Two Sentence Tuesday-Revisions

Ghastly, ghastly, oh, so nastly. Or something like that. You know what I mean. A while back, I wrote a romantic suspense mansucript. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. My agent couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. She just kept saying it didn't "work" for her.  So, because I wanted to know what was wrong, I paid to have it professionally edited. When it came back there were a lot of notes.  A LOT OF NOTES.  I got very depressed. I put said manuscript away.

Well, recently I've gotten to feeling that I need to revisit the manuscript and make the changes the editor recommended.  A LOT OF CHANGES. It hurts. It hurts a huge, whopping, great deal. And sometimes I disagree with her.  But probably 80% of the time I can see she's right.  So that means I have to make 80% of the changes she recommends.  Ouch.

So, a couple of new sentences I added to the old manuscript:

Mrs. Josephs looked up at him, her head shaking slightly as if she would say no, then finally acquiesced. He led her away, leaving Ethan alone with Renee’s father.

I don't want to say what I read this week because it was so bad if it hadn't been on my Kindle I'd have thrown it against the wall. So I'll give you two I read last week instead. From Leslie Dicken's A Tarnished Heart:

Lizzie's shoes squished her arrival. She stared at the tall man who stood in front of the fireplace, his dark head angled up at her mother's large painting.

And you? What did you read? What did you write? As usual, let us know and we'll update this post as the day goes on with links to you!

"How I Came to Write . . ." at Patti Abbott's Blog

I am proud to let you know that Patti Abbott invited me to tell the story behind the short story, “For Keepsies.”

You can click here to read all about it. And I thank Patti for inviting me to participate in the always fascinating “How I Came to Write . . .” series.

Terrie

My Town Monday: Piermont, New York

Last Sunday, we got sent up the river. Not to Sing Sing, but to a lovely town very near by, Peirmont, New York. Friends of ours had mentioned the town on the west bank of the river and thought it would make an interesting day trip. As it turned out, they were right.

Originally known as Tappan Landing, the name Piermont came about when the town incorporated in 1850 and the name was changed to a combination of nearby Tallman Mountain and the village's unique man-made feature, the mile long Erie Railroad Pier.

Walking along the pier, which juts far out into the Hudson, presents you with a gorgeous view of the Tappan Zee Bridge to the north and lower Hudson Valley to the south. People where strolling and biking along the mile-long expanse. Fishermen were out casting their lines in hopes of catching perch, shad, striped bass and winter flounder. And several families of geese were raising their young on a nearby bank.

The pier has its own historical significance. During World War II it was a major embarkation point for hundreds of thousands of American troops traveling to fight in Europe.

This Memorial Day it will also be the site of one of the four Watch Fires set along the river as a beacon to honor our fallen military and those missing in action. For twenty-four hours, veterans will keep a vigil at the fire, standing guard as it burns into the night and through Monday.

Several stories tall and built of huge tree-size logs, the Watch Fires themselves are the exact size and configuration of the fires that were set by George Washington's troops to announce the end of the war. The General knew that they would be seen for miles by people living along the river and serve as an announcement that we'd won.

A fitting commemoration then, and now.
Find our where everyone's been visiting this week. Click on to the My Town Monday blog
 
Let's be friends on Facebook and follow me on Twitter @cathicopy

New England Crime Bake 2011

Registration recently opened for New England Crime Bake 2011 ~ the tenth annual mystery conference for writers and readers ~ and it is already 40% booked!

This year's Crime Bake, sponsored by New England Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, will be held November 11-13, at the Hilton Hotel in Dedham, Massachusetts.

The Guests of Honor will be Barry Eisler and Nancy Pickard.

Registrants may choose to attend one of two free seminars ("Practice Your Manuscript Pitch" or "Using Social Media") after a welcome pizza party on Friday evening. The cost also includes a continental breakfast on Saturday, a box lunch, and Cocktail Hour hors d'oeuvres, and Sunday's full breakfast.

For an additional fee, Manuscript Critique Sessions will be available, as well as Master Classes.

Five-minute one-on-one pitch sessions with agents and editors are free, but pre-registration is required.

The posted schedule will be updated frequently.

Have you attended a Crime Bake? Are you interested in attending this year? If so, don't postpone registration ~ it sold out quickly last year. For a treat, check out Clare's post on last year's Crime Bake ~ complete with fabulous photos!

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Democracy in Publishing?

I just set up accounts at Richard Nash's start-up site called Cursor, and at Red Lemonade, his beta social platform for publishing. I feel as if I've entered a brave new world in publishing, with the chance to be a player.

Nash, who ran the indie publishing company Soft Skull Press where he launched a number of best sellers and prize winners, has a vision for a new model in publishing that has the potential to turn the industry on its ear. When I heard him speak at one of BEA's concurrent seminars, I didn't know him. It took awhile for the concept he talked about to sink in, but in the end I realized his vision is radical.

First, Nash's take on attracting readers is to find them, one by one, by exposing a writer's actual work to readers and publishers interested in the genre. Envision online communities of mystery lovers, romance readers, noir or thriller readers, editors, authors, and publishing folks. Imagine those communities influencing what gets published by Red Lemonade, or another of the many publishers who are likely to join and frequent the site.

This can happen because the actual work - an excerpt or a full manuscript - is posted on the site, read on the site, marked up by readers and annotated on the site (tools to make on-the-page feedback easy are in development), and updated as the writer wishes. Some of the manuscripts will stimulate buzz online, and their authors will find publishers who want to snap up already-tested manuscripts that a whole community finds exciting. Any publisher - indie press, major house, and anything in between - can make these writers an offer.

That's it in a nutshell. Obvious concerns are that the site could become a popularity contest, that members might suck up to the big names, or that critiques may turn bloody. Nash believes he can minimize these offenses by using moderators and publishing professionals within each community to help steer the conversations.

Read more about it here and here. Think it could work?

How Do YOU Find Books?

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know that Amazon has set itself up as a publisher and will have both a romance imprint (Montlake) and a mystery imprint (Thomas & Mercer). More on all that later, but for now I am interested in what they claim as one of the major benefits of using them as a publisher over doing the digitizing yourself and simply selling your book on Amazon: marketing.

Now, I know most authors shudder at the thought of marketing, but I do wonder how effective Amazon marketing will be.  I guess it depends on how you find books.  So here's a question for the day:

How do you find books you want to read?

Library Tragedy

From time to time I have bragged about my beloved Queens, one of the five boroughs of New York City. With a population of more that two million people, Queens is also the most ethnically diverse county in the United States of America. Every nation on the planet is represented in one or another of the neighborhoods of Queens. And as I explained in this post one of the most important resources for all the residents of Queens is the Queens Borough Public Library, which has the largest circulation of any library system in the United States. Well, times are tough and local governments are struggling. The Queens Borough library system has not purchased a single new book since December 2010 and is unlikely to be able to buy library materials any time soon.

This article in the New York Daily News tells us how bad things are getting.

It seems to me that in a place where new Americans are assimilating at an ever increasing rate, we as a community have an obligation to help that process by providing the cultural environment that is only available at a local library.

HOW TO HELP:

In answer to Elaine's question, The Queens Library Foundation is requesting cash donations so that the library can buy the materials it most needs. However since many of the sixty-two branches often sell donated or no longer needed books, book donations may be a help.

Terrie

Two Sentence Tuesday

Last week I felt so productive, having written The End.  Of course, the two words that follow that are always "not really."  No sooner did I "finish" than I found a massive logical inconsistency that I had to fix!  I didn't get much new writing done this week--too busy editing Murder With Goodies, which was supposed to be a short story and ended up 13,800 words.

I picked up a book that's been sitting next to my bed since last summer waiting for me to get around to reading it, Silent Scream by Karen Rose.  I got it at one of the many book signings at last summer's RWA and was kind of embarrassed not to have read it.  I really like Karen Rose, but for some reason the book had remained sitting at my bedside.  So I began reading and it took me about a half a page to realize that sometime between when she gave me the book at the signing and yesterday, I bought the book and read it on my Kindle.  Oooooooops.  But, regardless of my idiocy, here are a couple of sentences:

"Absorbs pee and puts out fires. Can it cure cancer?" Kane asked, tongue in cheek.

Once I finished the first edit on Murder With Goodies, I went back to the as-yet-unnamed contemporary romance. I managed to write a whole six sentences on it.  Here are two:

“Fling, schming. Take the guy out for a test drive."

And you? Did you do any reading? Any writing? As usual, let us know what you've ben up to and we'll update this post with a link to you.

MTM: "The City"

photo by Tom Curtis, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I've lived in several places over the years, some towns, some cities. One day, I plan to write a book that begins "I grew up in the country, with the chipped plates, mismatched linens and faded wallpaper." My parents had an apartment in "the city," New York, Manhattan, but I never fit in there.  I fit in the "country house" my parents bought the year before I was born, before the Long Island Expressway was built, in a town no one wanted to visit, where we had a little orchard and the beach was in biking distance.

When I was 18, I moved to St. Louis for college. But where I lived wasn't in the city itself, it was in what has become known as the "exurbs," not quite a suburb, but not downtown, either.  During college, I lived in a nice exurb.  After college, I lived in a not-so-nice one.  Either way, we all considered ourselves living in "the city."  If we were going to St. Louis proper, where the bars and nightclubs were, we said we were going "downtown."

After St. Louis, I moved back to "the country." The problem was, by that time the Long Island Expressway had been built and the town had grown.  Almost uncontrollably.  Too many cars crowded the parking lot for the tiny supermarket.  Too many people crowded the library and the beach. My folks sold their house and I moved to Yonkers, NY.

Yonkers is just outside the city limits of New York City according to the legal definition. That is, it's the next spot north of The Bronx.  But if you live in NY, "the city" doesn't include The Bronx.  Only outsiders include all five boroughs in the term "the city."  For those of us who live here, "the city" is Manhattan.  The other boroughs go by their names.  If I am going to Brooklyn, that's what I say.

image from TexasOutside.com

After Yonkers (where I lived in an apartment designed by a 70's cheap motel designer--you went into the lobby, took the elevator upstairs and came out outside, on a balcony that ran the length of the building and from which you entered your individual apartment), I moved to Austin, TX.

Austin is interesting because there's no agreed upon definition of "the city."  Sure, there's a "downtown" and even a "South Austin" and "East Austin," but no one says they're going to the city or even, really much, that they're going "downtown."  Different areas have different names, but people rarely even use those.

Then came Boston.  But not Boston proper (which is how the downtown there is described), but another exurb, verging on a suburb. There, when I took the T (the train/subway) into Boston proper, I could say I was going to "the city" or I was going "downtown."  People would understand either.

I loved Boston, but my husband is a New Yorker (and a Yankees fan) despite having been born in Colorado and spending years in Chicago, so eventually we moved back to New York.  I'm still not a city girl, however, and I refuse to live somewhere I can't have a yard where my dogs can run around, so we compromised.  Now, we live an hour outside "the city," (half an hour from The Bronx) and have two apple trees and two pear trees.  I know the people at my local restaurants and grocery stores, and I'm close enough to go visit all my relatives, who still live in Manhattan and are urban creatures through and through, when I want to.

All these have been "my towns," though with the exception of one they're mostly at least on the edge of cities.  How about you?  What kind of place is your "town?" To explore other cool locations, check out the My Town Monday blog.  For example, today, Barrie Summy's highlighting San Diego's human calculator!

Why Modern Romantic Suspense Rocks!

I made a list of ten reasons how the modern brand of romantic suspense leaves Perils of Pauline way back on the dusty railroad tie, in addition to providing a delightful respite from everyday life. Here are the bullets, with a smidgen of the commentary.

1) Smart women
2) Uninvited Help
3) Freaks of Nature
4) Hauntings
5) Tech that Works
6) Competent Team Members (sample verbiage):

There will be access to responsive and intelligent self-starters who are hardly ever scheming super-criminals. Your own human resources include Angus of the low forehead in Accounts Payable. Enough said.

7) Freedom from Stubble
8) Effortless Sex Appeal
9) Graphic Gories and Glories
10) You Say Serial Killer, I Say Vacation from Dusting.

You can read the whole post with my (amusing?) elaborations here at Heroes and Heartbreakers.

Giveaways Galore!

Right now Criminal Element has two super giveaways open to readers. You can register for both at this link.
Between now and May 25th you have a chance to win Breaking Silence by Linda Castillo, a taut novel of hate crimes and murder in an Amish community. Click here for a fuller description of the book and a link to an exclusive excerpt.

And you have until May 27th to try to win five (count’em five) audio books in CD format.

• Vanished by Joe Finder
• Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich
• Elegy for April by Ben Black
• Trinity Six by Charles Cumming
• Death Cloud by Andrew Lane

I will confess that I was lucky enough to listen to Elegy for April, a character rich mystery set in 1950’s Dublin. My blog about it will appear on Criminal Element soon. I am also dying to read/hear Death Cloud, which is a story of Sherlock Holmes as a fourteen year old boy working alongside his American tutor to solve his first mystery. I guess that’s career path development.

So pop on over to Criminal Element, see what’s going on, read a great story or two and don’t forget the giveaways!

Terrie

Public Safety Writers Conference

The Public Safety Writers Association will hold their annual Writers Conference at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, from July 14 - 17, 2011. The conference is open to anyone writing crime and mystery fiction or non-fiction, technical writing for public safety magazines in print or online, or anyone interested in writing.

The conference schedule includes presentations such as "Bringing Fictional Characters to Life" with author Michael A. Black, a police sergeant in the south suburbs of Chicago; "Using Forensic Evidence in Storylines" with Tom Edmonds, Chief Deputy Coroner and Public Administrator for the Kings County Sheriff's Office in California; and "How to Develop and Write Thrillers/Mysteries Utilizing an Undercover Agent/Officer" with John M. Wills, a former Chicago police officer and retired FBI Agent.

For information about joining the Public Safety Writers Association and membership benefits, click here.

Cost of registration goes up after June 1st -- so act quickly if you're considering it!

I've attended the past two years and I'm looking forward to another amazing conference this summer.

How about you? Any plans to attend conferences this year?

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Two Sentence Tuesday

You know, the Kindle is very bad for my budget.  Tonight I was watching The Daily Show and saw Jon Ronson talking about his new book.  Instead of waiting, looking up some reviews, etc, I immediately downloaded the blasted thing.  And so, for this week's passage, I give you a bit from towards the beginning of Jon Ronson's non-fiction book,  The Psychopath Test.  The book begins with a mystery, and it does, indeed, contain a "test" to determine whether your friends and neighbors are psychopaths.

“I hope I’ve conveyed to you the sense of weirdness that I feel about the whole thing, and how alluring this story is. It’s like an adventure story, or an alternative reality game, and we’re all pawns in it. By sending it to researchers, they have invoked the researcher in me, but I’ve failed to find the answer. I hope very much that you’ll take it up.”

For myself, the sentences I wrote are not as important as the two words I wrote: THE END. But I know those are much more fun to write than to read, so here are a few sentences I wrote before I got there.

A few minutes later we were on the road in Shawna’s scrupulously clean Lexus SUV. I knew almost as little about cars as I did about flowers, but even I knew you couldn’t buy a Lexus on an EMT’s salary. Perhaps the EMT work simply supplemented another form of income, like alimony. Unlike Suz, Shawna never spoke about her ex.

How about you? Did you get anything written? Did you read anything? As usual, let us know and we'll post a link to you!  

• Leah J. Utas has two hard-won sentences up at her place, and she's reading a classic.

As punctuation, does this ending look more "logical" ?

Per Slate, another modern dilemma of usage.  Should we now place the commas and periods outside the quotation marks?

For at least two centuries, it has been standard practice in the United States to place commas and periods inside of quotation marks. This rule still holds for professionally edited prose: what you'll find in Slate, the New York Times, the Washington Post—almost any place adhering to Modern Language Association (MLA) or AP guidelines. But in copy-editor-free zones—the Web and emails, student papers, business memos—with increasing frequency, commas and periods find themselves on the outside of quotation marks, looking in. A punctuation paradigm is shifting.

Indeed, unless you associate exclusively with editors and prescriptivists, you can find copious examples of the "outside" technique—which readers of Virginia Woolf and The Guardian will recognize as the British style—no further away than your Twitter or Facebook feed.

Image with more relevant links from Jim Romanesko at Poynter

Authors@Google

Despite the ongoing issue over Google scanning millions of titles from more than 100 countries in 400 languages and a lawsuit that remains unsettled, Google has something that authors promoting books may not want to pass up.

The New York Times recently published an article by Katharine Mieszowski of The Bay Citizen describing a speaker series that began in 2005 and has picked up tremendous momentum -- especially when it is broadcast on YouTube and garners numerous hits. More than 1,000 guests have appeared, including over 600 authors, mostly non-fiction.

Authors promoting books in the San Francisco Bay area (where sadly, many bookstores have closed their doors) are making a stop at Googleplex for an informal chat in front of a live audience. Two dozen volunteer Google employees organize the events, held two to three times a week. The series has spread to other Google offices in the U.S., London, and Dublin. Here's a list of those who've appeared in the New York offices of Google.

You can follow the tweets of the series @googletalks.

Follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

LI SinC welcomes Reed Farrel Coleman

Next Saturday, May 21, 2011, the newly-formed Long Island Sisters in Crime welcomes Reed Farrel Coleman -- three-time Shamus Award winning author of the Moe Prager series -- as their guest speaker, from 12-2 p.m., at the Sachem Public Library, 150 Holbrook Road, Holbrook, NY (Suffolk County).

The event is open to the public; admission is free.

Follow Reed on Twitter @RFColemanBooks and on Facebook.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Mysteries are Bloody Booming

So says industry pro Alan Rinzler at The Book Deal, and he's been talking to people in the industry who know.

Image from Bundaberg Arts Centre


"Mystery and crime fiction is booming – there are more debut authors, more acquisitions by editors, higher sales and greater dominance on the bestseller lists...
The New York Times bestseller list confirms all this. Of the top ten books on the hardcover fiction list last week, five were mysteries. And last week’s Nielsen’s BookScan reports that for bestsellers in all categories or formats, eight of the top ten were mysteries. BookScan also reports that unit sales for mysteries were greater than for titles in romance, science fiction, and action adventure."


Go read and be heartened, crime fans and writers!

Update: Think we're back up on Blogger.  Maybe.  Gives it that genuine Friday 13th feeling!

Beautiful Words

My co-worker, Eric Bass, who calls himself a "consummate word nerd", passed along a link to the 100 most beautiful words in the English language.

The list, which was posted on the So Much To Tell You blog, includes words such as conflate, elixir, lagniappe, penumbra and seraglio. Evocative words that might be fun to work into a sentence or two, like my favorites, serendipity and dichotomy.

Click on over to and see if any of them resonate with you. Or, better yet, let us know what your favorites are.

Follow me on Twitter @cathicopy and let's be friends of Facebook

Two Sentence Tuesday

I had a hard time this week because nothing I read really appealed to me. So I started a couple of different books and put them down. Forced myself to finish one because it had been sent to me as an ARC for review. I seem to be in a reading slump, which I hate, because when that happens nothing appeals to me.

So rather than give you a snippet of fiction, here are a couple of lines from an intriguing blog post by T.N. Tobias which delineates various ways of adding a twist to your story:

But, as with anything, there are templates to the twist or even ways to make your linear plot seem to have a twist simply by withholding information. Neat trick, huh? So here are ten general ways to introduce a plot twist, one of which is sure to fit into any manuscript.

Being a pantser, I don't tend to plan twists. If they don't happen, then the story isn't working! I think most of what I write tends to use the "red herring" kind of twist, but I've been known to dabble in other twistiness as well.

In terms of my own writing, I keep plugging away at this short story that's now more than 10k words.  I never planned for it to be that long, and I really wish it would end.  Really.  I have other things to do. *sigh* Here are a couple sentences I wrote this week.

I moved the sheets to the dryer and put the towels into the washer, still fuming over being considered a suspect. I am the kind of person who puts a quarter into the meter even when I’m just running in to the coffee shop and will be able to see the street the whole time.

How's your week been? Written anything? Read anything? As usual, let us know and we'll update this post as the day goes on with links to you!

• Dorte H plays along this week right on...Q...you might say! 
• Leah J Utas brings us something new.
• Gail Farrelly posts a a couple from her latest spoof - and a link to the rest - in the comments!

O'Nan: Holding Them Close

Terry Gross, on NPR’s Fresh Air, recently interviewed Stewart O’Nan about his new book, Emily, Alone. (Click here to listen to the full interview.) When Gross asked why O’Nan chose to write about an eighty-year-old woman, he described meeting Emily Maxwell and becoming fascinated with her while he was following another character. As he began his 2002 novel Wish You Were Here and met the other members of the Maxwell family, he became fascinated with them as well. The book, which he describes as sprawling, encompasses all their stories. However, O’Nan knew he had unfinished business with Emily. Thus, the new book.

Meeting your characters as if they were living people? O’Nan expanded on this, describing how characters appear to him in a fleeting way, as strangers, and then become more real as he gives them a back story and language, and begins to see the world through their eyes. He called it a trick, getting himself to believe the characters are real even though he knows they’re not.

“You need to believe in them and care for them before the reader can ever believe in them and care for them,” O’Nan said. “You grow closer and closer to them and hold them close to you. When I’m writing I try to have the mask of the character on as I’m walking through the world.”

If you’ve read O’Nan, his description of his relationship with his characters probably won’t surprise you. His characters draw you into their lives and make you forget you’re holding a book in your hand. In O’Nan’s world there may be walk-on parts, but no character is insignificant, each the hero of his or her own story.

O’Nan acknowledged that some of his characters might be considered unlikely subjects for a novel, but, he said, “When you look deeply into what the characters have going on, you realize these are really big, big stories. They may seem to come from small places but they’re really big stories that are shared by millions and millions of people.”

Case in point: Last Night at the Lobster, O’Nan’s brilliant short novel about a crew working in a Red Lobster restaurant, in the middle of a blizzard, on the night before the place is to be shut down for good. What O’Nan pulls off here, without a trace of condescension, is the revelation of these characters’ humanity and dignity and importance.

As I listened to O’Nan, I thought about my own writing and my relationship to my characters. I don’t know about you, but I struggle with the bad guys. It’s so easy to label them villains, to forget they have souls, had mothers, wake up with panic attacks at 3 a.m., are part, as we all are, of the human condition. Who would they become, and how would our stories change, if we held them close and saw the world through their eyes?

Your thoughts on this?

Newspaperman Pete Hamill on the News

In regards to recent, lethal operations of an international nature, Pete Hamill, whose new novel Terrie reviewed and gave away to 5 lucky winners this week, spoke to John Merony at The Atlantic about his reactions. This wry New Yorker, who was downtown on 9/11, declares when "it's easy to be a tough guy"

Unfriendly Facebook

Are you obsessed with Facebook? Find yourself checking your news feed when you should be writing? Usually that slows you down, but it doesn't land you in jail.

In Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, one young man found that checking his Facebook account while "working" can bring your career, and life, to a screeching halt. When the 19-year-old burglar broke into a house last August, he stopped to check his account on the victim's computer. He stole two diamond rings worth $35,000 from her dresser, but left the computer behind. Bad move; he should've grabbed the computer while he was at it. At the very least, he should've logged out of his Facebook account.

In September, the young man was arraigned on one count of felony daytime burglary. The sentence in Pennsylvania for that crime is up to 10 years in prison. I guess he'll have a lot of time for a while to keep up with his Facebook account.

What to do after 300 Tornadoes

Zynga's organizing relief through Cityville online gaming

The swell mavens at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books are organizing a Southern Relief shipping brigade to get supplies to people in Alabama who can distribute them locally. If you've ever walked around with the annoyance of furry teeth and sour breath, imagine your only toothbrush flew to another county and embedded itself halfway through a Buick's quarter panel. Let's not mention the fate of the hair comb.  The people who have also been displaced by this catastrophe are bereft of the most basic personal items for comfort and hygiene, and you can help a lot by scooping through your local toiletry aisles on double-coupon day. The Sarahs also offer information if you'd like to ship donations to the local United Way or donate to local food banks, which are open and feeding the multitudes of people displaced by this catastrophe. If you're so inclined, click over and take a look at the options!

If you've already handled it (or you're completely soulless and bent) just look at News Weird's shocking expose' of what toothbrushes do when left alone at night.

And the Winners Are:

All week I've been following the comments on the Women of Mystery Giveaway of Tabloid City, a thriller written by the incomparable Pete Hamill. Today is the official launch day of Tabloid City and I am happy to say that it is also time to announce to announce the five winners.

Congratulations to:

Warren Bull

Charlene

Felissa


Kevin R. Tipple


Nancy Sweetland

You each should have received an email from me requesting a mailing address. If you have not, please click on my name on the Women of Mystery sidebar and email through my profile link.

And to everyone who has never visited New York, or hasn't been here in a while, come visit. We love company.

Terrie

Long Live the Typewriter

Dry your eyes, as PCmag.com said last Wednesday. The typewriter is not dead! Long live the typewriter!

Last Tuesday, the news of the typewriter's demise made its way to a number of the writers' email lists I subscribe to after it was reported that the last typewriter factory, Godrej & Boyce in Mumbai, India, was closing its doors. PCmag.com reported the story here.

The next day, happily, PCmag.com printed a correction. The typewriter, it seems, continues to be alive and well and in production in New Jersey, where Swintec, a company in Moonachie, "is still cranking out typewriters." Read the followup story here.

I was sad when I heard the original report and happy when I heard the correction. My dad was in the Army during World War II and served as his unit's Radar O'Reilly. When I was growing up, one of the things he took pride in teaching me was touch-typing. My dad passed away 20 years ago, and to this day, when I think of him, I still see him sitting at his desk, typing away at his old blue Smith Corona.

I haven't used a typewriter in many years, and I may never have a reason to ever use one again, but it's one of the things I'd still hate to see disappear.

Two Sentence Tuesday

Ah, Tuesday.  Most of what I read last week was political in nature, and not what I want to put up on the blog!  I did manage to squeeze in a bit of reading on Ellen Byerrum's latest Crimes of Fashion mystery, Shot Through Velvet. Here are the first few sentences, just for your amusement!

The body was blue.
Not merely wearing blue, he was blue—and not the blue pallor of death. He was sapphire from head to toe, a deep shade of mood indigo.

There's been quite a bit of discussion on Criminal Element the past couple of days about what makes a good cozy or a bad one, and although this particular series entry isn't my favorite, I do still feel that Byerrum's books are better than most of what is out there.  Perhaps it's because they aren't too cozy or kitchy or "twee."

My sentences are once again from the short story WIP.

“Missy met her in Zumba class at the Y. They go to the same bars, nightclubs.” Marian laughed. “Both hunters, looking for a man. Neither of them’s ever been married, so they don’t know how useless most men are!”

What about you? Did you read anything good or bad this week? Did you write anything? As usual, let us know in the comments and we'll update this post throughout the day with links to you!

• Our own Terrie Farley Moran plays along in the comments.
• Gail Farrelly hits us with a pair from her latest, full story available at The Spoof.
• We have a new participant this week! Sabrina Ogden joins us with two lines from her WIP in the comments.

MTM: Giveaway: Tabloid City

Last Monday I told you I found the thriller Tabloid City written by Pete Hamill to be thoroughly New York and thoroughly superb. Here is the link to my review.

Now comes the fun part. Little, Brown and Company is offering copies of Tabloid City to five lucky American or Canadian readers of the Women of Mystery blog. For a chance to win all you have to do is drop a note in the comment section of this post and tell us what you love about New York City, or what you think you’d love, if you could only get here. Or you can just say “I’d love to win Tabloid City,” or anything else that strikes your fancy. However you choose to enter, make sure that either your blogger i.d. has an email link, or that your email addy is in your comment. If I don’t have a way to contact you, I will not enter you in the giveaway.

Comments posted before 7 pm EST on Wednesday, May 4th, will be printed and placed into one of those big brass drums which I will vigorously churn until the entries have been tossed hither and yon. And perhaps I will have one or more of my grandkids pull out the winners. It is even possible that I don’t have a big brass drum, but, hey, do you really care? Supervising the draw of comments is my worry, not yours. Your job is to enter. Hop to it.

Winners will be announced here on Thursday, May 5th.

And please pop over to the My Town Monday blog and see where other bloggers are helping us visit.

Terrie

And the Winner Is . . .

The Women of Mystery would like to congratulate fellow SinC New York/Tri-State chapter member Daryl Wood Gerber for her big win at Malice Domestic this weekend. Daryl, writing as Avery Aames, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel for The Long Quiche Goodbye. The winning book is the first in the Cheese Shop Mystery Series.

Congratulations, Daryl/Avery!

Hippocampus Magazine Launch

I'm very excited about a new online monthly literary magazine for "memorable creative nonfiction," called Hippocampus. The site will feature memoir, personal essays, interviews, craft articles, and memoir reviews. Check out their submission guidelines.

Today is their official launch date -- and to celebrate, Hippocampus Magazine will be giving away a $100 Amazon.com gift card to one lucky reader today. To be eligible, simply interact with Hippocampus Magazine during their online launch party today (for example, mention them on Facebook and Twitter ~ but be sure to tag it properly so they can monitor).

You can find Hippocampus Magazine on Facebook, and on Twitter @hippocampusmag.

Congratulations and best wishes to Donna Talarico, Editor and Publisher of Hippocampus Magazine. You can follow Donna on Twitter @DonnaTalarico.

Should you join in the festivities, good luck in the Amazon.com gift card giveaway ~ I know I'd love to win!

I'm definitely going to submit pieces ~ how about you?