And the winner is...

The Practical Preserver (Karen Brees). You can read Karen's great tips on preserving food at: http://practicalpreserving.blogspot.com/. Please note her new book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Preserving Food, is now available for pre-order at online booksellers.

I'll be sending Karen an advance reading copy of The Desert Hedge Murders for her reading pleasure. This drawing was conducted by writing the names of qualifying entrants on teeny tiny pieces of paper, shuffling them around in a little pile, closing my eyes and shuffling some more, and finally picking the winner. Can't get much more scientific than that.
See my regularly scheduled post below to find out why I feel good....

I'm Ready to Write

Since I'm writing this blog Saturday night and pre-scheduling it to publish Sunday morning, I won't hold the drawing for the advance review copy of The Desert Hedge Murders quite yet (just in case someone in the Pacific Time Zone squeezes in an entry at the last minute). Sometime today (Sunday), I'll post the winner's name in a separate blog notice and will contact him or her for a mailing address.

I turned in chapters nine and ten of my new book to my writer's critique group this week. Those chapters were written several weeks ago, before I started a blog, joined Facebook and Twitter, and did some traveling. I'm at the stage now where I'm itching to get back to the new project. I want to shut the door, unplug the phone, and write.

So I'm setting a goal. I'll complete the first draft of this novel by August 31st. I already have about 30,000 useful words. I can easily finish the novel by my deadline if I average 1,000 words a day, even with a few days off and a weekend trip thrown into the mix.

Tomorrow will be organization and planning day. Tidy up the piles of paper strewn about my office. Find all the stray pages of the manuscript and story plan, plus the notes I've scribbled on pads all over the house. Organize my To Do List and set priorities. Change my blog schedule to five days a week. Stock up on MREs. Warn husband. Listen to husband complain.

I feel good, dadadadada...

Once a Bookworm, Always a Bookworm

One of the worst moments of my life happened the day I realized I would never be able to read all the books in the world. Don't laugh. I was devastated.

I'm seriously addicted to the written word. I've always needed scores of unread books on hand, just in case. Even with hardcovers and paperbacks overflowing my bookcases and end tables, I buy more. And then I go to the library and feed my craving with selections I wouldn't or couldn't buy but can't resist boorrowing, just in case.

As I mentioned before, Sandi Ault's second mystery is my current fiction pick. Through no fault of Sandi's, I haven't read very far yet. I keep putting off my pleasure reading so I can check one more blog, catch up on the day's Tweets, deal with important e-mails, occasionally work on my book, and on and on.

Even so, I dropped by the library today to pick up a non-fiction book I'd placed on hold. While I was there, I wandered through the stacks as I always do, and two more titles caught my eye. While I'm not reading Sandi Ault's mystery, I'll also not be reading:

1. Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse by Peter D. Schiff (with John Downes) 2007

2. being zen: Bringing Meditation to Life by Ezra Bayda 2002

3. Waking Up: A Week Inside a Zen Monastery by Jack Maguire 2000

I think my subconscious was at work, knowing I would need two books on Zen to offset the dire predictions in a book about economic collapse.

Can you tell I'm already craving another weekend read-a-thon? June 13th and 14th are looking good. There! I wrote it on my calendar.

Note: You still have time to enter the drawing for an advance review copy of The Desert Hedge Murders. Check yesterday's blog about Adverbs and Adjectives, post your comment according to the instructions before midnight tonight, (Saturday--Mountain Time!!!), and check back tomorrow to see if I drew your name.

Self-Editing -- Adjectives and Adverbs

I know what you're thinking. Ouch. Self-editing. Boring! I'll skim this blog, drop in a quick comment, and run.

Please don't. Stick around. I have a surprise for you.

Each visitor who comments on this blog today or tomorrow will be entered in a drawing for an advanced reading copy of The Desert Hedge Murders.

All you have to do is write a simple sentence of at least ten words without using any adjectives or adverbs, and the sentence must create a picture with at least one color. Here's an example (which you may not use): The cowboy tripped in a rut as he ran past the sunflowers his wife had planted by the corral.

Leave your sentence as a comment, and then you're free to go. Please note that offensive entries will be disqualified, even if no adverbs and adjectives were used.

Simply stated, we don't need to tell smart, intuitive readers everything. They will fill in the blanks as long as the blanks are not critical to your story. You can describe a protagonist (male) as 60ish with long black hair, bronze skin, and a leathery, weathered face, and the reader will know what your American Indian character looks like. But if you say he's an Arapahoe elder, won't the reader form a similar mental picture without all the extra words?

Not all adjectives and adverbs are bad, of course. In some cases, details are important to the story and may be clues or red herrings. In other cases, a character's appearance might explain his odd behavior. Sometimes they're needed to create a mood. Even so, use adverbs and adjectives carefully and be precise. Don't use two or three when one will do the job.

Today I Will Kill Thistles

I'll bet you're thinking Thistles is the name of my neighbor's cat, the one that uses my flower bed as a litter box.

But no, I'm talking real thistles. They began taking over my garden in 2007. I was too busy promoting my book to plant anything. I instructed my husband to keep the weeds mowed, and I'd deal with the garden in 2008. Last summer, I spent an hour or two every morning digging weeds. I cleared enough space to grow one tomato plant, one zucchini, and one acorn squash. The rest of the garden I covered with cardboard and anchored it with good dirt and rocks.

With high hopes, I investigated my garden space as soon as the snow melted this spring. It was looking good. Two weeks later the thistles had grown through the cardboard. Another week and each tiny segment of thistle root I'd accidentally left in the ground had sprouted a new growth. This is the stuff that breeds science fiction and tales of horror.

You can imagine me on my killing spree today. I'll wear a straw hat, jeans, a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and gloves. I'll also wear a dust/allergy mask which won't protect me from the weed killer but will hopefully fend off pollen from the flowering trees. I'd wear a HazMat suit but I don't seem to have one lying around.

There obviously will not be a vegetable garden this year. But I'm thinking a layer of thick plywood with raised beds on top would work for next year. Thistles can't grow through plywood, can they?

Speaking of Books...

Yesterday I mailed eleven advance review copies of The Desert Hedge Murders to newspapers and online book review sites, looking for those extra opportunities for publicity. I still have more to send.

The book's official release date is August 19th. The next three months are for planning--scheduling promotional events, designing and ordering bookmarks and/or postcards, blogging, tweeting, and, if all goes well, setting up a blog book tour.

In 2007, when The Prairie Grass Murders was released, I joined four other Colorado mystery authors to form a panel called "Mystery Through the Ages," based on the idea that our protagonists' ages crossed several decades. We appeared at bookstores and libraries up and down the Front Range. I'm not sure how that panel impacted my overall book sales, but I definitely had a good time.

For this new book, I'm looking for more local and web-based marketing opportunities. One of our independent bookstores has a Sunday booth at a popular Farmer's Market and features authors whenever possible. And our Senior Center has added an authors' room to its widely attended annual craft fair the two days after Thanksgiving.

I plan to attend two big events this year: Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference in Denver in September and the October mystery convention, Bouchercon 2009, which will be held in Indianapolis.

Even after a full year of promotional activities with the 2007 release, I still find the process a mystery. What works? What doesn't? Why did this work last time but isn't working now? The debate goes on. I'll keep on trying to figure it out, and I'll keep you posted on my progress, or lack thereof.

In the meantime, would you please request that your library order a copy of:
The Desert Hedge Murders
by Patricia Stoltey
From Five Star on August 19, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-1-59414-785-2

I'd be happy to do the same for you.

Tom Piccirilli's The Cold Spot

The perfect choice for a determined effort to read good books while ignoring Twitter, Facebook, and all those e-mails, The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli delivers. First of all, I love mysteries, and it doesn't matter whether they're noir or cozy, police procedural or amateur sleuth. It's only natural I'd put mysteries high on my read-a-thon list.

I already gave you the first sentence of this novel (check yesterday's blog if you missed it), so let me jump straight into the teaser:

Chase is just a teenager when he witnesses his grandfather kill a member of his string (a gang but with members unworthy of loyalty) for an unforgivable misstep during a fairly routine heist. Chase can't stomach the killing, so he leaves his job as getaway driver-in-training and heads out on his own. The problem is, Chase has a bit of a heart and doesn't often search out his cold spot, the internal place he needs to go to commit violence without screwing up. Unlike Jonah, who perpetually lives in his own cold spot, Chase is capable of compassion and love. He does fall in love--with Lila, a deputy sheriff with a tough spirit, a deep passion for her man, and a strong commitment to the law according to Lila. What happens after they marry, and why Chase needs Jonah's help, is the story I didn't want to put down until I finished.

The Cold Spot is not quite as dark as I expected (due to my knowledge of some of Piccirilli's earlier books) and it qualifies as a top-notch mystery. Don't go there if you prefer Miss Marple cozies or gentle plots with no violence, but if you enjoy tough heroes and brutal low-life villains, I highly recommend The Cold Spot.

And the best news of all, Chase is back in the newest Tom Piccirilli release, The Coldest Mile.

And now I'm on to Sandi Ault's second Jamaica Wild (and her wolf, Mountain) mystery, Wild Inferno. I won't be reporting on this read right away, but will still leave you with Sandi's great first sentence: "In his last conscious moment, the burning man spoke three words."

Here we go!

Lemony Snicket's Horseradish

I admit I was expecting something funny. Instead, I found Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid to be as bitter as the root after which the author named his book. It is pessimism and cynicism with a little dark humor thrown in--not what I was looking for to begin my two-day reading project. It's my own fault. It was the only book in my To Be Read pile that even hinted it might make me laugh.

The best part of Horseradish, in my opinion, is the story the author tells in his ten-page Introduction. "The story concerns a woman who lived in a small grass hut with her husband in a remote village surrounded by an enormous field of horseradish, which is a very bitter root." The tale goes on to describe the woman's search for answers to a series of questions, beginning with, "Is life more than sitting at home doing the same thing over and over?"

Another reader might be delighted by Horseradish, so I won't pick at it any longer. After all, it only took an hour to read from cover to cover. The back cover reads, "Life is a turbulent journey, fraught with confusion, heartbreak, and inconvenience. This book will not help." I agree, but then, I don't think that was the author's intention. The book, published by Harper Collins in 2007, is priced at $12.99 retail, although amazon.com has it discounted to $5.49. And while you're there, please read some of the glowing reviews for this book.

So on to number two on the reading list: The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli. I'll blog more about this one (and the author, with links) tomorrow, because I haven't finished it yet. At least I had a better sense of what I was getting into when I chose this book. Piccirilli is well known in the horror genre, and has only recently taken to crafting mysteries. His books are dark, but well written. The Midnight Road won an International Thriller Writer award, and The Cold Spot was one of the five Edgar nominees for best paperback original this year.

I will leave you with the first sentence of The Cold Spot: "Chase was laughing with the others during the poker game when his grandfather threw down his cards, took a deep pull on his beer, and with no expression at all shot Walcroft in the head."

Yes! Must go finish this book.

Let the Reading Begin

If you read yesterday's post, you know I'm taking a great big break and intend to read for fun most of today and tomorrow. Four books have clawed their way to the top of my stacks of books:

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid -- Lemony Snicket
The Cold Spot -- Tom Piccirilli (mystery -- Colorado author)
Wild Inferno -- Sandi Ault (mystery -- Colorado author)
Flesh and Sprit -- Carol Berg (fantasy -- Colorado author)

It appears the weather will be dreary and rainy. I may have cups of hot herbal tea in the afternoon instead of the iced tea I imagined. And instead of the lounger on the patio, I may be curled in a comfy chair in the living room. It doesn't matter.

The usual Monday Colorado Author feature will return on June 1st. Tomorrow and Tuesday I'll discuss the books I read during this great weekend.

Temporarily Out of Order

Tomorrow (Sunday) morning I'm going to declare myself "Temporarily Out of Order."

I might even write that on a Post-It note and stick it to my forehead.

Tomorrow and Monday, I will not spend more than two hours per day at my computer. I will not check most lists or groups. I will not visit Facebook. I will not log in to Twitter.

Let me repeat that. I will not log in to Twitter.

During the morning, I will exercise, drink coffee, and read fiction. In the afternoon, I will pull a few weeds, drink iced tea and read fiction. And then I'll come back and tell you how I did.

You know, like, did I have withdrawal symptoms? Was I sore after exercising for the first time in weeks? Could I keep my mind from wandering as I tried to read sentences longer than 140 characters?

This isn't going to be easy. I hope you know that.

Ten Things I Don't Love

A couple of days ago, I blogged about ten things I love. That one was easy. Today I'll let you in on the rest of the story. I have another side. Yes, it's true, there are things in this world I don't care for. Side note: the really bad stuff would go on a list of Things I Hate, so don't expect to see them here.

1. I don't love skunks. I don't think I need to explain that.

2. Black walnuts. The smell and taste of a black walnut is just as repulsive to me as skunk odor. If I accidentally put even a small piece of black walnut in my mouth, I can't swallow it.

3. One-way political or ideological rants, especially when unexpectedly dumped on a captive audience at a conference or concert where I've paid for my own ticket or registration fee to be entertained or educated according to advertised content.

4. Novels about crimes against children.

5. Jazz. I just don't get it.

6. The combination of ham salad and corn fritters. You get a story with this one. I went to a small town grade school with a cafeteria that served hot lunches. Every once in a while, the cooks served up globs of ham salad made with more mayonnaise than ham, and greasy corn fritters. It made me sick once, and I could never eat it again. I feel a surge of acid indigestion just thinking about it.

7. The mess in my workspace. I've subscribed to a blog called zen habits that I hope will straighten me out. I've removed some of the paper from my computer table, and I feel better already. . . as long as I don't let my glance wander over to the nearby desk.

8. Mailing anything to Canada. In case you didn't know this, mail and packages from the U.S to Canada and vice versa take forever to reach their destinations. Priority mail is apparently not an option. I hate this. Snail Express would get it there faster.

9. Baseball. Except for the beer and hot dogs. I like that part.

10. News media. I believe newscasters live in and broadcast from an alternate universe.

Some Thoughts About Creating Characters

As I read through my advance review copy of The Desert Hedge Murders, I'm reminded how much fun I had creating and writing about The Florida Flippers, a travel club of elderly ladies. One of the ladies, Kristina Grisseljon, is the mother of my protagonists, Sylvia Thorn and Willie Grisseljon. Kristina is a spirited gal who loves to read mysteries (primarily police procedurals), travel, and meddle in her children's affairs. The travel club was formed years ago when all of the ladies lived in the same retirement community and all were enthusiastic fans of the Miami Dolphins.

I needed models for my characters to make it easier to establish individual personalities. Luckily, I just happened to have a few cousins and a much-loved sister-in-law who could provide all of the idiosyncracies I needed. And just for fun, I used their first names for their characters.

Linda Swayble, for example, is named after my sister-in-law. I added about fifteen years to her age, exaggerated a couple of her most endearing personality traits, and then expanded her bio, description, and speech mannerisms. Then I dumped her into the story to see what she would do. She was full of surprises. Linda of the mystery novel was a first-class worrier and way more timid than I expected. The real Linda, who died in March from the end stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease she'd been fighting for years, was one of the bravest women I've ever known. I will miss her very much.

Three cousins were the models for Marianne, Gail, and Diane. In real life, they're sisters. In my book, they're not related. I've assured the cousins I will let everyone know my Flippers are drawn completely from my imagination and not from real life. For instance, my red-haired cowgirl wannabe Marianne, who line dances with the sexy cowboys at a country bar in Davie, Florida, and plays Blackjack in Laughlin, Nevada, is actually a lovely white-haired grandmother and first-grade schoolteacher in Oklahoma.

Similarly, the real Gail would never kick anyone with her orthopedic boots, unless he truly deserved it, and Diane did not really win the lottery and does not live in The Sanctuary in Boca Raton, Florida.

Using real people to create characters in a novel has certain risks, of course. For instance, did I have someone in mind for the killer(s) and victim(s) in the Sylvia and Willie mysteries? No, definitely not. Really. Although someone who knew me in high school thought I was very tough on old boyfriends in The Prairie Grass Murders, which was set in central Illinois where we grew up. But those were Sylvia Thorn's old boyfriends, not mine. Honest.

Ten Things I Love

1. Wednesdays. I love Wednesdays. I think it's because I associate that day with pleasant things. For instance, I schedule my monthly massage on a Wednesday. And another thing, I never have to cook dinner on a Wednesday because my husband grabs a sandwich before he leaves to play bridge. On Wednesdays, I know I still have three more days to accomplish great things before the week is gone and lost forever.

2. My monthly massage. I used to get a sixty-minute massage. That expanded to seventy-five. Now I'm up to ninety minutes. Not only is it relaxing, but it helps relieve the aches and pains that result from too many hours at the computer.

3. Television. I'm one of those strange people who love TV and isn't afraid to admit it. I enjoy Survivor and American Idol and Amazing Race and Dancing With the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance and Big Brother. My favorite dramas are 24 and The Mentalist and Medium and Grey's Anatomy and Brothers and Sisters. I love Desperate Housewives.

A little TV recording story: I hardly ever watch one of these shows live. I record them and watch them whenever I can, sometimes fifteen minutes here and ten minutes there. I have to be careful though. Last season, I recorded the American Idol finale to watch later in the evening. At the critical moment, just as Ryan Seacrest was announcing the winner and said, "The winner is....David--," my recording cut out. The first name of both contestants was David. Most annoying.

4. Pumpkin scones from Starbucks. The calories don't count, because I eat it with a venti nonfat latte. I only have the scone once a month. It can't hurt me.

5. Plain nonfat yogurt and frozen blueberries sprinkled with granola (preferably a low fat and very crunchy granola). I have this for lunch almost every day.

6. Movies. I haven't been to a movie in a theater in ages. I use Netflix. But I've had the urge to see a big screen showing lately, so I'm trying to decide between Star Trek and Angels and Demons. I even tossed out the question on Twitter this morning. Which one should I see? Kerrie Flanagan of Northern Colorado Writers blogged about Angels and Demons in The Writing Bug and gave it a thumbs down. Anyone else?

A little movie story: Many years ago, when I still ate movie popcorn, I went to see a thriller. At one point, the camera is following a character who creeps down the stairs toward the front door to investigate a noise. Through the glass panes, we see it's dark outside. The character reaches the bottom of the stairs. There's an explosive sound as a gloved fist crashes through the glasspane. My hands flew up...and popcorn went flying all over the people sitting around me. They were very gracious, probably thanking their lucky stars I didn't have a cola in my hand.

7. Reading, especially mysteries from my favorite authors. I'll name Craig Johnson and William Kent Krueger here, but my list of preferred mystery writers is about ten miles long.

8. Chocolate. I like Lindt 85% cocoa dark chocolate. I can't keep it in the house all the time because...well, you know.

9. Wine. Hogue Gewurztraminer is my favorite white.

A little wine story: We have an old Concord grape vine in our yard. A couple of years ago I took our grapes to a business in our town that imports and also makes wine. A few months later, I went in and bottled, corked, and labeled my vintage, then toted it home. I even designed my own labels, some using a background of green grapes among the green leaves, and others using the cover art from my first book. The final product had a gorgeous, deep rose color and the aroma of Welch's Grape Juice. The flavor was lighter, and of course, alcoholic. I liked it. Liked it a lot.

10. Farmer's Markets. I'm delighted it's market season again. I usually visit one market on Saturday morning and another one on Sunday afternoon. I stroll the circuit of booths at least twice, once to survey and once to buy. The highlight of the season: peaches from Colorado's western slope.

It seems quite a few things I love are edible. I can live with that.

Sleep-Deprived Blogger Has Brain Fog

I'm really tired today (Monday). Last night I came upstairs at 10:00 to do one more thing at my computer (after watching the Survivor finale), and ended up hitting the sack at 2:45 AM. As usual, the "one more thing" had turned into ten more things.

Once in bed, of course, I couldn't fall right to sleep. Too many tasks on my mind. All good stuff, mind you, stuff I want to do, but my brain struggled to stay awake, listing and prioritizing at warp speed. I figure I slept about three and a half hours before my internal alarm woke me up. I'd forgotten to turn it off before I went to bed.

I'm writing this at 4:00 PM Monday so I can schedule it to post early Tuesday morning. Since I can't go to bed early tonight (mustn't miss my writer's critique group), I plan to sleep in tomorrow. I'll have this mental conversation with whatever part of my brain houses that internal alarm. "Tomorrow," I'll say, "I don't want to get up until I've had at least eight hours of good sleep." I'll repeat that a couple of times to make sure it registers.

Brain fog makes for a very boring blog, doesn't it?

Colorado Author -- Paula Reed

Remember that teaser blog last week about Author Janet? I was playing around. Our Colorado author of the week is Paula Reed.

Everything else I told you about her was true. She was a teacher at Columbine in 1999, she has been published in the romance genre, and she has just sold a historical novel that I am very eager to read. The publisher is St. Martin's Press. The novel is Hester, scheduled for release early in 2010. Yes, we're talking about the Hester of Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

In Paula's own words, quoted from her website: "What did a strong, intelligent, passionate woman like Hester Prynne ever see in a wimp like Arthur Dimmesdale? And where did Hester and her daughter Pearl go when they left New England? What did they do? Why did Hester return to America?

Hester answers those questions. It follows Hester and Pearl across the Atlantic, where they discover intrigue, passion, love, and fortune, but where Hester must also face the most formidable Puritan of all—Oliver Cromwell."

To read more about Paula Reed and her novel, including an excerpt from Hester, please visit her website. And if you wish to follow Paula's journey toward publication, please visit her blog. I'm betting the journey will be quite a ride.

Photos from Norway

Today I wanted to experiment with posting photos, something I hadn't tried on the blog yet, so I've chosen three from the solo trip I took to Norway in May 1998. Norway was a natural choice for an adventure. My maternal grandfather, Lars Ringstveit, emigrated to the United States with one of his brothers when they were in their teens. Another brother, Peter, had already settled in Montana, purchasing land on which he would herd sheep. He paid his brothers' passage to North America.

Two of my mother's cousins, older ladies who had worked and studied in England and traveled extensively, live in Stavanger. I wanted to go. My hubby declined, but didn't protest when I decided to go it alone. My itinerary involved flying to Stavanger with a connection in London, staying in Stavanger with one of the cousins for several days, taking a train to Oslo for one night so I could hop on a bus to visit the sculpture gardens, back on the train the next day to chug over the mountains to Bergen. A couple of nights in Bergen to see the sights and visit art museums, and then the ferry ride back to Stavanger for a few more days with the cousins.

I haven't asked for permission to post family photos, so will focus on scenery. This picture was shot about ten o'clock at night. I was standing in the living room of the cabin that sits on what's left of the property owned by my grandfather's ancestors.


Earlier the next day, I looked out the kitchen window as I drank my morning coffee, then went to grab my camera. This time I used the window as a picture frame:



And then, to show the weather is not always gorgeous in Norway, here's a shot taken during my rough ferry ride from Bergen to Stavanger. I can't remember how long the ride took, but I was very worried about getting seasick. Luckily, that didn't happen.

One of these days, when I have time (haha), I need to get the rest of my Norway photos scanned, as well as the best shots from other trips. Now that I've become more armchair traveler than actual traveler, I forget just how much fun traveling is, and how much other armchair travelers of the world experience their adventures vicariously through websites and blogs. Must plan, must scan, must write.

Permission is required to copy or use any of the photographs posted on this blog.

More on The Desert Hedge Murders

Yay! My advance reading copies of The Desert Hedge Murders, the second Sylvia and Willie mystery, arrived yesterday. Today I'll begin proofreading the book again. It's unlikely I'll find any mistakes, but it happens from time to time. I know of authors who found perfection in the advance review copy only to find upside down pages, or blank pages in the final book released to bookstores. Things happen.

Five Star sent more than twenty reading copies to the most prominent reviewers in the country. Since I didn't receive a review from any of the big four (Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly) the first time around, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we see at least one this time (hopefully a good one).

I'll send my reading copies to potential local or online reviewers. There's a monthly column in our town's newspaper, for instance, that features regional authors and their new releases. Since much of the action in the book takes place in a touristy gold mining town in northwestern Arizona, a town that sits on old historic Route 66, I need to step out of the box and look for unusual review opportunities there.

Getting published is a wait...hurry up...wait...hurry up roller coaster ride. I now move into hurry up mode until the proofing is complete and the reading copies in the mail.

The book information is now on amazon.com and bn.com but the cover art is not. I can submit the bookcover myself to those sites to speed up the process, so that goes on my ToDo list as well.

Here are the first few lines of the book flap synopsis for The Desert Hedge Murders:

"A body in the bathtub is the last thing Sylvia Thorn expects her mother's travel club to find when they check into their Laughlin, Nevada hotel rooms.

The Florida Flippers, named for their long-standing support of the Miami Dolphins, scatter like dandelion fluff, intent on investigating a murder case to which they have no apparent connection. From the elderly wannabe cowgirl with wild red hair to the caustic-tongued volunteer park ranger in orthopedic hiking boots, the Florida Flippers keep Sylvia on her toes as she does a little sleuthing on her own."

I'll keep you posted on the review process, bad or good.

Write...or Tweet?

My friend Kerrie Flanagan is the director of Northern Colorado Writers. She is an energetic, hard-working woman on a mission to motivate and educate writers, especially local writers, and help them reach their goals. From the Northern Colorado Writers Conference in April to the fall writers retreat, and all the workshops, classes, and special events in between, there is no excuse in our area for writers to feel alone as they work toward publication.

Early this year, Kerrie opened the NCW studio. The main room is used for meetings and classes, one of the side rooms as a library and meeting room for small groups, and the third room is the quiet room. Furnished with desks and chairs, not to mention wireless access to the internet, writers go here to write.

"My advice to writers--WRITE," Kerrie says. In this case, she's talking about time wasters in her latest blog on The-Writing-Bug, "Writers Write, Twitterers Tweet."

Kerrie abandoned Twitter after a trial period of several weeks. I plan to interview her about her experience, find out how she went about choosing who to follow and why she felt overwhelmed by the experience. I need to know all the facts because I'm not sure I love Twitter either. I know I'll stay in the T-game until the end of June when I've completed the online blogbooktour class. If I expect to do a real blogbooktour when my book comes out, I'd best stay on Twitter through the fall. But the idea of using the Tweeting community only as a marketing tool is a pipe dream for me. If I'm there, I'll be reading Tweets, following links, connecting up with interesting people. I'll be Tweeting instead of writing.

Unlike Kerrie, I do think Twitter has enormous potential for drawing blog readers and making top-notch connections with other writers and professionals in the writing and publishing community. I also find Twitter fun. But Kerrie's point is well taken. Twitter can be way too much fun. Do I want to be a Twitterer, or do I want to be a Writer?

Author Janet's Story

I think my newspaper saga is over. Life returned to normal this morning. Venting was fun for a couple of days, but I can't build a blog audience on whining and complaining, because I don't have that much to complain about. Unless, of course, I want to start in on politics, the economy, or my aches and pains. I'm not sure I want to go there.

So I'm returning to the subject of Colorado authors, because I want to tell you about an incredible lady I met at a Northern Colorado Writers event earlier this week. At this point, I'm not going to reveal the author's name. I will feature her on my blog a little later in the season, when her new book is available for pre-order. Today we'll call her Author Janet.

Author Janet was a teacher at Columbine High School in 1999. In the months and years that followed, she dealt with ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder, first through less-than-effective therapy, and then through her writing. She chose historical romance as her genre, and her books were printed as mass market paperbacks in English and several other languages. Her name has not yet become a household word.

But Author Janet had a bigger dream. She already knew how to turn her students on to classical literature. Now she wanted to write a historical novel in the tradition of the original author, and carry a classic story through to a previously untold conclusion. Publishers have competed for the right to publish Author Janet's new book, in hardcover, and the book is scheduled for a 2010 release. The idea is excellent. I predict her novel will hit the New York Times Best Seller List.

There are a lot of lessons in Author Janet's story. Whether as a human being, or as a writer, I recognize our need to be strong, to commit to what we want and need, and to keep hope alive. This is one Colorado author who can teach us the way.

Extra Cranky Today

I couldn't resist following up on yesterday's post about my late paper. Turns out it never arrived. I hopped out of bed this morning with high hopes. After all, it was just a transition problem with first-day production. The paper will now be printed in Denver, an hour away from my town. I suppose we'll have a late paper or no paper on snow days. I'd best get used to interruptions.

But what could possibly go wrong on this beautiful May day on the Front Range? The sun is shining. It's only a tiny bit breezy. Production problems should have been worked out yesterday.

I checked the driveway at 7:16 AM. No paper. I went outside, just like yesterday, and checked the bushes and inside the fence. Nope.

This time I called the circulation hot line and gave all the wrong answers to the automated questions. Four minutes later, in spite of the high volume of calls the line was experiencing (or so the automated voice told me), I was connected to a real person. She graciously gave me credit for two days of no delivery and filed a "delivery issue" complaint.

What did I do while I drank my morning coffee? I sat in front of the TV and watched a recorded Brothers and Sisters from three week ago. It's the one where Julia announces she's moving to Seattle and Kitty's husband realizes Kitty has been having an emotional affair. I started my morning crying through forty-five minutes of prime time soap opera.

I switched to one of the financial channels to check the markets. The DOW was down. Timothy Geithner was talking about TARP and community banks. I turned off the television and sat down to write my blog. When I was almost finished, a message flashed at the bottom of the screen. Blogger could not connect to save my post. It told me saving and publishing might fail. Good grief, was there a full moon last night?

When My Newspaper is Late

The newspaper and coffee start to my day began when I retired eleven years ago. The habit is firmly entrenched. This business of newspapers dropping like flies bothers me more than drops in the stock market. When one of the Denver papers bit the dust not too long ago, I was upset, even though I wasn't a subscriber. That Denver paper had always been there, just in case. I want my morning paper with my coffee!

The presses for our local newspaper ran for the last time yesterday. The newspaper, they told us, will live on. Papers will be printed in Denver. The transition should be seamless.

So when I got up this morning, I expected my paper to be in the driveway, just like always. I looked out the window. No paper. Maybe, I thought, it was thrown over the fence, or into the bushes. I went outside and took a closer look. No paper.

I grabbed the phone and dialed the 877 number for my paper's circulation department. "High volume of calls," the automated voice told me. Hmm. Not good. "I can manage my subscription online," she added. I wait for more. "...unexpected production problems," she finally told me. "...one to two hours late."

So here I am, having my coffee (and a whole wheat English muffin with crunchy peanut butter) while I write today's blog. I'm feeling kind of cranky. It's not the lack of news that's a problem. I can switch on the television or my computer for that. It's the feel of the paper as I turn the pages. It's the way my eyes get itchy if I rub them with inky fingers. It's the newspaper smell.

Newspapers, like books, are part of my life. I want my newspaper here on time so I can read it while I drink my morning coffee. It's not too much to ask. Grumble, grumble.

My Colorado Authors Project -- Mike Befeler

I love the authors of Colorado. Once a week I plan to blog about one or more of those talented and friendly folks in the hopes a few more people take a look at their books.

Today I want to tell you about Mike Befeler, a Boulder resident whose first mystery was published in 2007. Retirement Homes are Murder is the tale of octogenarian Paul Jacobson who suffers from short term memory loss. When he finds a body, and is suspected of being the killer, Paul must solve the murder to save himself. Unfortunately, Paul wakes up each morning with no memory of the events of the previous day. This book is full of humor, a few poignant reminders of what aging can do to folks, and a good mystery with plenty of suspense.

Mike's new release, Living With Your Kids is Murder, is available now. I haven't read this one yet, but I trust Mike to deliver a good story. It's definitely on my buy list.

I like to talk about Mike's writing experience when I give presentations or workshops because he's the perfect example of the commitment and time management required to be a productive writer. Mike used the morning pages journaling technique described in Julia Cameron's Artist's Way to write while he held down a full-time job. Each morning he wrote three pages of his novels by hand. When he came home from work, he typed his pages into his computer, editing as he worked. Three pages a day, handwritten.

I'm more of a binge writer, creating large chunks of my story in my head before I sit down and binge type. We all do our thing in our own way. Creativity happens when it happens. But Mike helped his along and has produced more pages of fiction than I have. Three pages a day. I keep thinking about that. Maybe I'll try it. Three pages a day when I first get up . . . but not before coffee.

Happy Mother's Day!

Note that I, being a mother, slept in today. Doesn't matter than my kids are all grown up and live many states away. I pamper myself on Mother's Day.

I already called my own mother, who is celebrating her 90th birthday today. My brother is preparing k-bobs on the grill for her. He already made potato salad and I think he even baked her a cake. I wish I was going to be there. I like all those things, especially when my brother does the cooking.

My stepdaughter is enjoying her very first Mother's Day as a mommy. Her precious baby girl just turned four weeks old.

And here in my corner of Colorado, the day began a bit gray and rainy and breezy, but the sun is threatening to come out. My Sunday newspaper was soaking wet and is now spread across the living room floor to dry. I'll spend a good part of the day at my computer, catching up on chores I neglected while traveling. And I'll watch some of the TV shows I recorded while I was gone so will finally get to see last week's Adam Lambert performance on American Idol. Should be a lovely Mother's Day.

The Grizzly Dream

I have a lot of bizarre dreams, sometimes nightmares. I've plucked a couple of story ideas from those subconscious, unconscious mind pictures, even created a character for a short story that has grown into the fourth draft of a novel.

The dream I had night before last has curious possibilities. I was walking on a path very much like one of the natural area trails that are common in Northern Colorado. Without warning, I came upon a grizzly bear and her two cubs. Mama grizzly charged at me. I told her I would leave, and I turned my back on her and walked away.

In my dream, I turned my back on her and calmly walked away.

I can't imagine where this came from. There are no grizzly bears in my part of Colorado. The only real bear I ever saw in the wild was a small creature somewhere in the Appalachians sometime in the 70s. And if I did run into a mama grizzly with two cubs, and the mama charged at me, I would freak out.

But it gives me an idea. What if a story character has no fear? Not the reckless type who feels the fear and does it anyway, but someone who was skipped when normal fight or flight responses were passed out. What if she does not feel fear and does not understand the concept of fear, similar to a person who does not feel physical pain and cannot imagine what physical pain feels like? Would such a person recognize danger? What would this character do if charged by a grizzly bear?

I'll have to think about this to see if I can turn it into a story.

Or you can.

Do Short Blogs Attract More Readers?

I don't know about the rest of you blog readers, but when I'm blog-hopping from favorite to favorite, I tend to skip the long blogs so I can cover more ground, visit more bloggers, and leave more comments. My intentions are good. I always make a note of the longer blogs so I can go back and read them later. The trouble is, I do a lot of "stuff" and time has a way of shrinking faster than my To Do List. Sometimes I return to the blog, and sometimes I don't.

So why on earth did I make yesterday's blog so long? Isn't it safe to assume long blogs affect other readers the same way? The truth? I wrote about something I care about and the words tumbled out through my fingers to the keyboard. The next thing I knew, I had enough material for three blogs. Should have thought of that before I hit Publish. I could have been two days ahead on the Blog-a-Day Challenge for the blogbooktour online class.

Here's my question for today's readers: How do you feel about short blogs versus long blogs when you are reading for fun and information?

Introducing Sylvia Thorn and Willie Grisseljon

After years of reading mystery series, and wishing some of those authors would put out a book every six months, I decided to write a mystery of my own. I wanted to understand more about the writing process--creating a character who can grow through multiple stories, properly construct a good story arc, and place clues and red herrings in all the right places. The result was The Prairie Grass Murders, published in 2007 by Five Star, a medium-sized traditional publisher of mystery and romance/women's fiction.

In future posts I'll talk about my path to traditional publication without an agent, praise the mystery authors I love (especially Colorado mystery authors), and the differences between the way I promoted the first book and the new tactics I'm trying for book two.

Today, however, I'd like to introduce the protagonists of my mysteries, Sylvia Thorn and Willie Grisseljon. The two are brother and sister. Willie is the oldest, a Vietnam vet who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder after a nearby explosion killed friends and left Willie in shock. When he was discharged from a VA Hospital stateside, Willie wandered the streets for a while, unable to reconnect with his elderly parents and younger sister.

Sylvia, a lawyer who formerly worked for the FBI as administrative support, tracked Willie down and helped him through a long recovery. Willie started his own accounting firm and reinvented his life when he realized his heightened sensitivity to flashing lights and loud noises included sensitivity to higher levels of communication. He's open to these communications when they involve his sister, but he's very reluctant to open the door to others (and he doesn't want to explore who and what those others might be).

Willie loves his family, and is very protective of Sylvia. She's had a few rough times as well. Her first husband, an FBI agent, was killed in an automobile accident. Later, she married an attorney who turned out to be a super grade A jerk. After that divorce, Sylvia focused on her career.

At the beginning of The Prairie Grass Murders, Sylvia is a circuit court judge in Palm Beach County, Florida. When Willie travels from Florida to Illinois to visit the farm where he and Sylvia grew up, he finds a body in a field. Because of Willie's odd behavior after a brief flashback, a deputy sheriff labels him a vagrant with hallucinations and carts Willie to the hospital for observation. Sylvia comes to the rescue, but it's Sylvia who needs to be rescued when she's caught snooping around the old homestead.

In The Desert Hedge Murders, scheduled for release in August 2009, Sylvia accompanies her mother's travel club (The Florida Flippers) to Laughlin, Nevada for a weekend of tours, eating, and gambling. When one of the club ladies enters her hotel room and finds a body in her bathtub, the gals decide to investigate the case, leading to non-stop trouble. Back in Florida, Willie starts having visions and his dad gets skittish that his wife doesn't answer her phone. This time, it's the men who come to the rescue--sort of. The motorcycle ride from Vegas to Laughlin, with Willie in the sidecar, slows them down. And the chance meeting between Willie and a famous ghost from the Oatman Hotel in Oatman, Arizona gives Willie new insights.

Although Sylvia and Willie are serious characters, the situations they get themselves into are a little crazy. Since I enjoy quirkiness and humor in cozy/amateur sleuth mysteries, I let my characters do crazy stuff and make dumb decisions, even when they want to go directions I'd never go myself. It was fun to write. I hope it's fun to read.

Avoiding the Aaaargh! Moments In Blogging

The best books on writing tell us to set our manuscripts aside for days, weeks, even months before we do final revisions. If we give ourselves time away from our work, we have a better chance of seeing our prose as a reader (or agent or editor) would see it. We can catch errors we missed earlier in the writing process.

By jumping into the blog-a-day challenge without writing a few blogs in advance, some of us don't have the luxury of putting our work aside for multiple rounds of self-editing. We pick our moment, sit down at the computer, quick-think a topic, write the blog, proofread a couple of times, and publish. That's the way I've been doing it.

Which is why, when I went back last night and read the blog I wrote yesterday morning, I didn't get very far before I had an Aaaargh! moment. A glaring error in grammar. Why hadn't it glared at me before I published? Here I am, writing about the self-editing process and how to do a better job cleaning up our own manuscripts before we submit, and I can't even see my own mistakes? Another Aaaargh!

Well, what to do but turn it into another blog, right? It could have been worse. I could have made that kind of error in a query letter, or book proposal, or on the first page of my novel. This way, I've only put the error out there for the whole world to see. I think I even Tweeted the link to that one. Holy mackeral, I did Tweet the link to that confounded thing. One more really loud Aaaargh!

So here's the thing. That good advice about putting our work aside before we do final revisions, and then maybe once again before a final self-edit, might be good advice for blog writers as well. Harder to do, of course, if you're writing about current events. But for those of us who can write our blogs in advance, it probably wouldn't hurt. Might cut down on the Aaaargh! moments.

A Good Lesson from the Blogbooktour Class

Here it is, only day five of the Blog a Day Challenge for the blogbooktour class. Since I'm in Brookline, Mass. using my tiny laptop instead of home in Colorado with my desktop and roomy work space, these first few days have been more of a challenge than I anticipated. I write my blog in the morning and do as much e-mail and blog hopping as I can. Then off to spend lunch, the afternoon, and dinner with that new grandbaby (that includes cooking and grocery shopping). Then back to our hotel to read posts, comment, visit Twitter and Facebook, and more e-mail.

I'm still a little behind on class requirements, so will flunk my first blog critique. I know my blog title doesn't match my url, for instance. I'm thinking I'll change the blog title now that I'm getting a better idea what I want to blog about. I haven't installed sitemeter yet, or the addme button, but hope to do that today or tomorrow. I think I finally got word verification turned off comments, and collapsed my archives. These are things I knew nothing about a few days ago.

There is one unexpected advantage to experiencing this first week of class with limited available time. I can't afford to procrastinate as I do at home where I lollygag over coffee for two hours every morning. Getting down to business may be the biggest thing I take away from this first week of class. And that, blogbooktour friends, will make everything else worth the time and trouble, because I'm a first class champion procrastinator.

Writing (and Deleting) the Memory Dump in Fiction

The setting for my first mystery, The Prairie Grass Murders, was central Illinois. A man's body was discovered in a field on a farm that strongly resembled the farm on which my younger brother and I grew up. The protagonists of the Sylvia and Willie mysteries are brother and sister (although Sylvia is the youngest in this family and the pair is in their early sixties).

What an opportunity, I thought, to use my memories to help create my story's setting. There are things I could never forget: the oily smell of the wood workbench in the toolshed, the reek of ammonia in the chicken house, the vicious white rooster that guarded the barnyard, the sweet scent of our lilac bush, or biting into a warm tomato fresh from the garden.

In the first writing, two of the chapters were memory dumps, reading more like memoir than mystery. The descriptions were lovely (if I do say so myself). The incidents charming, even amusing. But there were two problems. (1) The memories had nothing to do with the story, and (2) these stories were plunked into the middle of tension-building scenes, thereby destroying the pacing.

You know what that meant. I needed to scratch them out. Select and delete. Make them go away. It was hard, but it was necessary. The goal of self-editing is to make our manuscripts crisp and clean and ready for a full read by an agent or editor. The delete key is our friend.

Social Distancing

There was a headline on a swine flu story yesterday that mentioned social distancing. I didn't read the whole article because I understood exactly what the phrase meant. I've been doing the same thing since my husband and I arrived at the airport last Thursday. To me, social distancing means I don't shake hands with people; I step away from those who sniffle or sneeze or clear their throat as though they're suppressing a cough; and I quickly retreat from anyone who looks sick or has a real cough.

This is not so easy on an airplane, or in a crowded grocery store, or a restaurant, or a hotel. In all those places, we're too close to too many people, and we have to touch too many things that could have been handled by someone who's ill.

In the hotel restaurant this morning, I sat near a gentleman who sneezed twice after he sat down at his table. I watched him for a moment. He looked well. He didn't sneeze again. I chalked it up to allergies and let it go. He could have been one of the goofballs I mentioned in an earlier post, but probably not.

Those I label goofballs, by the way, are sick people who don't have sense enough to stay home.

Social distancing is pretty good advice for this situation. And stay home if you're sick. Please!

Seeing Our Work With the Reader's Eye

Self-editing is one of the most critical parts of the creative writing process, and one of the hardest to master. Over the last year, I read and critiqued a dozen memoir and fiction manuscripts. All were excellent stories, worthy of publication. All contained at least two of the most common bad habits writers have. In all cases, the issues appeared over and over throughout the manuscript.

I do the same thing in my own work. My editor caught me using the word "back" over and over in my most recent manuscript. My characters stepped back, leaned back, turned back, sat back, looked back, and talked back. Thank goodness for the Find function in my software. I also look for really, pretty, and just. Other authors wear out actually, softly, and carefully.

It's not only word repetition, however. Other habits include overuse of a favorite sentence structure. Perhaps using series of three over and over, or connecting two separate sentence thoughts with a comma and the word "and." Or maybe it's the muse striking a bit too often, resulting in overly clever metaphors on every page.

Training ourselves to see our work with the reader's eye is difficult but essential if we want to produce a polished manuscript. It helps to let a manuscript rest for a few weeks before tackling the final edit. Another helpful approach is to ask your critique group to nitpick, and listen to them. Read a couple of good books on self-editing. One I recommend is Don't Sabotage Your Submissions by Chris Roerden.

Good self-editing can make the difference between acceptance and rejection when submitting to agents or editors. Learn to see your own work as a reader instead of the author. It's a different way of reading, and it works.

Finding Story Ideas in the Strangest Places

Writers need to keep their eyes open and their wits about them at all times. A long day of travel and a middle seat in the back row of an airplane create opportunities to overhear interesting dialogue. Annoying people make excellent victims. A day in a hotel room with no window triggers a setting. People-watching leads to new quirks and habits for our characters.

So here's the thing. The first victim in my next mystery will be a waiter, and I won't say any more about that. I will have a young male suspect who wears his pants with the crotch hanging almost to his knees. One character will rub her nose and sniff a lot, and the protagonist will wonder whether she has allergies...or whether she's a drug addict. And something will happen in a creepy hotel room while the writer is trying to update her blog.

Hmmm. That hits a little too close to home.