Baby to Toddler to Published

Our SleuthSayers blog is coming up on its second birthday on the 17th of this month. Wow, we're not babies anymore. We started out not really knowing where we'd go or who we might meet along the way, but it's been fun so far. We have an outstanding group of award-nominated and award-winning authors. We have a couple of writers who had to go on hiatus because of writing deadlines, yet we were able to add wonderful new folks immediately. Now at the terrible two stage, I expect more mystery, murder and mayhem, daily. If you only come around periodically, I suggest you try to come by on a regular basis. You might be surprised at our new running, walking, toddling stage and the very grown up published state.

The idea of comparing SleuthSayers to a baby just brings to mind how a writer is born, grows and develops. Not every writer, okay, there is the odd one or two published the first time out. Those are rare cases. And in reality most of those honed their craft in newspaper or magazine writing or editing. They could even have a background in public relations, advertising or graphic work. It's possible they have a background/work history which they then used to write, like a policeman, a CIA agent, a lawyer, a crime-beat reporter or they were a real private detective. Being a bit of an expert in their field helped their writing craft.

Most writers have to start somewhere in their life, usually at an early age writing. I know authors who wrote a novel when they were ten or twelve or fourteen years old. At any rate, they almost always thought about or wanted to be a writer. I knew one children's author who told stories to her class when the class work was over each day. She quickly learned in telling her tales to stop at the day at an exciting part so the other kids wanted her to continue the story the next day. She was a baby writer who grew up fast.

Another friend who wrote a novel at age 12, went around neighborhood selling copies. I know writers now who write and have children in school. They have to work their schedule around when the kids are gone and then be ready to be a parent when the kids come home from school. I knew one lady who had toddlers underfoot, who would type a line or two, then change a diaper or fix a bottle. More power to her.

I know a lady who is a best-selling author whose husband died from a heart attack and she had three small children and since she had always wanted to be a writer, decided to see if she could make it. She did.

Another writer I know, also a best-selling author who wrote a couple of medical mysteries because his wife was a doctor and he had someone who could help him with the technical parts. Then he wrote private-eye novels and next wonderful thrillers and he stays home and takes care of the kids, being Mr. Mom while he writes.

I always wanted to write and publish books but I worked as an X-ray Technician and Radiation Therapist and after doing that all day and with three kids at home, I didn't try to have anything published. Well, that's not exactly true. I wrote an essay for English class my senior year and unbeknownst to me, my teacher had it published in the school paper. The paper came out that morning and after first period class a bunch of kids came running up and told me that Miss Moore had published my essay in the school news paper. It was What Christmas Means To Me. I was so excited, kids wanted my autograph and that's when I knew I wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, that publication didn't survive and I don't have a copy of it.

My next publication was a scientific paper on a new machine we got in Austin at Holy Cross Hospital called a telecopier. This was before fax machines. The oncology radiologist I worked with was able to send a preliminary treatment plan using this machine and transmit this plan to an oncology radiologist specialist in Houston (not MD Anderson) where they also had a physicist. The Houston folks worked out all the details and transmitted the final plans back to our department in Austin. The article I wrote was entered in the Local Radiological Society contest and the Texas State Radiological Society contest and I won both prizes. The TSRS sent it to the American Society and they published it in their monthly journal. The local prize was $50 and local publication, but the TX RT Society prize was $500 and the promise of the publication in the national journal. That was the first paid publications and it was about twenty years before I was paid for a short story. And it wasn't a mystery. Another five years passed before I published my first mystery short story. Good thing I kept my day job.

But when I started writing with an eye to actually trying to be published, I was a baby writer. I had to learn to crawl, then to walk, and finally to run as a writer and get published more often.. I learned that as long as I kept writing...not really worrying about getting published but sending query letters out and eventually getting feed-back that I improved. I grew as a writer. And strangely enough I noticed there seemed to be a change, or a growth spurt about every six months. The best way to do that as all you SleuthSayers know and any of you aspiring writers want to know is to write, write, write. and read, read, read.

So keep in mind most of us start out as baby writers and we keep growing with all the trials and pains of a toddler and then a teenager, but finally we learn and become a published author. There're a lot of growing pains along the way but it's worth it. Just ask any SleuthSayer.

Lessons Learned

Lawrence Block wrote an excellent article on procrastination in his book, Telling Lies For Fun And Profit. The book is a collection of the columns Mr. Block wrote for Writer's Digest. In the article he talks about Creative Procrastination, the time we sometimes spend doing things other than writing. Not always, but often that time is really when our subconscious works on our story. Yes, really. Of course, that's not always the case. Often writers just put off writing and doing other things. I've vacuumed floors, cleaned bathrooms, done laundry, taken a walk or a shower just to keep from sitting down and working on my WIP (work in progress.) But he isn't saying to become a sloth either. What you have isn't necessarily writer's block.

We may have a general idea of the next book, or chapter or scene but feel things are not quite jelling. It just may be we need a Time Out, which is the next chapter subject in Larry's book. If we have a deadline we can usually force ourselves to set a schedule. Write so many hours or pages or words per day and get our deadline met. Other times we drag ourselves to the computer and maybe miss our goal for the day by a long shot.

Perhaps the scene or chapter isn't working for some reason and we have no idea why. It's just not totally wrong to take a walk or do the laundry. A little creative procrastination or a little time out is probably what our creative brain needs.  I'm always amazed when I think how the subconscious works. Mainly I try not to think about my muse. Because if I try to wrestle it to hop into action, it has a tendency to tell me to go jump off a cliff.

However, if I take a time out and let the whole thing simmer on the back burner for a little while, things seem to straighten out completely. I can sit down at the computer and the words will flow. A direct line from my brain to my fingertips and I almost can't type fast enough.

The flip side, naturally, is even after a time out, maybe of a few hours or a day, things still seem muddled and I know I have a schedule or a deadline then I have to sit my behind down in the chair and write. And keep writing.

Oftentimes when I'm writing, I think the work is going badly. That all I'm writing is total junk; I have to keep writing.  I have to realize the editor portion of my brain is trying to take over and I have to tell it to "shut up and go away." I've learned that usually the next day what I wrote before isn't half bad. I know that every word I write isn't going to sing but I need to stay on task. That once I'm at the end of the story and write the end I'll be able to look at it more objectively.

Once I set the work aside, two or three days, or even a week, and pull it out I'll find that it's pretty danged good. I can see where I need to revise. Increase tension. Strengthen a character. Or even delete a page or three. That's where the revisions come in. Some writers hate revising. I mainly don't mind because I know I can make my story better with revisions.

Someone told me a long time ago, that you have to tell yourself the story first, then you are able to go back and get the story in shape for others to read.

I envy writers who are able to write a book with only a few minor revisions. I'm just not that good. I also am unable to outline a story. I know authors who do a sixty-seventy page outline of their book. I know others who write a brief outline. Maybe three or four pages. If I outline, it's like talking too much about the book. I get bored if I know too much. I  do a whole lot better when I fly by the seat of my pants. I have sometimes made a brief outline when I feel I'm about at the halfway point. Mostly so I can see if I need to add or subtract an element. Generally, I know how the book ends but not always whodunit. Feels like it works better for me if I fool myself then maybe the reader will be fooled. But basically I'm not concerned with the plot because my major thing is my characters.

Okay class, let's recap. Allow yourself some creative procrastination or time out. Don't beat yourself up if it seems like things are going badly. Most of the time, they're not.  If you really want to learn more about these subjects and how to deal with them, find a copy of Lawrence Block's book, Telling Lies.

And remember, each writer has to do what works best for them.+

What R U reading?

by Jan Grape

With the current heat wave in TX there's only one thing you can do to stay cool. Find a comfortable chair and a good book.

For some strange reason, my favorite thing to read is a mystery. Honestly, I don't try to figure out whodunit, I'm more interested in the characters. I have many favorites. If I start listing them, I'll get carried away and even then I'll leave off someone. Then I will get upset with myself because I left off one of my all time favorites, so I won't name names.

However, I recently read an ARC, titled The Last Whisper In the Dark by Tom Piccirilli. The book just came out from Bantam.  Unfortunately, I had not read the previous, The Last Kind Words, I will be purchasing it soon. It's the story of the Rands, a family of criminals...but not your usual criminals. They are creepers, cat burglars, grifters, con artist .It's in their blood and what they do is just their destiny. And to add to the strangeness they're all named after dogs.

Our protagonist is Terrier, father is Pinscher (who is creeping up on Alzheimer's,) grandfather, Shepherd, who is in the latter stages of the disease and who Terry calls, Old Shep. There is a brother, named Collie, who for some strange reason, (if you haven't read the first book you don't know why,) goes on a killing spree and has been executed for his crimes. Terry's sister is named Airedale, he calls her Dale. There are two uncles, Mal (amute) and Grey (hound.)

Terry is in love with Kimmy, who now is married to Terry's one-time best friend, Chub. And I think Kimmy's little girl, Scooter, is Terry's biological child. I don't think I was ever sure about that but it's obvious he loves her and her mother dearly. The locale is Long Island, NY but that is incidental to the story.

Mr. Piccirilli has written an unusual cast of character who slowly become real folks as you continue to read. The mystery is not so much who does what, although there are twist and turns as Terry becomes involved with his estranged maternal Grandfather. Terry's mother was disowned when she married Pinscher and Terry doesn't know any of the maternal side until the man calls and wants to see his daughter before he dies. The old man is on his deathbed. Mother Rand goes but Terry goes with her and it soon becomes apparent the old man wants to talk to Terry too, and he wants Terry to steal something for him.

If that's not complication enough, Terry's sixteen year old sister is involved with some hooligan thugs and looks as if she could be in big trouble almost immediately if not sooner. And Kimmy's husband Chub is involved with some really bad guys and Terry's got to try to save Kimmy and his daughter.

Some reviewers compare the writing to Raymond Chandler and call The Last Whisper very dark. I suppose it is more in the noir category than anything else but it's such an intriguing cast of characters that all I could do was keep turning pages to see what would happen next. It's also probably much better if you read Last Kind Words first because without that background you're a bit lost until about a third of the way into it.  But it is definitely worth your time, especially if you like that sort of thing. Great characters and a well-written story, I mean.

The other ARC I read lately is NOT exactly a mystery. It's A Wilder Rose, by Susan Wittig Albert. It's the surprising true story of Rose and Laura Wilder and the Little House on the Prairie books. I'm not going to review it here as Susan is going to write an article in my place in the very near future and I don't want to step on her toes, but is a fascinating story within a story of the collaboration of a mother and daughter and the blending of facts and fiction unraveling the mystery of these books.

So what are you reading?

Books On Writing

I've often found that books that talk about how to write are useful. Through the years I've bought quite a few of them. I honestly don't use them much anymore, but they sit there on my bookshelf and make my office look writerly.
To name a few: Writing the Novel, From Plot to Print and Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, both books are by Award winning author, Lawrence Block; From Printout to Published, by Michael Seidman; Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain; How to Write a Mystery by Larry Beinhart; Break Writer's Block NOW, by Jerrold Mundis, Writing the Thriller by T. Macdonald Skillman.  Then I have The Crime Writers' Practical Handbook of Technical Information, Edited by John Kennedy Melling.  There's also The Courage to Write by Ralph Keys, Writing the Natural Way by Gabriele Lusser Rico and Stephen King's book, On Writing.

All of these books are 12-15 years old but the information is still excellent. I'll admit I don't look at any of them very often, however, if I do feel stuck when starting a new book and I'm trying to work out characters or plot, I'll pull out one of these oldies but goodies and see what I can relearn.

I think it's satisfying to pull out a book like Block's book on novel writing and reading what he says on building characters. The main reason readers keep turning pages of a book is to see what happens next, and the main reason a reader cares what happens next is because they like the characters or a least the main character and they care what happens to that character. It's not easy to make your characters real or as editors often say three-dimensional. Your  characters must have something about them that a reader can relate to, or understand, or laugh with or at least care about.

We all know that we draw from real people we know. A certain look, a mannerism, a gesture yet we seldom incorporate a real person into a character. We could be sued for something like that. I once had an author tell me he's used a mannerism of mine for a character in his book. This was back when I used to smoke (20 years ago) I would set my elbow on a table with a cigarette in my hand. It was a small thing that I didn't realize that I did but I obviously did it often enough that the writer noticed it and used it. Of course, I had to buy the novel when it came out just to real that tidbit.

I like to people watch and used to go to big shopping malls to watch. One day, I noticed a man who kept rubbing his hands, both of them, over his almost bald head. I don't know if he was checking to see if he still had hair there or if it just felt good to feel his head. It was a gesture I used in a story I was writing at the time. If I remember correctly it was a minor character but I think it added to that character becoming more real.

Some times you write about a small town where people know just about everyone and although you are NOT writing about any town you where you may have lived, you'll probably be asked if Jane Doe is really Jane Smith that everyone know is a gossip. Or they'll say your town is really Georgetown or Johnson City or Kingsland isn't it?  And no, you really made up the whole town. Or someone will ask, where is Pioneer City and like my late friend, Barbara Burnett Smith used to say, I just smile and say it's about forty miles west of Austin.

Time is running out and I need to sign off as I can't sit still too long. I'm on my new computer and it has Windows 8 but since I'm only writing on our blog site, I'm not having any big trouble. And class if you ever have any doubts when starting a new book or a new story, look  on your bookshelf  or look online and see if you can find a good book on writing to download. I'll bet you get some great ideas. Until next time. Keep Writing.

Computer in a Box

by Jan Grape

Do you over research things? I do. Especially when I'm going to spend some money. I've been trying to decide on what computer to buy for over two months. Okay, I haven't spent everyday on it, but every few days and at least twice a week. Do you have any idea how many different laptops there are? Seems every company in the electronic businesss makes a laptop. Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Panasonic, Lovoto, Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung, and of course Apple's MacBooks and their iMac. I'm sure I've left out a half dozen more. There are laptops and notebooks and Idea Books and something called Twist and Shout, I kid you not.

So my idea was to find a lightweight machine with a bit of fast power, a fair amount of HD memory and a price I could handle. I determined a reasonable amount that I could afford and my top figure was five hundred dollars. I knew when I added tax and product insurance protection and perhaps some tech support insurance, that $500 would quickly run up to seven, eight hundred. And I'd still have to get software programs. Most don't come with software installed anymore, except perhaps anti-virus.

Now there're things like i3, i5 and i7 Intel processors. There's 5 GB this and 740 GB that and touch and no-touch and other things with strings of letters and numbers for CDs and DVD and ways you can burn those and USB ports galore and gaming whatevers and HD webcams with dual tone microphones. Not to even mention Windows 8 which people say is so hard to use and a few computer which still use Windows 7.

Before long my head was spinning like that girl in The Exorcist. Surely you can understand why I couldn't research every day because it was absolutely confusing, One day this past week, I managed to chat with a Question and Answer person at Dell who after two hours helped me decide which of their laptop would be just exactly what I needed. I then tried to order it and had trouble getting shipping address set up. One of the main reasons I thought I'd go with Dell is I've had 3 Dell laptops and before that a Dell desktop. I've had excellent luck with all of them and the tech support has been wonderful. But after another hour online and I couldn't get a laptop ordered I got tired of the whole thing and gave up for that session.

Then a funny thing happened this morning after a late night conversation with my Nashville daughter, and she kept bragging about her Toshiba laptop, I got an e-mail from one of those big box stores, telling about a sale they were having. As luck would a very nice Toshiba laptop that fit all my criteria was on sale within my price range. Even better we have one of those stores in our town of Marble Falls which made their geek guys readily available. I drove over there about 5 pm and about an hour later I drove back home with a computer in a fairly small box.

I'm excited although I know the learning curve will take me twice as long since I'm computer challenged. Yet soon I will be ankle deep in Windows 8 alligators trying to understand exactly what to do.

To make this all more or less on topic of writing, I'll have you know that I've got the third in my Zoe Barrow policewoman series about half-way through its first draft and I came up with an idea for a short story this week and was just waiting for the new laptop to get involved with either project.

It's probably okay to research like crazy if you're planning to spend a chunk of money, but when you're researching for your book or story, don't get too carried away. If you fall in love with your research you'll have a hard time going cold turkey. And if you use too much of your research in your story you can get bogged down. Just do the necessary research and then use it sparingly.

Now off to open this new computer in a box.

STAY CREATIVE

In January, my niece Dona and I went out to California to help my sister-in-law's 90th birthday. Dona and I stayed at a small, but very nice, hotel in Red Bluff, CA. In our room was a note pad on the night stand. The hotel's logo was on one corner of the pad, "Holiday Inn Express." In the left top corner in large all caps letters, "STAY CREATIVE." I brought the note pad home and it's on my night stand.

Since January, I've wondered many times, why would a hotel have this on a note pad? Some of you may know, and I'm quite sure it's possible to look it up and find an answer or at least an explanation. But I haven't done that. Maybe I wanted somehow to be creative about it?

Actually, a few ideas come to mind. Perhaps it's a message for the many business people who stay in these hotels. Reminding them to stay creative and think outside the box for their sales techniques. Or it could be a way to remind tourist there are many things to do and see in the area. Don't just visit mountains, visit the ocean.

As an artist, singer/songwriter or even a mystery writer, it suggest that your mind can sub-consciously be in a creative mode all the time. Most of us who write don't consciously think of staying creative, but all of us know our muse is generally on duty staying creative.

For instance, last night I went to a local restaurant to listen to a singer/songwriter that I had not heard in two or three months. I went by myself but two couples I knew were there so I sat with them. My friend, Wake Eastman began singing and I ordered food. A small crowd was in this dining room but people do sort of come and go. It is a restaurant after all.

It was time to "stay creative" as this turned out to be a great place to people watch. Men and women both came in with cowboy hats on their heads. Not unusual in central TX but a couple older ladies were loaded down with turquoise jewelry and knee-length skirts and cowboy boots. Men who definitely looked like prosperous ranchers except their protruding bellies and soft-looking hands and fancy-looking boots told they were either drugstore cowboys or retired.

One lady just screamed out to be a character in a story for sure. Her skirt was touching mid-knee and was a muddy brown. Her blouse was flowered and worn outside her waist, but the neck line was low and her breast tops were quite prominent. She had curly blonde hair definitely colored from a bottle, But her face was the kicker...her make-up screamed south side streetwalker but her face was wrinkled and had to be on the north side of sixty. I don't like to call anyone "old-looking." I'm no spring chicken myself, however, I think both men and women might be smart to dress age appropriate.

Maybe the hotel pad hasn't any hidden meaning after all, but guess what? Thinking about this pad, gave me an idea to write this article.
STAY CREATIVE everyone.

Smith's Law

by Jan Grape
 
Bet you've never heard of Smith's Law. Well, don't fret. I'm sure you've heard of Murphy's Law? Well, my late husband, Elmer Grape used to claim that Murphy was an optimist. That whatever did go wrong was going to get worse.

So I had my internet tech out last week & got my desktop back online and then sorta got the laptop going also.  Well, it was working; it just takes thirty minutes plus to load. Since computers were working I delayed buying a new laptop. And today is when Murphy's Law kicked in. Things got worse.

This afternoon while trying to get my article written and posted, I cannot get online with either computer. The desktop is totally hopeless. I managed to get online with laptop but after 40 minutes of the cursor spinning it just would NOT open the sleuthsayer website.  So I'm writing this on my phone. Thank goodness I bought a styles thingy last week. I can't  imagine trying to type this much with a fingertip.

And so things won't be a total crying towel, pitiful Patty, I'll give you an idea of what my original article was about.  I've had people say that my policewoman sounds exactly like me. Or that this character or that character is Aunt Whosit or Uncle What's his name. In reality none of that is so. The characters I make up are just that "made up."

If Zoe Barrow sounds like me...it's probably because you give her a Texas accent because I'm from Texas.  Like most writers say, there's a little bit of me in several of my characters. But Zoe is younger, thinner, prettier and braver than me. (I got that one from Sue Grafton about comparing Kinsey to her.)

However, I take bits and pieces of people I know or see to compose a character. I've gone to a mall to people watch. To note gestures, walks, body language.   You may take a trait of Aunt Whosit and marry it with Cousin Whom.  When you do that you do need to be careful they don't recognize themselves. A friend once said she made her mother-in-law into a yippy dog but the MIL never caught it.

Characters are fun to create. But don't just give a list.of hair and eye color. Give us something to their makeup as a person. Thats when characters come to life.

I think this is about all I can type this way . So until next time watch out for Murphy.

Memorial Day 2013

Today is the day we honor our fighting men and women, our veterans and mostly it's a day to remember and honor those who lost their lives fighting for our country and our freedom. Yet we also honor those who are still fighting. And in all fairness those who are home but are wounded physically, emotionally and spiritually. Memorial day is for remembrance.

When I was six years old I lived in Houston with my maternal grandmother. My mother, a single parent, worked in an aircraft factory in Fort Worth. It wasn't easy if your child got sick and you couldn't work. If you were late to work or missed work and didn't have a written doctor excuse for being absent you were fired. no excuses, no exceptions. It was easier just for me to live with my grandmother. I was in first grade but I'd been home with chicken pox for about a week. (That chicken pox virus came back to haunt me six years ago in the form of shingles and left me with some nerve damage.)

Ok, back to my story. One day, I was pretty much over my pox when I looked out the window and saw a yellow taxi cab pull up in our driveway. Now we lived ten miles from the city limits (at that time) in Houston on a dirt road. A taxi pulling up was an event in the 1940s but an even bigger deal if you lived out in the country. A uniformed Army soldier got out. It was my father, Sgt. Thomas L. Barrow. He was on furlough and had come to see me. Oh my goodness, I got so excited that my little pox scars turned pink and I thought my disease had returned. Thank goodness I was wrong about that.

I had a wonderful day with my dad, he spent the night with us and the next day when it was time for him to leave, my granddad and I drove with him over to the old Dallas highway and let him out. He was going to hitchhike back to Fort Worth. We sat there just watching from the car for about five or ten minutes when a car stopped for him. This was during World War II and almost everyone would pick up a soldier in uniform. It was almost un-American not to do so. That's only one of the few memories I have of my father when I was little. Since my parents were divorced when I was two years old and he was in the army serving in India and China he wasn't around. But I never forgot that day and still remember clearly that yellow taxi and how handsome my father looked in his army uniform.

Months later, my mother remarried and I went to live with her in Post, Texas. My step-father, Charles Pierce had also been in the army, serving in France and Germany, but the year was 1946 and the war was over or winding down. I remember at Thanksgiving and at Christmas my mother inviting some service men to come and have dinner with us. There was an air force base in Lubbock, forty miles away and these men came from there. I think there were two who came for Thanksgiving and two different one who came for Christmas dinner. Another time a young couple came. They had a baby girl and she was expecting another child. They'd been living on the base and were going to be alone for Thanksgiving.

When my children were about 7, 8 & 9 years old, we lived in Memphis, TN and there was a naval air force base just north of there, Millington. I invited three young men to come have Thanksgiving dinner with us. They were young men, homesick for their families and for a home-cooked meal. They enjoyed the dinner and we enjoyed having them.

Does this happen anymore? I don't know. I haven't had anyone to my house since then. But I have a feeling that people who live near a military base do something like this, at least I hope they do. It's just a small thing to open your home and heart to someone who is alone for the holidays.

Memorial Day is a special day all over our country. Not just for the mattress sales events nor the outdoor BBQs with friends or spending a day at the beach. Hundreds of towns, small and large remember. They have parades and place wreaths on graves and remember the fallen. It's a special day of reverence for everyone who has served our country, those who died and those who came home with wounds that will take years to heal.

I can only hope one day before long we won't be involved in a war. The two wars the United States have been involved in have gone on way too long. I can only hope all our troops will be home with their families soon. And I hope that a little girl or boy somewhere today can see a taxi cab or a vehicle drive up and someone in uniform gets out and looks up and smiles because they are home. I hope that child will run into a parent's arms and hold on forever and remember that feeling, for the next forty or fifty or sixty years. "You're home, Daddy, or Mommy. You're home. I love you."

That will be a Memorial Day to celebrate.

Lost Ideas

I'm thrilled the President is backing research on mapping the brain. Mainly, because I'd like to know where my brilliant ideas go inside my brain when I lose them. Does this ever happen to you? I can't understand it and it's wonderful that scientist are going to map out the brain. I wonder if it will be like a file cabinet and things will be labeled alphabetically? Or will they just handle things regionally? Texas things here. NY things here. California things over here. Music, art, literature, science, mathematics, food, wine, sex, uh oh. I really don't care I just want to access those awesome ideas when I have them.

The aggravation is, I know I had a wonderful idea for this post last week. It was on writing and the lessons were perfect for the beginning writer, for the advance writer and for the astute reader. I had examples I planned to use and even thought of book covers I could incorporate. But silly me, I didn't write any of this down. You see, I was laying (lying?) in bed trying to go to sleep and my brain was running about 120 miles per hour. It happens to me at least twice a week. I just can't turn off my brain and go to sleep.

So I'm lying (laying)? there and suddenly I began having a brainstorm. I'll bet at least half of those 86 billion neutrons were popping at the speed of light and the thoughts kept blinking off and on. Off and on. I'd have a good thought and that in turn would melt into another related good thought. The next idea flowed into another and it all made wonderful sense.

I know, I know, I probably should have gotten up, picked up my pad and pen from my night stand and made notes. Problem is, I was so comfortable. I had my body in exactly the right position so that nothing hurt and it was so nice that I just didn't want to move. When you get to be my age, good sleeping positions are to be cherished and the worst thing you can do is move a muscle. Because once you move, that warm comfy position somehow slips away. No matter how much you try, after you get up, to get back into that comfort zone you just can't find it. It's gone. Where I don't know, but perhaps with the brain mapping there will be a cabinet drawer that's labeled "Comfort Zone For Sleeping." Lord, I hope so.

So I'm totally comfortable and I'm not about to move. The next best thing is to sternly tell myself, "Self, this is important. This will make a super article for my SleuthSayers blogspot." Okay, so I repeat several times what I believe is the main theme of my article. I mentally write on my forehead, as if it were a note pad. Number 1: The fantastic way to do this is by writing...this. Number 2: It's very easy to do, all you have to do is...this. Number 3: Show examples of this. Number 4: Get someone to show you how to pull book covers off web sites and put into your article. Finally, Number 5: bring it all together in a meaningful way and wow...you got this.

That's when the danged alarm went off and it was time to get up and get ready for my bowling league. I was exhausted because I had not slept a wink all night because I had this extraordinary idea to write for my blog. However, I couldn't remember any of it except all the meaningless things.. Like being too comfortable to get up and make notes. Like talking sternly to myself and saying "You will remember, you will remember, your will remember." Like mentally writing bullet number points on my forehead as it it was a lined sheet of paper.

BUT I had absolutely no idea what my article idea was about. Nothing. Nada. No way. I've tried every day for nine days to remember. Used every trick I could think of to bring it all back to mind and nothing works. Which means that y'all now have this silly little article about my forgetfulness and my frustration. As my Mama used to say, "It's aggra-fretting."

Please Doctor Scientist, hurry up and get our brains mapped so I can know exactly where to go in my mind to find those super ideas that I manage to come up with. And maybe, just maybe that awesome idea is there, filed away somewhere in my mental file cabinet and I'll be able to resurrect it and write it up for all of you to read.

Research and Location

In a weird sense this is extra to Dix's blog on daydreaming. The topic of research has been on my mind for a couple of days and after reading about daydreaming and play acting I realized it more or less fit in the same category.
To learn where you characters are going to be located in your book. How much or how little do you research? For my first book, Austin City Blue, I visited the Austin Public Library's History Center. I read all the wonderful stories and newspaper clips that told of murder and mayhem in Austin in the beginning days of recorded records. I was mainly interested in the records of the police department. I used a little historical paragraph before each chapter. It wasn't a clue but I tried to make it relate to something that was going on in each chapter.

For instance, prior to Chapter Five I wrote:
             In May 1904, the police chief announced compliance with a city-ordinance requiring new uniforms for his force. The ordinance stated: "the dress of the patrolmen shall consist of a navy blue, indigo dyed sack coat with short rolling collar, to fasten at the neck and to reach half-way between the articulation of the hip joint and the knee, with four buttons on the front. The pantaloons have to have a white cord in the seam. The cap to be navy blue cloth with a light metal wreath in front." The chief instead ordered felt hats and requested helmets for foot police, making them look like "real city policemen." The police clerk refused to wear his uniform-- blue trousers, yellow coat, and green cap--saying it made him look like an organ-grinder's monkey.

The chapter briefly mentions wearing the dress blues and/or dressing plain clothes in homicide.

Towards the end of the book, I wanted a neighborhood in a specific area that looked a bit seedy but not totally undone. I got in my car and drove around and found exactly what I wanted. It was a neighborhood filled with double-wide and single-wide trailers but not really considered a trailer park. The manufactured homes in the front part of the neighborhood were well kept and tidy, with nice lawns, gazebos, flower gardens and white picket fences. As I drove back into the neighborhood there were unkept yards, a car upon blocks in a driveway. Peeling paint on the houses, children's toys scattered and looking abandon. It was exactly what I needed and I used it in the book.

For Dark Blue Death, I used information I had learned from some classes I took that were presented by the Austin Police Academy. It was called the Austin Citizen's Police Academy program and mainly used for teaching neighborhood watch programs all about the various police divisions. Fraud, Robbery Homicide, Firearms, Victims Service, SWAT, etc., and was a 10 week, 3 and a half hour class session. Each division sent a department head to talk to us and explain what their units did. It was very informative and I met several officers that I later could contact and pick their brains more.

I also drove around Austin and took photographs of a location or a building I wanted to specifically mention. I went inside buildings to the 3rd or 10th or 14 floor to see exactly what a person might see from the windows of that building. Of course, I didn't use all the information I learned. Sometimes my book location changed and I didn't need a particular view or interior decoration.

A writer doesn't always write about the town they live in or even a place they've ever been inside of and sometimes just have to use their imagination. Once I wrote a short story about President Grant's wife, Julia Dent Grant inside the White House. I did a Google search and found pictures of the WH along with some floor plans. I managed to have the story take place in two or three different rooms and felt I did make it sound like the WH in President Grant and Julia Dent Grant's tenure there.

To me it's always fun to research and locate where I'm writing about. Someone several years ago, and I think it was Mary Higgins Clark, told of buying local newspapers of the town you're writing about even if you lived there four or five years ago. You are more likely to get the essence of the town and the people there. And if you're writing in the past, look up newspapers from that era and you'll discover the prices from the ads, what people wore, what entertainment people attended and a myraid of intriguing things.

Like the old real estate sales slogan: Location, Location, Location. Your book or story will definitely sound more authentic if you Research, Research, Research.

Ripped From The Headlines

People always ask writers: "Where do you get ideas?" Gosh, I dunno, maybe the news of the day, just ripped from the headlines. Two items that caught my attention this week:

Body in hotel tank: Cause may take weeks

An autopsy on a woman whose body was found in a hotel water tank in Los Angeles is complete, but the cause of death is deferred pending further examination, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said Thursday.

That may take six to eight weeks, according to Ed Winter, the assistant chief of the coroner's office.
The decomposing body of Elisa Lam, 21, of Canada, was found floating inside a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel on Tuesday. The body was in the tank for as long as 19 days while guests brushed their teeth, bathed and drank with water from it, officials say.

One lady is reported to have thought the water tasted "funny" but finally chalked it up to the LA area having strange tasting water. (Taken from a CNN News Report)

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Don't think about this too much, but maybe for the next few weeks or months people will carry bottled water with them. That won't help with bathing; at least what you drink will likely be pure.

My first thought when reading this was I wonder how many thriller/mystery books will come out next year with this idea as the premise? Someone on Facebook stated that one of the CSI-type shows had this as a story line a few years ago.

Maybe this next item should be in the "Stupid Crooks" column except this guy wasn't a crook. At least nothing was said about his rap sheet.

Woman 'shot' by exploding bullets in oven

A Florida woman is lucky to be alive after being 'shot' when a loaded handgun magazine exploded in an oven.

Aalaya Walker, 18, was visiting a friend when she turned on the oven to heat up some waffles, not realising he had hidden the magazine there earlier, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

When she went to investigate the resulting explosion, she was struck in the chest and leg by bullet fragments.

Ms Walker was able to remove the shrapnel before taking herself to hospital to be assessed. Her friend, Javarski Sandy, told police he had placed the magazine from his licenced Glock weapon in the oven with four rounds still in it.

"He stated that he does not have a temperature gauge on the oven so he estimates the temperature based on how far the knob is turned," the police report read. "I observed that the inside of the oven was damaged."

If being an idiot were an arrestable offense, Mr. Sandy would be in handcuffs by now but no charges have yet been laid. (Taken from a CNN News Report & Tampa Bay Times)

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As most writers know truth is often stranger than fiction. I know writers who have written true stories in their manuscripts and an editor rejected them by saying "No one would believe that."

I've often said and think maybe have even mentioned in a column before that ideas are everywhere. I even have a strange feeling they're in the air and when you need one, you just reach for one. There have been times I've had an idea come to me and a short time later I would read or hear something about that same idea. Or would come across a book written by someone else using that same idea.

But I've also heard stories of authors already working on a book when the major premise of their book actually happened in the real world. Both times the author had to stop and give up on the idea because it was too close to the real events. The first was a writer friend who told of how he was writing a book about a famous athlete (not a football player) killing his wife and he was about three-fourths of the way to the ending of his book, when O.J. Simpson was accused of killing his wife. In my friend's book the athlete is caught burying the wife. The author gave up his book because by the time it came out everyone would think he had just "ripped" his story from the headlines.

The second, was current best-selling author Michael Connelly and he reports in his newsletter that he had a book almost complete that he had to give up because it dealt with school children being killed in an elementary school. But it's got to hurt an author to spend so much time developing the story and characters and then have to dump it. Michael had to do that, Newtown CT was too emotional.

I do know that many television shows of today are based on true stories or events of the day. One television show has used that idea to their successful advantage for many years.

So the next time someone asks you where you get your ideas, you know what to say: "Ripped From The Headlines."

Travel In Style

On most Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, I go to a nearby restaurant on Lake Marble Falls to hear live music. (That's opposed to Dead Music, which I can’t seem to ever understand because they're dead.) On Tuesday nights, it's Mike Blakely and friends singing Tex-Americana. Mike not only writes and sings his original songs, he is also an author of Western Historical fiction, and has won Spur awards for a book and also for a song. He has a new book due out early summer, written with Kenny Rogers about the music business (www.MikeBlakely.com).  

On Wednesday nights, it's john Arthur martinez (small caps on first & last name is correct). jAm was on Nashville Star a few years ago and placed second behind winner Buddy Jewel. Miranda Lambert came in third this same season. jAm sings a wonderful mix of original Tex-Mex-Americana-Blues-country-funk ( www.johnArthurmartinez.net). Anyway, another fan of the live music nights is Lenora, who happens to be a great travel agent. She set up a Texas Music Cruise with Mike and jAm on Carnival Triumph, which left Galveston last Saturday, February 2nd, and sailed to Progresso and Cozumel. The cruise was for friends, family and fans of the musicians and I signed up last summer to go. 

I drove with my cabinmate, Lottie Issacks, to Galveston last Friday as we planned to spend the night in a hotel before boarding the ship on Saturday. We followed the instructions to the hotel, which was located on Seawall Blvd, but I think we got turned around when we stopped to refill the gas tank so we ended up lost in the dark, driving around for about an hour. I mean, Seawall Blvd runs for blocks and blocks along the beach but we just couldn’t seem to find it. Adding to the confusion was the fact that many of the downtown streets were blocked off because Galveston has a mini Mardi-Gras celebration and parade. Every time we thought we could get somewhere we'd run into blocked dead-end. Finally, after passing a parked taxi the second time, we pulled over and asked the driver for directions. He hemmed and hawed and started to tell us three different times then said, "Ladies I'll have to show you, I can't direct you from here." He led us through several turns and eventually we wound up on the back parking lot of the hotel. We got checked in and into our room a 9:15 pm. We washed our faces, smoothed our hair and headed down stairs to the bar for a much needed glass of wine. We asked our server about dinner and were told that the dining room closed at 10:00. Since it was only 9:35 at this time, we did get food. The next morning, we watched the Mardi-Gras parade from our eighth floor balcony.

 

At 1:30 we hopped on the shuttle which took us to the Pier. Aboard the Carnival Triumph, we had a wonderful cabin with a balcony so we were excited about being able to watch for dolphins. This was Lottie's first cruise and at first she couldn't believe all the food was included. There were two dinning rooms that served three meals a day. If you didn't like what your ordered, say your grilled fish wasn't all that good, all you had to do was send it back and order Lasagna. Or, if your lobster tail and shrimp didn't fill you up, you could order a prime rib. And the desserts were out of this world! My favorite was the molten chocolate cake which is sort of a pudding cake with vanilla ice cream on the side. Yummy. Besides the dinning room, the aft deck had deli food, burgers & fries, hot dogs, soups, Chinese, Italian and pizza. If you were still hungry, you could order room-service 24/7. No wonder people complain about gaining weight on a cruise. 

Our musicians put on a two-hour show on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They were listed as private functions but we could invite anyone we wanted and if someone wondered in, that was okay. The music was super and everyone had a great time. 

Our first port of call was Progresso, Mexico. Lottie and I accompanied jAm and his wife, Yvonna, and we walked to the oldest restaurant in town and had a wonderful meal. We were sitting near an open window with a wonderful view of the water and beach. After lunch, we walked over to the beach and while jAm got a massage, we gals sat under a palapa and drank margaritas. A young man came along, selling silver jewelry. We each bought something and within seconds, we were set upon by people selling everything. They hit like vultures to fresh roadkill! Our next port of call was Cozumel. Since I had been there twice before, I stayed on board ship and read one of my books.

 Later, we all dressed up for formal dinner night and enjoyed a great meal. Then it was on to the casino, where I managed to win enough to keep playing for a while. That last night at sea, we experienced a rather wild storm that had the boat rocking. It wasn't enough to make us sea-sick, but it was a little scary for Lottie who said that if the first day had been like this she would have put on a life-jacket and swam back to shore! Because of the storm, our captain put the pedal to the metal and we docked two hours early at Galveston Pier Thursday morning.

To me, this is a fantastic way to travel. Even without our musicians, there's so much to do on a cruise ship: bingo, trivia, Broadway shows, comedians, magic shows, shopping, card-playing, swimming, sunning, fitness room…the list goes on and on. However, you are constantly walking while on a ship. It seems like everything I wanted to do was almost always at the other end of the boat from our cabin. Good thing, as it keeps you from gaining too much from all that wonderful food!

  Then, just tonight on the news I heard that the Carnival Triumph, the ship we were on for five days, and that put out to sea for a new cruise just hours after we disembarked, had a fire in the engine room and was adrift in the Gulf! No one was injured and all the passengers are safe but the ship will have to be towed back to Galveston. I didn't know anyone going on board the ship, but the stewards and wait persons we met and who befriended us are on board. May they all be safe. But please, don’t let that deter you from taking a cruise...it’s one of the best ways to travel.

　

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

My good friend, Taffy Cannon posted this the other day and it just tickled me so I requested and got permission to post it here.  Intriguing idea, don't you think?

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

by Taffy Cannon

This is kind of a blog chain letter, wherein one writer answers a specific set of questions about a work-in-progress, and then tags five other writers to answer the same ten WIP questions on their blogs—and so on and so on until there aren’t any more writers left on the earth.

Of course I am a rebel by nature and so I have switched around the order of the questions to make them more to my liking. Also because this book is unlike anything I’ve written previously.

What is the working title of your book?
The Baby Boomer’s Guide to SibCare

Who or what inspired you to write this book? Where did the idea come from for the WIP?
Five years ago, my younger brother’s health, which had been problematic since a malignant brain tumor in 1994, took a serious nosedive. My sister and I were suddenly immersed in major issues and decisions related to his deteriorating health. She was in Seattle and I was in San Diego. Our brother, a former cop who lived alone with a minimal support system, was in Chicago and wanted to stay there.

We faced a lot of medical crises, bureaucracies, and financial messes. We made mistakes and followed false paths and spent a lot of time with our fingers in our ears, singing lalalalala very loudly. We learned to live by a maxim our mother, gone now for 41 years, used often: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

We had some great help from friends and relatives and even bureaucrats. We also were blessed with a true deus ex machina that changed everything in the family equation fairly early on. But most of the time we were banging around in the dark, trying to figure out what to do next. My mantra became:
“Now what?”

I met other folks my age having similar sibling-related medical experiences and got some useful tips and advice from them. And I tried to find some kind of handbook about the particular joys and challenges of helping a sibling with a serious medical problem.

I came up empty.

My brother passed away last March. And I decided to write the book that I had looked for and couldn’t find.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
The baby boomers are getting old, and when your body turns on you and you don’t have a strong local support system, the default is likely to be family.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote about what was happening quite a bit while it was going on, in narrative fashion. When I looked at this narrative, I realized there was a lot of practical material in there that could be very helpful to other people taking on medical bureaucracies, bill collectors, stubborn patients, unexpected crises, and sometimes other relatives as well. I decided to make it more accessible by putting it into handbook form.

Every family’s situation is different, and so is every sibling relationship, even within a single family. There are, however, common problems and challenges. My intention in The Baby Boomer’s Guide to SibCare is to point people in the right direction to find out more about how to meet their particular family needs.

I danced around getting started with the handbook itself for a while, writing bits and pieces here and there. I wrote outlines and arranged multi-colored Post-Its on pieces of foam board. I did some research and labeled a lot of file folders. In fact, I was researching studies of adult sibling relationships (Newsflash: there are precious few) when my brother went into his final decline.

Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?
Since my agent handles only fiction, I anticipate working with a former agent who represents nonfiction.

What genre does your book come under?
Self-help, I guess. Health. Caregiving. It’s a hybrid.

Let’s see. Maintaining equanimity in the face of uncertainty. Standing up to unforeseen challenges. Laughing at adversity. Have I missed any clichés?

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Ain’t none. See above.

There are certain similarities to books about taking care of aging parents, but the sibling relationship is really quite different from that. There is also a limited literature about siblings disabled from birth, a group with many overlapping elements.

Here’s why it’s different: Your siblings are the people you’re likely to know for the longest time in your life.

Your parents are around for the first part and with luck you’ll have a family of some sort with you during the middle-to-last parts. But your siblings march in lockstep beside you throughout your entire family history.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Ten thousand baby boomers become eligible for Medicare every single day. That’s a whole lot of people getting old at a very rapid rate, people who genuinely believed they would remain forever young.

Nobody’s been talking too much about the boomers for a while, but there plenty of us and we share an important collective history. We were young in a period when it sometimes seemed as if everything was changing at once. We caused or participated in in a lot of important societal movements, events, and changes—sometimes from more than one side. Vietnam, of course, is the classic generation-splitter.

But despite many differences, the baby boomers share a lot of common ground and have left an important cultural legacy. It all kind of blended together over time:
Rock and roll. Vietnam. Protest. Civil Rights. The Women’s Movement. The Sexual Revolution. Exercise for adults. Environmental Awareness.
And did I mention rock and roll?

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
As a general rule self-help books don’t get made into movies, or even get development deals. And a lot of this material is drawn from personal experience, which means it’s about the Cannon family. It’s hard for me to picture us as anybody but us.

However, I would be satisfied to have Meryl Streep play me. She’s also a blonde baby boomer and I think she can get the accent.

December 16, 2012

Today is only days after the Newtown school tragedy. I'm just in such a sad place that it's difficult for me to think about writing anything funny or helpful to readers or writers. I write about guns and murder and mayhem but what I write is FICTION not real life as we have watched unfold since Friday. The heartbreak is still too near the surface.

I have very strong feeling about things we need to do to make and keep our lives and especially our children safer. But I will only say that while I respect everyone's right to have a gun, I see no need for assault weapons. And I do think we need to address the mental health problems that seem to always come into play.

About all I can say, is to hold your loved ones close. Say I love you as often as possible. Hug your children and your grandchildren and say a prayer for the Children:

Charlotte and Daniel and Olivia and Josephine and Ana and Dylan and Madeliene and Catherine and Chase and Jesse and James and Grace and Emilie and Jack and Noah and Caroline and Jessica and Avielelle and Benjamin and Allison.

For the adults: Victoria, Mary, Anne Marie, Lauren, Rachel and Dawn.

For all their families and loved ones.

For the First Responders who are also in grief.

For the town of Newtown, Connecticut.

Cure the Common Cold??

Okay, I guess I really can't complain, I haven't had a cold in ages. Don't even remember the last time. I've made up for it by having a doozy. On Thanksgiving Day I went to the University of Texas football game where there were thousands and thousands of people. However, my interacting with people was limited to the people in the UT Club, courtesy of my sister and brother-in-law who are members. Then it was even more limited to the people who were partaking of the fabulous buffet. But there were still a large number of people any number of whom could have been sharing their cold germs. By last Saturday night, less than 48 hours later my throat was getting sore. Just a little mind you but by Sunday night the throat was raw and the head was stopped up. I had a couple of degrees of fever and felt what could only be described as yucky.
I doctored myself with all my home remedies, Airborne drinks, salt water gargle, sinus medicine, extra vitamin C and by Wednesday the fever was gone and the throat was better and I was on the recovery road. I didn't go out of the house for anything or anyone. Just rested and took care of me. On Thursday evening I needed to go help decorate for a charity event that I'd been involved in since last July. The event was scheduled for Friday, Nov. 30th and was to raise money for the Andy Roddick Foundation. Yes, that super tennis player who lives in Austin. His foundation is building tennis centers for school children and one of the locations is in a small town a few miles down the road from me, but it includes all the small towns and elementary schools in the Hill Country area. Our committee was decorating for a Casino Night Gala to be held in the Lakeside Pavilion in Marble Falls only five miles from my house.

We all worked Thursday evening and knew we need to be back at the pavilion by noon on Friday. On Thursday night late, I realized my cold had moved down to my chest. I wasn't coughing much but just enough to know I probably was losing ground. I ignored it all, could NOT not go help finish the decorations...this was a huge project. And we only had a small number of worker bees. On Friday afternoon I worked as late as I could then rushed home to rest for 15 minutes, then hopped up and dressed in my thirties gun moll best and head over to the gala. It looked fabulous.

We had hired a company who brings roulette, poker and blackjack tables, slot machines and a craps table with all the equipment and dealers and pit bosses needed. We had a silent auction going on with some wonderful items donated for people to bid on and door prizes and donated food and drinks including alcohol. One of our major features besides the gambling was the wonderful musician/singer/songwriter john Arthur martinez and his fantastic Tex-Americana-Mexican-Bluegrass Band. john came in second at the Nashville Star TV show a few years ago. Miranda Lambert, a big country star married recently to another big star, Blake Shelton, came in third. So that lets you know what good company he was in. The winner was a guy named Buddy Jewel.

I helped at the sign-in table taking tickets, greeting the close to two hundred people who attended the $100 per ticket crowd. The tickets included a gaming chip worth $10,000 (only at this event not at any place else.) Then the chips you won you traded in at the end of the evening for tickets which  then were drawn for prizes. The ticket also included all the food and drink, you could also dance or listen to the music, visit with people and bid on the silent auction items, all of which were great items. I made two lovely baskets with copies of my books, 2 small bottles of wine, a package of hot chocolate, a sack of chocolate gold coins and a purple Christmas ornament and donated those for the auction. I also did something this group had never heard of, but authors do it a mystery conventions all the time. I auctioned the right to be named a character in my work in progress. It was a hit and we got a nice price for it.

By the end of the night however I was exhausted and my cold was dragging me down. Still no fever or cough so am hoping I didn't share. I stayed afterwards, helping clean up for as long as I could, and happy because our event was a success and everyone had a good time. Got home and went to bed and stayed there for twelve hours. Didn't sleep solid that  time but slept as much as I could and got some needed rest.

Yet my cold is still with me, I tried not to share it with anyone all week so am still hoping I'll get better soon. I got some new medicine and a refill of another one today. BUT why oh why can't someone come up with a cure for the common cold? Maybe some company needs to offer a ten million dollar prize to the person who cures the cold. If I were rich I'd offer it. If I were a scientist I'd go for it. Until then, try to stay away from germs...they are unhealthy.

ONE FINAL BIG NOTE: Congratulations to our own Robert Lopresti for winning the 2012 Black Orchid's Novella award. Way to go, Rob!!

November Already

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!  Congratulations to Elizabeth Dearborn, the winner of our first monthly contest at SleuthSayers.  She will receive a copy of David Dean's exciting new novel THE THIRTEENTH CHILD as soon as we learn her snail-mail address.  Stay tuned later this month for another giveaway!  Back to Jan...

I can't believe it's November already. We had that silly time change this morning at 2 AM. Did you get to church an hour early or get to the football game early. Oh yeah, I guess if you got to the Pro game early that was a good thing.

I can't believe it's November already. It's only hours until we will have a final vote and tally for a President. All I will say here is PLEASE vote. I voted early the other day which is the best way to do it. No line and it only took a few minutes. Thank goodness it's almost over, I'm sick of politics. I'm definitely sick of the negativity, the vitriolic words and the racist overtones from some people.

I can't believe it's November already and it's only two and a half weeks until Thanksgiving. Have you bought your turkey yet? Made out your menu? Invited all your in-laws and out-laws? Gosh, I haven't even taken down my Halloween decorations. And before I can turn around twice it will be time to put up the yuletide items.

I REALLY can't believe it's November already and it's only fifty-two days until Christmas. Yikes! Have you got any shopping done? I haven't but I'm not worried about it, I give money. One size fits all and the color is always right.

One thing I can admit is I love holidays and I hate holidays. I love seeing family and enjoying good food. But I hate trying to travel any distance and all the hoop-la that the stores and television bombard us with. I saw on facebook the other day that Nordstrom's say they won't put up any Christmas decorations until AFTER Thanksgiving. Way to go, Nordstrom's. Wish other stores would follow that example. I actually heard X-mas music in a store the other day and I thought, NOOOO! Not ready for X-mas music yet. Not even ready for November yet, but here it is. Rolling along.

I do want to bring a blog and interview to your attention. The Maine Crime Writers had a blog today that's an interview with an expert, Jayne Hitchcock, on cyberstalking and cyberbullying. This is a must read for all of us who use social media as much as we do and importantly it's important for our children and grandchildren. This is fantastic information. So head to www.mainecrimewriters.com

I don't know if any of our writers or readers were in the path of the storm. I hope if so, then hope that you are safe and warm. I do have writer friends who were without power for several days but are now electrified and warm and safe.

This is about all I know to write about today. Real life seems to take up a lot of my day...like vegging out on the sofa and watching Texas Longhorns yesterday and tonight Dallas Cowboys.

Take care all and keep writing and reading.

Great Sentences

When you're reading a book that you really enjoy, do you sometimes find that you STOP and reread a sentence? Maybe it's simplicity caught your eye. Maybe you know that it completely conveys the character, the scene, the motive, that it just rings as true.

I was rereading a book by my friend Susan Rogers Cooper last week. The book is A Crooked Little House," published in 1999. Now, I've read Susan for years, actually since 1990 when we had our mystery bookstore and she came out for our Grand Opening. I had not met her before but we had a hard copy of her second book Houston In The Rearview Mirror. I asked her to sign it and from that point on Susan and I became friends. I read everything she wrote usually before it even came out. I tell you all this to let you know that just because I know and love her like a sister, it has no bearing on the sentences in CLH that grabbed, and gave me the idea for this article. It's actually three short paragraphs, but it conveys the geographic location so vividly.

"I love a good storm. I always have. It energizes me--the drama of it, the excitement of it. Rain without lightening and thunder is just wet, but put the three together, and you have a night's entertainment a hell of a lot more stimulating than dinner and a movie. And sex during a storm is nothing to sneeze at--in case you weren't aware of this.
Since we'd moved to central Texas, there was a certain sadness for me about storms. In Houston, where I was born and raised and where I gave birth to my children, you can expect rain just about anytime. Droughts in Houston are such a rarity as to be laughable.
Not in central Texas. Each storm of spring could be the last one until fall;enjoy the one coming because you may forget what it's like before the next storm."

It's words like that which make me want to be a writer. To be able in a few words to convey a feeling of storms, of living where there are few storms. To feel the heat on your skin and body for weeks and months and the longing for a good rain. Many writers can do this and I admire each and every one of them.

David Baldacci's latest paperback, Zero Day gives a description of a woman that is excellent in my opinion.

"Samantha Cole was not in uniform. She was dressed in faded jeans, white T-shirt, a WVU Mountaineers windbreaker, and worn-down calf-high boots. The butt of a King Cobra double-action .45 revolver poked from inside her shoulder holster. It was on the left side, meaning she was right-handed. She was a sliver under five-three without boots, and a wiry one-ten with dirty blonde hair that was long enough to reach her shoulders. Her eyes were blue and wide; the balls of her cheekbones were prominent enough to suggest Native American ancestry. Her face had a scattering of light freckles.
She was an attractive woman but with a hard,cynical look of someone to whom life had not been overly kind."

Wow. Short but so powerful. You know you'd know Samantha if you met her anywhere. There's no reason to describe someone with sentences and paragraphs and words and words. Just find the important little details that can make a character a real person to the reader.

One more example and it's a song lyric, which might sound strange but it's just one that really grabbed me. The song is "Utopia" written by John Greenberg & Bill Murry and is sung by singer/song writer, john Arthur martinez. jAm came in 2nd on the TV show Nashville Star, a few years ago and is a friend and neighbor of mine.

"For 15 battered years we lived out of a pick-up truck. When she told me to make my bed I'd just put the tail-gate up."

Okay, maybe it's just me, but those twenty-five simple words convey so much. I know each of you have favorite sentences and paragraphs that move you or excite you or inspire you. I've shown you some of mine and now you can show me some of yours.

Childhood Memories

This week I opened a quart carton of orange sherbet. Yum. I've had orange sherbet through the years yet, somehow, this time my childhood memories flooded back (maybe old age kicking in, who knows?) I suddenly felt as if I were eleven again, visiting my dad for the summer in Fort Worth, Texas. My parents divorced when I was young. Both parents remarried and during the whole school year, I lived with my mother, step-dad and two little sisters, out on the high plains of Texas, forty miles from Lubbock in the small town of Post, TX. Post then had a population of about three thousand folks and this was back in the olden days when ice cream was only available in grocery stores and drug stores. The most flavors I remember were vanilla, chocolate, Neapolitan, and strawberry. In the summer, when I went to visit my dad in the big city of Fort Worth for a couple of weeks, one of the first things we did was to drive over to Baskin Robbins where, at that time, they offered thirty-one flavors of ice cream. I'd look at everything they had and every single time order the same thing...orange sherbet, served in an ice cream cone. I have no idea why. They had banana nut, peppermint, chocolate mint, cherry vanilla, regular vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, peach, Neapolitan, and something with nuts, maybe butter pecan. They also had orange, lime and pineapple sherbet. I don't remember any of the other thirty-one flavors but for some strange reason orange sherbet really seemed like the best of the best to me and that's what I'd buy.

This nostalgic trip got me thinking about my childhood memories of reading. I honestly don't remember not liking to read and really not sure when I began reading. A little before first grade and then from first grade on I read and still read as much as I can now. I lived with my grandmother in Houston for my first grade and then my mother remarried and I moved to Post, TX when school was out. I spent a lot of the summer playing outside, but I also spent a lot of time reading...sometimes reading outside. My parents bought me books. Post didn't have a library then but there was a small library at our church. Most of the books at the church were biographies but written for children. So I learned about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin, and George Washington Carver from these bios. At home mother bought, Heidi, Black Beauty, Grimm's Fairy Tales and Bible Story books. I loved the Bobbsey Twins and a series called The Sugar Creek Gang, which was about a boy and his pals but I liked adventures and the boys were always having those.

I probably started reading Nancy Drew when I was nine or ten years old and devoured those. I think I tried the Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belton, but Nancy was my idol. She had a really cool dad, an even cooler convertible and she solved mysteries. But my big love for mysteries really grabbed me totally when I was twelve and my father handed me a stack of his paperback books: Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Richard S. Prather's Shell Scott and Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and his Bertha Cool and Donald Lam detectives, and John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee. I thought Private Eye books were awesome and Perry Mason was so exciting by the revelation of the murderer in the trial.

Soon I matriculated to high school and devoured as many of their mysteries as I could find...Daphne du Maurier, Edgar Allan Poe, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dashiell Hammett, Rex Stout. I could go on and on but you get the idea. I still read spies and thrillers, Ian Flemming, John le Carre, Alistair McClain and I soon discovered John D. MacDonald wrote other books besides the Travis McGee series. In the meantime, Post TX got a public library and my mother became one of the volunteer librarians and when they were able to hire a librarian full time, my mom got the job. She had only gone to the 8^th grade in school but she had gotten a GED and she took some college classes by correspondence. She took many of the continuing education classes the library offered. That was her dream job and also helped add to my "have read" growing list of books. Is it any wonder that I wound up writing mysteries and owning a mystery bookstore?

In exploring my childhood memories which I decided to share with each of you I reveal how I managed to fall in love with mysteries and private eyes in particular. What about you?

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to the kitchen to have a bowl of orange sherbet.

Short Stories or Novels?

Sometimes people ask me why it took so long for me to write a novel? I was writing and selling short stories. Well, the honest answer is, I was writing novels they just weren't selling. I wrote two or three novels that didn't sell. One came really close about three times to being published but the editor left or the publishing house went out of business or the novel buyer at the publishing house who was supposed to recommend my book got sick and died. Yep, that all happened. All with one novel. I think it's called being snake bit.

But in stead of giving up, I kept plodding along and because I was selling short stories, I found a editor who liked my work. That person was Ed Gorman and at that time he and the late Marty Greenberg were selling anthologies right and left and actually both of them liked my short stories, interviews, articles, reviews, etc. I was writing a regular column for Mystery Scene magazine.

In 1998 one of my short stories, "A Front Row Seat," published in the Vengeance is Hers anthology edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins was nominated and won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story.

A project came along that Ed and Marty had working. It was to be a coffee table style book about women mystery writers. There were to be interviews, articles and articles, by, about, and written by women mystery authors. They asked me to co-edit with Ellen Nehr and the book was titled Deadly Women. Unfortunately, Ellen got sick and passed away when we were about half-way into the project. Dean James took over in Ellen's slot and we continued the project. We were fortunate enough to be nominated for an Edgar for Best-Non Fiction and at Bouchercon we won a mccavity Award.

About then is when Ed and Marty formed a company, Tekno, and began working out a package deal with Five Star Mysteries. They would find the book for Five Star to buy, and once Five Star editor read and liked the book, Tekno would get the contract and get it signed, get the book copy-edited, get a cover, the blurbs, jacket copy,and whatever else was needed to get the book ready to be published.

Eventually, I had a chance to send my book, Austin City Blue, featuring my Austin policewoman, Zoe Barrow to Mr. Gorman and he recommended to Five Star they buy it. Five Star liked it and as they say, the rest is history. Soon I also had a contract for Five Star to publish a collection of my short stories, Found Dead In Texas. And soon after a contract for the second novel, Dark Blue Death, in my Zoe Barrow series.

In the meantime, I kept writing short stories and getting those published. Yet shortly after my husband passed away, and I began having health problems. I had a really rough four years. I had one novel I had written earlier which had never been published, I dusted it off, did some rewrite and in 2010 Five Star published, What Doesn't Kill You, a non-series or stand alone as some people call them. I certainly didn't do much other writing. My creative muse was trying to reassert itself I guess.

About four years ago, the American Crime Writers League, of which I was President, decided we needed to help get our name out a bit more and also wanted to earn a little money to go into our treasury. We came up with the idea of an anthology of original stories, all written by our ACWL members. I volunteered to co-edit and my co-editor was R. Barri Flowers. Barri was the one who had suggested the anthology. His agent sold the project to Twilight Times and our title was ACWL Presents: Murder Past, Murder Present. It was published in 2009. I wrote a short story for it, titled, "The Crimes of Miss Abigail Armstrong."

In May of this year, ACWLs second anthology, Murder Here, Murder There was published by Twilight Times. Again the anthology was co-edited by R. Barri Flowers and myself. My short story this time was, "The Confession." The story featured my long-time female Private-Eye characters from several short stories, Jenny Gordon and C.J. Gunn. It was a lot of fun to visit with the PIs from G & G Investigations once again.

So most of my writing career has been both short stories and novels. In some ways I like short stories better because you can usually write one in a very short time. I've had ideas and written a story in a day and the longest only took about a week. However, because you do only have a short frame work to write in you have to be more precise, more determined to have characters who seem real and you have to be ready to work and rework until the story is finally finished. It helps to have a great or even a twisted, you never saw that coming ending.

With a novel you have more room to develop your plot and sub-plots as well as develop your characters. There are many more characters and more scenes and it definitely takes much more time to write a novel. It takes me a year or so. But it's so satisfying when you get that book complete and polished and you send it out. There are more chances to make better money (at least that's what I've heard.) More chances for people to believe you are a "real" writer if you have a novel published.

I actually enjoy doing both and since my writing career first began with short stories I love doing them. But I also love that feeling you get when you go into a book store and see your novel on the shelf. Your own...the book your wrote.

I guess it's all how you feel about it. I remember an author telling me years ago, that he didn't write short stories because he only had one idea a year and didn't want to waste that idea. He felt he needed to spend his time on a novel. I can understand but I'd hate to give up either one.

How do you feel? Writers? Bloggers?

What’s Up With a Bunch of Grapes?

As I write this on Friday night I’m trying to finalize some housekeeping chores and getting everything ready to pack  because I’m flying to New Jersey for our Tri-annual Grape Family Reunion. Yep, a whole bunch of Grape get together every three years to see what’s going on in the lives of the seven offspring of the family I married into forty-four years ago.  In 1975, Mom Grape, who lived in Loma Linda CA, passed away and my late husband, Elmer went out for the funeral.  His oldest sister, Ina was in the hospital in VA having just undergone mastectomy surgery and was unable to attend.  Elmer thought it was just too cruel to only get to see his brothers and sisters in the time of tragedy but half lived on the west coast and half on the east coast and he’d settled in Texas.  He was next to the youngest but always seemed to be listened to because of the three boys he was the most outspoken and so his idea was to have a family reunion the next summer, 1976, and have it at our house in Memphis TN where we’d lived since ‘72.

When he got back home and told me, I readily agreed.  I had met all of his brothers and sisters already and knew there was a good chance we’d have a darn good time.  And we did, despite the fact that the last two weeks of August turned out to be one of the worst summers for Memphis because of unusually high humidity.  We’d lived in Houston previously but you never get used to high humidity. All of the brothers and sisters came with spouses except one sister recently widowed and one sis who have never married.  A number of nieces and nephews came, I don’t recall exact number of each but we had 48 people who came during that two week time-frame. We had a small house, (1350 sq. ft. 3 bedroom,1-1/2 bath) but we had a camper and a friend loaned us a trailer and a next-door neighbor who was out of town loaned her house for bathroom privileges.  A couple of people came in a camper of their own and everyone else fought for a space on the floor for a sleeping bag. We had snagged 3-4 army cots for a females only dormitory in the living room. We claimed all step-children and adopted children without any problems and still do. Everyone took turns cooking and everyone helped with clean-up. We took a riverboat ride on the Mississippi, visited the new shopping mall that Elmer had built. He was a superintendent in commercial construction and this was the first two-level mall within a five hundred mile radius. 

It was decided that we’d have these reunions every three years because everyone lived so far away and that long time in between would give folks a chance to save up vacation time and extra money to make the trip to the next location.  In 1979 we went to Fairfax, VA,  to Ina’s house. And our sweet  never married Esther  had just married at age 57. She came but her new hubby couldn’t make it, then in 1982 we went to Cory, PA to Roger’s who is the youngest boy.  In 1985 Elmer & I had moved back to Houston and once again hosted. Oh horrors, heat and humidity once again but we survived. We also had a wedding that year, Easter & Mom Grape had raised & adopted Jeanie and she and Alan had a lovely formal wedding with the reception at our house.  Our house was a little larger, we did have 2 bathrooms yet somehow we managed although we had suitcases lining the hallway and sleeping bags once again littered our floors.

In 1988 we had moved to Austin and our niece Dona lived directly behind us, so guess who agreed to have the reunion.  She had 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and so did we. We had a gate in the back yard fence so people could walk back and forth easily. Plus we also had a Motel 6 just across I-35 which worked out nicely. But that year I said it was time for the younger set, the nieces and nephews, to take over the hosting job. In 1991 we went to Hyde Park, NY, in 1994 Council Bluffs, IA, in 1997 Bergen, NY and in 2000, our daughter Karla hosted the reunion in Nashville, TN.  In 2003, our niece Dona hosted us at her lovely home on Inks Lake, TX (75 miles west of Austin.)  In  2006, Kissimmee FL, I missed  our reunion for my first time. Elmer had passed away only 5 months before and I just wasn’t up to going. In 2009 we went to Sacramento, CA. We had a fantastic time and as usual did a lot of sight-seeing.

This year, a nephew who lives in Little Falls, NJ, which is only 20 min. from NYC is hosting and I’m so excited to be going. I’m leaving from Austin Airport about noon on Sunday, July 1^st and will stay until the 7^th or 8^th.  I’m really looking forward to getting together with everyone.  We try not to dwell on the ones we’ve lost because there are new little ones and new spouses every time you turn around.  As usual we’ll enjoy each other’s company and see some wonderful new sights.  I have no idea who will volunteer to host this awesome family reunion in 2015, but you can bet I’ll be going and having a “GRAPE” time.

Sorry, I didn’t talk about writing this time, but I’ve been recovering from a ear and sinus infection and with this upcoming super family reunion constantly on my mind, it just naturally was the only thing I could think of to write about.  In case anyone is wondering, Knut Grape,  the patriarch of this family (1871-1953) was 100% Swede. In Sweden they have an umlaut over the E but since we don’t use those marks in the USA we’re happy to just say our name is Grape. Elmer and I made two trips to Sweden and met a number of distant cousins. We now have some who come to our reunions and that is way cool.

Next time…I will be back on script.