My Mind's Meanderings

I don't have any kind of theme for this post.

I'm still following the news about Japan, tragic and scary. However, I have a friend on Facebook, a Japanese gentleman who I don't really know, who makes the most positive statements about his country and his state of mind such as: "The government is taking care of it." "It's almost time for the cherry blossoms and all will be fine." He also has a cat and has posted photos of it. I like reading what he has to say.

We have friends, a writing couple that we've spent quite a bit of time with, who this week flew to Osaka Japan for a reunion with American and Japanese people who built the Japanese version of Universal studios. Her posts about their trip and visit have also been on the positive side.

Hubby and I with our son and daughter-in-law went to our local Indian Casino for the Friday night buffet because I'd heard they had crab legs. I love crab legs. Even though this Indian reservation and casino are often in my Deputy Tempe Crabtree mysteries, I don't venture out there often because both roads to get there are too darn scary. The one we take goes around sharp curves and over rises and dips that make your stomach lurch like an elevator that drops too fast. The Indians and people going to and from the casino drive like they are racing to get there or home. Son drove and he drives in L.A. traffic all the time so this drive doesn't faze him at all. The buffet was great, best clam chowder I've eaten anywhere, but the crab legs came with no tools to crack the legs or poke the meat out. What a struggle. Daughter-in-law, who doesn't eat fish, laughed while we ate and said she should have brought a video camera. When we go a next time, we'll take our own tools.

From the buffet we went into the casino itself and son insisted we try the machines. Right up front I have to say I don't like to gamble. I don't understand the point of putting hard-earned money into a machine and pushing buttons. Son put $10 in and made me sit down and try. It was a penny machine and sometimes I won and sometimes lost, when I got it back up to $9. 98 I cashed out. Hubby did the same thing with $5. I used to like the old-time one armed bandits, at least I understood what I was doing while losing my money.

I'm the program chair for the Public Safety Writers Association's conference http://policewriter.com coming in July. I've been working on panels because we promise everyone who wants to be on a panel that they will be. Not easy to do if they don't fit for the panels that we've come up with. Now I can understand why at some conferences I've attended in the past I ended up on some panels with topics that had nothing to do with the kind of book I wrote.

Though I'm really trying to work on my next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, it seems I'm spending a lot of time writing blogs--like this one.

And that's what's on my mind at the moment.

What's occupying your mind?

Marilyn

My Take on What's Going On at Home and Abroad

The reason I put the cover of my latest book, Angel Lost, up today is because I like it and it makes me happy to look at.

What doesn't make me happy is all the scary stuff going on all around the world with the Japan earthquake and tsunami being at the top of the list right now--but who knows what will be next? My heart goes out to the Japanese people. What's happening over there is far worse than any horror movie or story. Who would believe an earthquake of such magnitude followed by tsunmai traveling 500 miles and hour? Nuclear reactors exploding and now a volcano erupting, it's all too much to even grasp.

I'm not even going to get into the wars and rumors of wars.

What I'm going to write about next seems petty to all of the above.

I'll move onto something far smaller-daylight savings time. I'm an early riser and I'm not thrilled with it being so dark for so long in the morning. I know that I'll get used to it and as summer approaches it will get light earlier.

Last week I had a couple of disappointments. The big one was the cancellation of Mayhem in the Midlands. This is a convention I eagerly await each year. Because hubby and I are getting older I was wondering how many more we'd get to attend with flying getting more difficult each year. Now, it seems, we may have already gone to the last one. It's like finding out a family reunion has been canceled. I'm not going to see any of the wonderful friends that I've made over the years at Mayhem, nor will I be able to share wonderful meals with them at the various ethnic restaurants in Omaha.

So as not to lose the money completely I'd lost on the non-refundable ticket (the trip insurance I bought didn't cover the cancellation of an event) I decided we should go to Killer Nashville. I registered for both of us (this is a non-refundable fee) then called the airline to buy the airline tickets. To make a long and very frustrating story short, the new tickets, even deducting the old ones, are twice as much as the first pair.

A two day event I was going to attend for the second time (the Jane Austen Fest) was canceled and I might not have even found about it if I hadn't run into one of the organizers and told her I'd see her in a few weeks. Fortunately, I did get the money back for that one, and the hotel I planned to stay in for two nights cancelled my reservation without a fuss.

I then signed up for a one day event right here in my home town, certainly not nearly as elegant and you can see that by the name, The 50th Jackass Mail Run. It cost 1/4 what the Jane Austen Fest. It's outdoors which means putting up a tent, hauling table and chairs and my books--but what the heck, it's close by, I won't have to pay for a motel room.

My problems seem pitifully small compared to all the global happenings, but they are problems I can deal with.

And on the positive side, the reviews for Angel Lost are beginning to come in and so far have all been great.

Marilyn

Tsunamis of all Kinds

Tsunamis, Nuclear Meltdowns, Earthquakes, Grassfires, Union Busters, Protesters, Crazy Dictators, Crazy Actors, Crazy Politicians ....

And that was just last week.

In between crises (Or is that crisi? What's the plural of crisis? Cause we don't just have one crisis at a time anymore.) Anyway, in between, I did my income taxes (I'm officially getting $5 back from Uncle Sam), held a public meeting on new regulations for my day job, published a new Evelyn David ebook to multiple on-line platforms, and worried about Oklahoma's state budget and how the current crop of legislators are going to try to make the numbers work. One of the proposed ways (being debated today) will cripple the agency I work for in ways too many to count. None of the proposals will save money. But, hey, sometimes a press release on consolidating agencies is all a politician can hope for. Real solutions take time, research and require reconciling facts with aspirations. Not something the average state politician wants to tackle. And I'm not even going to mention all the new federal environmental policies being forced down the states' throats. No time to make new laws, just change the policies, and try to enforce those like laws until the courts kick them back. Maybe it's not just state politicians who don't have time to do it right.

But leaving my personal "crisi" aside, I feel so bad for the Japanese people. Evelyn David has a slight connection to Japan. Our first book, Murder Off the Books was published there in a Japanese edition and we've nothing but good things to say about our experience with the Japanese publisher and agent. We wish them and the Japanese people well during their recovery from the earthquake and tsunami.

I hope this week is better than the last one. I don't know about everyone else, but my world has gotten just a little too frantic.

If you want to escape, try our new e-book, Love Lessons. Eleven romantic short stories guaranteed to make you smile.

We also have a new cover for our 4th Brianna Sullivan mystery. Undying Love in Lottawatah now features a minor character on the cover - Leon the bulldog. He was such a hit, that we've had to give him a full time gig. Look for him in the upcoming, A Haunting in Lottawatah.

Rhonda
aka The Southern Half of Evelyn David

*****
Brianna Sullivan Mysteries - e-book series
I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries- Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
The Dog Days of Summer in Lottawatah- Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
The Holiday Spirit(s) of Lottawatah- Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
Undying Love in Lottawatah- Kindle - Nook - Smashwords

The Sullivan Investigation Series
Murder Drops the Ball (Spring 2011)
Murder Takes the Cake- Paperback - Kindle
Murder Off the Books- Paperback - Kindle
Riley Come Home (short story)- Kindle - Nook - Smashwords

Romantic Short Story Collections
Love Lessons - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords

International Dog of Mystery

On Tuesday the collective Evelyn David received a pleasant surprise. We got a look at the cover of the Japanese version of Murder Off the Books, the first book in the Sullivan Investigation series. We can't wait to get our hands on an actual copy. We found it interesting that the title has been slightly altered: It's Murder Off the Book (singular) for the Japanese audience.

It was during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2007, that we first received an e-mail from an agent in Japan. The agent contacted us through our website (If you're a writer, don't let anyone tell you that websites aren't important.). She was working for a publisher who was interested in acquiring the Japanese rights to Murder Off the Books.

Thrilled, we forwarded her email to our agent. He assured us that the agent was real, the interest legitimate. Can't remember a Thanksgiving that I've enjoyed more: turkey, dressing, family, and a possible Japanese sale of our novel – doesn't get much better than that.

Like everything in the publishing world, nothing happens quickly. It was spring 2008 before we signed our contract and received our advance. After that it was just waiting to see when the book would be published. We knew this summer when they asked for information about obtaining the rights to use the photograph of the Irish wolfhound on our cover, "Whiskey," that publication of the book was moving forward.

We're going to be keeping our fingers crossed that Japanese readers fall in love with Mac, Rachel, Whiskey, and the Sullivan Investigations gang. If so, maybe they'll want the second book in the series, Murder Takes the Cake.

Maybe in book three we'll send Mac and Whiskey on a trip to Tokyo. I hear they have Golden Arches over there now – anyone who's read our mysteries knows Whiskey loves McDonald's!

Sayonara,

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

Irish Wolfhound on the Prowl

I hate to fly, as I confessed here on February 18. Despite this phobia, or maybe because of it, I've always wanted to skip "across the pond" aboard the Concorde. I may not believe in the physics of flying, but anything that would shorten the time I had to spend in an airplane sounded good to me.

Unfortunately they grounded the SST in 2003. Still, there are other hypersonic possibilities on the horizon – and last week I got itchy for one of them to be rolled out for the regular public. I'm talking about NASA's Scramjet. It cruises at Mach 7, seven times the speed of sound. That makes the Concorde look like a Model-T Ford. At 2km per second, it could fly from New York to Tokyo in under an hour. I could probably handle that.

And why, you might ask, do I want to go to Tokyo? Some delectable sushi perhaps?

Nope, even better. Last week we sold the Japanese rights to Murder Off the Books! Great advance, great press run, and can't you just imagine the book tour – assuming the Scramjet is ready for me?

The foreign rights of a couple of my nonfiction books were sold to Pakistani publishers. I wasn't surprised that my book, The Baffled Parent's Guide to Sibling Rivalry, sparked international interest. Cain and Abel's sorry tale explains why parents worldwide, from the beginning of time, have been trying to figure out how to keep their kids from figuratively, if not literally, killing each other. Hopefully, my book is the perfect antidote to prepubescent familial warfare.

The most recent statistics I could find on Japanese publishing were in a Publishers Weekly article from 1998. Foreign works account for only about 8 percent of all new Japanese titles each year. What I found especially interesting is that while the percentage of foreign titles hasn't changed much in the last 30 years, the type of books has. In the 60's, Japanese publishers primarily imported literature and philosophy titles. Today, the emphasis is on commercial titles, mainly mysteries and thrillers. How exciting that Japanese readers can discover the sleuthing team of Mac Sullivan, Rachel Brenner, and of course, Whiskey!

So, until the Scramjet can get me to Tokyo in under an hour, I'm thrilled that our Irish wolfhound will be visiting the Far East.

Arigato gozaimasu to our new friends in Japan, from your pals in America, Evelyn David.