Better Late Than Not Getting Here at All

Yes, I did forget this was my day to post--but I had a sort of good reason.

I've been on a blog tour--one I planned myself--and things have been a bit chaotic.

Though I asked each blog host to email me when they received my post to email me back--and they did--when the time came for me to be on their blog--several had forgotten. One host couldn't figure out how to post everything.

Right when the tour started, I traveled to Woodstock with my publisher. It was a road trip, from Central California to Portland OR. Beautiful scenery but not an easy drive. We arrived on the second day in time to set up our booth--not easy and probably more than I should have been doing. The next day we manned the booth, talked to a lot of people and sold a few books. That evening I had a big problem with my heart. It finally settled down and I was able to sleep.

The next day, more manning the booth, then at 4 we broke it down and hauled everything back to the car. We had a nice dinner, spent the night and got up early and headed back down through Oregon and he long, long state of CA, finally stopping for the night. We finally arrived home in mid-afternoon.

All during that time, I promoted my book tour as best I could on my iPad when I was able to get a wifi connection.

The following Friday I spoke to a book club and on Saturday hubby and I drove to Fresno (about an hour and 45 minutes way) for a book event in a really nice bookstore. That was fun. Sold some books. Had a great dinner and came home.

Last night I had some heart issues again. Went to the doc's this a.m. Had an EKG and some blood tests, waiting on the results and have another doc apt. on Thursday.

Was supposed to do a big event on Saturday, but I've decided this old gal needs to slow down. I've always been used to going like a house afire--but it's time to recognize that I can't do that anymore.

I'll have to think of some tamer things to do to promote the latest in my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series: Spirit Shapes.

If you like tales about haunted houses, ghosts and evil spirits--and even angels and demons, you'll enjoy Spirit Shapes.

Marilyn

Change Ain't Easy

by Evelyn David

 

For the past six months I've kvetched, whined, worried, and conversely delighted in and even laughed at all the changes in my life. All were for the good in the long run, but that's not to say, that most didn't involve serious hard work.

To recap the last six months:

We prepped, put on the market, and sold our home of 24 years

We bought another home, after a ragged month of haggling over minor details (them, not us)

We moved on a day that topped 95 degrees

We had the house painted and a few minor repairs completed while we lived in this new house

Then:

Son number two announced that he'd gotten a fantastic job opportunity. Only downside, at least for this devoted grandma, is that no longer will adorable grandkids be 45 minutes away. Instead they were moving to…wait for it…Paris. Yes, I know, I shouldn't whine about Paris, but do you know how far away Paris is and how much I loathe flying? They move after the first of the year.

Son number three also announced that he had gotten a fantastic job opportunity, only downside is that instead of living 25 minutes away, he would now be living in Seattle. See objections above.

Then there were the glorious moments:

In May, adorable grandson was born. He is the child of son number one and his wonderful wife.

In September, son number three announced his engagement to a wonderful woman.

And ten days later, adorable granddaughter #2 was born (to son number 2 and his wonderful wife who are moving to Paris).

Seriously, can you keep up? I can't.

So, with all this change in my real life, I am now faced with another move, this time a virtual one, in my mystery writing life. The Stiletto Gang, of which we are proud founders, is moving to Facebook. It's an easier way to connect to readers.

Writing this blog has been a lovely way to memorialize some special moments in our personal and professional lives, as well as to get off our chests some issues we feel need addressing. And you know what? We still plan to do that – just on Facebook. If you haven't already, please "like" our new page, The Stiletto Gang. Stop by, chat, and catch up on all that's happening with our gang.

All best wishes,

Marian, the Northern, frazzled half of Evelyn David

 

_________________

Evelyn David's Mysteries 

 

 

Audible    iTunes

Audible    iTunes

Audible    iTunes

 

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
A Haunting in Lottawatah - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
Lottawatah Twister - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
Missing in Lottawatah - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
Good Grief in Lottawatah - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
Summer Lightning in Lottawatah - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
Lottawatah Fireworks - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords

The Ghosts of Lottawatah - trade paperback collection of the Brianna e-books
Book 1 - I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries (includes the first four Brianna e-books)
Book 2 - A Haunting in Lottawatah (includes the 5th, 6th, and 7th Brianna e-books)
Book 3 - Lottawatah Fireworks (includes the 8th, 9th, and 10th Brianna e-books)

Sullivan Investigations Mystery series
Murder Off the Books Kindle - Nook - Smashwords - Trade Paperback
Murder Takes the Cake Kindle - Nook - Smashwords - Trade Paperback 
Murder Doubles Back Kindle - Nook - Smashwords - Trade Paperback
Riley Come Home (short story)- Kindle - Nook - Smashwords
Moonlighting at the Mall (short story) - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords

Romances
Love Lessons - Kindle - Nook - Smashwords

An Exception to the Rules of Perfect Timing

By Laura Spinella

Amazing how the second Friday of the month (my high-heel post day) sneaks up on me! A quick blog, as

Clarabel and Robert, September 24, 1949

Mother is visiting this weekend. If you know Mother, you also know that my hands are filled with dust mops and disinfectant, and that I have no time to devote to cleverness or chatty banter.

So I will keep this blog simple and relevant, noting first and foremost that the Stiletto Gang has expanded their social media horizons by creating a Facebook page!  I’m excited about this new venture, and hope it will offer greater opportunities for us to interact with Stiletto Gang followers, as well as with each other.  Please come by and “like” us!

If you haven’t heard, I have a new book out in a few weeks, PERFECT TIMING! As excited as I am about the Stiletto Gang’s new digs, I’m maybe a hair more stoked about this. Honestly?  I believe the book's existence can be traced to blood being drawn directly from a vein—one in my neck. This is my second published novel, and I am excited to share it with readers. One-thousand-and-one iterations later, the back cover blurb goes like this:

There’s rock, there’s a hard place, then there’s Aidan & Isabel

What’s a Jersey Girl to do when she moves to Catswallow, Alabama? Isabel Lang finds the answer in friendship, an unlikely bond with the musically gifted Aidan Roycroft. The two share everything from a first kiss to startling family secrets. But when Aidan is accused of a violent crime these inseparable friends flee to Las Vegas. The move seems like a jackpot win as a long-awaited romance ignites and a major recording label offers Aidan a deal. But Vegas luck doesn’t last when circumstance interferes and Isabel’s future comes tumbling down.

Seven years later the past is history. That includes any yesteryear bond with Aidan Roycroft—an entity better known as Aidan Royce, Alabama’s own Springsteen. Isabel is busy running a radio station and closing in on a commitment with Nate Potter, a guy who defines ideal. Life seems cozy until new station management demands a sudden-death ratings grabber, putting everyone’s future on the line. What should be a simple solution leads to a stunning revelation as Isabel is forced to call on the past and the only rock star she knows.        

          

If that tickled your reading fancy, you can pop over to Goodreads where there’s a giveaway going on, courtesy of those nice folks at Penguin.  If you’d like to read a little more now, you can find the first chapter on my website 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Perfect Timing

by Laura Spinella

Giveaway ends November 09, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Wishing you all a wonderful fall weekend! Many thanks for visiting with us at the Stiletto Gang while I visit with Mother!

Laura Spinella, a RITA finalist, is the author of the award-winning novel, BEAUTIFUL DISASTER. PERFECT TIMING is available November 5^th!  

Literary Genome Project?

by Bethany Maines         

As I was furiously hitting the “thumbs down” on Pandora this morning, I wondered just how their stupid blankity, blank, blank, algorithms could get my musical tastes so wrong. Pandora, for those unaware, is a free music service that plays “stations” based on songs you select or “like.” I doubt that I have ever “liked” an Audio Slave song, and even if I have, at no point in my entire life, will I ever feel like Audio Slave at eight in the morning.

An internet search reveals that Pandora algorithms ignore such things as genre, artist, or what other members also like those songs. Instead, they run of Music Genome technology that analyzes each song and suggests songs that have similar characteristics. Which, in theory, is awesome.  At eight in the morning, it sucks major hind tit.

But isn’t that the problem with algorithms? There is always one more factor you wish the algorithm had been programmed to consider.

I used to read the newspaper movie reviews and I became attuned to interpreting the reviewers taste to mine. A one star comedy was really a two star comedy. A two star action movie was really four star awesomeness. And a three star drama was a three star drama. The man really did not fully embrace the action movie ethos. 

Finding a book to read is another exercise in mental jujitsu. We all do it - weighing what we know about the author, the person recommending the book, the book blurb, and any reviews, all before buying or borrowing. All I really want is a book with minimal plot holes that makes me laugh, fall in love, and thrill to moments of action. We need a Literature Genome project! Something who can tell us all about the tone, the writing quality and the basic je ne sais quoi of a book. Although, now that I think about it – that may just be currently known as “a Librarian.”

The Stiletto Gang is now on Facebook!  Please come join us!

  

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter.

A brave new world - FACEBOOK!

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Okay, Facebook has been around for a while, so it isn't exactly brand new. Each of us have our own social media pages for us to socialize, post cat photos and talk about what we had for dinner, but as of this week we now have combined forces and have a page dedicated to all things STILETTO GANG!

Hurray! Throw confetti!  Dance!  Eat cake!  Take a nap!

Hmmm...well, the last suggestion might not sound all that exciting to some, but the idea of a nap sounds like a wonderful way to celebrate to me.  I guess that's the late night writing sessions and the hectic conference and travel schedule talking.  But hey - we all have different things that make us happy, right?

Which is why a group Facebook page is such a fun concept to me.  Instead of one person blogging every day - which is good...now we can all chat and yammer and give stuff away all on the same days. It's an every day party hosted by a bunch of ladies in high-heeled footwear.  (Or wedges and flats....I can't help it.  High heels and I don't always get along!)  We are still working out all the details on how the Facebook page will evolve and much of that depends on you and what kinds of parties you like best....cake eating?  Confetti throwing, dancing or napping?  However it grows and changes, I can promise you one thing - it's going to a fun adventure.   But of course, for the adventure to really begin, we need you!  

Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/stilettogang

Like the page.

And let the fun begin!

Through the Evil Days - Julia Spencer-Fleming

The Stiletto Gang is delighted to welcome Julia Spencer-Fleming!  We are huge fans so this guest appearance has us all a-twitter...if you haven't checked out Julia's books featuring minister Clare Fergusson and police chief Russ Van Alstyne, now's the time. Through the Evil Days, the seventh in this fantastic series, is on sale this November.

Dos and Don'ts of blending Mystery and Romance

I clearly remember the moment when I realized that the romance subplot/second story of my mysteries had become the plot/primary story: I had just given a talk to an enthusiastic group at a bookstore,  detailing how I work out the twists and turns of the murder, how I use the harsh weather and rural landscape to echo conflicts within the book, how the crimes highlights social issues I feel strongly about. The it was time for questions. A well-dressed woman's hand shot up. “What I want to know is,” she stood up for emphasis, “when are they going to Do It?”

Well, then.

The tradition of including a romance within a mystery goes way back – who among us hasn't swooned when Peter Whimsey finally got his proposal to Harriet Vane right: “Placetne, magistra?” “Placet.” Or when Deborah Knott finally realizes Dwight Bryant has been waiting for her for years. Or when art thief John Smythe, battered and bruised, admits his love for art historian Vicky Bliss? Can you recall the crimes in Gaudy Night, Rituals of the Season and Trojan Gold? I can't. But, boy, I remember those scenes.

So what have I learned in seven – soon to be eight – books about the tortured, tempestuous relationship between Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and chief of police Russ Van Alstyne? Glad you asked. Let me share with you my dos and don'ts of blending the genres:

DO take advantage of the long story arc. In a straight-up romance, the hero and heroine need to find their “Happy Ever After” by the end of the book (in the same way that the mystery has to be solved at the end in crime fiction.) But in a series, readers get to follow the couple, sometimes for years, as they get to know and love each other. When Russ and Clare meet in In the Bleak Midwinter, he's contentedly married and she's a brand-new cleric in a brand-new parish. How they struggle and resist and succumb to their feelings becomes a story that spreads out over seven books (and counting!)

DON'T play it safe. There's a lot of crime fiction where the amateur sleuth meets the detective in book one, dates him in books two through four, is engaged in book five and married by book six. Their big conflict is usually that she's nosy and he's overprotective. Nice enough, but it doesn't tend to make the heart race. A good romance has complications and obstacles and hurdles galore for the lovers. In Hank Phillippi Ryan's Jane Ryland books, her eponymous heroine and Detective Jake Brogan are passionately in love right from the start. But if he's dating a reporter, he'll be suspected by the department anytime anyone leaks a story to the press. And if she's dating a cop, her hard-won career as a crime reporter becomes tainted be perceptions of favoritism. They literally can't be seen together. But they yearn to be together! What to do? Obviously, you have to keep reading to find out.

DO use danger as an aphrodisiac. In Out of the Deep I Cry, Russ and Clare are locked in the pitch-black  cellar of a derelict building. They have no weapons, no phone and the place is flooding with freezing cold water. (It sounds a little bit like the Perils of Pauline as I describe the scene, but trust me, it works.) Isolation and the fear of imminent death break down their barriers and they kiss. Who wouldn't? If the hero and heroine are going to be rubbing shoulders with bad guys and putting themselves in harm's way, take advantage of it!

DON'T mess with reader expectations. When someone picks up a mystery, she has a reasonable expectation that there's going to be a crime (usually a murder) a series of clues, and a solution. When someone reads a romance, she has a reasonable expectation that there will be a couple, they will change and be changed by each other, and they will reach a Happily Ever After (or at least a Happy-For-Now, with an option to upgrade.) There's not much more disappointing than getting to the end of a mystery and not learning Whodunnit. Or how. It's equally infuriating to root and cheer for a couple only to have one of them die or leave town at the end. Elizabeth George, I'm looking at you, here.

DO It. When readers have anguished and yearned and hoped along with a couple for two, four, six books, they want to experience the payoff. You don't have to have a play-by-play book with diagrams, but let's see a few fireworks! Readers want to experience the big emotions in the other parts of the characters' lives – anger, frustration, triumph – so it's natural to want to be there for one of the biggest emotional events of all. And, after all, unlike killing someone, it's something most of us have actual experience with...

Julia Spencer-Fleming's New York Times bestselling books have won multiple awards, including the Anthony and Agatha, and have been Edgar and RT Reader's Choice nominees.  The next Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne novel, Through the Evil Days, comes out on November 5^th. You can find Julia at her website, her readerSpace, on Facebook and on Twitter as @jspencerfleming. She also blogs with the Jungle Red Writers.

http://www.juliaspencerfleming.com/index.html

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062196538

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rituals-of-the-season-margaret-maron/1100299235?ean=9780892968091

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780380731237-3

http://www.amazon.com/Through-Evil-Days-Fergusson-Mysteries/dp/0312606842/ref=la_B001IGUSD4_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380651916&sr=1-1
 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-the-bleak-midwinter-julia-spencer-fleming/1100337490?ean=9781250006516

http://www.amazon.com/Hank-Phillippi-Ryan/e/B001T2BNEA/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1380651974&sr=1-2-ent

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250016041

http://www.juliaspencerfleming.com/index.html

http://www.amazon.com/Through-Evil-Days-Fergusson-Mysteries/dp/0312606842

http://www.juliaspencerfleming.com/index.html

http://juliaspencerfleming.ning.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Spencer-Fleming/177457288939862

https://twitter.com/JSpencerFleming

https://twitter.com/JSpencerFleming

http://www.jungleredwriters.com/

The Mental Getaway

By Laura Bradford

I'm not sure if it's the stress of my impending deadline (although I think this is going to be a really fun book) or life stuff, but I keep finding myself dreaming of places I want to go.

Some, are favorite spots--places I've been and absolutely adore. Others, are places I simply want to go to because of things I've heard or pictures I've seen.

Today, I want to get on a plane and go to Disney. I just want to smile and play and have ZERO stress.

Next week, I could see that becoming my aunt's place in the city...where I can write for hours and then head across the park to watch the sea lion's eat.

Where would you go today if you could?

~Laura

How Do You Decide Which Mystery or Writing Conference to Go to?

Going to mystery cons are so much fun--and I used to go to a lot more than what I do now. The main reason I've cut down is I no longer enjoy flying. I've always had to change planes at least twice and often three times. Once I had to change concourses which meant a bus ride and going through security again.

Back when it was easier, I went to Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime no matter where they were (well in the U.S. anyway.)  After a while it was like going to a reunion because of meeting old friends--some of whom I met at previous cons.

One of my favorite cons was Mayhem in the Midlands which is no longer in existence. Too bad, Omaha was a great place to visit. And that was part of the whole experience, because all these cons are held in different cities, there is the opportunity to see places you'd never get to otherwise.

I went once to Love is Murder and loved it. Being a California native, what I didn't love was flying in right in front of a snow storm--though loved the snow once we got settled in the hotel. Also loved meeting new people, and spending time with old friends too.

I've been twice to Malice Domestic--loved it, but it's just too far away.

Left Coast Crime is another favorite--and I will be going to the one in Monterey CA--that's drivable for me. Whether or not I'll go to Bouchercon (also in CA--Long Beach) hasn't been decided. Driving in L.A. traffic is another things I've given up.

One writing conference I go to every year is Public Safety Writers Association's conference. The participants are made up of men and women in many public safety field, active and retired: police, FBI, dispatchers, firefighters, the Air Force equivalent of NCIS, on police psychiatrist, most of whom write mysteries or want to write mysteries and a small contingent of mystery writers who have figured out this is a good place to make friends with people who know how it really is. A small conference, it's easy to really network.This one is always in Las Vegas in July--another I can drive to, and the month it's held makes the hotel price cheap.

Epic is a conference for e-published authors and publishers. I've been to most of them. This is small and moves around each year. Whether I go to anymore will depend upon where they are

The big question is why go? First off, it's fun. Mystery readers attend Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime. An author can meet readers with a little effort (means speaking to strangers), being friendly, and handing out business cards or bookmarks. I've met several readers this way who have since become my fans..

Because most of us are mystery fans too, it's great to see your favorite authors and tell them how much you love their books.

What Mystery or Writing Conferences do you go to, and why?

Marilyn

Coming very, very soon. #13 in the Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series!