The Shameless Art of Self-Promotion

It's hard to toot your own horn. At least for most people. But when you're a writer promoting your work it's just something you have to do, even though you may think it sucks. Or so says, Nathan Bransford, agent turned author and blog master in a recent post on his blog in his efforts to promote his new young adult novel, JACOB WONDERBAR.

Take a look at what he has to say and let us know how you feel about self-promotion. Hate it? Enjoy it? Know it's a necessary evil? You can even toss in a few of the things you're doing to get the word out about your work.

Let's be friends on Facebook and follow me on Twitter @cathicopy

Two-Sentence Tuesday

I’ve been thinking about dialogue a lot lately while working on the final revisions for my book. Good conversations are essential to keep a plot moving forward and provide interesting insight into characters.

I’ve always enjoyed the dialogue in James Lee Burke’s books, which is peppered with local wit and slang that is true to Louisiana. I do sometimes think his love of language can bog down the descriptions, but his stories and characters are fascinating.

My favorite writer for quick, witty dialogue is Robert B. Parker. Even when he has an entire page of dialogue it is short sentences that provide a great deal of information. For my example today, I picked from Rough Weather, which I thought was appropriate to our recent experiences in New York and New Jersey.

The bad guys have interrupted a wedding during a horrible storm to kidnap the bride and leave the guests surrounded by gunmen. Spencer, of course, is chosen to carry the bride to a nearby helicopter for the villain. When they arrive, the villain doesn’t get good news.

“Can you fly in this weather?” he said.
“Oh my good God, no,” the pilot said. “We can’t get up until the storm passes.”

We immediately know the dilemma and what that means. There’s no way out and decisions must be made quickly. Guns don’t matter. The number of bad guys doesn’t matter. Everything is adjusted for the villain and his plans must change.

I picked out two sentences from my book, which is about a shapeshifter, that I think take people out of the everyday world into the world I’ve created.

“How do you know it’s Patrick?” he asked when he could.
“I recognize his mane.” Craig touched the tawny, black-tipped fan of hair around the beast’s face.

Share two sentences from your work today and maybe we’ll get a dialogue going!

MTM: The Television Capital of the World

New York City. Television Capital of the World? Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but just last week Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting announced that in the 2011-2012 season, twenty-three prime time television series are being filmed in New York and that is in addition to the one hundred forty news programs, talk shows and reality shows that originate here.

This year’s crop of prime time goodies includes the returning Blue Bloods, Boardwalk Empire, Damages, The Good Wife, and White Collar and some new shows such as Pan Am and Unforgettable. And in case you think we don’t get our share of the motion picture business, several films including Men in Black 3 are presently under productions.

So keep your eyes open as you are heading over to the Today show to join the crowd outside the studio, or to sit in the audience for the David Letterman show. The familiar looking person standing next to you in the crosswalk might have been on your television screen just last night.

For more My Town Monday posts just click here.

Terrie

UPDATE: Jim Winter explains the yearly, pre-Labor Day Cincinnati ritual of Boomsday, when a local rock station blows up the Ohio River.  And Barrie Summy shares the sights and tears (and another very-famous Barry) while dropping Child #2 at college orientation.

Hurricane, Schmurricane

Well, at least by me the hurricane hasn't been much to talk about.

Yeah, our power's out, but it has a pretty good chance of going out even on a clear day, which is why we have a generator.

And yeah, there's a lot of rain, which means it's difficult to get the dogs to go outside (this is not surprising since at least one of my dogs I am pretty sure is a wicked witch and therefore afraid of melting in the rain).

And, ok, there are heck of a lot of leaves everywhere, but that would happen with the advent of fall any minute, so no big deal.

There were four fire calls within about an hour last night, but that's not so unusual during regular rain, either, and our local FD was on lockdown, with several engines available to go out, so not a big deal there, either.

How about by you?

Hold onto your Hats and your Hardbacks

 Irene's not the only one with powerful Forces.
Resist this cuteness, you cannot!

As regular readers know, we here at Women of Mystery are all current New Yorkers, and a couple of us are on Long Island, which will be on the leading edge of Irene's landfall.  This particular WoM, who's had part of her town along the Sound evacuated, is already camped out in Pennsylvania.

Many of the rest of us are further upstate.  One WoM has a generator in the basement, I know, and another's in New Jersey, which has areas being evacuated as well.

So we're all battening down our hatches as best we can, as many of you may be, and as you in the Carolina's and further up the East Coast have already had to do.  I am confident that when the winds blow out of here later tomorrow evening, these tough Northeasterners (whether new arrivals or born-and-bred, everyone nearby ends up infected with New York attitude) will climb out of our hidey-holes, and start cussing up blue streaks while we clean up and get back to business.

My husband recalls sitting next to his living room window in Massachusetts during Hurricane Gloria in 1985, reading an Alfred Hitchcock-themed anthology. When a tree top came down, according to him, he looked out, saw no yard, just limbs and leaves pressed against the glass. He thought oh, well, and went back to the book. We wish you all dry basements, proper current in your wires, and the pleasure of family and friends (and even a great mystery) to keep you company.

Image via Qole Pejorian's flickr set.

Bouchercon 2011: St. Louis

I am very excited and thrilled to be a moderator at a terrific panel called, "Writing From the Headlines," with a spectacular line-up of panelists at next month's Bouchercon in St. Louis (September 15-18, 2011). Our panel's title is "She's Not There" (all panel titles were taken from True Blood, Wire in the Blood, and various shows written by Robert Crais) and will occur on Friday, September 16, 2011 from 11:30 am - 12:30 p.m. in "Landmark 4" room of the Renaissance St. Louis Grand.

I will have the privilege of introducing and interviewing: Pamela Callow (@PamelaCallow) Diane Fanning (@DianeFanning), Ryan David Jahn (@RyanDavidJahn) Karen E. Olson (@kareneolson) and Rick Reed (@JackMurphy1010).

I am grateful to programming chairs Judy Bobalik and Ruth Jordan for arranging such an awesome group and granting me the absolute honor of moderating this panel.

If you are attending Bouchercon next month, I hope to see you at our discussion ~ and come prepared with intriguing questions for these talented authors who have written true crime and/or written mystery, thriller, and detective fiction influenced by or based on true crime events.

Fellow Women of Mystery and NY Sisters-in-Crime, Cathi Stoler, and Clare Toohey, will also be attending. Cathi will serve on a panel, "Creating Believable Female Characters" on Friday, September 16, from 8:30 - 9:30 a.m., in Landmark 1,2,3 room. The panel's title will be "All About Eve." The moderator will be Steve Steinbock, and panelists Sandra Brennan, Vicki Hendricks, Sara Henry, Nora McFarland will join Cathi.

Another NY Sister-in Crime, Hilary Davidson (whose novel, The Damage Done has been nominated for an Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and a Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel; you can read the categories and nominees for the Anthonys here, and the Macavity Awards here) will be moderating a panel entitled, "Monsters," which will investigate crime in the age of social networking, Google, & technology. Panelists include: J.T. Ellison, Chris Knopf, P.J. Parrish, Sam Reaves, and Mark Russinovich, in room Majestic D, on Friday, September 16, from 2:30-3:30 p.m.

Hilary will serve on a panel on Saturday, September 17, from 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. called "Payback," in Majestic D, contemplating the future of the genre, moderated by Laura Lippman. Joining Hilary is Kathleen George, Bryan Gruley, Bill Loefelm, Duane Swierczynski.

The list of attendees is huge ~ check it out!

Hope to see you in St. Louis!

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Soundtracks for novels???

"Booktrack, a start-up in New York, is planning to release e-books with soundtracks that play throughout the books, an experimental technology that its founders hope will change the way many novels are read." and they are talking classics as well as popular fiction. Will it work? You can read all about it in the New York Times. Then decide for yourself.

Terrie

Two Sentence Tuesday

Today is my first day at my new job. I will be working in an office for the first time in...uh...let's not go there. I'll be updating this post whenever I get a lunch break and again when I get home.  In the meantime, here are two sentences I read, from Kaylea Cross' No Turning Back:

Deep in the shadows of the alley where she'd spent the afternoon, Sam signed as she counted the remainder of her dwindling cash supply. Only enough to see her through a couple more days, if she ate sparingly.

For me, I finally finished reading my own work and am revising...again. Here are a couple of sentences:

Meth. Richie Mack’s poison of choice. Ethan wondered if they’d just identified the human remains in the back of the truck. Were both Richie and his dealer on someone’s hit list?

What about you? What have you read? What have you written? Let us know and I'll update this post when I get a chance!

• Karin Huddleston returns this week with two tantalizing sentences from her own MS and two traditional favorites from Outlander in the comments. Welcome back!

My Town Monday: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Visiting recently for a concert, I got to spend a day walking around Philadelphia.  I'd already seen the Liberty Bell and some of the historic sites, so this was more about downtown, where the ornate and historic are everywhere side-by-side with the lively, modern city.

At Market and Broad Streets is the famous City Hall from 1900, still the world's tallest masonry structure and a wedding-cake white that blazes in the sun. You can walk right through that main center portico, because it's a long tunnel onto the street behind.

One of many fine and charming watering holes for refreshment.

The colonial rowhouses are beautiful and you can find stretches of them on blocks around the pretty Rittenhouse Square.

Some of the diverse sculptural menagerie at the entrance Rittenhouse Square Park.

I like my Philly Cheesesteak "wit' whiz," Cheese Whiz, that is.

Right near City Hall is the picturesque Masonic temple building and makeshift scooter parking, more of that old-new juxtaposition I found so charming.

The Reading Terminal Market is a giant, indoor market downtown with tons of shops, stands, and cafe-seating restaurants living inside.

You can get all kinds of fresh meat, produce, ice cream and confections, and other farm-made or local products.

Since we missed the actual Liberty Bell this trip, here's a chocolate one from the market. Have a Sweet Monday!

You can check out more towns at the My Town Monday blog. Leave your links in the comments and we'll add your updates to the list!

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Sheila, who won an autographed copy of Erica Spindler's book, Watch Me Die. Thanks to everyone who commented. We're always happy to hear from readers!

Family Tree

Looking for a new internet diversion to distract you from the work at hand? One that will provide you with more story ideas than you’ll ever be able to use, and that you can justify as ‘research’? How about perusing the criminal trials of London’s Old Bailey?

I learned about the availability of these criminal proceedings, which date from 1674 to 1913, from Patricia Cohen’s intriguing NYT article of August 17th.

The website (“A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published…”) includes instructional videos that make research a breeze.

Since my family had a twenty-year stopover in England en route from Russia to America, I began my research by typing in our surname, hoping for a hit despite our respectable past. And there he was, Jack, a nineteen-year-old watchmaker accused of stealing three diamond rings that he’d been given to repair and clean. After reading the extensive testimony, I, like the judge, was convinced of Jack’s guilt. Clemency was recommended because of his age, though the judge was clear that unless the “lost” rings were found, the sentence could be severe.

Poor Jack. I hope those rings turned up.

Editing on the Kindle

As I've said over and over, I've been editing of late. The last part of this process, for me, is dumping the edited MS onto my Kindle and reading it there.  If you ever read on an eReader, I highly recommend you do this.

Why?  Because reading your WIP on an eReader is the closest you'll get to experiencing it as a book.  I used to have the blasted things printed and bound at the local copy shop, but even that isn't the same as reading a book.  You always know you are reading a mansucript.  It's great if you're going to want to write in the margins, but if what you're looking for is readability, the sense of flow and pacing, the best thing you can do is put your book on an eReader and read it as if you just bought it.

I don't make extensive notes when I am reading my work on the Kindle.  Just little ones that let me know what stopped me at a certain point. I will fix them later, when I go back through and look at the notes.  (If you have a Kindle, you may not be aware that you can check your notes on the web -- https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights once you have turned on your wireless and synced your Kindle.)

So that's my advice for the day!

Sin, Stained Glass, and Suspense: A Giveaway

Watch Me Die by Erica Spindler (pictured) was one of my favorite reads this summer. Set in post-Katrina, steamy New Orleans, it not only provides the thrills and chills this best-selling author is known for, it also gives you a glimpse of a city still on the mend from the devastation so many years ago.

Spindler's heroine, Mira Gallier, feels overwhelmed with grief, addiction, and life in general. Though she has been working with a therapist to heal, her struggles continue years after her husband was killed going to check on her studio after the big storm. The only solace she has found came from restoring the beautiful stained-glass windows in the city. When the parish priest where she has been working is killed, Mira hurries to begin repair work on the precious windows she’s been repairing. Dealing with the police isn't easy, especially when they feel Mira is more concerned with the damage to the windows than the death of the beloved priest. The detectives are more interested in the vandal’s message scrawled on the windows than preserving the church’s spiritual history in the stained-glass windows.

The homicide detectives will be familiar to regular Spindler readers from previous books. This story continues the saga of the popular Malone law-enforcement family with its intricate web of relatives scattered throughout NOPD. As usual, the Malones work well together and have their own stories going along with the heroine’s tale.

When a second murder leaves police struggling to decipher another religious message, they know they’re not dealing with a simple vandal. It seems every time Mira tries to put a block in place to rebuild her shattered life, she’s loses ground. As the murders continue, Mira’s life gets more complicated and intense.

Spindler does a compelling job of fitting the pieces of an intricate, sharp plot together as deftly as her heroine does the beautiful crafted glass. Mira falls deeper into mental anguish and personal tragedy. Accusations from the police and hallucinations lead her to believe everyone may be right about her inability to rebuild her life . . . ever.

Here’s your chance to win an autographed copy of Watch Me Die! Everyone who posts a comment by 7 p.m. on Friday, August 19, will be entered in a drawing for the book. Winners will be announced Monday, August 22. Please be sure we have you email address so we can reach you when you win!

An Apologetic Two Sentence Tuesday

Why apologetic, you ask? Because, embarrassing as this is to say, I read and wrote NOTHING last week.  That is, I have been editing (still/again) and last week I succeeded in cutting several hundred words from my manuscript, but I didn't add any.  I am happy about that, but it doesn't leave me with much to put here.  And then there's the whole reading thing--I've been reading my own manuscript on my Kindle (more about that in a future post when I can put my thinking cap on) and haven't gotten to anything else. Except the dog's vet bill, and that's not written in actual sentences.

Once I realized that, I picked up a book I have sitting here for review that I knew I could tease you all with.  So my two sentences, read just before midnight so they count for last week, are from Harlan Coben's forthcoming young adult (or maybe middle grade, not sure yet) novel, Shelter. It stars Mickey Bolitar, nephew of Myron.  The first two paragraphs:

I was walking to school, lost in feeling sorry for myself--my dad was dead, my mom in rehab, my girlfriend missing--when I saw the Bat Lady for the first time.

I had heard the rumors, of course. The Bat Lady supposedly lived in the dilapidated house on the corner of Hobart Gap Road and Pine. You know the one. I stood in front of it now. The worn yellow paint was shedding like an old dog. The once-solid concrete walk was cracked into quarter-size fragments. The uncut lawn had dandelions tall enough for the adult rides at Six Flags.

And you? Please tell me you accomplished more than I did this week!

MTM: Two New York Restaurants and a History Lesson

During Thrillerfest 2011, Sleuthsister Deb Lacy (you can find her Sherlockian post on Criminal Element.) and I had dinner at two fine New York restaurants. The first, AnTalia, on West 45th street, serves authentic Turkish Mediterranean cuisine. The entire restaurant is crisp and clean. They use locally grown produce and follow traditional Turkish recipes. The servers are happy to explain the ingredients and cooking method of everything on the menu. All in all, AnTalia, probably named for the Turkish city AnTalya nestled on the Mediterranean coastline, is a wonderful dining experience.

The next day, we were roaming Forty-second Street when a man holding up a sign for Annie Moore’s restaurant on East 43rd Street handed us a menu. We decided to give it a try. A typical Irish Pub, Annie Moore’s menu features Irish Shepherds Pie alongside New York Sirloin. We enjoyed it so much; we went back later on just to hang out. But, to tell you the truth, the real draw for me was the restaurant’s namesake, a fifteen year old Irish immigrant named Annie Moore.


On January 1, 1892, Annie Moore, followed by her two younger brothers, was the first to step off the USS Nevada and set foot in America at the newly opened Ellis Island Immigration Center. There was a bit of pomp and circumstance surrounding the arrival and Annie was presented with a ten dollar gold coin which she said she would always treasure. Then what? Who knows? Like most immigrants, I am guessing that she struggled to adapt, worked hard, married, had children and died. End of story. Not quite.

It seems that somewhere along the line it was decided that an Annie Moore who died in Texas was Ellis Island Annie Moore and, with not a lot of evidence, her descendants were invited to participate at ceremonies on Ellis Island and in Ireland.

In 2006 genealogist Megan Smolenyak decided to investigate further. She offered a reward of a thousand dollars for information about Annie Moore and with the assistance of New York City’s Commissioner of Records, Brian G. Andersson, discovered that Annie Moore never left the City of New York. She lived on the Lower East Side until her death in 1924. She married a man named Joseph Schayer, gave birth to at least eleven children and is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens along side 6 of her 11 children, (five who died in infancy and one who survived to age twenty-one.) It’s a familiar story to me since my own ancestors started out in Ireland, lived in Manhattan and were laid to rest in Calvary.

According to an article in the New York Times, Annie Moore’s “living descendants include great-grandchildren, a great-nephew and a great-niece. One of the descendants is an investment counselor and another a Ph.D. Mrs. Smolenyak described them as “poster children” for immigrant America, with Irish, Jewish, Italian and Scandinavian surnames.”

So there you have it. What we now think is the true story of Annie Moore, Irish immigrant. Although her existence was confused with that of another woman for decades in the public eye, her true purpose, a better life for her descendants was apparently met.

The image of Annie by herself is a statue erected in her honor at Ellis Island. The image of Annie with her brothers, Philip and Anthony, is a statue honoring their voyage that was erected in Cobh (formerly Queensland) County Cork Ireland, the port city where Annie boarded a ships bound for America.

For more My Town Monday posts, please click on the My Town Monday blog.

Terrie

The Best of Movies, the Worst of Movies

I was thinking about Anita's post the other day wherein she asked what movies we watched when we couldn't stand anything else.  I fear there is something I must admit:

My husband and I watch bad movies.

We actively seek them out on Netflix streaming.

Epics like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, The Manster, and most recently, Rubber, make up a great deal of our evening entertainment.  Rubber is about an angry, mean-spirited tire (yes, a tire is the star of the movie), who figures out that he can blow things up with his mind and goes on a killing spree.  It's hilarious.  And bad.  But hilarious nonetheless.



And then there's the one movie I can't really share with him because every time I watch it--every single time--I turn into a blubbering mass of jelly: Truly, Madly, Deeply.  If you haven't seen this movie, you should.  It's very British, but don't let that stop you.  It's about a woman whose lover dies and she cannot get on with her life.  So he comes back as a ghost to drive her crazy.  He moves into her flat and invites all his drinking, movie-watching, poker-playing ghost buddies over at all hours, etc.



So there you have it. My guilty little secrets.

Speaker Series in Northport: Comic Books

As part of the Northport Historical Society's Speaker Series, on Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 7 p.m., A Brief History of Comic Books: From the Classics to the Contemporary will be presented by Glenn Fischette, co-owner of Fourth World Comics in Smithtown, New York; Scott Snyder, writer, Batman and Swamp Thing; Keith Dallas, writer, Argonauts and Omega Chase. They will take a look at the history of comic books and collecting. A brief presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.

The event, being held at 215 Main Street, Northport, New York, is free for Northport Historial Society members, and $5 for non-members.

For more information, visit the Northport Historical Society web site.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Sucker for the Handwritten Word

I must have been sick the day they taught us to write the cursive form of ‘z’. Too shy to ask for special help, I just added a loop either side of the block letter, and no one, I thought, was the wiser. Turned out, the only person who had a problem deciphering it was my fourth grade teacher, who scrawled an ugly C- on my report card.

I was mortified in part by my disgraceful grade, but also because I was and still am fascinated by handwriting and its 6,000 year history. (Really. I used to pore over photos of hieroglyphics and illuminated manuscripts.) So my failure felt all the worse.

Like most of us who write stories, I use the keyboard. I like to see my words appear as fast as my brain conceives of them. But I still love the feel of a pen moving on paper, so it's the pits to watch my own cursive deteriorate further every year.

According to educators in nearly every state in the union, learning to write script is not relevant in the age of technology. You might think, given my schoolgirl shame, I'd be relieved to learn that my grand kids won't be subjected to similar agonies. And I am glad that my daughter's seven month old son, who shows signs of left-handedness, will be on par with fellow students at the touch screen and keyboard. No question, he’ll be texting, tapping, and pinching with the best of them. But I’m a little sad to realize that, if he ever wants to decipher all the volumes of his grandmother's hand-scripted journals, he’ll be hard pressed to do so.

(My apologies to Liz V. who commented on this post while it erroneously appeared on the blog two days in advance of its publish date. She said: "Your post reminded me of a scene in John Dunning's The Bookman's Wake, where Grayson is learning the intricacies of fonts by writing in the sand.")

The Summer of Our Discontent

Global warming has arrived. The government, with its collective brain cells apparently incinerated by the heat, played a deadly game of chicken with we the people as the designated losers. And summer movies, instead of offering a chance to escape this mess, are the worst in history. Or maybe not. Maybe, as with childbirth, you forget the pain from one season to the next.

We were persuaded by NYT critic Manohla Dargis, as well as by a desperate need for A/C, to pay money to see "Bad Teacher." Dhargis must have been grading on a curve. You read enough failing essays, and when a D- comes along it looks like a work of genius.

How would we endure this miserable summer without DVDs?

Here’s what we’ve watched lately:

"Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) Meryl Streep walks out on her marriage and her son in order to find herself. Dustin Hoffman, a workaholic ad exec, becomes the best parent on the planet. When Streep comes back for the boy, the judge tells Hoffman to hand him over. Streep redeems herself by giving up custody to Hoffman. Get the message, ladies? Despite the feminist backlash, it was fun to watch. How could it not be with Hoffman and Streep, both heartbreakingly young, and the adorable Justin Henry as their son.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmyfOquda-M

"The Fabulous Baker Boys" (1989) This film stars the fabulous Bridges brothers and a gorgeous Michelle Pfeiffer. Beau and Jeff are piano playing brothers who’ve eked out a living over the years in second-rate nightclubs. When they lose one of their gigs, they decide they need singer, and discover Pfeiffer. She’s a former escort service employee, and rough around the edges, but what a voice. The plot matters less here than the chemistry between the actors and the music, which is terrific. If you’ve ever seen this film, you will remember Pfeiffer atop the piano in a short red dress seducing every man in the room with “Makin’ Whoopie.” If you’ve never seen it, here’s your chance. In case you’re wondering, she does her own singing in this number.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TULYBRHBAs

"Fargo" (1996) William H. Macy is a car dealer in financial straits who hires two psychopaths (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife so that he can collect ransom money from his rich father-in-law. Frances McDormand is the seven-months pregnant police chief who solves the crime in part due to her investigative skills but also helped by the utter stupidity of the bad guys. Who but the Coen brothers could turn this sometimes grisly material (you might want to close your eyes during the woodchipper scene) into a comedy of sorts? There’s not a weak performance in the ensemble production, but I especially relished every minute McDormand was on the screen. This scene comes near the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cOlwnJ24AE&feature=related

Any films you'd like to add to this list of antidotes to the twenty-four hour news cycle?

Two Sentence Tuesday

Today's twosome comes from Stephanie Tyler's Promises in the Dark, a paramilitary romantic suspense.

He slid a gun into her hands. "Don’t think, just shoot."

In other news, I finally finished the rewrite of my manuscript. Now, of course, I have to go back and check to see if I deleted anything vital and rewrite...again. A couple of restructured sentences:

Lucy felt as if she were at the same time floating and impossibly heavy. She could hear people moving around, but couldn’t be bothered to open her eyes.

So what about you? What have you been up to? Did you read anything? Write anything? Let us know and we'll update this post as the day goes along with links to you!
----
It seems to be the week for finishing revisions! Congrats to Leah J. Utas who also finished and has two sentences for us over at her place. And our own Leigh Neely tells us in the comments that she, too, is nearly finished with a major revision.  Anyone else revising?

MTM: Jefferson Oregon Library

A few weeks ago I got this email from Linda Baker, giving us a lot of options to help replace the Jefferson Oregon Library which is housed in a building that can no longer safely serve the public. Well, here, I’ll let Linda tell you:

Hi Terrie,

The sky isn’t falling, but the library in Jefferson Oregon just might. We need your help! The 150-year old-Conser House which serves as our library has recently been determined to be severely structurally deficient and must be replaced.
“How can I help?” you ask.
“Easy as can be!” we reply.
You can:
1. Send an autographed copy of one of your book(s).
2. Make a cash donation – no gift is too small or too large.
3. Submit a favorite recipe and a narrative of your choosing for inclusion in a cookbook with the working title of Authors and Appetites.
For your convenience a project brochure and submittal form are available on request. Question or comments, please email Jeffersonlibrary2010(at) gmail.com.
Thanks and in anticipation, Linda.

Okay so there you have it--lots of ways to help renovate a building that serves our primary audience, the reading public. If you can send an autographed book or a recipe with a narrative about it and you, or, if you are able, a check would be wonderful. All donations are much appreciated. Please email Linda at the above address and she will be happy to send you a brochure describing the project and a submission form explaining how to submit books, recipes, etc.

For more My Town Monday posts, click on over to the MTM blog.

Terrie

And The Winners Are...

The winners of PJ Parrish's The Killing Song are ProCoCat and Jenny Milchman.

Congratulations, ladies!  I sent you email, so send me your physical addresses and I will get the books out to you!

Friday Art in the Park

New York City has lots of art on display at any given time, and maybe I'm just noticing it more as I've been doing so much walking.  My new subway stop is a little further away from my office, and when the trains break down (as has been known) further still.  One such recent morning, I enjoyed my jaunt through Madison Square Park, where this tall, elongated, serene head now sits on the lawn.  It's called "Echo" and is part of the Art in the Parks exhibit.

Here's another impressive figure on the State Supreme Court building that borders the park.

The fountain's kinetic and aural art.

And the plants are in full color.

The walk was way longer, but full of loveliness, so even arriving on my own pins, I arrived refreshed. Hope you have a beautiful Friday and weekend!

Hanging With Friends

What could possibly be better than a double issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine? I’ll tell you—a double issue filled with stories written by friends. This is my own abbreviated table of contents for the September/October 2011 issue.

“Witness Protection” by Brendan DuBois is a story about Justice with a capital J. Brendan’s seventh novel in the Lewis Cole mystery series, Deadly Cove, was released last month by Minotaur books.

Next up in the table of contents is “Hedge Hog” by Hilary Davidson. This story reminds us all that smart as we think we are, there is always someone smarter. Hilary’s second novel, The Next One to Fall, will be released in February 2012.

Then we have my pal Mike Cooper. Who? Mike Cooper. Who? Oh, that’s right, we all know him as Mike Wiecek. Henceforth, he shall be known to one and all as Mike Cooper. Why, you ask? Well, as Mike said to me at Thrillerfest, “spell Wiecek.” Easy for you, you only have to read what I wrote but without a cheat sheet, I flopped on the second letter. So to make it easier for us all to find him, Mike has changed his professional name. He assures me that as soon as his Mike Cooper website is up and running, we will be among the first million or so folks to know. In the meantime, his first published work under the name Cooper is the terrific short “Whiz Bang.” Rest assured that no matter which Mike has written it, the story is just grand. Mike’s next novel, Clawback, will be published in 2012.

And our fourth pal to have a story in this issue is “he who never ceases to amaze,” Dave Zeltserman. I would say that his story “A Hostage Situation” turned out to be something I wouldn’t expect from Dave, but I have learned that he is capable of writing all kinds of great stories. His latest novel, Outsourced, is available now.

Of course I always love to read Blog Bytes by Bill Crider so that I know the latest cool sites in the blogosphere. Besides his review column, The Jury Box, Steve Steinbock adds a special feature to this issue with his article “Seven Anniversaries” which describes each of the ten year blocks of time since the founding of EQMM in 1941.

So there you have it, amidst more than a dozen excellent mystery writers, are a few folks I call “friend.” Always a good thing.

Terrie

Two Sentence Tuesday

Welcome to Tuesday. If you're anything like me, the weeks--and months--go much too fast.  Can you believe it's AUGUST already?  Holy crud!

This week I have a couple of sentences for you from Roxanne St. Claire's Shiver of Fear.  I love her stuff and am really upset that--like so many of my favorite authors--she's moved to YA at least temporarily. I just don't enjoy reading YA despite my best efforts to do so! Anyway, here are a few from Shiver of Fear:

To her credit, she didn’t cry. She didn’t talk, either. Or look at him. What she did was stare at that picture and occasionally give in to a shiver despite the fact that the windows were closed and no air-conditioning chilled the car.

For myself, the painful process of editing continues. Here are a couple of sentences I adjusted this week:

An old, beater pickup truck had crashed through the boarded-over front window of the house. It rocked there, tilted over on one side for interminable seconds, then slammed down onto all four tires.

What about you? Read anything? Written anything? As usual, tell us what in the comments and we'll update the post as the week progresses with links to you.

• Charles Gramlich gives us two sentences (and boy are they teasers) in the comments, and a whole free story on his site.
• Like me, Leah J. Utas is editing this week and has given us some nice new sentences to ponder.

PJ Parrish The Killing Song -- Interview and Giveaway!

As I've mentioned here before, I just finished reading PJ Parrish's latest book, The Killing Song. I also wrote a brief piece about it for Criminal Element. But that was an impersonal article, one I wrote just to give Criminal Element readers a little taste of what they might be getting.  Today, the Women of Mystery are happy to provide something entirely different: an interview with the authors and the chance to win one of two copies of the book!

1)  Some people may not realize that “P.J. Parrish” is actually two people--sisters Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols. How does your writing process work? Do you ever write individual projects, or do you always write together?

We've always started with a basic plot concept and then worked out our main characters and themes. We don't outline but use templates that go forward four or five chapters at a time. It's like E.L. Doctorow said: "Writing is like driving a car in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights but you can make the entire trip that way."  In in old days, we did things by telephone and exchanging finished chapters over AOL. We would also get together once a year, usually to finish a book. (We have a ritual where one of us type THE and the other types END then we hug, cry, and open a bottle of wine). But about 18 months ago, we discovered Skype and it has transformed our collaboration process. We can now share the same page or chapter and literally write "together" while being  1600 miles apart.  We still do the wine ritual even when apart.

2) We've all enjoyed the Louis and Joe books so much I can't help but believe you've also enjoyed writing them.  What made you decide to write a standalone novel this time instead of a series book?

We had an idea for a story set in Paris but it just didn't feel believable that Louis would go there. But even more, Louis's personality didn't fit with the theme we wanted to explore. We pay close attention to Louis's character arc over the course of the series and there was nothing in the Paris plot that we felt could advance him as a hero. It had to be someone else's story to tell.

3) Since many of our readers are writers, can you tell us a little about how you feel having written both? What you like better about writing a book in a series vs. what you like better about writing a standalone?

The good part about writing a stand alone is that it's really invigorating to give birth to new characters and  fresh locations. Sometimes working on a "larger canvas" helps you get out of old habits and ruts. We're very aware that a series can grow stale and there is nothing worse than a writer's ambivalence toward her character starting to show. Our hiatus from Louis makes us all the more eager to get back to him now. The hard part about writing a stand alone is that your characters are all strangers, and you have to build them from scratch.

4) The thing that struck me most reading this book was how incredibly detailed the descriptions of the various murder settings were.  Did you actually go to all those places? Did one of you go to some and another to another?

We've both been to Paris and have visited both the catacombs and the sewers and all the places where the killer left his victims. Kris probably knows Paris better than any city and has actually been in the sewers and catacombs as well as the off-the-tourist-path places we write about. (You can see pictures of the real locations by searching Facebook PJ Parrish Book.) But the other locations in London and Scotland we had to research. We even used Google Map's street views, a nifty tool for any writer!

5) What's your favorite place you've ever visited/lived?

Kris: My favorite place is Paris and if I had the means, I would take my husband and dogs and move there in a New York minute. Second place: Vancouver.  I like Canada; it's a very sane country, and God knows we could all use a little sanity these days.  Kelly: I love walking the rocky windy shores of Lake Superior and I love living in my current home Petoskey, a bucolic town in northern Michigan -- even in the winter.

6) What's your least favorite place you've ever been? (I have to say that Parisian sewer didn't float my boat!)

Kelly: Los Angeles and anywhere with hot weather and too many people. Kris: I'm with Kelly. I hate LA. And I don't like being in any place in the desert, be it humble (Searchlight Nev.) or fancy (Palm Springs). It makes me feel like a dried up lizard. 

7) What place would you most like to go that you've never been? Do you think you'll ever make it there?

Kelly: After writing THE KILLING SONG, I really want to visit Scotland and Ireland. Kris: Australia and New Zealand. 

8) Can we expect to see more standalone novels in the future? More thrillers with international flair?

We're working on a second stand alone right now but we are also thinking about a new Louis book. This is one of the few times in our career where we're working on two projects at once.

9) What draws you to the mystery/suspense genre? Did you always know that was what you wanted to write?

Kris got her start back in the 1980s writing romance and women's family sagas but when she got dropped by her publisher, her agent suggested switching to suspense. Kelly was still working in the casino business at the time but had a great idea for a protagonist (Louis Kincaid) and the basic plot for "Dark of the Moon," which became our first book. It was Kris's husband who suggested we collaborate. We haven't looked back since and don't really see ourselves going into different genres.

10) Your Louis Kincaid series is set in the recent past, but THE KILLING SONG occurs in the present day, with all of its technological advances.  Was it difficult making that transition? What are the challenges and/or advantages of setting a novel now vs. the 1980s? 

It was hard coming back to the present because we're aren't exactly spring chickens and except for Skype, we aren't exactly techno-wizards. So we had to be careful when we were dealing with the current gadgets.  That said, an iPod became the clue that set the whole plot in motion. Also, even though Kris was in the newspaper business for 25 years, she had to rely on friends still in the business to get the feel for all the changes that our hero Matt is going through. On the flip side, when we write about Louis's world (he's now up to about 1990), we have to be careful that we are true to the forensics, cop procedures and little culture stuff,  like a slogan on a t-shirt.

So there you have it, readers! For your chance to win a copy of The Killing Song, just post a comment *including an email contact address*! Winners will be picked on Friday, August 5.