First Sentences -- Don't Start With The Weather?

My personal notes:

Blogger once again did not publish my pre-scheduled blog on Monday, so I had to tweak the darned thing to get my post out there. Probably happened again this morning.

Then I was attacked by a vicious mosquito as I diligently pulled weeds from around my lavender plants. Now I will fret about West Nile Virus for goodness knows how long.

My reading report:

I just completed the ARC for Barbara Fleming's Journeying, to be released in August 2009. More on that in late July when I feature Barbara on my Colorado Author Monday.

Am now reading the new Lomax & Biggs mystery, Flipping Out, by Marshall Karp. I won this one. Free. And it came signed. And it had a lovely note inside from Marshall, encouraging me to tell the world if I love the book. I can only tell you, if it's anything like The Rabbit Factory and Bloodthirsty, I reckon you'll all be getting a book review soon.

And now for today's blog:

Haven't you heard that advice a few times--Don't open your novel with the weather?

Well, I have a lot of books around my house, and I knew there would be some with opening sentences about the weather, so I did a little search. I didn't bother with first-time authors, but went for the big guys, the ones who've been around and can pretty much write what they want the way they want to write it. Here's what I found:

"The first week after Labor Day, after a summer of hot wind and drought that left the cane fields dust blown and spiderwebbed with cracks, rain showers once more danced across the wetlands, the temperature dropped twenty degrees, and the sky turned the hard flawless blue of an inverted ceramic bowl."
.....James Lee Burke, Last Car to Elysian Fields: A Dave Robicheaux novel (Simon & Schuster, 2003)

Whew, long sentence, Mr. Burke. But nice. Very nice.

"The morning air off the Mohave in late winter is as clean and crisp as you'll ever breathe in Los Angeles County."
.....Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer (Warner Books, 2005)

Personally, I've never experienced that in LA County, but I'll take Mr. Connelly's word for it.

"It was sullen and gusty and snowing like hell when I went to see Grace."
.....Robert B. Parker, All Our Yesterdays (Delacorte Press, 1994)

I'm already wondering why seeing Grace was so important that the character had to go out in that kind of weather.

"A nasty squall had blown across Pitts Bay earlier in the day, the wind tossing sheets of water against the landmark pink facade of the famed Hamilton Princess Hotel."
.....Margaret Truman, Murder at Union Station: A Capital Crimes Novel (Ballentine Books, 2004)

Hmmm. I haven't read Margaret Truman lately. Maybe I'll make that one next up on my list.

So what does this tell you? First, if you're observant, you'll notice I'm way behind in my reading, because these are older books, and I tend to give unsigned books away after I've read them. More on the topic, however, you'll see that weather can provide a convenient way to identify the story's setting and set the first scene. I know some agents and editors don't like manuscripts that open with weather. I don't understand why. Any thoughts on that?

Colorado Author -- Janet Lane

Does anyone out there like a good historical romance with a little spice and a lot of intrigue? Today's Colorado author delivers that and more. Published by Five Star's Expressions line of romance and women's fiction, Janet Lane's Coin Forest Legend Series features Gypsy adventures set in 15th century England.

Now I'm going to admit that I don't read a lot of historical romance, but since Janet and I participated in two or three group signings together, and I knew I would keep running into her at Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer events, I decided to give her first novel, Tabor's Trinket, a try.

My conclusion? Tabor's Trinket (adventures of Sharai and Lord Tabor) is well-written, an exciting adventure, and the Gypsy and period research is outstanding. The part that is fiction is seamlessly blended into fact.

There is a giant bonus when you follow the link to Janet's website. Be sure to check out the articles posted on her writing page. Her column in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers newsletter is always
informative, and she'll be presenting workshops on plotting and Twitter at RMFW Colorado Gold Conference in September. On top of everything else she does, and I don't know where she finds the time, Janet now has a blog. My readers will want to check out her June 26 post on book signings (especially since I think I participated in at least one of those less-than-successful group signings Janet describes).

The second book in the series, which I have not yet read, is Emerald Silk (adventures of Kadriya and John Wynter). Janet is working on Legend of Coin Forest (adventures of Stephen and Alina), the third book in the series.

Sharing The Last Journey

Farrah Fawcett's two and a half year battle with anal cancer was heroic, as most such battles are. What makes her death especially notable is the information she gave us about her disease, and her determination, even though she'd been told she could not be cured, to fight for her life.

One of the greatest gifts we humans can give our family and friends during such a prolonged illness is to share our journey, as sad and as difficult as that might be, and to put up a good fight. The tendency is often to withdraw and slam a door closed behind us, shut everyone out, and give up. When that happens, everyone loses.

Farrah's willingness to talk about her experience, not only with those close to her, but with everyone who wanted to be there, was a blessing. Her approach reminds me of two others who gave us more of themselves than most would.

One is Gilda Radner, the Saturday Night Live legend who died of ovarian cancer, a sneaky disease that is very hard to diagnose. A twentieth anniversary edition of her book, It's Always Something, has just been released by Simon & Schuster. Your library probably has a copy as well. First published not long before her death, Gilda's book is poignant and funny and so real you feel you know her by the time you turn the last page.

The second book is more recent: It's the print version of The Last Lecture by Carnegie Mellon Professor, Randy Pausch. Pausch died of pancreatic cancer in July, 2008, just a few months after the book was released. In The Last Lecture, he passes on life lessons, and shares his passion for the work he accomplished and the family he loved.

Yes, the stories are sad, but they also remind us of some universal truths. I highly recommend both.

Countdown -- Two Months to Publication

Most of the ARCs (advance reading copies) of The Desert Hedge Murders have been distributed to reviewers. My local newspaper reviewer highly recommended the mystery for a "Snuggie-covered reading session." The first online review is available at armchairinterviews.com. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a good word from one of the big four: Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, or BookList. Two good words would be even better.

On July 11th, I'm giving a two hour workshop on self-editing for Northern Colorado Writers. I'll attend Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference in Denver in September and Bouchercon 2009 (mystery convention) in Indianapolis in October. I've also applied to participate in the Author's Room at the big Holiday Market in Fort Collins, Colorado, the two days after Thanksgiving. I'm even squeezing in a weekend writing retreat in mid-November to catch my breath and, hopefully, start a new book.

Now I must fill in the spaces from mid-September through the end of the year. It's decision time. Will I schedule bookstore signings? Give talks at retirement communities or libraries? Keep activities regional or hit the road? Or will I focus on a Blog Book Tour? Perhaps do a mailing? Or maybe try a little bit of everything while not overdoing anything. It's time to make up my mind. Plan. Write it down. Make the calls. Send the e-mails. It's time.

The Usual Travel Stories

As promised, I do have a couple of travel stories.

The usual injury: I stayed with my son and daughter-in-law two nights. They have two young dogs, including a hefty one-year-old German Shepherd named Jaxie and a two-year-old, slightly smaller, mixed German Shepherd and something else named Robbie. They are nice, playful, happy dogs, occasionally rowdy. As I walked into the room where they were bounding about, Jaxie spun around and charged straight at me with Robbie racing after her. I think when Jaxie realized I was there, she tried to aim for the space between me and a nearby easy chair. Unfortunately, that space was about six inches wide. Somehow, I stayed on my feet. Forty-pounds of dog weight slammed into my left knee. Jaxie didn't even get a bloody nose. And, happily, it appears my knee survived. A few dozen ice packs later, and I'm almost back to normal.

The usual change of plans: The second floor of the Oatman Hotel is getting a makeover so it was closed to the public. I did not try to commune with the ghost. Maybe next time. I assume a little renovation never chased a perfectly good ghost from his chosen haunts.

The usual fascinating people: In that part of the country, especially around the gambling towns, you always meet interesting people. There was a comic on the shuttle ride from Laughlin to Las Vegas. He'd finished a gig at one of the casinos and was headed home to Wisconsin where he owns a sign-making business. On one of my flights, I sat next to Leslie of www.FightFraudAmerica.com and the John Cooke Fraud Report. I listened to some of her amazing experiences and story ideas began popping like popcorn kernels. If you're looking for information on frauds and scams for your mystery or thriller, you might want to drop by these two websites.

The usual story idea: Yesterday morning I was up very early because I had an 8:00 AM flight home. About 5:15 AM, I left my room in search of coffee. I was one floor up from the casino level, so I walked down the long empty hallway toward the elevator. I noticed the receiver of the house phone, which hung on the wall by the elevator, was off the hook and dangling by its cord. The door of the elevator opened immediately after I pushed the call button. I stepped inside and rode down one floor to the casino level. I entered another empty hallway, very close to the casino entrance. I walked through the door toward the lighted machines. Nothing was flashing, clanging, whirring, or clicking. Even at 5:00 in the morning, I expected the casino to be alive, full of energy. Not this one. It was quiet. Dead quiet.

Here's where you ask, what if...?

On My Way Home -- I Hope

I'm flying back to Colorado from Las Vegas this morning. I was hanging out with my son and daughter-in-law, their dogs, cats, and horses, and maybe even a ghost, in Oatman, Arizona, from Friday through Sunday. Sunday night I stayed at the Edgewater, a casino/hotel in Laughlin, Nevada, then took a shuttle to Las Vegas yesterday. Last night I stayed at the Tropicana in Las Vegas, knowing I had to be at the airport at the crack of dawn this morning.

(It feels so weird to write like this, as though I really am on my way home, but the truth is, I'm writing this last Thursday night and I'm pre-scheduling it to post next Tuesday, which is today if you're reading it on the 23rd...well, you see what I mean.)

To continue, many of my travels involve complications, delays, confusion, and other insanities, so I hope to have good travel stories to tell.

Like the time I took a business trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, with co-workers and we arrived at the airport to find the taxi drivers were on strike. Hotel vans were not allowed in to pick up passengers. We had to be smuggled off airport property in a private car.

Or the time my husband and I were flying to Europe and had to change planes in Dallas-Fort Worth. Violent thunderstorms threatened just as our plane pulled away from the gate. We sat out in the middle of nowhere for four hours until the storms were past, and then the plane took off. They ran out of food before we landed in Paris, and I think there was also a problem with the bathrooms. I seem to be blocking that memory.

That's enough for now. I need to finish packing for the trip I started last Friday and will be getting home from today, which is next Tuesday. Just take my word for it.

Colorado Author -- Cricket McRae

The author of three Sophie Mae Reynolds Home Crafting mysteries, Cricket McRae is a crafter of all trades, and I suspect a mistress of all as well. In Lye in Wait, she even taught us how to make homemade lip balm. While weaving all things crafty into her stories, Cricket creates believable characters and clever plots as well. Her protagonist, Sophie Mae, lives with her best friend and her friend's ten-year-old daughter, and her dog. In Lye in Wait, the first book of the series, the handyman dies from drinking lye. Unfortunately, lye is an important ingredient in soap-making, so Sophie Mae has a good supply on hand.

In the second book in the series, Heaven Preserve Us, Sophie's boss at the crisis center where she volunteers dies of food poisoning. Recipes are included.

Okay, so maybe that was a bad choice of words in the context of food poisoning.

In Spin a Wicked Web, Sophie's third adventure, she's in trouble again when the very first skein of wool she spins is used to strangle a member of the art cooperative where Sophie is learning her new skills.

You're probably wondering what craft Sophie Mae Reynolds will dabble in next. It's rumored to be cheese-making. I'll bet the second thing you're wondering is if Cricket McRae is this author's real name. No, it isn't. If you'd like to know more, please drop by the Sisters in Crime--Rocky Mountain Chapter website where I've posted an interview with Cricket.

Oatman, Arizona -- The Ghost in the Oatman Hotel

I'm taking off a little later this morning, flying to Las Vegas, and then traveling to Oatman, Arizona, a dozen or so miles east of Bullhead City. Part of the action in The Desert Hedge Murders takes place in and around Oatman, an old historic Route 66 gold mining town which is now a tourist attraction. In addition to the Oatman Hotel, which is where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are supposed to have spent their wedding night after their marriage ceremony in Kingman, AZ, Oatman features an old west main street complete with wild burros looking for a handout and staged robberies and gunfights in front of the hotel. This highway is also a favorite for motorcycle buffs who want to travel the famous Route 66 trail as they live their inner Easy Rider personas.

The Oatman Hotel is rumored to be haunted, not by Clark and Carole, but by a miner named Ray, now nicknamed Oatie. Ray was despondent after the death of his wife and children who were emigrating from Ireland to join him. He eventually, it is said, drank himself to death. His body was found behind the hotel. I wish I could say we heard or saw Oatie on one of our visits to Oatman. We did not. But one of my protagonists in The Desert Hedge Murders sees Oatie three times.

I'll try again on this trip, although I'm not staying overnight in the hotel again. My son and daughter-in-law live in Oatman, and my daughter-in-law owns Sweet Sally's, the ice cream shop in the hotel lobby. Her mom runs the hotel and its excellent restaurant. I plan to interview them about the ghosts for a future blog.

Have any of you ever encountered a ghost? Was it fun...or scary?

Online Companies for Promotional Materials

Most authors have their favorite companies from which they order bookmarks, postcards, and other promotional materials. I'd like to share three of my online favorites with you, and hope you'll add your favorites to the list by leaving a comment.

The first is PrintingForLess.com. In 2007, I designed my bookmarks for The Prairie Grass Murders, and this fine Montana company did a top notch printing job at a price I could afford. The bonus in the deal was the excellent follow-up from the team that handled my little project. I was kept informed by e-mail, and after I my ordered was shipped, I received a phone call to find out if I had received the bookmarks as scheduled and if I was happy with the company's work. Most definitely. I'll be giving them a bookmark order for The Desert Hedge Murders soon, and I may purchase postcards this time as well.

The other company that delivered an excellent product was zazzle.com. I didn't know about this business until my son-in-law cleverly designed a coffee mug with my book cover on it and gave it to me for Christmas. I ordered more mugs to give as gifts and to include in auction donation packages for a couple of the mystery conventions I attended.

The third company I've used is VistaPrint.com. This is the place to go for free business cards. Choose from over forty designs, fill out the online form, and place your order. You pay for shipping and processing. For a reasonable price, you can expand the design choices. I chose the free option and was quite satisfied.

Have you used any online companies you would recommend?

Why I Spent the Night in the Boys' Locker Room

It was August, 1992. Hurricane Andrew was headed toward South Florida. At the time, my husband and I belonged to ham radio organizations ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) and RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service).

Ham radio operators provide a number of services when disasters occur, especially when normal communications are interrupted. In addition, to avoid jamming critical transmissions among emergency police, fire, and medical services, ham radio is a separate way for Red Cross shelter personnel to report to emergency management officials through volunteers. Bill and I were on the list, and we were called to work as soon as the decision was made to open the shelters.

We hurried to install the metal storm shutters at our home, grabbed our two teenagers, our radio and equipment, and all the supplies we could think of to take with us, locked up the house, and headed for the nearby high school, our assigned base.

It was our first time. We'd been through the basic training and had a checklist, but we weren't sure what to expect from the other folks involved. We did believe we'd be placed fairly close to the Red Cross shelter manager. And the food and water. And people. It didn't work out that way.

Our radio base was set up in the darkest corner of the darkest area of the school, a small office off the boys' locker room. The whole area reeked of sweaty socks and gym shoes. While one of us was on the radio, another had to run back and forth to the shelter manager with reports and requests. The kids camped out on the floor. Bill and I were awake almost all night. We couldn't hear much of the storm, but we caught glimpses of the storm's progress on television until the power went out. It seemed to be headed toward our town, Boca Raton.

There was dim emergency lighting in most of the school, but not in the locker room area. We operated by the lights from our big flashlight. All night long, taking turns, we reported in to emergency management personnel, gave people counts, took messages for the Red Cross team and crossed the dark, dark rooms and walked long hallways to reach the shelter area in the gym. We took little naps when we could.

There are a lot of bad things about hurricanes. They take a long time to form, and a long time to get where they're going. Plenty of time to worry. Panic, even. Sometimes they get close to landfall, and then get confused. They wobble, wander around in a circle, change course, and then slam into land miles away from the projected target. Hurricane Andrew veered a bit to the south, so did not hit Boca Raton head on. Other than a few small limbs and leaves on the ground, our house was fine.

Homestead, south of Miami, took the brunt of this hurricane. Parts of that town were leveled. You can see some of the damage photos if you follow the Hurricane Andrew link above. If you like the meteorological details, they're at that same site.

I kept thinking about the Florida hurricane experiences as I sat in my closet in Northern Colorado yesterday, wondering if I'd escaped all that hurricane anxiety only to get blindsided by a tornado. At least my little closet didn't smell like sweaty socks.

Twenty Minutes in the Closet with Twitter

I know. The title makes no sense. Stick around and I'll explain.

We've had strange weather in Northern Colorado the last couple of weeks. Lots of rain. Hail that shredded gardens. Wind. A few tornadoes around Denver and on the eastern plains. Yesterday was stranger than most at my house.

My second floor office space, where my desktop computer lives, is at the east end of our house. At the west end, one bedroom window looks out past houses toward the hills. While I was working at my computer yesterday afternoon, I heard a rumble of thunder. I strolled to the bedroom and rolled up the blinds, stared at the ugly black cloud with its rolling, twisting tendrils, left my desktop to defend itself as best it could, and headed downstairs.

My laptop was parked on the kitchen table where I'd left it earlier, so I powered it on. In seconds, the Weather Bug began to chirp. Sure enough, there was a tornado warning that included my town. Tornadoes never come to my town, and they sure don't form to the west of my town. Except yesterday.

The safest place in our house is the closet under the stairs, in the center of the house, just off a hallway. The entry into the crawlspace is also in that closet, extra protection if needed. I hauled the sweeper and a couple of boxes out of the closet, grabbed a chair and my laptop, and took shelter.

It began to hail and the wind picked up. I closed the closet door. There was a low rumbling. Was it getting louder? I couldn't tell. The closet was dark except for my laptop screen. I logged in to Twitter. With the alerts from Weather Bug and tweets from local weather spotters, I was in touch. I knew what was happening. Nothing. The background rumble continued. I opened the closet door and listened. Ah. The clothes drier.

I still waited until the tornado warning expired to exit the closet.

Yeah, a bit anticlimactic. You're disappointed, aren't you? You were expecting something more intense. Maybe I can fix that. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the night I spent in a high school boys' locker room during Hurricane Andrew. I'll bet you can't wait.

Colorado Author -- Sandi Ault

Sandi Ault's first Jamaica Wild mystery, Wild Indigo, was released in January 1, 2007, followed quickly by Wild Inferno in 2008, and Wild Sorrow, released in March 2009. Jamaica, who begins the series as a Bureau of Land Management agent in New Mexico, is a student of Pueblo culture, an interest that often gets her in trouble with tribal authorities as well as her BLM boss.

The second book in the series allows Jamaica and her wolf, Mountain, to get up close and personal with a forest fire. Since author Sandi Ault is a fire information officer, she writes from firsthand experience. I recently finished reading Wild Inferno. The fire scenes are intense, and the book was hard to put down. I'm looking forward to Wild Sorrow.

Not only a fine writer with extensive knowledge of the land and culture in which her protagonist performs her duties, Sandi is also an entertaining speaker and workshop instructor. The interesting and poignant tale of the original and real wolf, Mountain, can be found at Sandi's website. To find out more about Sandi's race to finish the fourth Jamaica Wild book, Wild Penance, visit Sandi's blog.

The Search for Good Ideas

I wanted to use the quote, "No good deed goes unpunished," in a story, and it occurred to me that although I use the phrase from time to time, I had no idea of its origin. I pulled my copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations from my bookcase and found the phrase first in the index under "unpunished."

When I followed the page reference back to the quotations, I was disappointed. The source is anonymous. That piqued my interest, however, and I found almost twenty pages of song verses, sayings, proverbs, and rhymes for which the authors are not known.

These seem especially relevant for the times:

"Keeping up with the Joneses."
.....Popular saying

"A fool and his money are soon parted."
.....English proverb

"Use it up, wear it out;
Make it do, or do without."
.....New England maxim

"You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!
.....Remark -- Made by an unidentified cabinet member (possibly Secretary of the Interior Jacob Dolson Cox (1828-1900), quoted by Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ch. 17.

"It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell."
.....The Chicago Times (1861)

If you have a copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations in your own reference library, you can find a lot of good article and essay material. For instance, did you know that Henry David Thoreau is credited with this:

"Nothing is so much to be feared as fear."
.....Journal [1906], September 7, 1851

But in similar words, so is the Bible (Proverbs), Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Wellington, and then, finally, Franklin Roosevelt.

The ideas from all this? Articles on personal finance and why people should pay attention to those old sayings. An essay on fear, or simple truths that survive centuries of change. Or a political blog about congressmen who need to be smacked on the snout.

Have a great weekend.

The Rest of the Story

So, as I was saying yesterday, things changed in my leisure and writing life at the end of 2003. That's when I signed up for a novel-writing class at our Senior Center. The instructor was Brian Kaufman, a local author traditionally published by a small Northern Colorado press. After the class was over, several of us formed a critique group which is still in existence today. One original member has left us to work on a nonfiction book, and the person who joined us was...tada...Brian Kaufman.

About that same time, I hurt my knee while bowling. That sidelined me for many months. What to do with the time? I had started writing a mystery novel for the class, so I wrote the rest of The Prairie Grass Murders in about six months. After a couple of revisions, I went to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference in 2004 and pitched the book to a New York agent.

She shot me down.

I did two things after I recovered from that little humiliation. First, I wrote a new novel called Wishing Caswell Dead, which is historical fiction about a thirteen-year-old girl who survives in spite of the evil that threatens her future. Then I went back and polished The Prairie Grass Murders so I could take it back to Colorado Gold in 2005. I signed up for a workshop with an editor and author, Denise Dietz, the angel who is my editor today.

Once in a while we make random choices for random reasons and magic happens.

After following Deni's suggestions to improve my novel, I submitted the manuscript and Five Star bought it. There's a lot more to the submission, acceptance, contract, editing, copy-editing, and marketing process, but we'll save that for another day.

The point is this: You can't ever give up. If you want it sooner rather than later, you'll set different priorities, you'll work harder, you'll give up more sleep. But you can't ever give up.

How Writers Pay Their Dues

I don't need to tell writers what that means. Most of us practice our craft for years before we have a manuscript good enough to submit to an agent or publisher. Once we work up the courage, we send out enough hard copy queries, partials, and manuscripts to take down a hundred trees. We work ourselves into a blubbering snit as we prepare to pitch our work at a conference or workshop. And sometimes, decades after we first began to write, we decide it's never going to happen, and we give up.

Or, we finally get published.

Yeah, I know, sometimes a guy hits the big time with his first manuscript. Maybe that author is so brilliant he deserves his good fortune. On the other hand, there may be a long story you haven't yet heard, like maybe the author has been revising the same manuscript for twenty-seven years.

My story begins a really long time ago, after I graduated from high school and started college. I dabbled in poetry, short stories, and essays when I wasn't busy with term papers and part-time jobs. From time to time, I took a writing class or attended a workshop. Later, after joining the corporate world, I abandoned the poetry and worked harder on short stories. At the same time, I was documenting accounting procedures, preparing business reports, and designing training materials for new accounts payable computer programs. And I also had a family.

That may explain why I wanted to escape to a make-believe world in my free time.

Fast forward to 1985, when I had an incredible opportunity to take a break from the real world and spend a couple of years in France. All of a sudden I had more free time than I'd had in years, and I began to write. Since my brother and I had discussed collaborating on a novel based on his years in the transportation industry, that's where I began. We sent materials back and forth between France and Illinois by regular mail (no e-mail yet), and the result was an action/adventure story, The Troubleshooter. While my brother tried to get someone to read that novel, I moved on to romantic suspense set in the South of France.
It took us thirteen years of submitting and about six rewrites before I discovered the niche for The Troubleshooter. Books in Motion marketed heavily to cross-country travelers and truck drivers who could buy or rent the books at large truck stops along the way. The Troubleshooter was released on audiotape in 2000. The story has not yet been published in any printed form. However, I'm thinking it has potential as a historical mystery if I revise it one more time. If you tend to suffer from review anxiety, read the one on The Troubleshooter at the Worldcat site and eat your heart out. Come on, you'll like it.

The romantic suspense novel which has no title requires a tougher and braver heroine than the gal who showed up for my first draft. The manuscript is sitting on a shelf in the bookcase just behind me. I intend to rewrite it one of these days and bring in a new gutsier dame with a sense of humor to play the lead.

Meanwhile, back to the never-ending story. I continued to write once in a while from the late 80s to 2003, but my working hours increased, and then Bill dude and I retired, moved across the country, and did a bit of traveling. When I did write, I rarely took the time to submit anything. As a result, I have that one published article I told you about yesterday and a file box full of bad poems, short stories, essays, and beginnings of things never finished.

And then, late in 2003, my writing life changed. I'll tell you more about that tomorrow.

The First Time

Oh, don't get your hopes up. I'm not writing about that first time.

I'm talking about the first time I was published. It was April 1990. The magazine was Popular Communications. An article I'd written on ham radio was incorporated into The Ham Column: Getting Started as a Radio Amateur.

The article, What's a Neat Lady Like Me Doing in a Shack Like This? described my journey from complaining spouse of a ham radio operator whose radio shack looked as though it has been hit by a tornado to a General class operator who no longer cared much what the radio room looked like. I was too busy making contacts around the world as N4UNE.

Kind of makes you think of Twitter, doesn't it?

Getting published that first time was a great feeling. I ignored the fact that my article was chopped up and apparently not copy-edited after the changes were made. I filed the tear sheets away because I couldn't use them as an example of my excellent writing, not with errors such as "irratated" or "to" used instead of "too." And I didn't get paid for the article.

That was a one-time adventure in article writing, related to a specific niche from a unique point of view. It was fun, but fiction was my thing. Over the next few weeks, I'll write more about my writing experiences and my unique journey to publication. I never do things the easy way.

Colorado Author -- Lynda Hilburn

I know some of you folks like vampires. Most of you know by now that I do not.

Even so, in the interest of doing a competent interview with Colorado author Lynda Hilburn for the Sisters in Crime -- Rocky Mountain Chapter website, I read The Vampire Shrink (Medallion Press, 2007). This novel is the first in the Kismet Knight series and features a Denver psychologist who thinks a couple of her clients are delusional. It turns out those clients really are the vampires they imagine themselves to be. I gotta tell you, vampires aside, Lynda's novel is full of suspense, humor, romance, and sex. It's a great read.

The second book in the series, Dark Harvest, is now available. Lynda's book trailer is at You Tube and it's kind of creepy. But I'm anxious to see what happens next to Kismet Knight, so that book is now sitting in my TBR stack. I found her a gutsy, interesting character and I liked the psychologist angle. The trouble with a good vampire mystery/erotic romance/fantasy is that it has vampires in it. But this is my personal problem; I shouldn't be bothering you with it.

This author is even more interesting than her character, Kismet. According to her website biography, Lynda is also a psychologist; she has experienced life as a rock-and-roll singer/musician and a professional psychic; and she is also a certified hypnotherapist. Her interest in the paranormal goes back to her childhood, a time when she had imaginary friends and could sometimes see dead relatives. I assume when she says that she means the ghosts or spirits of dead relatives, but I haven't been all that anxious to ask more questions about that particular experience.

Paranormality, Lynda's blog, has a lot to offer you paranormal story lovers, including story excerpts and guest bloggers. If you are a fan of the paranormal genre, and enjoy mystery and humor in your sexy romances, please give Lynda Hilburn's novels a try.

Painless Book Promotion -- Wishful Thinking?

When I say painless, I'm talking about promotional efforts that don't require me to get dressed up, get in the car (with a box of books in the trunk, just in case), drive between 10 and 200 miles to a bookstore, tote my books and bookmarks and postcards and bowl of Hershey Kisses inside, sit or stand at a table for two hours trying to charm customers into talking to me, and then drive home, exhausted, after signing and selling a couple of books. For me, this is the worst kind of torture, especially the part where I have to avoid eating the Kisses, at least until I'm in the car and on the way home.

So what makes someone shell out the cash for a new book?

I step into my reader shoes and think of things that persuade me to buy:

1. I know and like the author, either personally or through online or mail communications.
2. I attend an author's signing or presentation (usually because I know the author) and can buy a signed first edition.
3. I need to buy a gift for a friend or relative (books are always my first choice).
4. I'm browsing in a bookstore for one of those gifts, and I impulsively buy a book for myself based on the cover art and synopsis.
5. I read or hear a great review from a reviewer I trust.
6. A lot of reader buzz is coming from everywhere. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is a good example.

There are several things that rarely lead me to purchase a book:

1. Blurbs on book jackets or inside the book cover.
2. In-your-face displays near a bookstore's front door.
3. Bestseller lists.
4. Signings without a reading or presentation by authors I don't know.

Even if I choose not to buy a book myself, I might request a book at the library. That decision is often made after I read about a book on a website or blog, but I don't know the author or reviewer.

In my search for alternative ways to sell books, I'm exploring the world of blog book tours, updating information on organization websites such as my page at Mystery Writers of America, and joining new web social networking sites. I like the looks of Library Thing and intend to go there next. I'll do at least one mailing to libraries in the state where I live (Colorado), the state I grew up (Illinois), and the states where my new book is set (Arizona and Nevada). There are bookmarks to order, maybe postcards, and a few mugs to use in the conference and convention charity auctions.

I'm working my way through these older marketing books, looking for more ideas :

The Complete Guide to Book Marketing by David Cole (revised 2003).

The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't by Carolyn Howard-Johnson (2004)

Guerrilla Marketing for Writers: 100 Weapons for Selling Your Work by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman & Michael Larsen (2001)

This blog is more about questions than answers, I guess. I'm not convinced a book signing tour is worth the time and expense. I'm not sure a blog book tour will work either. If anyone else has the answers, please let me know. I'm feeling particularly clueless today and wish I had a bag of Hershey Kisses stashed somewhere in the house.

Retiring From Florida

When my husband and I retired and left Florida, we selected half a dozen cities to visit across the United States before making a final decision. We knew we wanted to live in a college town, and preferred a population of 100,000 to 125,000. After eleven years in South Florida, we also wanted interesting terrain and less humidity.

Because of my childhood love for cowboy movies and Zane Grey western novels, I had my eye on Laramie, Wyoming. The reality of Wyoming, however, is its wind, its fierce winters, and its altitude. My husband convinced me we'd best enjoy Wyoming's beauty during occasional summer visits.

This time of year, wildflowers burst into bloom in the western states. This photo was taken a few years ago in Wyoming not far north of the Colorado border.

Wyoming can be green and lush or dry and brown. When the rains do come, the colors are spectacular. This photo was taken near Hole in the Wall while we were on a driving trip that went from Colorado to South Dakota and then down through Wyoming.

But enough about Wyoming, as beautiful as it is. We've now lived in Northern Colorado for eleven years and still haven't seen everything it has to offer. But Rocky Mountain National Park is only forty-five minutes away, so we've taken that drive many times.

Most people laugh when they hear we moved away from Florida when we retired. But we grew up in Illinois and I had also spent quite a few years in Indiana. Change of seasons feels right. We especially enjoy fall and winter, even when it snows. And now that it's June, I'm ready to take the new camera (which I'm confident will never give me a blurry photo) into the hills and search for wildflowers.

Permission must be obtained from Patricia Stoltey before copying or using these photographs.

Killer First Sentences -- June 3, 2009

First sentences are hard. Agents and editors give all kinds of conflicting advice on panels and in workshops, on their websites or in books. One says a novel should never open with dialogue. Another says she loves a book to jump into dialogue from the get-go. A writing manual tells us the first sentence should be the hook. An agent insists we should never open a book with the weather. In a conference workshop, a well-known editor advises writers that the opening sentence should never be in the form, "Blank did blank."

What's an author to do?

Since I have lots and lots of books around my house, I decided to look at the first page of random books and pick five that had killer first sentences (that's killer first sentences from my point of view, of course). Here are the ones I selected this time around:

"Several miles into his journey, Jack St. Bride decided to give up his former life." .....Jodi Picoult, Salem Falls (2001)

"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." .....Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon (2007)

"Call me Snake." .....Marilyn Victor and Michael Allan Mallory, Death Roll (2007)

"Three days before her death, my mother told me--these weren't her last words, but they were pretty close--that my brother was still alive." .....Harlan Coben, Gone for Good (2002)

"When this nameless piece a' shit tore off Linda Lobo's G-string instead of sticking money in it like he was supposed to, Texas Jack Carmine went crazy-over-the-edge and hit him with a pool cue." .....Robert James Waller, Border Music (1993)

Killer first sentences will be a blog topic from time to time, which is why I put the date in the title. Let me know if you have an all-time favorite, or one that caught your attention recently. Can a great first sentence convince you to buy a book (or check it out of the library)?

A Tough Day

Monday was a lousy day for a lot of people.

An Air France flight was lost somewhere in the Atlantic. Turbulence and lightning don't usually knock airplanes out of the sky.

The General Motors bankruptcy was distressing, even though we knew it was inevitable. Another 20,000 workers to lose their jobs. Dealerships to close. More taxpayer money thrown into the GM wishing well.

I had a heck of a time trying to blog about something pleasant when all this was going on, but even in the toughest situations, there's something good. So in the midst of reading the headline stories, trying to figure out why our President puts a period after every phrase in his speeches, and puzzling over the stock market gains on a day when all hell was breaking loose, I saw these good things in my life:

1. I added almost 1,300 words to my novel.

2. I learned how to use the Instant Message chat capabilites in my e-mail program.

3. Because my critique group was meeting at my house last evening, I managed to sweep the front step.

4. The grilled cheese sandwiches my husband and I had for supper (with an excellent salad) were made with sharp cheddar cheese. Grilled cheese sandwiches are one of the greatest foods known to man.

5. I don't personally know any vampires or werewolves so I'm fairly certain they don't exist. This is an especially good thing.

We'll hope today goes a lot better for folks who are having a rough time.

Colorado Author -- Beth Groundwater

I'll put the full disclosure information right up front. I know Beth Groundwater very well and consider her a good friend. In 2007, we were two of the mystery authors on the Mystery Through the Ages panels (with Mike Befeler, Linda Berry, and Robert Spiller), and also enjoyed presentations and signings with thriller author Bonnie Ramthun and Five Star historical romance authors Joanne Sundell, Janet Lane, and Leslee Breene. You'll hear more about these and other Colorado authors over the next few months.

The launch party for Beth's second Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery, To Hell in a Handbasket, was held yesterday in Colorado Springs. Although the first book was set in Colorado Springs, book two takes place in Breckenridge, Colorado, when Claire and her family head to the mountains for a ski vacation. But all goes to hell in a handbasket when her daughter's boyfriend's sister is killed on the slope.

I'll buy my signed copy next weekend when Beth passes through Northern Colorado, but I can already tell you the first book in the series, A Real Basket Case, was an entertaining mystery with excellent plot twists. The second promises to be the same. Kirkus Reviews (April 1, 2009) said, "Groundwater's second leaves the bunny slope behind, offering some genuine black-diamond thrills."

Beth has been a powerhouse in networking and marketing, pursuing creative and energetic ways to promote her books. I asked Beth for a few comments regarding her efforts, and this is what she said:

"First, promotion takes a lot of time & planning! I set aside April - June to work full-time on promoting TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, and I'm working at least 40 hours a week doing just that, with no time for writing fiction. I wrote all the blog articles for my tour (& a New Books essay for the June Mystery Scene) in April (if I hadn't, I would have lost my mind in May!) & booked most of my June northwest tour dates in April. This month (May) is the blog tour, contacting media along my tour route & sending out ARCs, and booking Colorado signings in June & July. Next month (June) I'm on the road. Then I'm taking a breather in July & August.

And you never know what magic will happen down the road from your promotion efforts. I've gotten radio interviews from Facebook connections, blog site visit requests from Goodreads friends, book club invitations from library visits, you name it. It all feeds on itself."

I caught a few of the blogs along the way as Beth did her virtual tour. My favorite was on The Lady Killers blog on May 4th: a reporter, Ina Bigjam, interviewed Beth's protagonist, Claire, about the death of the young woman on the slopes. To find links to the rest of the blog tour, visit Beth's website.

And for some great photos of Beth's most recent activities, including pictures from Mayhem in the Midlands, a mystery convention held in Omaha in May, take a look at Beth's blog. Here's hoping she brings back another back of photos from her upcoming real life tour.