Goldfish Brain

by Bethany Maines

I’m monumentally bad at dates.  The Christmas after I got married my mother-in-law got a new pair of sneakers and she said, “Oh, I wish I’d had these on XX of some-month-Bethany-doesn’t remember.”  And I said, “Really? What happened on that date?” And they all stared at me because it turned out that was the day I got married.  Which may seem a bit rude to my poor husband, but in my defense I also can’t remember what year I graduated from college.  And one time I spent an entire day being really annoyed because my friends kept calling me (I was in the middle of a project) to wish me happy birthday.  Every single call was a surprise.  So, I’m not saying that I will absolutely forget that some day (14th?  15th? No, seriously, what day is it?) in February is Valentine’s Day, I’m just saying that the odds are not in my husband’s favor.  But on the other hand that means if he remembers all that lovely chocolate will be a wonderful surprise.

Unfortunately, this type of memory blockage also means that my memory for VERY IMPORTANT FACTS related to my characters is also somewhat lacking. Like last names, eye color, the details of their backstory.   Given enough time and rewrites it all gets a bit fuzzy.  Bulletproof Mascara, for instance went through 9.5 rewrites (I’m counting the typo catching pass as .5 of a rewrite).  That means that the villain Jirair Sarkassian went from being Texan to Armenian somewhere around draft 6.  And in An Unseen Current (Available everywhere April 28! Available for pre-order on kindle now!!) I dropped an entire villain between draft 1 and 2.  Which wouldn’t be much of a problem if I didn’t insist on writing sequels.  It’s a bit of an embarrassment to have to read your own book to find out what you wrote, but apparently readers insist on continuity and well, just generally making sense.  But having just read Bulletproof Mascara and Compact with the Devil (in preparation for the forthcoming High-Caliber Concealer), I can honestly recommend my books to people.  I’m very funny and my plots actually do make sense.  I give myself two thumbs up.  I probably can’t review myself on Goodreads, can I?

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of Destiny and the forthcoming An Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.  Learn more at www.bethanymaines.com

Valentines: Red Hot or Humbug Blue?

by Marjorie Brody

The day for expressing love is just around the corner. Do you look forward to it with glee? Eager to plan what you will do to make the love-of-your-life feel special? Or is your reaction one of a modern day Valentine Scroogette?



Bah, humbug. What’s with Valentine’s Day anyway? Why should we need a special day to show people we care about them? Oh, sure, a kid might have fun that day. She can give out cards to everyone in the class and keep her fingers crossed no one forgets to bring her one. She can give the boy who sits across the aisle and draws Superman pictures he slips to the prettiest girl in the class whenever Mrs. Thomas turns her back, a special card with a lollipop in it. But of course, he'll give the lollipop to her pretty rival. Or, she can eat the chocolates Dad brings home for Mom because he had to work late again even though he promised to make it home in time for dinner and the dinner’s ruined so Mom throws it in the trash and shoves the box at her and tells her she can eat the whole thing herself for all she cares. Phew.

Poor Scroogette. Her experiences with Valentine’s Day are so unlike my own--except that Matthew McCawley did slip me Superman drawings, and I did put a lollipop in his Valentine card.

Actually, my Mom and Dad always sent each other beautiful Valentine cards with sentimental handwritten notes prefacing their signatures. And sometimes gifts. But they’d do the I-love-you cards and gift thing on non-special days, too. Like for an un-birthday. Their motto was to show (and for writers, we know the heightened value of “showing” rather than just “telling”) each other how much they loved each other. Daily. So, Valentine’s Day was only a smidge more special than any other day.

This Valentine’s Day, my husband and I are going to babysit so our son and his wife can have a nice, quiet, romantic dinner alone. We’ll play with the babies and hold them in our laps and tell them stories, and after they are tucked in their beds, my husband and I will cuddle on the couch, and think about the non-Hallmark Valentines we’ve delivered to those we love.

How will you show your love and caring?

Marjorie Brody is an award-winning author and Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her short fiction has appeared on stage, in literary magazines, and in three volumes of the Short Story America Anthology. Her psychological suspense, TWISTED, received an Honorable Mention at the Great Midwest Book Festival and won the Texas Association of Authors 2014 Best Young Adult Fiction Award.

The First Time...

There are all sorts of firsts in life – first kiss, first car, first love… With all due respect to my first kiss and my first love (and no, they’re not the same) the first I remember most clearly is riding down the sidewalk in front of my childhood home without my father holding onto my bike.

He’d let go before and I’d crashed. Spectacularly. I had the skinned knees and scraped fingers to prove it. I told him I couldn’t do it. He told me I could. Lord knows, I wanted to ride that bike. It was pink with a white banana seat, white handles and hot pink streamers. I wanted it so badly I could taste it, so I tried again.

The next time, I stayed upright. I flew. The bumps that, on previous trips, had sent me careening into the neighbors’ lawns were just…bumps. Behind me, my father cheered. Ahead of me, the world opened up like a new Nancy Drew, with me as the heroine and untold adventures hiding around every corner.

On Tuesday, February 17^th, I will experience another first. The Deep End, will release.

I wish my father could hold onto the back of my banana seat and whisper advice – Don’t obsess over rankings, honey. Don’t drive your children crazy checking reviews on Goodreads. Remember, not everyone will like it. He’d be right – about all of it.

He'd also be right if he told me to look out for adventures hiding around every corner.

 

A Good Person to Murder

by Linda Rodriguez

One of the secret benefits of writing crime novels and short fiction is the chance to vicariously kill off people who have worked hard at pissing you off. We’re seldom violent people, we mystery writers, even though we write about murder and lesser crimes. We’re usually polite and kind to our friends and family and gentle with kids and animals. If you know a lot of crime writers, you know we’re mostly very nice people. I believe mystery and thriller writers are the nicest group of writers there are, and I know a lot of various kinds of writers.

My theory about all that niceness is twofold: Nice people may just be drawn to write mysteries and thrillers, or we’re all so nice because we have the chance to work off all our anger in our books. I know I’ve been able to deal with a certain person’s nasty behavior in real life much more easily since I wrote a scene where a similar character was mowed down by reams of bullets in a classic gangland shooting.

For that matter, listening to mystery writers at a professional conference talk at meals or in the bar can be scary for outsiders. We swap good ways to murder, especially in ways that are difficult to prove, and methods and places to dispose of bodies. I’ve watched waitresses and bartenders stand back from a group of us with leery eyes as they overhear bits and pieces of what must seem a violent conspiracy. I suspect the really troubling thing is that all this morbid conversation is always full of great cheer and hilarity.

This ability to extract satisfying revenge on the page can remove lots of resentment and hurt from our lives. That co-worker who goes around behind everyone’s back, telling lies to stir up trouble in the workplace that costs people their promotions or even their jobs—smash her over the head with a fax machine. The senior faculty member who steals your research and passes it off as his own, branding you as a pathetic liar when you protest—how about rat poison in his coffee? The old schoolmate who made you a laughingstock at the last reunion—have her hit and run over by a car. The guy who humiliated and dumped you publicly after “borrowing” all your savings—let a crazed serial killer catch up with him and slash him up. The ex-wife who cheated on you all through your marriage and then took your house and kids to go off with someone else—fake a suicide with a handgun to the head (that your smart detective will see through immediately). The sexually harassing boss who threatens to destroy your career if you complain or don’t let him have his slimy way with you—tie him up naked for kinky sex and smother him with a pillow over his face.

So the next time you’re at a crime writers conference, look around at all those sweet, funny, and kindly mystery authors and ask yourself, “Why are these people smiling?”

It Was A Sign

by Sparkle Abbey

So last week, we were on our way to work and of course that means a trip through the Starbucks drive-thru. Our Starbucks is very popular, especially in the mornings and on the weekends. It’s not unusual for there to be a five or six car wait before you even reach the speaker to place your order. Why not go inside, you ask? Well, like most of the U.S., we've been hit with bone-chilling subzero weather and over ten inches of snow. So regardless of the line, you don’t get out of your vehicle unless you have to.

On this day, the drive-thru was almost deserted. There were only three cars in front of us. That’s a good thing, right? The lack of customers certainly didn't have anything to do with icy roads, a wind-chill of twenty below, or the fact that it was after 8:00 am and the morning rush had already passed though. It was a sign to proceed! So we did.

Just one example of our many Starbucks stops 

In what felt like seconds, but was probably more like five minutes, it was our turn to order our usual: grande non-fat no water chai, and a grande skinny hazelnut latte. The only problem was that the driver’s window wouldn't roll down. It was frozen shut. There was no way that window was moving.

You see where this is going.

Since there were cars behind us, keeping us from backing out and a making a clean getaway, we had only one choice—open the door to place the order. We looked rather silly, and felt a little foolish. And while we were hoping no one was paying attention to us, we weren't that lucky. We caught the driver behind us was smiling at us. Our barista also got a good chuckle at our predicament and casually mentioned we weren't the first customer with a frozen window.

Within a few minutes it was our turn to pay. Once again, we opened the door, allowing the freezing wind to slap us around for a few seconds and to steal our breath. As we reached for a Starbucks card to pay, the barista informed us there was no need-—our drinks had already been paid for. Turned out the driver in the car before us felt so bad about our window, he paid for our drinks! A true random act of kindness. It was completely unexpected and it totally made our day.

February 9^th - 15^th  is Random Act of Kindness week. The idea is to cheer up, inspire, or help a stranger. There are many simple acts you can do: a smile, let someone cut in front of you in line at the grocery store, or pay for someone’s drink at your favorite coffee shop. Most acts of kindness are free, you don’t have to spend money to “pay it forward.”

If you’re lacking inspiration and need some “kindness” ideas, check out the Random Acts of Kindness website. If you’re social media savvy, take part in helping #RAKWeek2015 trend by flooding your social media platforms with kindness. Look for us as we’ll be taking part in the fun.

What about you? Have you initiated a random act of kindness? Have you ever been the recipient of an act of kindness? Tell us about it! You never know who may read your comment and feel inspired by you!

**The Starbucks story is mostly true. It happened to only one of us. We’ll let you guess which one.

One last shout out! If you're in the Ames area this week, we'll be at the grand opening of Treats on a Leash for a book signing from 10:00 am- noon. Stop by and say hi! Click here for more details!

3 Firsts for Me!

By Kay Kendall

Here are my three firsts:                                                   

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1) My first short story.

2) My first venture into sci-fi.

3) My first self-published project.

The shortest way to explain that list above is  – I seized an opportunity.

A group of writers asked me to come aboard an anthology of short stories written around a common theme—called The Prometheus Saga. There were rules to what we could do with our alien character who dropped to earth, plus rules for making our stories as Kindle shorts available only on Amazon. Set price = 99 cents. Such a bargain.

On Monday, January 26, twelve of us published thirteen stories in The Prometheus Saga. Settings include pre-history, the American Revolution, and the sixties. That latter was mine, entitled “Strangers on a Plane.” The sixties is what I write about, always.

Fans of the suspense genre will recognize my title as an homage to the great Patricia Highsmith’s sinister novel, Strangers on a Train. But my story is not sinister. Instead, it shows my amateur sleuth Austin Starr traveling across the North American continent, rushing to the rescue of her dear friend, Larissa Klimenko. Readers who know my debut mystery DESOLATION ROW will recognize these characters.

New is an odd elderly woman who calls herself Promethea. Strange things happen. Then Austin and Promethea disembark from the plane, never to see each other again. This short story is a bridge to my next mystery, RAINY DAY WOMEN (due out this summer), and the sci-fi touch is so light that I don’t bend the mystery genre—not too much.

Why did I seize this opportunity? Advice to writers is to issue short stories in between major books as a way to keep your readers interested. While some of my author pals crank out more than one book a year, I don’t do that. Thus, this advice seemed wise.

Moreover, there was a chapter I dearly loved that for various reasons my editor suggested I chop from my next book. Here was a way to save it.

Finally, authors are encouraged these days to become “hybrids.” That means that you mix up your projects—some issued through publishers and others self-published. When I checked, the wonderful Ken Coffman, owner of Stairway Press of Seattle, was fine with my participating in The Prometheus Saga.

So, here’s the bottom line. If you ever felt a tiny urge to read my fiction and never acted on it, you now can do so for only 99 cents. You don’t even have to own a Kindle. There’s an app that lets you read “Strangers on a Plane” on your tablet, cell phone, PC, or Mac. Return to the time of America’s first moon landing, the week of the horrid Manson murders, and endless bad news from the Vietnam War. August 9, 1969—with just a hint of the paranormal!

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 OF "STRANGERS ON A PLANE"

13 stories make up The Prometheus Saga

*******   

Kay Kendall set her debut novel, DESOLATION ROW--AN AUSTIN STARR MYSTERY in 1968. The sequel RAINY DAY WOMEN (June 2015) shows her amateur sleuth Austin Starr proving her best friend didn't murder women’s liberation activists in Seattle and Vancouver. A fan of historical mysteries, Kay does for the 1960s what novelist Jacqueline Winspear accomplishes for England in the 1930s–present atmospheric mysteries that capture the spirit of the age. Kay is also an award-winning international PR executive who lives in Texas with her husband, three house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. Terribly allergic to the bunnies, she loves them anyway! Her book titles show she’s a Bob Dylan buff too. 

My Humble Opinion of the Movie, American Sniper by Marilyn Meredith

I'm not a fan of war movies--but hubby is, so with some reluctance from me we went together.

First I should say that I've read all the controversy over the movie--but I also read comments by my daughter and several friends who loved it.

First off, it isn't a pro-war movie--it is a factual movie about war, if anything, it's the opposite.

Second, Chris Kyle was not a coward--he was a hero, and his main mission was to protect our men.

And third, and the most important part, the movie was a good depiction of what happens to a man and how the changes affect a family.

How do I know it was factual portrayal? Because I experienced some of what his wife and family did.

Hubby spent 3 tours in Vietnam as a Seabee. No, he didn't shoot anyone, but he and the base he worked from were underfire all the time. When he worked with the heavy equipment building roads and airstrips, he was shot at--and a Marine riding with him shot back--but they kept on working.

Like Chris Kyle, he didn't like to talk about what went on over there--and still doesn't.

Like Chris Kyle, between tours he wasn't the man I married. And he was always anzious to go back (something I couldn't understand), though he turned down the 4th tour and soon retired with 20 years of service.

Besides the worry of whether or not something may happen to the amn you love and the father of your children, not only does he change while in combat--but you change too. When you are the one running the home and taking care of the emergencies (with 5 kids there were plenty of those), you become independent and it's hard to give up being in charge when hubby does come home--especially if it's only for a short time. (This wasn't depicted in the movie, but I know it happens.)

I remember once saying to my husband, "You may be a Chief in the Navy, but I'm the Admiral of this house." I don't remember his reaction, and it's probably a good thing that I don't.

I was blessed because I still have my husband, and over the years he's mellowed.

Marilyn

Mystery She Read by Lynn Cahoon

I'm in a reading mood. I adore getting lost in a story, reading through the hours until my body is stiff and my dogs are chewing on my leg, trying to get me to let them out....

Okay, maybe not that.

I've been working on a presentation for my RWA chapter (go MoRWA) on Killer First Lines. Authors are warned away from several starts, one is this classic Snoopy line, "It was a dark and stormy night." We're told not to use it. It's weather and setting and boring.

Except, if you're Madeleine L'Engle and writing A Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book growing up. As a fatherless child, myself, this story gave me hope that my dad too, was just on another planet, waiting to be magically pulled back to my life.

Yes, there are reasons I'm an author. Like my mom asked, "How do you make up all these stories?" I would have thought she knew I'd been doing it all my life.

Authors don't give up their imaginary friends, we just give them lives in our books.

Another book I loved as a kid was The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. I loved the story of a little boy driving through the fantasy world through a tollbooth that showed up in his room, just because he was bored.

Boredom doesn't happen for authors as we're off imagining a new world. And it that gets boring, I need to change up the story.

So what was your favorite book as a kid? Was it mystery related?

Lynn

Oh, and if you want a bit of romance for your Valentine's Day, I have a novella in My Sexy Valentine. My story, The Twelve Days of Valentines, twists the classic Christmas song into a how to win your love in 12 days.