device (the old Sony Clié). It rocks. It's like a can opener in that you can read virtually anything with it. But beyond that, you can set it up to work automatically with your Dropbox account (or virtually any cloud).

To the right is a picture of a document created in Word, dumped into my Dropbox, and opened for editing in Documents To Go. See all those little icons down at the bottom? (Click the picture to enlarge it.) That's where the formatting, saving, etc, takes place. Unlike Pages, at least the versions of Pages I've tried, the combination of Dropbox and Documents to Go maintains your formatting between the iPad and the computer. It's limited, I grant you--you can't do everything you can in Word--but you can bold, italicize, underline, and even color various pieces of text or background.

All in all, this combination (along with my bluetooth keyboard) has given me all I need to take my show on the road!

And you? Anything helping you in your writing these days?

UWRF Flash Fiction Challenge

The 2010 Citibank Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, which will be held in Ubud, Bali in October, has opened up its Flash Fiction Challenge. The competition is open to anyone, of any age, in any country.

The word count (not counting the title) is limited to no more than 350 words. Entries must not have been published before in any medium.

The deadline is September 24, 2010. Check out the rules and prizes here. The winners will be announced on October 1, 2010.

You can follow @ubudswriterfest on Twitter or check them out on Facebook.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

The Book. The Glossary

The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer is a satirical take off on faux memoirs—think James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, or last year’s cancelled, Angel at the Fence—as well as a good read.

Mr. Langer’s protagonist, Ian Minot, is a novelist/coffee barista who is frustrated and fed up with literary poseurs making it big while he is barely surviving. Hooking up with a former writer/agent, he recreates the man’s novel as a memoir in an audacious plan to scam the publishing industry.

What made the book more interesting was the glossary the author provided to explain made up words he peppered through the story. Literary-inspired words such as ‘franzens’, the sort of stylish eyeglasses worn by the author Jonathan Franzen and ‘golightly’, a slim cocktail dress favored by Truman Capote’s character, Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, added an insider touch. Although, I believe that many readers would get most of the references.

Here are a few examples of Mr. Langer’s prose:

Then she got up and gathered all of her belongings that were still in my apartment—a couple of golightlys, some pens, books, a journal, and a necklace—put them in her gym bag and walked to the door.

I could see my breath fog up the lenses of his franzens as I warned him to never, no never come into our café again…

To tell you the ending would be a spoiler. So I won’t, even if you ply me with ‘faulkners’ or put a ‘canino’ to my head.