Shorties!

By Bethany Maines

This past year I have been focusing on my graphic design business and having a child (see adorable picture of Zoe below) and it’s been hard to give the time required to write a novel.  

Not that I’ve stopped writing or wanting to write, but the amount of hours I have available is not what it once was. Since I had shorter hours I decided to shift to shorter projects and I’ve spent the past year working on short stories. This has been both hard and rewarding. Hard in that I’ve always worked in long format and short stories are structured differently than novels. Short stories have made me practice new skills and work in new ways and it has been extremely rewarding to see these new skills bear fruit.

But as my life (and daughter) settle back into a routine, I’m looking forward to returning to the novel structure.  In fact, I have plans for a third Carrie Mae Mystery, High-Caliber Concealer, and an as yet to be named mystery set in the San Juan islands.  I can’t wait to share these new adventures with you, but today I’m releasing the last of my pre-daughter short stories - Power of Attorney a Carrie MaeMini-Mystery - is now available!  I hope you enjoy it!

Another ramble by yours truly

What should I talk about? I have no idea. This is getting harder and harder to find a topic that will interest people to stop by and see what I have to say. Hey, if you’re reading this, thank you!

Someone asked with my daytime situation, how do I have time to do the other things that I do such as the dru’s book musings, quilting, Facebooking, I don’t tweet, writing a monthly blog for The Cozy Chicks and The Stiletto Gang and reading? I don’t know, I just do it. As an introvert, being in the comfort of my home gave me pleasure because I can entertain myself with my hobby of watching TV, going to the movies (although I do this rarely, but Godzilla sent me to the movies last week), so it was a natural transition to helping authors get the word out about their work, especially since I was already telling them I liked what they wrote.

It gets easier with time as you develop a routine for getting it all done. I don’t have deadlines like the authors do, although as I type this on Saturday morning at 5:49 EST, this is due on Monday at 3:00am EST, it will get done. I’m just rambling away filling up space. Do you find rambling help you clear your mind?

I dedicate an hour every day to do my blog activities such as sending out reminders to the author that their blog goes live the next day; selecting a winner for the giveaway; notifying author of giveaway winner; formatting blog posts for their guest appearances and keeping track of schedules and other blog related items. Hey, I have to be done before Jeopardy comes on. On Saturday, I devote up to two hours for my weekly round-up post and making sure the next week’s guest posts are ready for their scheduled publication. Do you use Saturday as your catch-up day?

Oh, in between that I’m reading books. I use to average reading 4-5 books but now I’m averaging 3-4 books per week. I’m reading 90% of my books on my e-reader and the worst thing that can happen is when you get to the good part of the book and the power runs out, especially when you are not near a power source. Has that ever happened to you with your e-reader?

In between that, I have to find time to work on my quilt project. I interrupt this note to say “there’s a cruise ship passing by on its way to port” and I can even hear it blowing it’s horn, it’s a bit foggy out here. Anyhoo, this week I want to finish the quilt I started a month ago, but before that I have to make a quilted pillow for a bride. I’m using her invitation as the centerpiece of the quilt. Are you crafty?

I rambled myself out of topics. See you in a month.

My Writing Vacation - Or Books I Enjoyed When I Let Myself Read for Fun by Debra H. Goldstein

Many of you know I stepped down from the bench a year ago to give myself the freedom to write during the day.  The results were mixed.  In the beginning, I couldn’t get disciplined enough to do much more than organize my daughter’s wedding, travel, and watch every possible episode of How I Met Your Mother and NCIS. I finally found my writing “legs” and finished a novel that beta readers are now reviewing and wrote and submitted a number of short stories.  Four of them, “A Political Cornucopia,” “Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief!,” “Early Frost,” and the “Rabbi’s Wife Stayed Home,” were published by Bethlehem Writer’s Roundtable (November 2013), Mardi Gras Murder (2014), The Birmingham Arts Journal (April 2014) and Mysterical – E (April 2014), respectively. At the same time, my 2012 IPPY Award winning mystery, Maze in Blue, was re-released by Harlequin Worldwide Mystery as a May 2014 book of the month.

When I received notice that Maze was reissued and the fourth story had been accepted for publication, I

decided to take a two week vacation from writing and rejoin the world of being a reader.  Some of the books I could have done without (diet books – I’ve gained weight since I decided to write), some were simply okay (a biography of Barbra Streisand), but some proved to be pure fun.  One of the exciting things to me, is that many of the books I really enjoyed were written by authors I have met at various conferences and who, in many cases, have written guest blogs for “It’s Not Always a Mystery.”(http://debrahgoldstein.wordpress.com)

For a good suspense read, let me recommend Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Agatha winning The Wrong Girl.  I read her Mary Higgins Clark MWA winning The Other Woman last year and eagerly was awaiting this book.  Then, I picked up the third book in the Skeet Bannon series written by Linda Rodriguez.  Every Hidden Fear was published the week I took my reading vacation, I couldn’t put it down – each book only has hooked me on Skeet since Linda won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition for Every Last Secret.

I wanted to get a little food and farm reading in so I turned to Edith Maxwell’s A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die which I followed with Leslie Budewitz’s Agatha winning Death al Dente. Food wasn’t my only companion during my reading excursion.  I added a little comedy and romance with Kendel Lynn’s Board Stiff.

Much as I enjoy mysteries, I needed to spice up my life with a few good looking men so my bedtime reading was Robert Wagner’s Pieces of My Heart.  Tonight, I’m snuggling up with Rob Lowe’s book, Love Life.  I plan to read fast because tomorrow I’m giving myself back to writing.

Welcome to Summer and book giveaway!

by Maria Geraci

We're just a couple of days from Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start of summer, arguably, most people's favorite time of year. Summer means vacations and warm weather and trips to the beach and the lake and wherever else you like to go in your free time. It also means beach reading! My most favorite thing to do in the world is set up my beach chair along the shore, slather myself in sunscreen, stick my feet in the water and open up a good book.

In honor of the upcoming holiday (and just because) I've been doing a beach book giveaway over on my blog and Facebook page. I'm giving away a free autographed copy of my second book, BUNCO BABES GONE WILD. All you have to do to enter is click on the word blog or Facebook page in the previous sentence and you'll be take to a link to
leave a comment. Contest ends Friday night at midnight and is limited to US entries only. I'd love it if you stopped by and entered!

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! And remember to thank a Veteran for their service!

Cars, Rats & Anne Perry

By Kay Kendall

I don’t give a fig how a car works. Or electricity. Or a computer. They all might as well be black boxes, as far as I’m concerned. Inside mysterious things happen. Poof! The car turns on. Poof! Electricity powers the air conditioner. Poof! The computer recalls everything you write.

What I do care about is how people work. Why they do the things they do. I discovered this passion one teenaged summer when my boyfriend dumped me and I drooped into churlishness. After a week my mother tired of my moping around the house and suggested I work at one of her charities.

I ended up volunteering at the county’s psychiatric clinic, helping with rudimentary clerical tasks. As I typed up forms and patients’ reports, I was shocked to see so much pain appear on the pages. But later I was gratified to see the clinic’s psychiatric social worker help some of those patients whose woes I’d typed up. Sometimes the patients left our office with springier steps. I fancied I could see their anxieties and depression lift, if only a little.

That same summer my favorite cousin began exhibiting behavioral problems. Merle was super bright but troubled. I never saw him act out or be mean to someone, but I began to hear stories.  I wanted to help him but didn’t have the skills. Ah-hah, I thought! I’d study psychology in college and become a psychiatric social worker so I could fix him.

Please note that I never aspired to be a psychologist or psychiatrist. Perhaps that was because I’d only seen a psychiatric social worker in action and therefore could imagine being one. But also note the date was 1962, the year before Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique.  And eight years before I became an ardent feminist.

When I entered college in 1963, most courses I took fascinated me, including for a short time even geology and astronomy, subjects taken only to fulfill liberal arts distribution requirements. Psychology, however, was a letdown, a huge bore.

All we studied were rats. I wanted to learn about people. While two friends in my class did manage to cope with rodentia behavior, I couldn’t.  These women went on to earn their doctorates in psychology and help countless people. For me, however, the gap between the actions of rats and people was too great a leap. I never took another course after Psych 101.

I toyed with various majors, but English literature was my mainstay. Fiction encompassed everything about humanity, and I’d always been a ferocious reader. Writing was a joy. After getting a graduate degree in history—real crimes that happened in the past, I now say—I fell back on writing and developed a solid career as a corporate communicator.

I never felt I’d found my niche, however. My heart did not sing.

When I began writing fiction a decade ago, I finally responded to an inner compulsion. What I had to explore is why people do the things they do. Character development and plot are almost synonymous to me. It’s like attending another high school reunion and seeing old friends again after ten years. I’m reading the newest chapters in their lives. People are walking, ongoing stories. Curiosity drives me to learn everything I can and then fictionalize it—showing their behavior and uncovering their motives.

Anne Perry, author

The mystery comes in when good people do bad things. Anne Perry was the first mystery author I noticed whose killers weren’t thoroughly evil, but I didn’t know what to make of this. And then the film Heavenly Creatures came out in 1994, exposing her secret. As a teenager she had helped murder a friend’s mother. Maybe Anne Perry has been trying to fathom her motives ever since? No wonder the killers she devised—especially in the first half of her career—are complicated, unfathomable people, jolted into acting horribly in bad situations.

Each of us is a mysterious black box. Inside are so many factors all jumbled up—memories, desires, hurts. How can other people ever hope to understand us? How can we hope to understand ourselves?

Yet still we try. We must try. I was never able to decode what caused my cousin Merle to derail. I did solve part of the puzzle but was helpless to alter his sad trajectory. Alas, after living for twenty years in a hospital for the criminally insane, he wandered off into a field while on furlough and simply lay down and died. He was forty.

As a mystery author, though, I can put characters into extreme peril and see if they’ll sort out their own complicated lives as well as the sometimes vile things that others do. Solving the puzzles of people living only on pages (or in E files) is a full-time job. After I figure out one set of interconnecting lives, then I go on to develop another set, another, and another. This is a job I relish. You can call me a contented Sisyphus.

*******

Kay Kendall is an international award-winning public relations executive who lives in Texas with her husband, four house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. A fan of historical mysteries, she wants to do for the 1960s what novelist Alan Furst does for Europe in the 1930s and 1940s--write atmospheric mysteries that capture the spirit of the age.

Discover more about her at

http://www.KayKendallAuthor.com

Why Do I Keep on Writing?

That's a good question, one I must ask myself periodically.

I spend a good percentage of each day in front of my computer either working on a new book, editing, or promoting whichever book is out now.  And guess what? I don't make much money. And what I do make is spent on promotion.

No, my publishers do not send me out on book tours, though they both do some promotion, the greater share is up to me. I'm the one who arranges my in-person events and does the majority of the on-line promotion.

So what do I get out of all this work?

1. I love to write. I enjoy visiting my characters and finding out what is going to happen to them next. The only way to do that is to write the next book. My writing is not confined to my novels, believe it or not, I get a kick out writing blog posts, like this one, and others where I guest.

2. I love meeting people and making new friends. Of course this happens at book events and at conferences and conventions. (Going to a mystery con is very much like attending a huge family reunion.) The Internet has given me the ability to make many new friends, many I've known now for a long time.

3. And of course my books have fans--fans that enjoy my books, have favorite characters, email me, read my newsletter and comment, fans that encourage me to write the next book.

4. Because of the conventions, conferences and places I've been invited to teach and speak, I've traveled many places I'd never have visited otherwise from the West Coast to the East Coast, many cities in-between, and Hawaii and Alaska.

5. I've learned how to do many things I might never have tried if it hadn't been for my writing career from many computer skills to giving presentations and classes about books, writing and publishing. For ten years I taught writing for Writers Digest Schools, and I just recently retired from many years of being the program chair for the Public Safety Writers Association's annual conference.

6. And most of all, I've met many challenges, grown as a writer and a person, and had a great time doing what I wanted to do.

Marilyn aka F. M. Meredith

Saying Goodbye to a Series - A continuing discussion.

Some of you might have seen my post over at Sara WalterEllwood’s blog during THE BULL RIDER’S KEEPER blog tour on my bitter sweet feeling on letting go of The Bull Rider series. Today, I wanted to talk about the journey. Or as Ron White would say when asked how far the plane would go, "all the way to the crash site."

THE BULL RIDER’S BROTHER marked my entrance into the publishing world.  On June 4^th, 2012, I became a published author.  The sweet story about four friends (Lizzie, James, Barb and Jesse) who return to Shawnee for the town’s annual rodeo weekend, each with their own agenda, taught me a lot about how to tell a story and how to be an author. Most civilians (those outside the publishing world) think all the work is in the writing. Everyone who’s ever published through digital first, traditional or even self-published will tell a different story.  Between edits and reviews and promotion, a book takes many hours of time to show up with the buy me button on Amazon.

As soon as I signed my contract for BRB giving James and Lizzie their happy ever after, I started writing on THE BULL RIDER’S MANAGER. This was Barb’s story. I knew she worked too much and didn't have a strong family support system going in. Barb’s house was the fun one growing up, the one without rules. So I knew this had to be about her learning to accept and finding her own family. How it turned into a wild night in Vegas, I’m not sure, but I’m glad the story took me there. By November 2012, the book had that coveted buy button.

Then life happened. Around Easter 2013, I signed a three book contract for THE TOURIST TRAP MYSTERIES. One book written, the second started, and a vague idea for book three.  By the end of the year, I had all three done and ready for their release dates spanning 2014 (GUIDEBOOK TO MURDER-April 17^th, MISSION TO MURDER –July 31^st, and IF THE SHOE KILLS- October 28^th).

I’d also started a new, cowboy romance that I thought could be an amazing series. This got put on the back burner when I signed the contract.

So as soon as IF THE SHOE KILLS went off to my editor, I returned to the last book in the Bull Rider series, Jesse’s story.  I’m glad I waited, mostly because Jesse needed the time to grow and change. And I’m very proud of his character arc over the three books. Little brother all grown up. THE BULL RIDER’S KEEPER released April 28^th and I closed the door on Shawnee and the four friends.

But what about the stories I didn't get to tell. Kadi’s riding instructor deserves a happy ever after.  Cash Dillon, the dumped, in THE BULL RIDER’S BROTHER, got his story told in a novella, SHAWNEE HOLIDAY, exclusively available at Amazon. And then there’s Angie, the Sullivan brothers crazy mom.

It’s hard to walk away. But I don’t have the time now to write these stories.

Maybe someday.

Do you have series that you or the author hasn't finished that you’re waiting for another book? 

How to Keep Your Favorite Writers and Books from Disappearing

by Linda Rodriguez

Since my third Skeet Bannion novel, Every Hidden Fear, came out just last week, I’m thinking seriously about book sales right now. I’ve written and spoken a number of times about what an avid reader can do to support the authors s/he loves, and so I thought I’d compile all of those actions into a blog post for today.

As a reader of novels, I was often disappointed and horrified when authors that I loved disappeared or stopped writing series I loved and started writing another that I might not be as fond of.  After I became a published and got to know many other published novelists, I discovered how these things happen and what I as a reader can do about them. 

A couple of examples—one writer’s books always get rave reviews in the big journals, usually starred reviews, she always earns out her advances, and every single book has been a finalist for some of the biggest awards, but her publisher, one of the Big Five, has dropped her. Why? Her books aren’t increasing in sales enough from book to book, even though they are increasing and are profitable to the publisher. She is looking at writing novels in a different genre now. Another writer had an award-winning series of witty, well-written private-eye novels. He was dropped because it was determined that private-eye novels wouldn’t be selling well soon (a prediction that turned out wrong). He couldn’t get a publisher then. So he had to take a woman’s name and start writing very successful cozies under that.

Often even famous writers are just a breath or two away from tumbling down the slopes in the fickle game of publishing, and success is even more volatile for midlist authors. There are dozens of other stories like these that I could tell. This is what’s happening to the authors you love who vanish and what may well happen to the authors you love now. Even selling enough to earn out their advances is not enough, if they are not increasing their sales drastically with each book. How can we help the authors we love to do that so we can keep reading the books we’re addicted to? Here’s a little list.

Pre-orders— pre-orders have become more and more important to writers. Publishers often decide how big a print run and how much, if any, promotion they will give a book based on pre-orders. Bookstores base orders on that, too. So pre-orders can determine whether your book will be on the shelves in bookstores around the country or have to be special-ordered.

Other things you can do to help are clicking "likes" and "tags" on Amazon. Reviews on Amazon and Goodreads count more toward sales than those longer ones on my blog or elsewhere, and don’t forget Barnes & Noble and Library Thing. Post your author’s book in your WantToRead file on Goodreads when you know the book is coming. Publishers tell us that is important, that other readers look at those and often decide whether to buy the book based on how many other people have listed it as something they want. But reviews on your blog or other review sites do help, as well. I know I’m doing a lot more book recommendations now and not just waiting for folks to ask me.

As soon as I know a book is coming out by one of my favorite writers, I will request my library system order that book—and my own pre-orders for those books will be through local bookstores because that helps them decide whether or not to order in that book to have on the shelves. Ask your library to order the book, and then check it out. Library sales are important to most authors, and we love libraries. If you check out our books, the libraries will keep buying them and won’t sell us off for pennies at the Friends of the Library book sale. (Many libraries get rid of books that haven’t been checked out in more than a year, so even if you own a book, checking out from your local library helps keep your author alive there.)

When we order books from our local bookstore, we need to tell them what we like about that author and why s/he might be a good fit for the store. That not only can convince them to order the book, but also gives them something to tell people when they ask about it.

Talk up your author and book on Facebook and Twitter. I know for a fact that people have bought my books because of wonderful things some of my fans have posted on those two platforms about them. Word of mouth is still the best advertising.

If you’re in a book club or book discussion group or anything like that, suggest your author’s book for the group to read and discuss.

If you take one or more of these actions for your author, you have given great support and taken steps to make sure that s/he will be able to continue writing and publishing the books you love. Anything we can do to help others learn about the authors and books we love helps to keep them available to us, too.

Are there things you do to support your favorite authors that I've missed? Please add them in the comments.

REPLY TO COMMENTS (Blogger still won't let me comment GRR!)

Sue, you've got a good point. Many writers who've been dropped in recent years have turned to self-publishing. I don't think it's a good route for unpublished writers usually, but it can work very well for those who've already built a backlist and a cadre of fans.

Kay, you're right. I always feel it's not up to my readers and fans to promote my or any writer's books, but for those who want to be sure to have more of them to read, these are some ways they can help. I have seen too many writers whose work I love stop publishing--or at least stop publishing those books I love so much--because of the lack of escalating sales.

Debra, yes, the publishing world has been changing ever since the multinational corporations took over most of the big old firms and demanded a much higher ROI than publishing can really sustain. They think the bestsellers are the only way to go, but the old pub houses sustained themselves on the many midlist authors. But midlist authors are no longer respected by the big companies who always want the "big kill."