Karen E. Olson

Another one bites the dust

2011-12-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

What the title is referring to is the fact that the Lipstick Chronicles blog is bidding adieu to the blogosphere.

Lipstick has been a great group blog written by some of the coolest women mystery writers today: Nancy Martin, Elaine Viets, Harley Jane Kozak, Sarah Strohmeyer, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Margaret Maron, and, well, you get the picture. It's been around since May 2005, when mystery writers were grouping up and forming all those cool blogs (I do have to add here that my former blog, First Offenders, was if not the first then one of the very first, starting in October 2005, but FO hung up its hat some time ago).

In the final blog post, the Tarts as they call themselves explain that Facebook and Twitter and, well, WRITING, actually is taking up a lot more time these days. And their hit numbers are going down.

That last reason is something I've been thinking about a long time. No one seems to be reading blogs anymore. And yes, I realize the irony of me writing that sentence in a blog post. But it's true.

I haven't posted much in the last few months, mainly because I've had a lot of other things going on my life and just not enough time. But another reason is that sometimes I forget I even have this blog because I'm not reading blogs like I used to and I wonder if anyone really cares what I have to say. Especially since I haven't had much to say at all lately. My writing is going in fits and starts and I can't really talk about what I've been reading for reasons that may become known later. I don't know that I want this blog to be about more than that, either. I could start blogging about my daughter's new sport: fencing. But I don't know much about fencing yet, and does anyone really want to know about that? I could post about my cats, which could be popular, but unless I figure out how to take video, it's really not all that interesting.

So I figure I'll post here when I think I have something to say, and any of you out there who want to read it, will read it.

But I'll leave you with a question: Have you been a big fan of blogs? Do you still read them like you used to? Or do you think that Facebook and Twitter and other social media have pushed blogs aside, making them a little irrelevant?

Please welcome guest blogger Reed Farrel Coleman

2011-11-07T11:10:00.001-08:00

My good friend Reed Coleman has two new books coming out soon, so I invited him over here to tell you all about them and talk a little bit about how he ended up an award-winning writer.

How Did I Get Here?

Someone pointed out to me recently that my first novel Life Goes Sleeping (Permanent Press, 1991) was published twenty years ago. Amazing! Now, as my 13^th and 14^th novels (Hurt Machine (Tyrus Books) and Gun Church (Audible.com)) are about to be released, I’ve taken pause at recollecting just how I got from there to here and how I got involved in mystery fiction at all. First, a little something about the new books:

Hurt Machine is the 7^th book in my Moe Prager Mystery series. Moe is in his mid-sixties and his daughter Sarah is two weeks away from her wedding. Within days of receiving grave news about his health, Moe’s ex-wife Carmella Melendez reappears after nine years. She needs Moe’s help to track down the killer of her estranged sister. Seems no one in NYC is very interested in finding the murderer. Why? That’s the question, isn’t it?

Gun Church is my second stand-alone novel and is an exclusive on Audible.com. Kip Weiler is a former literary wunderkind who’s fallen on hard times. He teaches creative writing at a rural community college and saves his class from a gun-toting student. He gets a second fifteen minutes of fame and something much more important: the urge to write again. Only things don’t go so well for Kip when he realizes he isn’t quite as in control of his life as he thinks he is.

Now that the promo stuff is done, let’s get back to the business at hand. The only formal writing classes I ever took were in poetry at Brooklyn College from David Lehman. I’d been writing poetry since I was thirteen and had hoped a college education would advance my poetry writing. Well, it did, but it also showed me I didn’t have the chops or the desire to be great at it. I figured I would find a job when I got out of school and I would continue to write poetry and publish occasionally. That’s pretty much what happened. I fell into the air freight business and wrote poetry on the side.

After about five or six years in air freight, I was getting pretty bored. Early on, I had taken a night poetry class at the New School—where I met my wife,by the way—but it seemed I would be shipping cargo for the rest of my adult life. A few years later, my work schedule called for me to go into Manhattan once a week from my office at JFK airport. There were a few hours of down time between leaving the airport and my weekly meeting, so I decided to take another evening class—this time at Brooklyn College—to fill up those unused hours. Only one class fit my schedule, a class on American detective fiction. I was never much of a crime fiction reader up to that point. My focus had been more literary, non-fiction, and sci fi. Talk about getting gobsmacked. The first two things we read in that class were Hammett’s The Continental Op and Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely.

By the time we were halfway through the term, I knew writing crime fiction was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. A few months later I went to my wife and asked her if she was willing to make the sacrifices she would have to make in order for me to follow my dream. And for the second time since we’d met, she said yes. Both of those yeses have had a profound impact on our lives. As I have often joked, it’s a good thing that class wasn’t on poetry of the French Renaissance.

Reed Farrel Coleman has been called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan. He has published fourteen novels. He is a three-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year and has been twice nominated for the Edgar Award. Reed has also won the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards. He is an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University and he lives with his family on Long Island. Visit Reed at www.reedcoleman.com. You can also find him on Facebook and he Twitters at Twitter@ReedFColeman.

How Much of Human Life is Lost in Waiting?

2011-10-24T12:25:00.001-07:00

I hate waiting.

This is not a good trait for a writer. I can imagine my agent's eyes rolling when he sees my email asking if he's heard anything from anyone about my manuscript that's out and about. Doesn't that sound like my manuscript is sitting poolside drinking cocktails with little umbrellas in it? Sadly, it might as well be, because that's all the action it would be getting right about now.

As my agent says, publishing moves on a cosmic scale, not a human scale.

I liken the wait to hear from publishers to the wait when we were adopting our daughter. We adopted our daughter from China in 1998, but for a year and a half before we actually met her, we were waiting. The thing about adoption is that you hear NOTHING until you hear SOMETHING. There are no little notes or voice mails telling you that things are in the works. There is silence. Very very loud silence. And then all of a sudden, you get a Fed Ex delivery with a picture of the most beautiful baby you've ever seen and the wait is over.

Publishing is exactly like that. You hear nothing. Until suddenly, one day, your agent calls and says that he's heard something. And someone wants to buy your book (the agent only ever calls if it's good news...bad news is sent via cyberspace). I got that first phone call while I was editing car and truck stories for the weekly Car and Truck Section at the New Haven Register. I don't even really remember what my agent said, because my heart was pounding so loudly. I had been waiting two years for news on that book. I had written two whole other books in that time of waiting.

That's what they say to do: Write. Write another book. And it's good advice. I've started something new, actually, two something-news. But it doesn't mean I'm not tapping my toe on the inside, hoping that the cosmos would move just a tad more quickly on the one that's already done.

Are you a patient person? Or do you just want to hear something already, like me?

Creativity amid chaos

2011-10-21T11:58:00.001-07:00

It's the end of the week. TGIF and all that. I wish it were TGI-six months from now. Because maybe all of the house-related problems we've been having lately will have been resolved by then. I certainly hope so.

In the midst of all this anguish, I was bouncing around through my flash drive and found the first 10 pages of something I wrote last year, maybe around this time, when I was floundering. I'd had an idea and it resonated just long enough for me to write those few pages and then I promptly abandoned it.

I have a lot of those files in my flash drive. The beginning of stories that never get told.

But in this case, the story might actually get a chance. I read those pages and said, "Hey, this isn't half bad." And I proceeded to write five more pages. And then five more. And now I've got 30 pages, which I showed to my agent to see if he thought it was worth moving forward. He did. He was incredibly encouraging.

Sometimes looking through the flash drive is a really good idea. I haven't written much since I turned my last manuscript in to my agent this past summer. I started another YA book, but haven't gotten too far with it. And then all those house things started to go wrong and distractions overruled creativity.

Maybe I should write about dishwashers breaking down, trees falling during hurricanes, showers that leak into basement ceilings, mice in the attic, and non-watertight porch windows.

Or maybe not.

Let's just say the book I'm working on now doesn't have any of those things.

Yet.

i Google

2011-10-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

I don't check my website stats very often, but when I do, it's always sort of interesting. Take, for example, the number of hits I get. In June, I got almost 20,000 hits, which makes sense because INK FLAMINGOS came out that month and my website was tacked onto reviews and whatnot. But what's really surprising is that there were 16,000 hits in September. Really? When I have done next to nothing promotion-wise. I even forgot to post that I was in St. Louis at Bouchercon.

But what's really fun to look at in the website stats are the search strings, or words that people put into search engines and end up finding my website. These have been among the search strings listed on my site:

clumps lipstick

Really? It makes me want to go into Google and see what I come up with when I type this in.

german mystery writer olsen

Well, I'm Swedish and Norwegian, and those are Germanic languages so maybe this one makes slightly more sense. Although I hate it when people spell my name wrong.

guilford ct tennis karen

I grew up in Madison, Connecticut, which is the next town over to Guilford. I played tennis about five years ago but haven't played much since. Karen is my first name. So maybe, with all these things strung together, it sort of makes sense.

driven to ink by karen e olson can be found in library

Yes, absolutely, Driven to Ink can be found in libraries. But the person who searched with this clearly wasn't quite sure just which library, just wanted to know if the book was in the library.

I know I've typed odd things into Google, looking for things I'm not quite sure about. We had funny white/greenish scaly stuff on the pipe that came out of the wall for the shower head. I wanted to clean it, but didn't know what it was. So I put white/greenish scaly stuff on pipe into Google and ended up finding out that I could use white distilled vinegar for almost anything. A good scrub with a Dobie soaked in white vinegar did the trick. I also got a great recipe for making homemade Windex with vinegar, water, and a little dishwashing soap, which works great.

Considering that Google and the Internets is still so relatively new, I still can't imagine how I lived without it for most of my life.

What was the last thing you Googled successfully

Same time, next year

2011-09-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

I've been back from St. Louis for three days now, and I'm anxiously awaiting the weekend so I can get some real rest.

St. Louis, you ask? Why were you in St. Louis?

For Bouchercon, one of the largest mystery conventions in the country.

I started going to Bouchercon in 2005, when my first book SACRED COWS, was published. I met Alison Gaylin, Lori Armstrong, and Jeff Shelby there in Chicago, and we started the now infamous First Offenders blog. First Offenders is defunct now, but Alison, Lori and Jeff and I are still good friends. Jeff couldn't come to St. Louis, but Alison and Lori and I got part of the band back together and shared a room.

Bouchercon is a little like college in that there are a lot of late nights in the bar, thus, the reason I'm a bit wrecked. But it's an incredible amount of fun.

Some highlights of the weekend:

Lori winning the Shamus Award for her book NO MERCY. It was so great to be able to be there and share that with her.

Meeting Eoin Colfer of ARTEMIS FOWL fame and Daniel Woodrell, who wrote WINTER'S BONE, one of my favorite books.

Lunch with Reed Farrel Coleman and three lovely ladies who "bought" a meal with two mystery writers.

Meeting Mary Jane Haake, a tattooist from Portland, Oregon, who is featured in the book that convinced me to write the tattoo shop mystery series: BODIES OF SUBVERSION: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND TATTOO by Margot Mifflin.

Sharing Linda Brown's (of the now defunct Mystery Bookstore in L.A.) excitement about traveling to China to meet her new daughter soon.

Explaining to a waitress that while Trey Barker really does have a gun, he wouldn't actually shoot her if she gave the check to me and not to him.

Having Harlan Coben give me a nickname (although I'm still not sure about it).

And seeing and chatting with: Sean Doolittle, Steve Hamilton, Wallace Stroby, Con Lehane, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Jim Benn, Lyssa Keusch, Peter Spiegelman, Jim Fusilli, John Connolly, Lauren Henderson, JT Ellison, and loads of others I just can't think of right at the moment. Like I said, I need a really good night's sleep.

Next year: Cleveland.

Summer break's over, time to get back to work

2011-09-05T10:41:00.001-07:00

It's Labor Day. And I've just now realized I haven't posted in almost 2 months. Consider it my "summer off" blogging, even if it didn't start out that way.

So what have I been up to for the past two months, you ask. Best answer: Not much. I have been reading and hanging out at our pool club (it's not as chi-chi as it sounds) and I finally, in the past couple weeks, have started writing something new. So I guess you can say I took the summer off from writing as well as blogging.

The new book is another young adult novel. It's sort of a crime novel mixed up with a coming of age story. I haven't gotten very far yet, but I did have my 14 year old daughter and her friend read the first 10 pages a few days ago and they both liked it, in fact, they were a little annoyed that there wasn't more and that I'd ended in mid-sentence.

This is a good sign.

I hadn't been sure of the direction of this book, which is why it took so long to really get started. I knew the basic story, but I wasn't quite sure how to tell it. I ended up taking what I'd initially wrote and cutting it and moving things around and turning it into more of a prologue and then jumping into what happened "before" the prologue, to see where the characters had started and how they end up where they end up.

I still don't have all the details worked out, and I'm sure I'll have more fits and starts, but it's finally starting to gain momentum and I'm beginning to be at the point where I'm feeling that I need to write every day again.

It's been a while since I've felt that way. But after writing a dark crime novel for adults about teenagers doing dangerous things, I needed a little break from writing about teenagers. Fortunately I'm getting over that now.

So what have you all been doing while I've been absent? Did you have a nice summer? Any nice vacations? Anyone starting a new book, reading or writing one?

The wait begins

2011-07-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

So I guess you think that just because I have a new book in the stores, I spent over a month celebrating and not bothering to do much else.

You'd guess wrong. Despite appearances.

So a quick update on what I've been doing since we were here last:

I finished a manuscript. Yes. Finished. And it is in the hands of my agent, who will now attempt to bribe some unsuspecting editor into publishing it. No, just kidding. Bribes and swag have nothing to do with this process. Although it's not a bad idea ...

Finishing this book took longer than expected, because my good friend Reed Coleman came up with the brilliant idea that I'd read it out loud over the phone to him. Now, this seemed like a really silly idea at first. I don't read from my books at my events, why would I read an unpublished manuscript out loud over the phone? But once I started, I realized that I'd been wrong. That it really was a brilliant idea after all. I found mistakes I hadn't seen and Reed offered up some great feedback. It's a really good thing my ego isn't all that big :) But when we finished it up and I made the revisions that were absolutely necessary to make, I felt that the book was finally ready to go out into the world and my agent agreed.

Now the waiting.

INK FLAMINGOS launches today!

2011-06-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

So today's the day. INK FLAMINGOS hits the shelves—and all those e-readers out there.

It's a little bittersweet. It's the fourth and last of my tattoo shop mystery series. I'm really happy with the book, in fact, I think it's my favorite in this series. I take Brett places she hasn't been before, I give her more challenges. I leave her in a place that, if she makes the right choices, could lead to a lot of happiness. It's a fitting end to the series.

I have a lot of people emailing me, telling me they love the series and would love to see it continue. There are two things going on here. First, the publisher has not extended my contract. Second, I'm done with the series. I think four books is perfectly fine for a cozy, amateur sleuth mystery series. Sometimes I have issues with those cozy series that go on and on and on, and I wonder why the amateur sleuth doesn't decide to move out of town, disappear for a while because once you've got dead bodies piling up in your life, I'd think you'd get a real complex about it. I know Brett does. That's why this has to be the last one. She's done. Done with solving crimes. She's onto bigger and better things in her life.

I hope you'll check out the book. It's a fun, fast read and Brett is dodging tattoo bloggers and stalkers. The plot is intensely personal for her.

Click here and you can order the book, either in print or download it into your e-device. I haven't made that e-move yet, but that's another blog post.

Enjoy the book!!

Jeff Shelby is making a few waves

2011-05-26T05:38:00.001-07:00

So it's come to my attention that my friend Jeff Shelby has started a new blog.

Of course he could've told me about this, but, well, he didn't. I had to find out about it on Facebook. But regardless of how I found out (and I don't carry grudges . . . for too long, anyway), I have added his blog to my blogroll over there down at the bottom on the right side of this blog. It's called Waves and Words, which might seem a little weird for a guy who's pretty landlocked in Texas. But he writes an amazing series about a surfer named Noah Braddock in San Diego, where Jeff is originally from.

I met Jeff in Chicago at Bouchercon in 2005. It was our first Bouchercon. My first book SACRED COWS wasn't even out yet, but his first book KILLER SWELL was already out. We were on our very first Bouchercon panel together, along with Lori Armstrong and Alison Gaylin and Vicki Lane. I was scared to death. I didn't know a soul, but instantly, Jeff, Alison, Lori and I bonded. Enough so by the end of the conference, about 2 a.m. Saturday, Jeff said, "Why don't we start a blog?"

And the First Offenders were born.

We blogged together religiously until last spring. Until we all agreed that the blog had run its course and we needed to move on. I started this blog not too long afterward. Lori blogs under her alter-ego's name, Lorelei James (she has a thing for sexy cowboys). But Jeff and Alison were blog-less.

Alison's got a new series in the works, and the first book, AND SHE WAS, will be out next March. Jeff, sadly, has been struggling a little in this crazy business we call publishing.

After his second Noah Braddock book, WICKED BREAK, Jeff found himself without a contract as so many of us do (I'm done after INK FLAMINGOS and am not just what my future holds in publishing). But he persevered, because he's a writer. He can't help himself. He wrote another Noah book, he wrote a thriller, and he also wrote one of the funniest cozy mysteries I've ever read.

It's been four years since WICKED BREAK. And I'm so thrilled to say that his third Noah Braddock book, LIQUID SMOKE, is coming out this summer from Tyrus Books! (there's a link on his blog). And that hilarious cozy? STAY AT HOME DEAD will be published by Kensington next winter (under the name Jeffrey Allen, but you can find all that out at his blog, too).

So go check out Waves and Words. In addition to being a great writer, Jeff is hilarious and he will definitely keep you entertained.

Some day we'll get the whole band back together. A reunion tour, perhaps.

Does the rusty scupper parking garage have cameras?

2011-05-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is actually something that someone typed into a search engine and then came up with my website as a result.

The Rusty Scupper used to be a restaurant in New Haven. It didn't have the best food, the service wasn't always that great, but it had a super location: Right on New Haven Harbor. You could sit outside and smell the salt water and fresh air. Seagulls would hang out, hoping you'd throw them a French fry. It was a good place to take people who didn't know New Haven and impress them.

I once took a LAW & ORDER director and producer to the Rusty Scupper for lunch. Out of the blue, I'd gotten a call from the director. He'd somehow gotten his hands on a copy of my first Annie Seymour book, SACRED COWS, and he wanted to talk to me about a possible TV show set in New Haven based on the series. You can't imagine my excitement. The second book wasn't even out yet and someone who was attached to a REAL TV show was interested in my characters. I started thinking that maybe I'd even make some money with this gig.So I took him and a producer to lunch at the Rusty Scupper to impress them.

We had a lovely time. They were really nice. But in the end, the director told me that "no one wants TV shows about a reporter." I'm still not sure why. It seems ripe for possibilities. But I couldn't argue with the powers that be. I'd had a nice lunch. I have a good story to tell.

The Rusty Scupper closed a few years back. Right before my third Annie Seymour book, DEAD OF THE DAY, came out. In that book, Annie goes to the Scupper and has lunch with Vinny. In SECONDHAND SMOKE, the second in the series, Annie gets a sub from Frank & Mary's Deli on Wooster Street. Frank & Mary's Deli closed before the book came out. I started to get a complex about writing about real restaurants in New Haven.

Another restaurant opened in the Rusty Scupper's spot: Leon's. It's an old New Haven restaurant, first located in the Hill section, then on Whitney Avenue in Hamden. I don't think it could help itself by opening in such a great spot. I'm not going to write about it.

Oh, and the question about the Rusty Scupper having cameras in its parking garage? There is no parking garage. It's just a parking lot.

Do you have a favorite restaurant spot?

Is the world of the Internets changing?

2011-05-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

I know I've been scarce around these parts in the last couple months. It's not that my life has suddenly gotten all that interesting. Or even all that busy. But I'm in the process of trying to finish up a manuscript and I've got another commitment that does take up quite a bit of time, so blogging sadly has gone by the wayside.

I've also discovered that I'm not reading as many blogs as I used to. I try to check in with my friends' blogs and some of the great book blogs on a regular basis, but rather than checking once a day like in the past, now I'm checking once a week or maybe once every couple of weeks and catching up with all the posts.

I had a discussion about this with a friend, and she said she's doing the same thing these days. Have blogs run their course? Five and a half years ago, when Alison Gaylin, Lori Armstrong, and Jeff Shelby and I began the First Offenders blog, we were the first "group" author blog. Now they're a dime a dozen. There weren't very many book bloggers out there, either. I did read Dooce, and still do — she's made a career out of blogging. But if blogs were to sag in popularity, would that affect her, too?

I find that I get most of my "news" on Facebook these days. People post about themselves, books they're reading, links to news stories and book reviews, book events. Stuff that I might have found on blogs two years ago. But now it's all in one place.

I haven't even updated my website in a while. I've got a book event in June for INK FLAMINGOS at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, CT, but I have yet to post that on my website. But someone did post the RJ Julia announcement about it on Facebook.

Is the world of the Internets changing? Are we evolving from blogs to Facebook? I do admit, though that I do not understand Twitter. I have an account but rarely ever post anything. It just seems redundant and silly.

What do you think? Granted, there might not be anyone out there these days since I'm not even here all that much myself. So my question might be going out into the wind. But in the odd chance that someone out there is reading this, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Are you reading blogs as frequently or do you find it's lagging, too?

The ubiquitous Harriet Klausner reviews Ink Flamingos

2011-04-25T09:02:00.001-07:00

I've been really scarce around these parts. Mainly because I've been busy working on a manuscript and I've tried not to be too distracted. But today I discovered that the ubiquitous Harriet Klausner has offered up the first reveiw of the upcoming INK FLAMINGOS (and no, Flamingos does not have an "e" in it, although Harriet thinks it does):

Ink Flamingoes

Karen E. Olson

Berkley, Jun 7 2011, $7.99

ISBN: 9780451233790

In Las Vegas, Brett Kavanaugh owns the upscale tattoo parlor The Painted Lady. After becoming embroiled in homicides (see Driven to Ink and Pretty in Ink), Brett promised her concerned friends and that she would never again investigate a murder. She is unable to keep her pledge when a steady customer Daisy Carmichael, lead singer of the pop group The Flamingoes, is found dead in her hotel room. On the blog Skin Deep, a picture of Daisy appears with a flamingo tattoo that is colored in; Brett knows her late client was allergic to ink colors so her tattoos were all black.

Brett’s brother Tim tells her that a witness saw a red haired woman carrying ink pots and needles leaving the room two hours before the body was found. Brett has an alibi and there are further entries on the blog written by Ainsley Wainwright that have altered pictures of Brett and events that imply the tattoo artist is a killer. Brett realizes she has a stalker following her. She is able to dispute all the evidence with help from her friends, but still needs to know who wants to make it look like she killed the singer; which means investigating.

Karen E. Olson writes an action-packed amateur sleuth who-done-it that stays constantly at the speed of light from start to finish even with a few nice hairpin spins. The audience will enjoy this complex whodunit enhanced by misdirection and a touch of romance with a peer Jeff Coleman who goes the entire Strip and more to help Brett. She realizes she is attracted to her caring competitor. Ink Flamingoes is a strong entry that has sub-genre fans wondering who and why.

Harriet Klausner

Campaigning for more votes and explaining myself

2011-03-23T13:39:00.001-07:00

So knock me over with a feather, but Brett Kavanaugh is holding her own in Jen's Book Thoughts' amateur sleuth survey. She's made it to round three. Please go vote for her and keep her in the running!

http://www.jensbookthoughts.com/2011/03/sweet-sixteen-worlds-favorite-amateur.html

I have to say that I'm thrilled that she's made it this far. When you're a writer and you spend hours sitting in your little room, your fingers flying across the keyboard, trying to make a story come together, it's really validating to know that a character you've created resonates with people. Brett was not a character I ever thought I'd write, but through the course of four books, I have grown to love her and her world.

I know I've been scarce around these parts lately. I've been writing every day, trying to pull this manuscript into shape. I've discovered that reworking an old manuscript doesn't mean I can merely do a search and replace on names. The whole backstory has changed, the setting has changed (somewhat), the new characters insist on doing things that the old ones had no clue about. And the new ones seems to be a little smarter, too, about how to try to solve this crime.

I have been reading a lot, too. I've spent quite a bit of time reading about Lady Jane Grey, one of those elusive Tudor period people that I hadn't really researched too much before. She and her family were fascinating, and I've discovered that perhaps she wasn't as innocent as she's been portrayed through the years.

I also ordered something online that I've been eyeing for a long time: a slim volume of Henry VIII's love letters to Anne Boleyn. While there are a lot of mystery writers who won't read crime novels while they're writing, I'm not one of them, but I must admit that it's nice to immerse myself in Tudor England after a couple of hours of murder and mayhem.

It's nice to see that it's almost spring (and while technically it is spring, we're having some snow today) and the crocuses and daffodils and tulips are starting to poke their heads through the dirt in the garden. I know the snow won't last, and it will really be spring soon. My SAD days are almost over.

So what have you been up to lately?

Go vote for Brett at Jen's Book Thoughts!

2011-03-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

Jen Forbus is one of my favorite crime fiction bloggers. She always has very interesting interviews with authors as well as insightful reviews (and I'm not just saying that because she likes my books!). She also has authors give her six word bios. Jen actually created scrapbooks with these bios and has gotten those of us who've penned them to sign them for her.

And now Jen's doing something that I think is incredibly cool: She's got a survey going on her blog to whittle down to the best amateur sleuth.

Brett Kavanaugh made the list! And Brett has actually gone onto the second round, which is up at Jen's blog this week:

http://www.jensbookthoughts.com/2011/03/round-2-worlds-favorite-amateur-sleuth.html

Go check it out and vote. You'll see Brett and some of your other favorites, and I'm not quite sure who's going to win in the matchup between Jack Reacher and Nancy Drew. (I have to admit that I voted for Nancy, who is my childhood hero.)

One more from the inbox

2011-03-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

I wrote last month about getting emails from readers who don't care for the use of the F-word in my Annie Seymour series. While I don't want to keep dissing readers, I am very curious about something: Why, if you don't like a book, would you bother to write the author and tell her so? Why not just put the book down and forget about it? That's what I do. If I don't care for a book, why would I go through all the bother of actually finding the author online and then sending an email to say so?

Case in point: This morning I received the following from a reader:

I wanted to write and let you know that my husband and I were disappointed with the first two tattoo shop books we read. Well, I should say I read them, —— only read the first and part of the second. We both felt that the first time Brett goes to a strange place she's not supposed to be in to meet someone she's suspicious of is maybe okay, but the second time she does it she is Too Stupid to Live. —— threw the book across the room.

I'm hoping you have decided not to include this kind of stupid choice in the other books. I'll be looking for them at the library this time.

Now, this email is quite interesting in that the reader clearly did not like the book (her husband, identified here only as —— was a bit more adamant about his dislike), but the last sentence indicates she's still going to read the series. Could it be that she possibly thinks that writing me to tell me that I shouldn't make my character too stupid to live will affect the rest of the books? Does she think she's doing me a favor by advising me about this? Possibly, I suppose. But I hate to tell her that the other two books are already written, the third one is already published and the fourth is already typset and ready to go. So if Brett is too stupid to live in those, well, it's just a little too late for any advice.

I believe I can speak for all authors in that we do not write characters intending them to be too stupid to live. In fact, we try desperately to keep them from that. Problem is with amateur sleuth mysteries, the sleuth is not a professional, has no backup, usually no gun, and is expected by the reader to solve the mystery anyway. When you look at it that way, the whole concept of the amateur sleuth mystery is rather silly, because regular people really don't go out and solve crimes. Most of us don't even really know when a crime has been committed until it's been on the news and then the police are already out there trying to solve it. We do not see a news report and then decide, hey, I think I'm going to get involved in that and go out and see if I can beat the police at their own game. And despite what we read in mystery novels, most of us are not suspects in crimes. The police are not knocking at our door to try to discover our motives for killing anyone.

When I was a reporter, I covered only two murders in six years. The first was clear cut: a kid killed his father over a pack of cigarettes. There was no mystery. In the second, a love triangle ended up with a man shot dead in his car in the parking lot at a local watering hole. The guy who shot him waited for the police to show up to turn himself in. Again, clear cut. Although he did claim self defense (the other guy had a broken beer bottle), and it ended up in court. (As an aside, one of my best friends met his wife at the trial. They were both covering it for different newspapers.)

I think readers who pick up an amateur sleuth mystery and expect realism need to check their expectations at the door. I had one reviewer complain that Brett's brother who is a cop would never be assigned to a case in which his sister is involved. As if a tattoo artist would solve a crime. That's my point. Tattoo artists are not solving crimes. Neither are knitting store owners, apple orchard owners, home repair people, ghosts, psychics, book group participants, cats, dogs, and any of the other hobbyists or cupcake store owners you will see gracing the mystery section shelves at the bookstore. And if they did solve crimes, I'm afraid they will at some point be too stupid to live. Because they're not professionals and can't be expected to know what they're doing.

Do you read amateur sleuth mysteries? Do you suspend your disbelief or are you trying to live vicariously through these crime solvers and expect more from them?

On being title-impaired

2011-02-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

One of my jobs at the newspaper was to write headlines. This was not my favorite part of the job, since many of my colleagues were far more clever than I was and could turn out great headlines like there was no tomorrow, while I wrote things like "School board votes on budget." Yes, it got the point across, but exciting it isn't.

Coming up with a book title is just like writing a headline. It can't be boring and needs to get the tone of the book across to the reader in an intriguing way so the reader will pick the book up off the shelf and start reading. Some writers actually start writing a book based on a title, My friend Louise Ure does that. She comes up with a title and then says, "I wonder what that book's about" and proceeds to write something amazing. Unfortunately, because of my history with headlines, my record with book titles has been spotty at best, and the title is usually the last thing I come up with.

I was lucky with my first book, SACRED COWS. The title came to me in the middle of the night, which sounds like a lie, but it's really true. I needed a title that would convey what was going on in the story — a Yalie is killed, and it's bad for New Haven when something like that happens — and also, New Haven is getting one of those Cow Parades. At one of the papers I worked at, we had a sign on the wall eschewing sacred cows, and out of the blue I remembered it and decided that since Yale is a sacred cow to the newspaper and it also has the word "cow" in it, well, that should be the title. My publisher agreed.

The second book was going to be called BIRDS OF A FEATHER because there are chickens in it. But my editor didn't want me to become the farm animal author, so because of the fire in the book, we ended up with SECONDHAND SMOKE. The third book originally was called WATERLOGGED, but after a long discussion about how it wouldn't fit on the book cover and you don't want to see a book review talking about how a book is "waterlogged," we changed it to DEAD OF THE DAY, which is what we at the paper used to call the daily featured obituary. SHOT GIRL was the original title of the fourth and stayed that way, because, well, SHOT GIRL is a great title for a crime novel.

The tattoo shop series was easy once I figured out that my publisher had to have puns. I didn't want a pun title (I am convinced that any book with a pun in the title will never get an Edgar nomination) and came up with over 50 titles that my editor rejected. Once I came up with THE MISSING INK and realized that was the direction they wanted me to go in, I went online and found all words that rhymed with "ink" and then found phrases using those words and came up with the punny titles that grace the covers of my books. They may not exactly evoke a mystery novel, but they're fun.

When I wrote my YA book last summer, I struggled with a title. I came up with a few that my agent wasn't happy with, and we finally settled on THE LEGACY. As I've said before, it's a time travel novel with an unusual twist. I wrote it in the vein of Percy Jackson and Maximum Ride, but I've been afraid that the title is too staid for it. Rick Riordan and James Patterson's titles evoke a different feeling than THE LEGACY, or even books titled THE HUNGER GAMES, GONE, LIFE AS WE KNEW IT. All those books are more serious and darker. And while I've got some dark stuff going on in the book, the tone is different.

Since the manuscript has been out and about for a while, I wasn't sure if I could change the title at this point, but my agent was going to be sending it to more editors, so I made a suggestion, which he agreed sounded much better: PHINNEAS LOCKE AND THE TIME TRAVELERS: LEGACY OF THE KEYS.

So taking a survey this Sunday. If you saw a book with that title, would you be drawn to it and feel you just had to read it?

Don't hate me because I use the F word

2011-02-13T07:17:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since a reader has emailed me to scold me about the language in my books. I think that's mainly because my tattoo shop series doesn't have any cussing in it, and the Annie Seymour series is out of print so it's harder for people to get their hands on it, meaning they aren't getting offended by the f words. But sometimes readers "discover" me and my first series, and that's when it gets interesting.

Case in point: I got an email this morning from someone who did not want to be included in my email list. He/she said, "REading you for 1st time. good writing but is it necessary to use the \"f\" word so much, does not add to the plot and makes the heroine sound like a filthy slut."

I naturally bristled at that, since when I created Annie, I didn't say to myself, hey, I think I'm going to make her a filthy slut. And to do that, I'll make her say the f word.

As I've told many readers who are offended by Annie's language: It is not gratuitous. Reporters talk like that, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. While I already knew those words, they really became a part of my own vocabulary in a newsroom. It's funny that now I don't work in a newsroom anymore, my use of those words has eased off quite a bit. Annie is also a police reporter, and cops are even worse than reporters, so it's natural she would use those words. Perhaps what makes it difficult for those people who are easily offended is that the book is written in first person, so Annie's language is front and center.

What's amusing to me, though, is how these readers who write me that they're offended by the language tell me that I'm a good writer and they enjoyed the book. It's a total oxymoron. I'm not sure whether to preen with the praise or bristle with the criticism.

People don't have to read books that they find offensive or don't care for. It's easy to put a book down and not finish it. I do that all the time. That's why these emails from people who clearly have read the entirety of my novel but scold me about my language are so perplexing. Don't they know they don't have to read it? And the bigger question: Why take the time to write the author and scold her?

I did make a conscious effort with my tattoo series to not have Brett cuss at all. There comes a time when a writer is tired of getting scolded (I actually had one reader say: "You look like such a nice person, how can you use such language?") and decides to come clean, in a manner of speaking. So Brett, a nice Catholic girl who just happens to be a tattooist, will never be mistaken for a "filthy slut" because of her language. But then again, she's fighting the stigma of being a woman who is tattooed. But at least there are no pictures.

What is your stance on cussing in a book?

All this snow is making me SAD

2011-01-30T16:48:00.001-08:00

This is what my front yard looks like. Well, maybe a little more plowed out now, but this was what it looked like last Wednesday, after our umpteenth snow storm. We'd gotten 30 inches two weeks before, and this past storm dropped 18 more inches on us. Another storm is supposedly bearing down on us, bent to arrive Tuesday or Wednesday this week. I'm not sure which because I'm afraid to watch the weather.

This is not normal for coastal Connecticut. Anyone who says climate change isn't happening clearly isn't living here or paying attention to the fact that the jet stream is shifting. And while we're getting snow dumped on us, somewhere the polar ice caps are melting. What's wrong with this picture?

Besides all the snow, this is never a great time of year for me. I get SAD (seasonal affective disorder), but usually not til February. I think it's all the snow that's causing it this year.

My husband says I'm an embarrassment to my people, who left Sweden to go to a place that's even snowier and colder: Minnesota.

I am not a pioneer.

Summer can't come fast enough.

Do you like winter?

Discovering Tana French

2011-01-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

I tend to veer away from books or movies that have had too much hype. Usually I think this is a smart thing to do, but sometimes I discover that the hype is incredibly well deserved. This is what happened when a friend was telling me how good Tana French's books are, and I decided to try the first one.

I feel stupid for not reading IN THE WOODS earlier. It got the Edgar Award for best first novel, but that's pretty much all I knew except people were raving about it. It looked to me like a horror novel; I didn't know too much about it except the author lives in Ireland. When I finally decided to give it a go back in early December, I wasn't prepared for just how much I was going to like it.

Tana French's use of language and character development is amazing. I was immediately drawn into the story of Rob Ryan, a Murder detective who'd been a victim of a crime when he was a child but who could not remember what had happened to him. Throughout the book he struggles with his amnesia about that, while investigating the murder of a child in the same woods where he'd been a victim.

I couldn't put the book down, and when I finished, I told my husband I wanted the second book, THE LIKENESS, for Christmas. What I like about French is that while this is sort of series, the books are only connected by characters from the previous book. In the second, the main character is Cassie Maddox, who was Rob's partner in the first book. But this book takes place after the events in IN THE WOODS, and takes us to Cassie's next assignment undercover.

I admit that I had to suspend disbelief in THE LIKENESS. Cassie looks so much like a murder victim that she's talked into taking that girl's place in order to try to catch the killer. But despite the obvious flaw in that premise, the story sucked me in and I believed that Cassie was able to pull it off and infiltrate the girl's life.

In FAITHFUL PLACE, the most recent of French's books, the main character is Frank Mackey, the undercover cop who talks Cassie into taking on the assignment in the previous book. Mackey is drawn back to his old neighborhood and a reunion with his family when it's suspected that his first love, the girl he was supposed to run away with to England when he was 20 and who left him with no explanation, might actually have not gotten away after all. The best thing about this book is the depiction of Frank's family, which comes to life on the page. I can picture them clearly through French's brilliant storytelling.

Each book is told from the first person point of view of the main character. French gets into each character and creates a whole new world in each book. If forced to pick a favorite, I think I have to say the first, IN THE WOODS. While I liked the other two and they are very strong stories, I think Rob's voice spoke most to me, and that story resonated just a little longer.

Have you read of any of Tana French's books? Do you tend to shy away from a book that's had too much hype?

Want to read my backlist but they're out of print? Download them!

2011-01-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

Lately I seem to have quite a few readers inquiring whether I'd ever write another Annie book or a fifth tattoo mystery and put them up on Kindle as e-books.

I admit that I find the phenomenon interesting. Many writers I know have been putting their unpublished manuscripts and/or backlist up on Kindle, and for a minimal cost, people can download them. Joe Konrath and Lee Goldberg claim they're making a mint on Kindle.

I'm not totally convinced this is the way to go. Honestly, it's really just self publishing. It would be taking a book I wrote, thinking that it's publishable even though maybe it was turned down by about a hundred agents—not even making it to an editor's desk—and deciding that people would want to pay money for it anyway. Granted, I wouldn't be out a lot of cash, like I would be if the book were to be printed, but still. It's the idea that whatever I write would be worthy of having people pay money for it without the validation of someone who's actually in the publishing business. Sure, I've wondered about some of those publishers' decisions on what to buy and what not to buy, but they are still the professionals here. I'm not confident enough to think that every word I write is gold and worth someone's hard-earned cash and time. (And this is not dissing those who do choose to publish on Kindle; it's a personal decision for personal reasons. These are merely my own thoughts on the matter and how I feel about it.)

That said, all of my books are available as e-books. Even all my out of print Annie books. You can get them on Kindle or the Nook or the iPad or whatever e-reader you might have.

This was a surprise to my friend Clair when I mentioned it to her. She had no idea. But the way publishing is working these days, when a book is published and printed, it's also put out there as an e-book. Why not?

Clair said I needed to let people know that my books are available as e-books, and when I thought about it, I realized she was right. I've had people email me and ask about the Annie books, where can they find a rare copy, and I do tell them that they can go on Amazon and eBay, but I never thought about saying that they're also available for download. Mostly everywhere.

So here it is. The announcement: All of my titles are available for download as e-books. So if you've got one of those Kindles or Nooks or iPads or another nifty gadget and you're dying to find out how Vinny and Annie meet up in SACRED COWS or you haven't been able to find a copy of SECONDHAND SMOKE anywhere, just download them. It's cheaper than a print book, too.

Are you an e-reader?

Finding a new voice in the new year

2011-01-03T17:15:00.001-08:00

So it's a new year.

I'm not one to make resolutions. It's too easy to break them. But I've been floundering a little, and I finally made a decision. I suppose you could say it is sort of a resolution.

June will see the publication of the last of the tattoo shop mysteries, INK FLAMINGOS. I wrote the book as the last one, so it leaves Brett and company in a good place — after solving the crime, of course.

I'm still waiting to hear from editors about my YA novel, and since there are no guarantees in this business, I know I need to get started on something else. I've tossed around an idea for another YA, but just couldn't find the voice when I started writing. I had another idea for a thriller, but the same thing happened: the voice just wasn't there.

It became too easy not to write. Two months went by and I produced nothing. I wasn't feeling very creative, still not feeling it.

So I decided to pull out an old manuscript. Way back after I wrote SECONDHAND SMOKE, the second Annie Seymour book, I decided to switch gears and write a straight up PI novel from Vinny DeLucia's point of view. For those of you just joining us, Vinny is Annie's former high school classmate turned lover. But the book that features him took place before he and Annie hook up again, before SACRED COWS begins.

I really liked that book. My agent liked it. So I started looking over it again, wondering what I could do with it.

First off, though, Vinny had to become someone else. I don't want to start rehashing old characters. This needs to be its own book, in its own right, with its own characters. So Vinny has become Nick Maloney. When I started writing Nick, suddenly I knew everything about him. In six pages, this story was no longer Vinny's, but Nick's. And I realize now that the story could never have been anyone else's.

Granted, I have to update it. Funny how in five years technology has changed, teenagers no longer email but text, Facebook exists. The economy is floundering, and Nick is a victim of that new reality of housing busts and layoffs and media infatuation with celebrity.

I have no idea where this book will go or if it would ever get published. But my resolution is to write it, to tell Nick's story, to get back on that writing horse and see where it can go.

Do you make resolutions?

Can't count down to Christmas without the Grinch

2010-12-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

We really can't count down to Christmas with the Grinch. Now, I admit that he's not my favorite Dr. Seuss character. That would have to be Yertle the Turtle, which I has pretty much memorized when my daughter was little (On the Far-Away island of Sala-Ma-Sond, Yertle the Turtle was King of the Pond. The water was warm. There was plenty to eat. The turtles had everything turtles might need.)

But every Christmas, we pull out the old video and watch the Grinch turn his dog Max into a reindeer (he's hilarious!) and slide down that mountain to take Christmas away from the Whos. And then when he realizes he couldn't steal Christmas, it came anyway, his heart grew three times its size and he brought everything back.

But my favorite song is the one that's sung while he's slinking around, stealing trees and ornaments and even that last can of Who Hash and a final crumb off the floor:

Bruce sings Christmas

2010-12-21T08:23:00.001-08:00

We've got two radio stations here that have been playing Christmas tunes constantly since even before Thanksgiving (which was a little ridiculous, actually, but now that it's the season, I don't care anymore). There's nothing like Frank crooning out a holiday classic, but I'm in the mood for a little Bruce today. One of my favorite holiday tunes is his Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Check out the video, and you gotta love Clarence and especially Stevie's head attire for this one:

More Christmas Countdown with Frosty

2010-12-18T07:19:00.000-08:00

Last night we caught FROSTY THE SNOWMAN on TV. I'm not sure what it was with Rankin Bass picking unusual looking male performers as narrators: Fred Astaire for SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN, and Jimmy Durante for FROSTY. But irregardless, it works. Durante has a distinguishable voice as well as nose, and his rendition of the song is very good. My husband was surprised our daughter knew Durante, but he forgot that Durante is featured in a favorite I LOVE LUCY episode, and we have all the I LOVE LUCY DVDs and she's got them memorized.

I always liked FROSTY because of the little girl Karen. She's feisty and empathetic, and we share a name.

Enjoy:

A Walter Brennan Christmas

2010-12-15T04:37:00.000-08:00

My friend and former newspaper colleague Fran Fried is out in California now, but when he was here, he used to deejay a show on Bridgeport's WPKN radio station called the Sleep Deprivation Experiment. The show ran from 2 to 6 a.m. every couple of weeks. At Christmastime, Fran would play Christmas songs. When I was working nights on the copy desk at the New Haven Register, I'd come home and listen to his show while wrapping presents.

The thing is, Fran wouldn't play just any ordinary Christmas songs. He found some of the most obscure, but really cool, songs to play on his show. Who knew that Walter Brennan put out a Christmas album? Walter Brennan of "The Real McCoys," some of you might remember that TV show or some might not, but it was a Western. Don't see many of those these days. Walter Brennan is also the only actor to ever get three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor roles, according to his IMDB biography. And he also had four top 100 single records.

Here's his Just 3 Letters for Christmas:

House Without a Christmas Tree

2010-12-14T05:24:00.000-08:00

Last year I found a DVD at my local video store for a made for TV movie that I loved when I was in middle school. HOUSE WITHOUT A CHRISTMAS TREE came out in 1972, and even though it was set in the 1940s, I could relate to Addie, the young girl whose mother has died and is growing up with her dad, played by Jason Robards, and her grandmother, played by Mildred Natwick. They don't have a Christmas tree because her father is still grieving for her mother, and Addie brings a tree home and stirs up a lot of trouble.

The DVD isn't the best quality, but watching it again brought back a lot of memories. Check this little montage out to get a sense of it, and then if you like it, see if you can find the DVD:

Christmas in Connecticut

2010-12-13T05:47:00.000-08:00

The day we put up our Christmas tree, we fished out the holiday movies and realized that last year we hadn't watched CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT. I'm not quite sure how we missed this last year, but we chalked it up to the silly seasona and how crazy it can get. So since we missed it last year, it was the first video we popped in last week.

Now, this is not the remake version with Dyan Cannon, but the original with Barbara Stanwyk, who plays Elizabeth Lane, a woman who writes a food column for a magazine based on Good Housekeeping. Problem is, she can't cook, doesn't live on the farm she talks about in her column, and has no baby or husband, either. So when her publisher tells her he's sending her a war hero to host for Christmas, she has to scramble to create the life she's pretended to have. What ensues is a lot of fun and romance and holiday cheer.

And for those of you who notice these things: It seems that Hollywood decided to use the same house that's in Holiday Inn for this movie (or the other way around). Might as well not waste a good set.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

2010-12-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

In the days before Pixar, there was Rankin Bass. They produced Christmas shows on TV when I was a kid, and I'd rather watch those than some of the shows they've got on now for kids. The characters are sort of a cartoon-puppet hybrid. Compared to today's animation technology, this is pretty basic stuff, but isn't any less entertaining.

One of my favorites of the Rankin Bass productions is Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The Burgermeister is a good villian, and the little penguin a good sidekick for Kris Kringle, who is voiced by the late Mickey Rooney. Mrs. Claus starts out as Jessica, the school teacher, and she plumps up quite nicely by later in the show when she takes on her new role. And who doesn't love the Winter Warlock, who melts into a nice guy with just a little magic left to make reindeer fly. As with my favorite holiday movie Holiday Inn, this one features Fred Astaire, although in a different form than in the film. But they got his long chin just right:

Feliz Navidad

2010-12-11T07:52:00.001-08:00

Growing up in the 1960s, because my parents were in their twenties, I wasn't immediately exposed to the Rolling Stones or the Beatles or The Doors. The records I remember from my early childhood were the Four Freshmen, the Kingston Trio, Fats Domino, and Jose Feliciano.

My husband first remembers Jose Feliciano because he sang the theme song for the early '70s show "Chico and the Man," with Freddie Prinz and Jack Albertson. Loved that show, too, but I'd already been listening to him by that time.

One of our all time favorite holiday songs is Feliz Navidad. We play it every year while we're putting up the Christmas tree so we can get into the holiday spirit.

Here's Jose Feliciano in a live concert in Denmark in 1973 performing it:

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

2010-12-10T05:35:00.000-08:00

One of our favorite holiday movies of all time is HOLIDAY INN, with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. They play two entertainers who part over a woman, and Bing Crosby goes to the country in Connecticut and buys a farm. He turns it into Holiday Inn, open on all the major holidays of the year. It's a glamorous place, despite being in the country, and he manages to put on magnificent productions with sets and an orchestra and fabulous costumes. Fred Astaire's dancing is amazing, and Bing Crosby croons. It's a love story and a musical and a comedy, and if you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out.

One of my favorite lines in the movie is when the manager goes to the flower shop and asks for "orchids. Loose, looking like they don't care."

In the 1942 film, Bing and Marjorie Reynolds sing "White Christmas," which is one of the best parts of the film:

Christmas countdown

2010-12-09T05:44:00.000-08:00

The silly season has begun, and with it all the Christmas specials and movies that we all know and love. And besides Charlie Brown and Frosty, some new shows are getting in on the holiday bandwagon. This week Glee had its holiday special episode, with some great music and a hilarious Sue Sylvester version of the Grinch.

One song, though, that was resurrected by the Glee cast was by one of the '80s groups: WHAM! I admit to having at least one WHAM! album, and my sister actually met George Michael in a club in London. Before the scandals. And whatever happened to the other guy?

I thought that between now and Christmas I'd post some videos from some of my favorite music performances and movies and TV shows that celebrate the holidays. So I'll start with WHAM!'s Last Christmas (and I'll throw in the Glee version, too, although it's just audio, no video):

Coming June 2011

2010-11-22T15:04:00.000-08:00

Amazing illustrator Craig Phillips has done it again. I have to admit that when I started this series, I wasn't quite sure just what my covers would look like. There is a sort of same-ness about some of the cozy mystery covers, which is most likely very comfortable for readers. But considering that this is a series about a crime-solving tattoo artist, it's a bit different than the typical cozy that features an amateur sleuth who might knit or crochet or hang out at the local library. It's got more of an edge to it. So when Penguin found Craig Phillips, it was a match made in heaven.

What do you think?

From the mountains of North Carolina to the streets of Boston

2010-11-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

Vicki Lane is one of my favorite authors. She writes the wonderful Elizabeth Goodweather series set in the mountains of North Carolina. The books are lyrical, evocative. They all have several layers overlapping each other, each more mesmerizing than the last.

Vicki and I were on our very first Bouchercon panel together back in Chicago in 2005, the one that spawned my previous blog endeavor, the First Offenders. Alison Gaylin, Lori Armstrong, and Jeff Shelby rounded out our "first novel" panel, and while Vicki didn't join the First Offenders, she and I have kept in touch and her books are always must reads for me.

I ordered her latest book THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS with a little bit of trepidation, however. This book does not feature Elizabeth Goodweather, rather Miss Birdie, a secondary character in previous books. This is Miss Birdie's story, and while I've enjoyed the character, I wasn't quite sure how I would like a whole book about her.

I loved it.

Miss Birdie starts out as "Least," the youngest child of a rather formidable, angry woman. She is called "quare" and her mother tells everyone that she is simple and can't handle going to school—so she doesn't. But when Granny Beck arrives to live with them, the older woman sees that Least has the Gift, and Granny Beck teaches her about that as well as teaches her to read. There is a bit of woo-woo in this book, with Least having a mystical power that carries her through the first part of her life. But mostly it is Least's story, how she gets through those first years of her life, how she survives when Granny Beck is gone, how she meets Young David and manages to survive.

I have to say, though, the first part of the book was my favorite. In the second part, Least has become the Miss Birdie of the Elizabeth Goodweather books, and she is drawn into the kidnapping of her friend Dorothy's grand nephew Calven and goes back to her Gift for the first time in a very long time to try to save him. While it's interesting, and the chapters from Calven's point of view are well done, I'm not sure that adding a crime like this to this novel was really necessary. It's as though this novel is actually two books. That said, I still recommend it, because it's still an amazing story. Vicki also uses the local dialect in telling the story, which works beautifully.

Another book I've read in the last week is Dennis Lehane's MOONLIGHT MILE. This is his much-anticipated return to the Patrick Kenzie/Angie Gennaro series, which ended several years ago with PRAYERS FOR RAIN. This book is a sort of sequel to GONE BABY GONE, in which a four year old girl is kidnapped and Patrick and Angie are hired to find her. In MOONLIGHT MILE, that little girl is now 16 and is again missing, and Patrick is hired to find her.

It's a classic crime novel. Lehane's style is easy to read; the plot is a basic one. However, the book didn't stand out for me like his earlier series books. Maybe it's because Patrick and Angie are now married with a four year old of their own, and there are a lot of references to how "old" they're getting and how they can't do what they used to be able to. Well, I didn't much care for whining about that. They're also supposed to be a little softer around the edges because of the passage of time, but I liked the grittiness of the earlier books. It's sort of like how on soap operas they could never let anyone get married and be happy because it would get boring. While I can appreciate how Lehane sees his two characters now, I agree with Sarah Weinman's assessment that it was like meeting up with friends at a high school reunion: You enjoy their company for a couple of hours but you probably don't have to see them again.

Perhaps it's because Lehane hasn't written about these characters in a long time that the gap is too noticeable. Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone has changed over the course of 20 books, but Muller has never taken a long sabbatical from McCone so the growth is gradual.

What have you read lately?

How much of human life is lost in waiting?

2010-11-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

I had a conversation with my daughter yesterday about book series. She's 13, soon to be 14, and she was lamenting how that by the time the next book in a new series would come out, she might have outgrown it.

She was talking in particular about Rick Riordan's new Lost Hero series, a sort of sequel to the Percy Jackson series. The Lost Hero just came out last month, and it seems she'll have to wait a year until the next one is released, since the second in his Red Pyramid series will probably be out first. But because these books are leaning more toward middle grade readers, she sees that while she loves the characters and the stories, they could soon be "too young" for her.

It's something that as a writer who has published two adult mystery series, I just never had thought about. I don't have to worry about my audience growing too old for my series. They were adults when they started, or maybe teens, in the case of my tattoo shop mysteries, and they will be adults when the series are over.

But as someone who's recently written a young adult novel, my conversation with my daughter struck a chord.

I tried to envision who my readers would be if this book is ever published. My main characters are three teenagers who are sixteen years old. I've investigated the middle grade vs. young adult thing: it seems that most of those books are categorized based on the ages of the protagonist(s). But I do know that while mine are in high school—and late high school—the book might be better suited for ages 12 to 15.

Now, with that in mind, I will reveal that I'd planned a trilogy when I wrote the first book. Granted, it can't be a trilogy if no one buys the first one, but if someone does, then I would like to pursue two more books. But I then face the dilemma of my audience outgrowing them before the next ones are released.

It might be a good idea if middle grade and young adult authors wrote faster. In fact, my daughter is really on board that bandwagon. She thinks there should only be six months between books, and, in lieu of conversation, she's right. As a parent, I'd like her to enjoy a series as long as she can, and as a writer, I'd like her to read all my books without abandoning them halfway because she feels too "old."

As a mystery writer who has written four books in one series in the last two years, I know that this is possible. I know that I could definitely write two more books in my YA series in the next year, maybe less. But in the case of Rick Riordan, who's got two series he's balancing, it might not be so easy. He's just going to have to rely on even younger readers growing old enough to read his series all the way through.

Do you think writers of middle grade and young adult books should try to push the envelope and get their series books out to their young readers more quickly? Do you think adult series writers should step it up a little, too?

Harry Potter back on the big screen

2010-11-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

You know what's coming this month, right?

No, not turkey and stuffing.

The Harry Potter movie.

In order to make more money, the last Harry Potter book is being split in two, so the first film will be out Nov. 19, and the second in July 2011.

I'm re-reading the book now, in anticipation of the first half. But watching the trailer for the movie, I have a sneaking suspicion that they're showing clips from both films. Things in the trailer don't happen in the first half of the book, which is actually a little slow moving. Harry, Ron, and Hermoine hide out at 12 Grimmauld Place, trying to figure out their next move, how to stay out of sight, in order to collect the five remaining Horcruxes that will help destroy Voldemort for good. They end up leaving more than 200 pages in, and then the action begins, albeit still a bit slowly.

I can't figure out where they're going to end the first film and start the second.

But it doesn't much matter. I'll be at the theater with my daughter to begin the last Harry Potter adventure together. Will you?

Here's the trailer. What do you think? Do you think there are scenes from both films, too?

Some thoughts on two books

2010-11-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

I've read two mysteries in the last month that kept me thinking after I finished them.

My daughter's violin teacher is a huge fan of Lawrence Block. In particular, Block's Matt Scudder series. So when I was at Bouchercon last month and my friend Alison Gaylin said she'd gotten an ARC for the latest Scudder book, A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF, I talked her into giving it to me so I could give it to Miles.

I had never read a Block book. But since it was in my bag on the plane, and I had three hours to kill, I pulled it out and began to read.

I am kicking myself for never picking up a Block book before. It was amazing. A relatively quiet mystery; a flashback to the year after Scudder stops drinking; a case about an old friend who is violently murdered; a slow, languid pace that just sucks you in and keeps you thinking long after you finish the book. I have lived with recovery in my life, not my own recovery, but in my family, and Block gets it all right. A scene where Scudder comes back to his room to find a glass of bourbon on his desk waiting for him is one of the strongest in the book. The temptation is clear, his resolve uncertain. The mystery takes a back seat to his struggle.

I'm now going to seek out more Block books. Better late than never. Sadly, though, you'll have to wait for this latest, since it won't be released until May 2011. But it's worth the wait. My daughter's violin teacher was very happy he could get this sneak peek!

The other book is one I just finished, and I admit that I'm not exactly sure what I think about it. Either it was brilliant, or it was ridiculous. But I can't make up my mind.

I have loved Louise Penny's Three Pines mysteries. Her chief inspector, Armand Gamache, is wise and clever. The setting is what drew me initially and has kept me enthralled: a small town just outside Montreal that's not on any map. My family has been to Quebec and Montreal a few times, so the setting speaks to me.

Her new book, BURY YOUR DEAD, is set in Quebec City. I absolutely loved following Gamache around there, since I could close my eyes and picture exactly where he was at all times. The city within the walls is not that big, and since we explored every inch of it, it was easy to picture.

The problem with the book is that there are basically three plots going on simultaneously. The first is the initial one: Gamache is in Quebec City and has stumbled across the murder of a man who has spent his life searching for the remains of Champlain, the founder of Quebec. Penny addresses the problems between the English (Anglophones) and French (Francophones) in Quebec in this plot.

While Gamache is investigating, however, suddenly we get snippets of conversations he has with a young agent named Paul Morin. And as the book progresses, we realize something has happened to Morin, that Gamache is "recuperating" in Quebec City, and his right hand man, Jean-Guy Beauvoir has also been wounded.

We then move into plot No. 3: Gamache sends Beauvoir to Three Pines to see if Olivier, the bistro owner, (SPOILER HERE) actually did kill the Hermit in the previous book. Now, I had huge problems with that last book, and I wasn't sure I was going to read this new book because of that. I never once believed that a beloved, recurring character had become a murderer. Perhaps Penny knew all along that perhaps he wasn't, and that's why she revisited that in this book. But it still feels wrong.

So all three plots are intertwined in this one book. While I got used to the conversations between Gamache and Morin interrupting the flow from time to time, it was an odd device to use. I found myself rating the three plots as to their importance to me: 1) Morin and what happened to Gamache and Beauvoir; 2) Three Pines and Olivier; and 3) Champlain's body. Sadly, I think Penny meant that I should be more interested in the third since that took up the majority of the book, but I found myself skimming a bit to get through all the history to find out just what happened with Morin.

Like I said, either this was brilliant or it was silly to take on three complicated plots at the same time. I'm not quite sure which.

What have you read lately?

Reflections, or Why Things Have Been Thrown Out

2010-10-24T16:11:00.001-07:00

I'm one of those people who actually throws things away. I don't like clutter around my house, although I'm afraid that those spaces behind closed doors tend to get a bit crowded with things. But I've been on a getting-rid-of-things streak the last month or so. I went through my closets and put tons of old clothes and shoes into a big garbage bag and brought it down to the Goodwill. This morning, I went through all my jewelry, weeding out horrifying 1980s earrings and cheap necklaces and earrings that have not worn well with the passage of time. My next project is the basement—a huge undertaking since we've got all my daughter's old toys and books and some of my grandparents' things that really do need to get tossed.

This is not to say that I get rid of everything. I do keep things for sentimental reasons: the box of dishes my grandmother gave me when I moved into my first apartment; books of all kinds that have touched me in one way or another; old dolls that I spent hours playing with.

I'm not sure why I'm on this big kick, except that I've been feeling a little bit like I'm going to be moving into a new phase of my life. I turned 50 in August and am dodging the AARP, my daughter will be going to high school next year, and my husband is facing a change in his career. I just finished the last of my tattoo shop mysteries, and it's the last in my book contract with no new contract in sight.

Rather than feel uncertain and anxious about all of this, though, as I would have when I was younger, I'm pretty okay with all of it. I've been very lucky—in love, since my husband is pretty amazing; in being a mom, since my daughter, despite being in her sullen teenage years, is turning into quite a remarkable young woman; with good friends; with my newspaper career, which spanned more than 20 years, and now my job editing a medical journal; and with my writing, having now seven published novels, with one more set to be published in June.

The closet purge is what the professionals would probably say is preparation for this next phase in a very literal sense. Like how women who are bringing a new baby into the house "nest" right beforehand.

Do you find yourself doing a purge when you need to sort other things out in your life, too?

I didn't leave my heart there, but I love San Francisco

2010-10-19T13:31:00.001-07:00

So I'm back.

I seem to be saying that a lot lately, but this time I was truly away. I was at the aforementioned Bouchercon in San Francisco, the premiere convention for all of us mystery folk. As usual, it was a blast. And as usual, I kept running into the same people and totally missed seeing some people I really wanted to see. This is the way it is when there are upwards of 1,500 people attending the same convention. It is also not as easy to see everyone when you're not staying in the convention hotel.

When I got home, I realized I'd taken a lot of touristy type pictures and only a few of actual people. I am not used to whipping out my camera and taking pictures in a bar or restaurant, unless I'm with my family. Although I do wish I'd taken pictures in Alfred's, the steakhouse I went to Saturday night with Clair Lamb, John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Mark Billingham, and Chris Mooney. The steaks were bigger than the plates and fantastic.

Here are a couple of pictures I did manage to get, however:

Keith Raffel, Lori Armstrong and I ended up having sandwiches for dinner in a pub near the convention hotel Friday night. Being in the financial district, many places closed early and it wasn't easy to find food. Lori and I were having visions of our White Hen experience in Chicago as we wandered around looking for dinner.

Lori and I took off Thursday and played hooky from the convention. We found a fabulous wine bar in Fisherman's Wharf and had a total non-Bouchercon moment when we had a champagne tasting.

Lori, Reed Farrel Coleman and I had a leisurely two hour breakfast on Saturday, discussing the YA book THE HUNGER GAMES. Among other things. Reed and Lori and I hung out a lot when we were in Denver in 2007 for Left Coast Crime.

Other friends I managed to snag some time with were Alison Gaylin, Judy Bobalik, Steve Hamilton, Dana Cameron, Hank Phillippi Ryan . . . in my current still jet lagged state I can't think of everyone. But like I said, Bouchercon is huge, mostly everyone tries to make it each year, and it's always a good time.

Bouchercon, or Why Conventions Should Be In Places You Don't Want To Go

2010-10-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow I leave for Bouchercon.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Bouchercon is the largest mystery convention in the country. It's named after mystery writer Anthony Boucher and each year is in a different city. This year, it's in San Francisco.

I'm a firm believer that conventions and conferences should take place in places you don't want to go. Last year it was in Indianapolis, and at risk of pissing off people who live there and love their city, it really is one of those places that you don't want to go. So you spend the whole time at the convention hotel, hobnobbing with other writers and going to all the panels. That's what you're supposed to do.

But this year, well, I'm torn. I want to get out of the hotel and see the city. I was in San Francisco five years ago, right before my first Bouchercon in Chicago, and the city is pure magic. So much to do, so beautiful. We took a tour of Chinatown, went to Alcatraz, Coit Tower, Golden Gate Park, Sausilito, Japantown . . . I can't even remember everything we did. We spent five days there, soaking in the local scene.

I will have three full days in San Francisco this week. Already I'm planning to take Thursday off from the convention. I've got a breakfast to attend, but after that, I'm stealing away with my friend Lori and we're going to be tourists, not mystery writers, for the day. While perhaps I should feel guilty about this, I will be at the convention most of Friday and Saturday and will still be able to hit up a few panels and meet up with friends I never see except at Bouchercon. But you really can't go to San Francisco and not take some time to enjoy it.

Have you ever been to San Francisco? A convention? Do you think all conventions should be in places like Hartford or Harrisburg or Toledo?

Guest blogger: Reed Farrel Coleman on Titles

2010-10-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Today I have the pleasure of having my good friend Reed Farrel Coleman guest blogging. Reed, who's won the Shamus Award three times and the Anthony and Barry awards, writes the amazing Moe Prager series. The sixth, INNOCENT MONSTER, is just out now from Tyrus Books. Reed and I became good friends during Sleuthfest in Florida in 2006, and when I picked up my first Moe book, I was totally hooked. Moe is a complex character, and Reed takes him to the edge and back again in every book.

Reed is talking titles today, something I know he's really good at, since he came up with title for my third book, DEAD OF THE DAY. So here's Reed:

Innocent Monster: What’s With That?

Titles are important to me. They always have been. Even before I studied poetry at Brooklyn College, titles mattered. The first editorial conflict I ever had was over the title of my first published poem. I was a sophomore in high school and submitted a poem for publication in the school literary magazine. Of course the poem was what most high school poems are about—unrequited love. The original title of the poem was “Monopoly—Maybe Not To You, But To Me.” Man, I thought that was about the cleverest title ever. Problem was when I got my contributor’s copy later that year, the title had been changed to “Monopoly.” Talk about mixed feelings. There I was delighted to see my name in print for the first time and fuming because the cleverest title ever had been changed without my permission. Now that was an abject lesson about publishing that I should have paid attention to, but I never believed writing would be my career. I got my revenge, because by the time I was a senior I was named the editor of the school literary magazine.

When I got to Brooklyn College, I studied writing poetry with Professor David Lehman. He taught me two of the most important lessons I would ever learn. First lesson: If you want to be a writer, you have to think of yourself as a writer. It seems so obvious, but it isn’t. He actually made us raise our right hands and take a pledge to think of ourselves as writers from that day forward. You know what? Since that day I raised my hand, I have never stopped thinking of myself as a writer. That pledge got me through a lot of miserable, hateful jobs. Second lesson: If it’s worth writing, it’s worth a title. I drank the Kool-Aid on that one. The two poems I got published while in college were titled “Commentary, Sorry” and “They Don’t Play Stickball in Milwaukee.” Yes, I stole my own title for the title of my third novel. Something else Professor Lehman did was tell anecdotes. One of my favorites was about the poet WH Auden. Auden was approached by a woman who was sure her son could be a great writer. When she asked for the great man’s sage advice on behalf of her son, Auden said that if the son loved playing with words, he had a chance.

Okay, let’s fast forward a couple of decades. I still love titles. I have helped several authors with titling their novels. I consider that a great honor. They don’t always take my suggestions, but my methods usually un-stick them. Sometimes, they actually use the titles I suggest. For me, I couldn’t write a novel without having a title for it first. What I found in poetry was that a good title could help you eliminate a first stanza. For a novel, the title can perform several functions. As I don’t outline, the title helps set the tone and helps me focus on where I should be going. Rarely, the title suggests the plot of the book. Innocent Monster is a case in point. The phrase just popped into my head one day and it forced me to conceive a plot that would deliver what the title promised. So although the juxtapostion of the words innocent and monster might strike you like the oxymorons jumbo shrimp or elevated subway, they are so much more.

I hope you agree when you read the book.

Monopoly

It is not a comfortable feeling, being manipulated like a knight in a game of chess,

Everyone one close seeing the masterful movements with the exception of you

A late model vehicle; her new mode of transit.

Strange though, my need ran out before the guarantee.

There is an emotional cavity in my ego now—as though I’ve been cheated.

The pain or embarrassment does not plague me,

Rather the unoriginality of the bait and the ease of the capture and canning.

Sealed and vacuum packed, ready for female consumption.

The question is raised,

How can one allow himself to tread on such a web?

This once, love is neither answer nor excuse

For there was no truth in her and no real affection in me.

— Reed F. Coleman (at 15 years old)

Check out Reed's website at www.reedcoleman.com. NPR’s Maureen Corrigan has called Reed a "hard-boiled poet," and the Huffington Post calls him "the noir poet laureate." In addition to the Moe Prager books, he's published two under his pen name Tony Spinosa and the stand-alone Tower co-written with award-winning Irish author Ken Bruen.

Happy birthday, John Lennon

2010-10-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

So John Lennon would've been 70 years old today. It definitely makes me take pause. As one of the four Beatles, he was my second favorite, next to Paul McCartney. I remember listening to Beatles albums with my best friend Alison Prendergast when we were in elementary school, lipsincing to the words, pretending that they were our boyfriends. Alison somehow always managed to nab Paul, and I got stuck with John. When perhaps that should've been just fine.

Google is celebrating Lennon's birthday today with an incredibly clever logo. Click on it and you'll see this:

I remember where I was the day Lennon got shot. I was studying for a journalism final at Roanoke College when we got the news — the old-fashioned way: on TV. No Internets or Facebook or Twitter then. I felt as though someone I'd known had died.

And I had known him. Through his music, which will last forever. Just imagine...

They're only words

2010-10-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

I made a concerted effort when I started this tattoo shop mystery series to keep anything that might be perceived as "offensive" to a minimum. I got, and still get, emails from people who've read my Annie Seymour series and have issues with Annie's language. Annie, if you're not familiar with her, uses incredibly salty language—none of it is gratuitous, however, since she's a police reporter and talks the way a real police reporter would talk. But because I was tired of being scolded, I decided that I wouldn't have my tattoo shop owner cuss. At all.

But because I've made such an effort to steer clear of all that in the tattoo shop series, a review of THE MISSING INK on the website of a small Tennessee paper left me scratching my head. Don't ask me what paper it was, I don't remember, and I'm too lazy to go back and look. But the two reviewers who reviewed my book, after saying how wonderful it was, put a disclaimer at the end, noting that "sexual language and profanity may offend readers."

I couldn't believe it. I quickly shot off an email, asking what they meant by that, since I knew I'd only used the word "ass" a couple of times (and to describe the body part) and there was no sex in the book. This was their reply:

With regards to your use — or lack thereof — of profanity, we warn readers of any and all profanity, no matter how mild; so 'ass' does qualify. Perhaps it would have been better if we had specified 'mild profanity'; we apologize for not doing so.

You also said you didn't use sexual language because the book 'has no sex whatsoever'; however, we describe 'sexual language' as not merely a description of the sexual act, but of sexual feelings. To wit, on page 204: 'He ran a hand through his hair and gave me another intense look, one that I felt between my legs.' This, along with his hand beneath her breast, bodies pressed close together, etc., is the sort of thing we meant by 'sexual language.'

Really? I think they're a tad sensitive. And perhaps a bit repressed.

But it's not just them. Over the weekend I got my editor's notes for INK FLAMINGOS. I've been going through the manuscript and making changes as she suggests. But I found two that baffle me.

I describe a very voluptuous woman getting out of the shower and wearing only a small towel, which shifts at one point, "flashing a little nipple." She took that phrase out. As if the word "nipple" is one of those words we just whisper in private company. And in the second instance, I have someone getting a tattoo on her lower back and tugging her jeans and underpants down to get it. My editor took out "underpants."

I think this is going a little too far.

Are you easily offended by language in a book? Or do you take it all in context?

Hungry for more

2010-09-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

I hate it when I read a book I wish I'd written.

I just finished THE HUNGER GAMES. I'm a little late to the party on this one, since the third in the trilogy, MOCKINGJAY, came out last month. But I've been a little busy, what with writing my own series and then writing and rewriting a YA of my own. Oh, and right: the day job and the kid and the house and the husband.

But back to THE HUNGER GAMES.

It's a pretty simple story, actually, and we all learned it in history class: The Romans threw the Christians into the arena with the lions to see who'd win. THE HUNGER GAMES twists it around a little and sets it in the future that looks remarkably like the past and throws 24 kids into the arena—although this one is a lush landscape with forests and ponds and lakes—and the last one standing is the winner. That's right. They have to kill each other to win.

It's GLADIATOR meets SURVIVOR. It even has alliances, which, of course, don't work here, either, because there can only be one winner.

One thing I've discovered with YA books is that they don't shy away from showing the reader violence and gore and the dark side of human nature. Once I started reading books like THE HUNGER GAMES and GONE and UNWIND, I wondered what my audience, the cozy mystery audience, would make of these books. I am constantly hearing about how writers can't kill off pets or favorite characters. YA books have no such restrictions. Characters are killed. Animals, too. No one is safe in a YA book.

And then I began to wonder about my daughter. She's 13, in eighth grade, and she is the audience for these books. What darkness is lurking in her head? But when I try to discuss these books with her, she is oddly not disturbed by any of it. They're stories that have been told. I can't blame it on the TV or movies she watches—we spend a lot of time watching Food Network and The Amazing Race, we usually rent Hitchcock or Marx Brothers movies on the weekends and we own five seasons of I Love Lucy and she watches them over and over. So I'm flummoxed.

The darkness aside, though, Suzanne Collins tells a good story. One that kept me turning the pages so quickly I read the book in two days (see earlier reference to how I don't have much time and this can be impressive). And one that made me wish, when I closed the book for the last time, that I had come up with this idea, that I had written it, because despite the darkness, a good story is a good story.

If you've read THE HUNGER GAMES, I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you haven't, well, you should.

I've been gone, but now I'm back

2010-09-27T08:55:00.001-07:00

So you might be wondering what I've been doing for almost two weeks, since I last posted.

Not a whole lot.

Of course that's not exactly what you want to hear, right? You want to think that I'm so busy that I just don't have time to post. But that's just not the case.

I basically have taken some time off writing.

I sent my YA book, working title THE LEGACY, off to my agent and was waiting for word from him. It didn't take too long for him to get back to me. He used the words "wonderful" and "delightful" and I couldn't be happier, especially since the first version of this manuscript didn't get such a glowing review (not even close) and I had to totally rewrite it. I'd been nervous, especially since I added something to it that I wasn't quite sure I'd be able to pull off. But I did. And I'm a happy camper.

Problem is, now that it's going out to editors, I have to start thinking about my next project. So we're back to what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks. Trying to figure out just what I want to do next.

I have an idea for an adult thriller, but I need to do some serious research. That shouldn't be a problem, you might think, for a former journalist, but this sort of research will be a little complicated and perhaps confusing since it's not exactly my field. And the research needs to happen before I can fully figure out the plot and the characters.

It makes me tired just thinking about it.

So when I was walking to my bus the other day after work, something else popped into my head: the voice of a fifteen year old girl who's having some trouble with her mother and then she meets a boy. And that meeting changes her life. Sure, it sounds like every other boy meets girl coming of age story, doesn't it? Well, there's a twist that I'm not ready to reveal yet. The more I heard her tell her story, the more I began to think that this could be my next book.

I truly had no plans to write another YA, but it might be the natural course of things right now. And my agent thinks the idea "is promising."

So today is my official I'M BACK day. Here, and on my laptop.

What have you been doing the last couple weeks?

Making a case for the cold case

2010-09-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

When I wrote SACRED COWS, I decided that there would be two murders in it. The first girl killed, Melissa, is dead on the first page of the book. The reader never meets her while alive, only learns about her after she's dead. The second girl killed, Allison, is a friend of Melissa's, and Annie Seymour interviews her for the newspaper about her friend. Allison is killed later, in a very different way than Melissa.

I did not want to solve Allison's murder.

The heart of the story would be finding Melissa's killer. Allison's death seems to be connected, because they are friends and the two girls are escorts. But when I wrote the book, I had decided that Allison's death was random, that the police would not find out who killed her at all. It would be one of those cold cases, the ones that are never solved.

We know that crimes are not always solved. We know that there isn't always a reason for a crime, but sometimes it's just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not every killer is caught. I wanted to show the reader both a crime that's solved, a killer brought to justice, and a crime that remains a mystery.

My editor didn't like that. Mysteries have to have all the i's dotted and the t's crossed, I was told. I had to solve Allison's murder just as I had solved Melissa's. The book would seem unfinished if I didn't. So, because I was so happy to actually have finally sold the book and it would be published, went along with it. I wrapped up the mystery of Allison's death just as nicely as I did Melissa's. I don't think the book suffered for it; I made the reason for the crime plausible, the killer plausible.

But I still wish I could've left it open.

Just as I wish Chevy Stevens had left her crime random in her splashy debut STILL MISSING. I read this remarkable book yesterday. The plot, about a woman Realtor who is abducted at an open house and held captive for a year by a man she called The Freak, sped along at a breakneck pace. It was the story of a woman who survived physically, but emotionally she is still facing the demons of what happened. I was riveted.

Until the last part of the book. When it seemed that perhaps Ms. Stevens' editor said the same thing to her as mine did to me: Give us a reason for the abduction. Someone has to be to blame. Solve the crime.

So she did. And I felt it was wrong. I didn't believe any of it. Because it stretched credulity. The suspense was gone, and what was left was merely "You've got to be kidding me." She should've left it alone. The reader would not have minded. In fact, many of the book's reviews indicate that.

Do you think a mystery writer has an obligation to always solve the crime?

DRIVEN TO INK out today!

2010-09-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

DRIVEN TO INK is officially out today! It's the third in the tattoo shop mystery series. In this adventure, Brett Kavanaugh discovers the body of a Dean Martin impersonator in the trunk of her car, a tattoo machine clip cord around his neck. She goes undercover with her nemesis, Jeff Coleman, to a drive-through wedding chapel to hunt down the killer.

For anyone out there who's in Connecticut, I'll be at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, CT, tonight at 7. The rest of my schedule is at my website at www.kareneolson.com, and there are links to order the book as well.

Hope you pick up a copy!

Discovering Louisa May Alcott

2010-09-01T15:45:00.001-07:00

I didn't realize I was taking the month of August off until I just now noticed that my last post was August 2. It was a month full of activity, a lot of pool time, a milestone birthday, and a blissful week in Maine. My husband had never been to Portland, and I had never been north of Portland, so we spent a couple of days enjoying the city before we drove up to Boothbay Harbor, a lovely little village mid-coast.

We decided not to do the six hour drive home in one fell swoop, however, so we booked a room at the Best Western in historic Concord, Massachusetts, about half way. I was the one to settle on Concord for two reasons: 1) my daughter will be studying American history this year and that's where the Revolutionary War began so we could take her to the battlefield; and 2) we could visit Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott.

My husband has never read Little Women, and my daughter, sadly, never got into it. But when I was 9, I immersed myself in it. I felt I knew Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy as if they were my own sisters, and of course I identified with Jo, the sister who wrote stories, like I did. My parents gave me a copy of the book, and I read it so many times the binding broke and the cover eventually fell off it. I've still got it in a box somewhere, although I bought a new copy for my daughter, hoping she'd see the magic in it as I did.

While I knew everything there was to know about the Little Women, I didn't know a lot about Louisa May Alcott herself, the writer, preferring to enjoy the fictional depiction of her own growing up and her own sisters. But a PBS documentary produced last year portrayed a fascinating woman who joined the army as a nurse during the Civil War, enjoyed fame at the level of JK Rowling, and died too young from what was possibly mercury poisoning as a result of medication taken during an almost fatal bout of scarlet fever.

For the first time, I saw the writer behind the story, and when faced with the possibility of seeing Orchard House, where she'd penned her most famous work, I was almost giddy with excitement.

It's a typical New England wooden house, right by the road. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a family friend, lived down the street, and he visited frequently, along with Henry David Thoreau. Alcott's father, Bronson, was a bit of a layabout, a philosopher who fashioned a school using his own educational theories. The house is very much as it was when the Alcotts lived there, even down to the furniture and a chest in May's (Amy's) room with costumes from the plays they'd perform for family and friends, just as the sisters in Little Women did. May was an artist, like Amy, and her drawings are throughout the house. In fact, she had a studio and in the 1980s, it was discovered that behind the plaster on the walls were her sketches of her students. While Louisa's desk where Little Women was created is a focal point of the house, so are May's drawings, paintings and sketches.

Louisa May Alcott came alive for me in our visit to Orchard House, and it brought back hours of joy reading her books, because I didn't stop with Little Women. I read Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that I decided to become a writer the year I read Little Women.

If you're a writer, what book or books helped shape your dreams? And if you're a reader, what book from childhood do you remember reading over and over? Do you feel about Little Women as I do?

Bieber fever

2010-08-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

Having a teenage daughter in middle school, I know who Justin Bieber is. For those of you out there who are not quite so privileged, Justin Bieber is the newest teen singer sensation. For those of you who are older, like me, he's like David Cassidy of the Partridge Family, Leif Garrett, or Bobby Sherman. One of his concerts in Australia was canceled because of rioting tweeners. Really. He has been on Saturday Night Live (with Tina Fey). According to reports, he's 16 years old, and here's the link to the scant details.

And now he's publishing his memoir.

Yes, you read that right. His memoir.

Of course, precedent was set when teenager Miley Cyrus "wrote" her memoir. But I have serious issues about children writing memoirs when they have nothing yet to say. Okay, so Bieber got his start on YouTube, and he sports a hairstyle that seems to defy gravity. But beyond that, what has he really done that justifies a memoir?

I have said for a long time that he's an E True Hollywood story waiting to happen. You know who they feature: Scotty Schwartz, from child star to porn star; Britney Spears; Lindsay Lohan; Angelina Jolie; The Kardashians. These are people who have earned their scandals. Bieber hasn't had a scandal. Yet.

Of course Harper Collins, which is publishing the book, due out in October for anyone who wants to put it on their calendar, doesn't care. They see dollar signs. But for parents who are used to spending at most $17.99 for a hardcover YA book, the $21.99 cover price might be a little hard to swallow. Apparently it will be illustration heavy, which will make up for the lack of an actual life to follow.

Harry Potter it is not. It's not even Twilight. It's a ridiculous money making project, that sadly will make loads of money.

Who was the big teen sensation when you were a kid?

Tapping into my inner teenage boy

2010-07-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

Writing from a teenage boy's POV is a little challenging, to say the least. I live with a teenage girl and at one point about a hundred years ago I was a teenage girl, and it's a very different thing. I admit to checking out my nephew's Wall on Facebook to see the sorts of things he and his friends are saying. He's almost sixteen, which is just a tad younger than Phinn, my protagonist.

I hadn't started out writing completely from Phinn's point of view. There is also a teenage girl in my WIP, Jess, and in the first incarnation of this novel had her own POV. I'd written alternating chapters from both points of view, in third person. But when I started to rewrite the book, I had to twist around my whole original vision, and I wrote five pages to get into it. And it was first person, all from Phinn's POV. I considered—briefly—still doing the alternate chapter thing using Jess, maybe in first person, maybe third, but abandoned that idea when I merely continued to write from Phinn's POV without even taking a breath.

On the most part, I think I've got it. I've had a friend read the first 100 pages, and she concurred, for the most part, but pointed out a couple of things that she didn't really think Phinn would say, and I agreed and changed it appropriately.

To get a little more into a teenage boy's head, I picked up a book by John Green, PAPER TOWNS, which won the Edgar award for Best YA mystery in 2009. It's the story of Quentin Jacobsen's obsession with his neighbor, Margo, who appears at his window one night and their antics as they play pranks on Margo's boyfriend and her best friend, who fooled around with her boyfriend. And then the next morning, when Quentin wakes up, he discovers that Margo has gone missing. It's not the first time, but a series of clues she leaves behind leads him on a quest to find her.

I loved the voice, I loved the relationship Q had with his friends and how he comes to terms with how he feels—and has always felt—about Margo and his perception of her.

Because I loved PAPER TOWNS, I turned to another John Green novel, his first, LOOKING FOR ALASKA. Miles leaves his Florida home and unpopularity behind to attend an exclusive private boarding school in Alabama, where he meets his roommate, Chip, aka The Colonel, and Alaska Young, a wild girl who swings back and forth from fun and flirty to bitchy to sullen to depressed. Miles's fascination with Alaska, his relationship with the Colonel, and his ruminations about his favorite class, Religion, are compelling. I can't say much more about the plot without giving it away, but the book raises interesting questions for the reader as well as for Miles.

Since John Green used to be a teenage boy, I believed in both Q and Miles's characters. They are typical teenage boys, much like Phinn.

I do know that some women writers have had to use initials in their names if they've written books with male protagonists, such as J.A. Jance, who writes the excellent JP Beaumont series, or JK Rowling—not that I have to tell you she writes about Harry Potter. I'm not sure that ploy really works, since we all know they're really women writing about boys, and people read them anyway.

What about you? Does the gender of the author make any difference if that author has created believable characters, whether male or female?

They really needed a bigger boat

2010-07-18T06:52:00.001-07:00

Ah, summer. Beaches, swimming, ice cream. And movies.

I've been a little disappointed this summer in the movie selection. There's not a whole lot out there I'd like to see or seems worth seeing. I took my daughter and her friends to see TOY STORY 3, and it was fantastic, but other than that, the movie scene this summer seems a bit of a dud so far.

So that's why when I noticed JAWS was on cable last night, I hunkered down with a strawberry popsicle to watch it.

It's the quintessential summer movie.

The musical score alone sends shivers down my spine, and when we see the swimmers from the shark's point of view, it's terrifying. We all know the backstory: the fake shark didn't work very well, so director Steven Spielberg ended up not using it quite as much. Which, since it wasn't planned, was brilliant. Not seeing the shark means it's all that more scary.

And scary it is. I hadn't seen the whole movie in one sitting in a long time. I figured I'd make it about halfway, or maybe through the part where Quint tells the story of the USS Indianapolis, but I was with it the whole way. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I still sat with my heart pounding. This is still my favorite line:

I first saw JAWS the summer it opened: 1975. I was almost 15. My friends Donna and Bruce and I rode our bikes to the little movie theater in the center of town in the middle of a sunny, hot afternoon. We lived in a beach town on the Connecticut coast that was very similar to the island in JAWS, a small community that relied on summer residents and visitors. The movie terrified us. Especially afterward, when we rode our bikes to the beach. I remember sitting on my towel, not wanting to go in the water. Because Spielberg's great white could be out there. Even in Long Island Sound.

I'm not much of a beach person. Not into all that sand, and the salt water clings to you like a second skin. And after seeing JAWS last night, I'm happy that I belong to a pool club, where there are no possibilities of any shark attacks. Except during a harmless game of sharks and minnows.

What's your favorite summer movie?

First hurdle is "delightful"

2010-07-14T06:33:00.001-07:00

My agent has declared INK FLAMINGOS "delightful." Even though I have had two first readers on the book, my agent's opinion is always the first professional one that I get on my manuscripts and he's always been very blunt and honest with me. So when he calls a manuscript "delightful," I know that it must be true. He also said that it "reads like the wind," which is one of the things I strive for when I write a book: make it move as fast as possible so the reader doesn't want to put it down.

Now it goes on to my editor. I can only hope she has the same opinion.

In other news, DRIVEN TO INK has received its first review by the ubiquitous Harriet Klausner. She says: "Karen E. Olson provides a refreshing mystery with a touch of whimsy."

The words "whimsy" and "delightful" are interesting ones, considering that the books are murder mysteries and there's at least one dead body in each. But since these are technically considered cozies, although I like to call them cozies with an edge (I mean, it's tattoos in Vegas, they can't be too cozy), then that's where the whimsy and delightfulness can come in.

Are you a cozy reader? Do you think a tattoo shop can be whimsical?

What did we do before Food TV?

2010-07-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

My name is Karen and I am a food TV addict.

I'll watch pretty much anything: Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, Chopped, Dinner: Impossible, Man vs. Food, Kitchen Nightmares, No Reservations, Iron Chef America, Food Network Challenge, the Next Food Network Star, Chefs vs. City. Although I haven't yet watched Cupcake Wars. I do have to draw a line somewhere.

I admit to being particularly partial to Top Chef, but Chopped is a close second. Chopped really shows whether a chef can cut it or not: the contestants are given a basket with different items and have to create a dish out of it. Sound easy? Well, not so much if you get the trout, the maple syrup and the popcorn basket. And then they only have 20 minutes for the appetizer and half an hour for entree. Why some think they can make a risotto or a stew in that time, well, don't they ever watch the show?

Gordon Ramsay is one crazy guy and what's with all the shouting? He shouts and cusses on Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, and he's got a new Master Chef show starting at the end of the month, so I'm wondering if he'll shout and cuss during that one, too. Although the commercials show perhaps a kinder and gentler Gordon.

Top Chef is our antidote to Hell's Kitchen, which my husband always says makes him want to take a shower afterward. Top Chef is civilized, with actual, real chefs who have some real talent. Although we can't figure out how Padma got involved.

Tony Bourdain has been a favorite since I read Kitchen Confidential. I loved his show Cook's Tour on Food Network and watch No Reservations on the Travel Channel religiously. I saw Bourdain speak at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison when the companion book for Cook's Tour came out. He was hilarious in person and talked about how in every country they'd find a little kid and make him tell the camera "I hate Emeril," and then they'd send the tape back to Food Network, which never mentioned it.

The Travel Channel also features Man vs. Food. Adam Richman can't keep this up, though. I mean, those food challenges will kill him. A ten pound omelet? With hot sauce? Sushi that's so hot he's sweating with the first bite? We watch, riveted by his stamina and iron stomach. I always wonder what's going on after the camera stops rolling.

I know I'm not the only one watching these shows. They're hugely popular, and now cable has even introduced the Cooking Channel. I haven't watched much on that, yet, except for a show about drinks. But it didn't have the same appeal.

Do you watch food TV? What's your favorite show?

All's well that ends well

2010-07-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

I'm finishing up the final tweaks on INK FLAMINGOS. This book is the fourth in my tattoo shop mysteries, and most likely the last one. Who decides that? The publisher looks at the sales numbers and decides whether it's profitable to continue. Sadly, while I haven't gotten the "official" word on that, it's not looking good for my series.

That said, I'm really proud of these books. I wasn't sure that I even wanted to write them at first. My then-editor had told me that the publisher didn't want any more Annie Seymour books (see reason above) and suggested that I write another series. After coming up with some lame possibilities, she said she was looking for a tattoo shop mystery series. I pointed out that I had no tattoos, that I was not privy to that world. But she said she was confident I could do it, so after some soul searching, I decided to give it a try.

Research for this series has been fun: talking to tattooists, tattooed people, reading about the history of tattoos, watching YouTube videos and, of course, those two trips to Vegas. I have grown to really love my characters: Brett has grown, albeit slowly, but you'll see some real changes in her at the end of DRIVEN TO INK and especially in INK FLAMINGOS. Bitsy, Joel, and Ace are fun supporting characters, and I have had a real hoot writing Sylvia Coleman. Jeff Coleman was the biggest surprise. He wasn't even included in the first proposal and has grown to be a character I would love to keep learning about.

So finishing up INK FLAMINGOS is rather bittersweet. More so than just finishing another book. It's finishing a series, saying goodbye to a world I've created and enjoyed immersing myself in.

I get a lot of emails asking if Annie is coming back, but like Brett, I've said goodbye to her, too. It took a while to get over that; Annie's world was much closer to my heart, although Brett's showed me that I am not just a one dimensional writer, that I can write about something other than my own hometown and my own profession. I've learned a lot writing these two series, but as with Annie, in this last tattoo shop mystery, I have left Brett in a good place.

Do you read series? How do you feel when you know a book will be the last?

Let's talk serial killers

2010-07-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

I've never been one for a serial killer book. I'm uncomfortable getting into a killer's head, and most of the serial killer books do give us the killer's POV so we know who they are, what their motivations are. I've never been that curious, since serial killers are, despite what we may see in books, TV, and movies, rather rare in the larger scheme of things.

That said, I have read two serial killer books recently that I found incredibly compelling. Both were written by friends, in full disclosure, but I am always happy to be able to like books written by my friends.

Kevin O'Brien recommended FINAL BREATH to me at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop's annual festival in early May. He said I might like it because it has a reporter character in it, and since I spent a long time as a newspaper reporter and editor, I decided to give it a go. Admittedly, it sat next to my desk for several weeks before I picked it up, uncertain again about the serial killer theme.

I was wrong. Really wrong. The book is intriguing and suspenseful, and I found myself caught up in Sydney Jordan's investigation into who is killing the heroes she'd interviewed. She is a hero herself, having saved a young kid from a fire just as her figure skating career was about to take off. Because she was badly injured, she now has a limp and her dreams never attained. There is a subplot with her son, who is trying to find out about the previous inhabitants of their apartment, victims of a suspected murder suicide. All the characters come alive, and I can see why Kevin has been on the New York Times bestseller list. I am definitely going to check out his latest book, VICIOUS.

I met JT Ellison in Denver at Left Coast Crime in 2008. She's a vivacious woman with a wonderful smile and a warm personality. She's also a wine snob, which in my book is a very good thing. I had never read one of her books, although I'm not quite sure why, until I snagged a copy of THE COLD ROOM at BookExpo America in New York at the end of May.

I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but I did not expect a serial killer book. And a very good serial killer book. JT writes a series featuring Nashville lieutenant/detective Taylor Jackson. Even though I didn't read the previous books in the series, it didn't matter. I was quickly introduced to the main players and got little tidbits of background that only intrigued me to check out the other books. I love Taylor, she's a very black and white person, it's all about right from wrong with no middle ground. That said, however, she has a complex personality and mixed feelings about her parents and upbringing. Her fiancee, Dr. John Baldwin, is a profiler with the FBI, and in this book, we meet her new partner, Renn McKenzie, who turns out to be far more well rounded a character than it seems at first glance.

Taylor and Baldwin are hot on the trail of a serial killer the media has dubbed The Conductor because of the classical music playing at the very staged crime scenes. Young woman are being starved to death, the killer then has sex with the body, and then carefully poses the body in a way reminiscent of a famous painting. This is not for the faint of heart or anyone who's got issues with necrophilia, but I was pleased to see JT didn't shrink from descriptions that were necessary for the story.

Do you read serial killer novels?

Film exposure

2010-06-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

One piece of advice I always give to expectant parents is that they should go to the movies. A lot. Because once baby comes into your life, going to see grownup movies in the movie theater is a very rare occurrence for several years. You end up seeing lots of Disney and Pixar movies, I sat through ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS (my husband refused, he can't stand the voices), and when my daughter got older I was relegated to sitting alone while she and her friend sat together on the other side of the theater to see 17 AGAIN. I felt like a total loser: a middle aged woman alone watching a Zac Ephron film.

Now that my daughter has hit her teens, we still aren't going to the movies all that much but we've decided she needs to be exposed to some classics, movies made in a time when you didn't really have to worry about ratings too much. (Also, I remember a teenager saying at one point she would never watch a black and white movie, something I never want to hear my daughter say.)

To my husband's delight, she loves the Marx Brothers. So much so that she's downloaded one of their songs into her iPod. Don't ask me what it is, I'm not a Marx Brothers fan, except for the I Love Lucy episode with Harpo. She loves musicals, especially Fred Astaire films. One of our favorite holiday movies is HOLIDAY INN with Astaire and Bing Crosby. (And even though it's not an old movie, one of her absolute favorites is BRIDE AND PREJUDICE, a Bollywood film based on the Jane Austen book with lots of fabulous colors and musical numbers.)

We're also thrilled that she enjoys film noir and Hitchcock films. Her first was NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and she was riveted. We've also watched TO CATCH A THIEF and DIAL M FOR MURDER. One night we caught LAURA on one of our movie channels, and she loved it, and not long thereafter we rented REBECCA.

I have never read REBECCA, but after watching it for the umpteenth time and seeing my daughter mesmerized by it for the first time, I decided to finally pick up the book. It's in my summer reading pile, and I'm hoping she'll want to read it with me. My favorite character is by far Mrs. Danvers, who is one of the creepiest women villians of all time:

What's your favorite classic movie?

Killing my babies

2010-06-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

I've finished INK FLAMINGOS. Well, at least the first draft. I'm giving it a little time to breathe, you know, like a fine wine needs a little oxygen infusion before it tastes perfect. In a couple of weeks, I'll tackle it, tweaking here and there, making necessary revisions, making sure the timeline works, that sort of thing.

In the meantime, I'm back to my YA book. My agent informed me early last month that it needs something critical for a book: A plot. After a long discussion with him, I realized he was right. The book as it stood was merely a sequence of events with no clear purpose, nothing that held the story together.

This is the kind of criticism that I need, that every writer needs. Showing a manuscript to a spouse or a good friend might just get a "yes, it's very good." You're not going to get that really critical eye, that feedback that you need to make the book better.

So while I worked on INK FLAMINGOS, I let the YA percolate a little. I tossed ideas around in my head during my morning run, trying to piece it all together more coherently, giving the characters a more definite purpose. A quest, you might say.

And I had an idea. An idea that I'm not really ready to share, because I'm not sure I'll be able to pull it off. But if I can, I think it's exactly what this book needs.

One thing I can say is I've changed the third person POV to first person. In the original, I had alternating third person POV in each chapter. In this one, so far, I hear only Phinn's voice, even though Jess is there. But I've added a character who will round out my adventurers, and my villian? Well, he will be who he was before, but different.

Now I've really confused you, haven't I?

It took a little bit of time to wrap my head around the rewrite. I had written an entire book one way, but now I'm taking it apart and killing my babies and trying to look at it in a whole different way. But I think it will be a much stronger book when I'm done, and I'll be a much better writer for having to do this.

If you're a writer, do you like to rewrite? And if you're a reader, have you ever read anything that is a little low on plot?

A Man's Gotta Have a Code

2010-06-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

The crime fiction community is small. Mostly everyone knows everyone else, or if you don't know someone, someone you know does know him. It's like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing. This is what makes conferences like Bouchercon and Malice Domestic so much fun. You get to meet readers, booksellers, librarians . . . and see all your friends and make new ones. I met my First Offender friends Alison Gaylin, Jeff Shelby, and Lori Armstrong at my very first Bouchercon in Chicago five years ago. We've stayed really tight through the years, and we've met other friends through each other: Jim Born, Megan Abbott, Toni McGee Causey, JT Ellison, Harlan Coben, Trey Barker, Neil Smith, Victor Gischler, Sean Doolittle, Laura Lippman . . . the list goes on and on.

But because it's such a tight-knit community, sometimes we forget that we don't know everyone and everyone isn't a good friend. There should be a code for writers, some rules that should be followed across the board, sort of like Omar's code in THE WIRE:

These would be on my list:

Don't compare what's going on with you with what you hear from other writers. The business is different for everyone and not everyone might be honest (This comes from my agent)
Don't ever review a friend's book, unless you're willing to disclose that the author is a friend
Don't review a friend's book and trash it, unless you're willing to lose a friend
Don't check your Amazon numbers and compare them to other books
Google yourself only when you've got a new book out and you might need to cull some blurbs from blogs or online sites for your website
Don't promise to blurb a book you think you might not like, and if you do promise and then don't like the book, see if you can find something nice to say about it
If you get a blurb from someone, don't rewrite it to make it sound more like what you want
Ask only people you know well and trust to be honest to read your manuscript
If you get a bad review on Amazon or another site, don't respond to it publicly, if at all
Don't poach anyone's ideas, even if they say they're not going to use them. Because they might want to someday
Don't ask a writer to recommend you to his agent or editor unless you are a good friend, and even then it should come from the writer, who should be familiar with your work
Downplay misfortune with anyone you're not really close with and don't take advantage of a friend's misfortune behind his back
Don't drink too much at conferences. You don't want to be the person gossiped about afterward
If you promise to have someone guest blog on your blog, then honor that in a timely manner

Would you add any others?

Almost 800 page book comes up short

2010-06-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished THE PASSAGE.

Well, sort of.

First, a little background. THE PASSAGE is an almost-800 page book by Justin Cronin, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award. He is no schlock; he's a literary writer who is acclaimed. But he decided to go off the reservation a little and write a vampire book, which is much more commercial. He also got a commercial rate: Random House paid him $3.75 million for a trilogy and Ridley Scott paid him $1.75 million for the film rights. Justin Cronin is sitting on easy street, something a literary writer usually doesn't do.

Because of all that, this book, which came out June 8, had big buzz. For months. I think I first read about the book six months ago, and in the week before the book came out, the New York Times wrote at least two stories about it and Cronin.

So I put the book on hold at my local library. I couldn't help myself. I was curious. I wanted to know what a $3.75 million vampire book would offer me as a reader.

I got it on Friday, and while there was one hold ahead of me, I wonder if that other person actually read the whole book or did what I did.

I skipped 250 pages in the middle of the book.

Honestly, for the first 250 pages, I couldn't put the book down. It was compelling. Cronin clearly can write, and his use of language made up for the fact that this was a book about vampires. In the future. A dystopian community. Two of the biggest cliches you can find these days, especially in Young Adult fiction. But the characters were fascinating, their backstories carefully revealed, the plot curiously riveting.

And then, suddenly, on page 249, the book became something completely different. New characters, new setting, in a different future time than previously. I read about 20 to 25 pages about new characters, but the writing became very dense to me, and because I was missing those other characters, I couldn't get into it.

I put the book down for a day.

When I picked it back up last night, I fast forwarded 200 pages. I started again about page 550. There were the characters I didn't spend any time getting to know earlier, but it didn't matter at all. Suddenly I did know them, and a character from the beginning was back, and then what happened in the beginning started to come full circle.

I finished the book and felt it was a fair and satisfying ending. Although I doubt I will pursue any of the rest of the trilogy. This book could've easily been a trilogy in itself. The length felt self indulgent, and the fact that I didn't have to read 200 pages in the middle of it violated one of Elmore Leonard's rules of writing:

Leave out all the hooptedoodle, or, all the stuff no one reads.

Are you like me? Will you read a book just to see what all the buzz is about?

Changing it up

2010-06-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

So I'm playing around with Blogger's new templates. Let me know what you think. Do you like this one, or did you prefer the previous template? This one seems to have a little more pizzazz.

I've also added a visitor counter. Visit me often so I don't look like a loser.

I'm adding new blogs to my blog list and new writers to check out. Visit them often, too!

Going from dark to light

2010-06-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Even though I'm putting the final touches on INK FLAMINGOS, I still have time to read on my daily bus commute to work. I've read two books lately that couldn't be more different, but I enjoyed each of them.

I've been a huge fan of Faye Kellerman's Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker mysteries for years. I love the way their relationship has developed through the books, and now their children are grown up, too. I haven't read any books by Jonathan Kellerman, Faye's husband, however. But their son, Jesse Kellerman, is now also a writer. I read and enjoyed his first book SUNSTROKE but did not read the next two. But I have just finished his most recent book, THE EXECUTOR, and it blew me away.

There is something about Jesse Kellerman's style, his use of language, his detailed descriptions, his clear understanding of his story and backstory, and his subtle manipulation of characters that makes this book stand out.

Joseph Griest is a languishing philosophy graduate student, 800 pages into a PhD dissertation his adviser declares isn't worth it at all. He gets thrown out of Harvard, his girlfriend throws him out of their apartment, and he begins to couch surf but isn't too amibitious about finding a new direction. He answers a classified ad for a "conversationalist" and meets an elderly woman who brings him into her life and her home. But what seemed to be an easy way out for Joseph may not be so easy after all . . .

I am reluctant to say more about the plot. You need to read it and savor it and find out the books secrets yourself. All I will say is, I read the last 100 pages in one sitting at a breakneck pace, my heart in my throat the entire time. And when you finish, you will feel exhausted and you will see that the story ends the only way it can.

After reading THE EXECUTOR, I decided I needed something considerably lighter, so I picked up BUNDLE OF TROUBLE, a Maternal Instincts mystery, by Diana Orgain. I met Diana at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop's annual festival in Pittsburgh in May, and she was so delightful I bought her book.

While I don't generally read cozies, I found BUNDLE OF TROUBLE to be exactly what I needed and then some. The writing is smooth, easy, and the characters likeable. When the book opens, Kate Connelly is very pregnant and actually gives birth in the second chapter, after finding out her brother in law might have been killed and dumped in the ocean. Once she's out of the hospital with baby Laurie in tow, Kate manages to steal a wealthy client from a private investigator and begins her own investigation into the murder.

While I did suspend my disbelief that a brand new mom with a brand new baby would be able to do the things Kate did (I was annoyed that she went alone to accuse someone of the crime . . . this is what we call Too Stupid To Live), most of it was as believable as it could be and Kate's voice is very engaging. If you're into cozy mysteries, this one should be added to your list, although I'm curious about the fact that Kate is now training to be a private eye. Most of these amateur sleuths stay amateur and never investigate professionally.

What have you read lately?

Waiting for Potter

2010-06-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Every summer for several years, my daughter and I had something to look forward to. Another installment in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series. The anticipation of a new book was incredible; I would order weeks in advance. When we finally got the book, my daughter and I would devour it in a day. It was no mean feat for what usually was a 600 to 800 page book. But once we started, we couldn't stop. We had to know what was going to happen with Harry.

I've had friends who scoff at the books. Say that the writing is pedestrian, they couldn't get into the story. That's their right. Not everyone is going to like the same books. But when the series was done, I could only marvel at its brilliance. The story arc was complete, with complicated plot lines cleared up, questions answered, mysteries unveiled. To do what Rowling did in seven books, creating a world and stories that were riveting, is something every writer wants to be able to do. No, maybe she isn't the best writer, per se, but the woman is a storyteller, and sometimes that's even better.

While there are no more books to anticipate, there are still two movies. Filmmakers have split the last book, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, into two movies. My question is, where will they stop the first and begin the next? This seventh book reads at a breakneck pace, with few lulls that could offer a place to break it up.

That said, during the MTV awards the other night, the trailer for the first part, to debut in theaters on Nov. 19, was shown. Here it is:

Are you a Harry Potter fan?

Book 'em, Danno

2010-06-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

In the vein of remaking old TV shows into new TV shows and movies, CBS is going to launch the "new" Hawaii Five-O in the fall. Check out the opening credits:

And if you want a little more, here's a longer clip included with a Hollywood Reporter story about the new series. I can't embed it, so just click here.

I have serious issues with this. Hawaii Five-O was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. McGarrett was the classic cop: he was mysterious, with only hints at his background in the Naval Academy, in Korea; he always wore a suit; and he never smiled. He wasn't a young guy, and if he was buff, we didn't know it because of the conservative suits.

The new McGarrett is young. Buff. He takes his shirt off (see video clip from Hollywood Reporter). He lets Danno drive.

Speaking of whom, Scott Caan seems to be channeling Sonny Corleone in some of these scenes. Totally not what I remember of Danno, who was a good young cop eager to learn from the older, wiser McGarrett.

Hawaii Five-O was one of the most racially diverse shows on TV in its day, having more Asian actors than ever seen before in one program. The new one does include that, but Chin Ho is supposed to be an older, heavy man. And what's up with the skinny Asian surfer babe? She's a cop? Right.

If we look at this new version of an old favorite as something totally new, like a wannabe Burn Notice, then it might be okay. We can't make any comparisons because it looks like there will be few. If we watch it merely on its own merits, then maybe, just maybe, we can tolerate it.

What do you think? Will you watch?

Poolside writing

2010-05-31T15:53:00.000-07:00

There's something soothing about writing poolside. The scent of sunscreen and chlorine hangs in the air, kids are laughing, everyone's having fun. This is the pool where I write during the summer:

It's the Ridge Top Swim and Tennis Club. Sounds a little more chi chi than it really is. I wrote more than 15 pages there since Sunday.

I'm usually not the kind of writer who needs a particular place or atmosphere to write in. Most days I grab my laptop and sit on my couch in my living room and knock out my five pages in between taking my daughter to her various activities. Or I sit in my office on my desktop (now that we've bought a new keyboard it's so much nicer because the keys aren't sticking) with the cat in my lap. Eloise isn't normally a lap cat, but anyone who works on the desktop usually doesn't have to wait too long until she's sitting right there with you, purring away.

I don't listen to music while I write, because I don't hear it. And it doesn't matter if my immediate area is clean or messy. I zone everything out and just write.

But that pool club has a certain magic for me. I wrote SHOT GIRL, THE MISSING INK, and about half of DRIVEN TO INK at the pool, sitting under the gazebo or lounging on one of the deck chairs. Since I'm almost done with INK FLAMINGOS, I won't be writing too much of it there, but it's nice to be able to wrap it up in my favorite place.

If you're a writer, do you have or need a special place where the words just flow better? And if you're not a writer, is there a special summer place that inspires you?

Kick off your summer reading

2010-05-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Since it's the holiday weekend, I've been thinking about books that would be great on a summer reading list and I've read two books recently that would be good to read by the pool or at the beach.

I finally picked up Robert Goolrick's A RELIABLE WIFE after seeing it everywhere. I kept picking it up and putting it down, not sure about the historical thing but the description was incredibly intriguing: A man puts an ad in the paper for a "reliable wife" and a woman responds, but neither of them realize the other has an agenda.

Even though Ralph Truitt realizes that the woman who steps off the train in the cold Wisconsin winter in the early 1900s is not the woman in the picture he received with her letters, he takes her home anyway. He knows this is starting out as a lie, but he shrugs it off. Catherine has secrets that are revealed slowly throughout the book, and Ralph's son Tony plays a role in their fates.

I really can't say much more because there are twists and turns I didn't expect and don't want to ruin it for anyone. But I can say this: while none of the characters are sympathetic, they are incredibly well drawn, the book is written beautifully, and the story is so compelling I read it in two days. The online reviews of this book have been mixed, but I couldn't put it down. It's also great for the summer, because if you're having a heat wave, reading about that frozen, white Wisconsin weather might cool you off a little.

I ordered THE PERFECT WOMAN by James Andrus because it sounded intriguing, even though I'm not into serial killer books. I usually find them cliched, and I don't much want to be inside the head of a serial killer. But I took a chance on this one and am glad I did.

William Dremmel fancies himself a scientist and he likes to conduct pharmaceutical "experiments" on young girls who are usually runaways. Sadly, though, they may die, and he puts their bodies in suitcases and abandons them. John Stallings, a detective with the Jacksonville (FL) Sheriff's Office, looks for runaways, because his own daughter has been missing for three years. This book really isn't about the serial killer. It's about Stallings, his partner Patty, the homicide detective Mazzetti, and the way police work. I found it more a police procedural, and all the details about police work are fascinating. Andrus is identified in the back as a pen name for an active duty police officer in the Southeast, and I found the sharing of insider knowledge is one of the reasons why I loved the book. Not to mention that all the characters are extremely well drawn, even the victims. I loved the setting of Jacksonville, since my brother lives there and I could smell the coffee from the Maxwell House factory when Stallings did.

Do you have any summer reading recommendations?

AR(eal)C(onundrum)

2010-05-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

As I've said before, there are many steps in the making of a book. First is the actual writing, then I send it to my editor, who sends me notes, and I make changes. Then it gets sent to a copy editor, who makes changes and suggestions and points out inconsistencies and the like. I then make changes based on that. And then I get the page proofs, the pages that have been typeset and this is the stage where it actually looks as it will in the book. I wrote about this previously.

The problem with the page proofs are that they are merely proofs, and there are still mistakes and typos to be found, but at this point it's considered minor.

Now it's those page proofs that will make up what's called the Advanced Reading Copy, or ARC. It's a bound copy that looks like a book, but it doesn't have the nice cover, just a brown cover, sort of like you'd covered it with a supermarket bag like we used to cover textbooks in high school. On this cover is the title, the author's name and the warning that these are UNCORRECTED PROOFS and it's against the law to sell this copy. Of course people don't listen and they invariably show up on eBay.

That said, I got my ARCs for DRIVEN TO INK today. I was surprised, since my editor had told me that they no longer would do ARCs for any books except the first in a series. Which is why they didn't do any for PRETTY IN INK. But I was pleased to see they decided to do ARCs for DRIVEN. Until I remembered.

I'd sent my editor 24 pages back with corrections noted on them. The majority of those were minor errors and typos. But there were three things that really stuck out.

First was that they spelled my last name wrong on every even page. If you open a book, you'll see the author's name on the top of those pages, the title of the book on the opposite page. Well, my name was spelled wrong.

But that was nothing compared to the fact that the last line of the book wasn't there. I mean, not there at all. Missing. Gone. And without that last line, everything on the last two pages of the book does not make any sense.

I found the last line, though. It was two pages later, as the title of the next Tattoo Shop Mystery. Now I could perhaps see how that could happen, but as long as there were no review copies going out, I wasn't bothered by it so much. Because it was going to be fixed for the final book.

But now, now that there are ARCs and they are going to be send to reviewers, I'm a bit concerned. What will the reviewers think when they reach the end? They will be wondering what that tattoo says, a tattoo that isn't "just a tattoo." And they clearly will not be saying that they're looking forward to the next in the series, INK FLAMINGOS. Because INK FLAMINGOS is nowhere to be found.

Have you ever reached the end of a book and wondered if there's a last line missing? If you've missed something along the way?

Pretty is as pretty does

2010-05-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

As a society, we are obsessed with good looking people, and it translates into gorgeous, sexy, well-dressed characters on TV, in movies, and in books. Women want to look like Julia Roberts, they want their men to look like George Clooney (or, if you're a younger person, maybe you're thinking Miley Cyrus is the epitome of what a teenage girl should look like. Just take a poll and see how many teenage boys now have Justin Bieber hair).

Physical descriptions in books are important, because the reader wants to be able to picture the characters in their heads. I made a point never to describe Annie Seymour too carefully because I wanted the reader to imagine her, not just see her clearly. But with Brett Kavanaugh, I have described her short red hair, the fact that she's almost six feet tall and skinny, and all of her tattoos in detail. She's an attractive woman.

Other writers follow suit: Alafair Burke's Ellie Hatcher is petite, blond and extremely attractive. Lee Child's Jack Reacher is a man's man and a woman's man, even though I've always wondered just how "clean" he is, since he doesn't carry a suitcase and seems to wear the same clothes all the time. Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache is a nattily dressed middle aged man. In Harlan Coben's THE WOODS, all the women are gorgeous and have long legs. Jim Born's Duarte is surrounded by amazingly attractive women, as is his Bill Tasker. Wallace Stroby's Harry Rane always manages to bed beautiful, sexy women.

Speaking of sex, Lori Armstrong's Martinez is the epitome of hot (and if you read SHALLOW GRAVE you may find yourself blushing). Alison Gaylin's Krull may be strong and silent, but not when it counts. Michele Martinez’s Dan causes Melanie to throw caution to the wind, lock her office door and offer herself to him on the desk. In my books, Vinny DeLucia used to be a geek but now he makes Annie weak in the knees. In THE MISSING INK, Brett meets a suave, gorgeous, British casino manager who sweeps her off her feet.

In reality, though, as an example, those CSI shows can't be farther from the truth when you see an actual CSI. Cops aren't always that good looking. Neither are lawyers or tattoo artists or journalists. Can we justify feeding into society's idea of what people should look like by writing these characters who take our books just a stone’s throw from the old-fashioned bodice rippers? Can we justify this by saying that’s what readers want? Can we justify it by saying that’s what we want?

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion

2010-05-19T17:48:00.001-07:00

There's a discussion going on on the Dorothy L listserv about puns in titles. It was started by someone who said she hated puns in titles and would never read a book with a pun in the title. This sentiment has been shared by others.

I have puns in my titles, as you can see from the book covers over to your right. They are tattoo shop mysteries, so they play off the word INK.

I did not want puns in my titles, I'll be totally honest here. Puns in titles worried me, because I associated title puns with books about knitting needle toting amateur sleuths who knocked the bad guys over the head with an old copy of Jane Eyre. Having a pun in my book title would mean I was not a serious writer, that the words underneath the cover would be fluffy and light.

I write tattoo shop mysteries. They are not fluffy and light. They have an edge to them, and I felt the titles should reflect that.

I sent 50 title suggestions to my editor when I wrote the first one. I even had First Offenders readers make suggestions. I got some good ones, too, and none of them were puns. My editor hated them all. Every. Last. One. I was almost done with the book and it had no title. My husband then made a suggestion: THE MISSING INK. It was so stupid I knew my publisher would love it. They did. And there I was, writing a book with a pun in the title.

But you know, that book isn't any different than the one with the title WHAT DIES IN VEGAS. It's the exact same book, but with a different title. It's still a little edgy, and it still has murder.

There are other mysteries out there with puns that are remarkably good. For example, Julie Hyzy writes fabulous books about a White House chef who solves crimes, with titles like EGGSECUTIVE ORDERS and HAIL TO THE CHEF. Roberta Isleib's golf mystery series have titles like FINAL FORE and SIX STROKES UNDER. And Kate Carlisle's bibliophile mysteries are titles HOMICIDE IN HARDCOVER and IF BOOKS COULD KILL.

So I ask you to keep an open mind. The publisher wants the puns because they think they can sell more books. It doesn't have to be a reflection on what's between the pages.

Are you an anti-pun snob? And if you aren't, what's the best book title pun you've seen?

Where's Bert Parks when you need him?

2010-05-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid if I start talking about how well INK FLAMINGOS is going, it'll jinx me.

So I'm not going to. Instead, I need to address the whole Miss USA thing.

It started for me when I saw the story about the Miss USA contestants and their "glam" shots. These weren't nice, hometown girl shots. Miss Kansas, for example, was wearing a man's shirt and not much else. Donald Trump, who owns the competition, thought they were very tasteful.

So then we move on to the pageant itself. Yes, it's quite nice that Miss Michigan, an immigrant from Lebanon won, but Lebanon is not one of those countries that makes its women wear burquas, despite what the stories are saying. They're actually a bit more modern than that. So all the talk about how this is revolutionary is a bit of bunk.

What is revolutionary is that Miss Michigan, Rima Fakih, won a pole dancing contest in 2007.

Is this what young women are supposed to emulate? I have a daughter who is 13. I've tried to raise her well, to be respectful of other people and of herself. But it's hard sometimes. We used to think that Girls Gone Wild was as bad as it could get. Seems that's just the tip of the iceberg. Girls are posting inappropriate pictures of themselves online, sending "sexting" picture messages that are more than suggestive. And they think it's okay. Why? Because just take a look at Miss Kansas.

Despite the fact that Miss Fakih does not undress during her pole dancing (you can see the video here), it's still the wrong message for young girls.

What do you think?

Don't get boxed in

2010-05-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

I'm fascinated by the different types of mysteries, or crime novels, that are out on the bookshelves today: hard-boiled, cozy, traditional, police procedural, paranormal, you get the idea. Some people say they read only cozies, or amateur sleuth mysteries. Some only read hard-boiled noir novels. Some like something in between. Is that what's called "traditional?"

I'm hesitant to put books into little boxes that supposedly identify them. You could say Louise Penny writes cozies because her books are set in a small Quebec village, but she does have a police detective, so then she veers more into, perhaps, traditional. Julia Spencer Fleming's books are along the same lines. Neither fall into any particular category, they're just good books and hugely popular.

I think we all know what constitutes a cozy. Those hobby themed mysteries, like the cupcake or doughnut or cheese or flower shop mysteries. Sewing, knitting, crocheting, glassblowing, orchard owning or gardening amateur sleuth protagonists. They more than likely have puns in the titles and most times than not the plucky young protagonists fall for the hunky detectives.

When I was contracted to write the tattoo shop mysteries, I wanted to veer away from the norm and give a little edge to the cozy. Granted, they are about tattoos and they're set in Vegas, which means they have to have an edge, regardless. But I also decided against the hunky detective boyfriend and made the detective Brett's brother instead. Of course now I have to find a little romance elsewhere, so it probably would've been easier to have the detective boyfriend. Oh, I didn't mention the romance, did I? Yes, they also must have romance.

Because my books have more of an edge, they would fall into the more "traditional" mystery category. Although so would my Annie Seymour books, despite the addition of a tougher character with salty language. Both do have some humor. Elaine Viets and Nancy Martin might be in this category, too.

What's frustrating is that once you're boxed in to one category, it might be hard for readers to see you writing something different. Nancy Martin is an example. She wrote the delightful Blackbird Sisters mysteries, which was much lighter than her current Roxy Abruzzo book. Roxy is a tough, independent protagonist, hard-edged with a sharp sense of humor. That's not to say that Roxy is better or worse than the Blackbird Sisters, just different in a good way. I'm glad Nancy stepped out of her box and took on the challenge of Roxy, and I'm glad she found a publisher who was willing to go along on her journey.

I heard about a panel at Bouchercon a couple of years ago where cozy writers had to improvise a hard boiled novel and noir writers had to improvise a cozy. I'd like to see that in reality, because I think a good writer can cross lines and make the boxes disappear.

I would personally love to see Reed Farrel Coleman or Lee Child write a cozy. And going the other way, I'd love to see a dark noir novel by Hank Phillippi Ryan or Julie Hyzy. Who would you pick?

Delving into the YA book world

2010-05-11T14:27:00.001-07:00

I've been reading a lot of YA lately, mainly because I'm attempting to write one of my own so I need to see what's out there. It seems there are two main themes of YA these days: vampires and dystopian novels. But that's not to say they're bad.

Because I'm not into vampires (no, I did not like TWILIGHT, and if you want to get into why, I'll tell you but only if asked directly), I usually steer away from those. Although you really can't throw a cat without hitting a vampire book in a YA section, either at the library or at a bookstore.

I didn't think I liked dystopian novels, either. I've got issues with all those kids reading about the end of the world and depressing future worlds. But I found a series I find surprisingly good, with really great characters. It's Michael Grant's GONE series. I've read GONE and am halfway through HUNGER and have LIES on order. In this series, everyone over the age of 14 just poofs out. Is gone. No longer exists. And there's a strange barrier surrounding the town and animals begin to mutate and talk. It's a bit LORD OF THE FLIES, but the characters are well drawn and the story told well.

I've also started reading James Patterson's MAXIMUM RIDE series, because my daughter is doing a yearlong project in which she's reading the first four books and then will write a paper in June. This is another series I wasn't sure about. I mean, it's about kids with wings. Kids who were genetically engineered by mixing human and avian DNA. Sure, it's out there, but this is another compelling read. I love everyone in "the flock" and the story moves really fast, which is why my daughter likes it.

I know many people credit Harry Potter with getting kids to read again, but between that and Rick Riordan's great Percy Jackson series, and these other books, I'm surprised any kid would have a hard time finding a book to fit his or her taste.

Do you read any YA?

Putting on my copy editor hat

2010-05-06T18:49:00.000-07:00

I got home from work today and there it sat. The white envelope from the Fed Ex guy. Inside: the page proofs for DRIVEN TO INK.

These pages are typeset and look the way they'll look when they're actually in the book. It includes all the reviews for my other books, my dedication and acknowledgments, and even the teaser for the next book.

This is the last chance I get to look at the pages before I see the real book. It's my last chance to make any changes necessary, find the typos and any other errors. The letter that accompanies these pages, however, scares the daylights out of me. "This is not the time to make major changes," I paraphrase. And then it tells me how much money it would cost to make said major changes.

The major changes are usually made during the copy editing phase of the book. I get the manuscript emailed to me with the markup from the copy editor. I can change anything at that point, my own changes and even deciding whether I want to keep the copy editor's changes. Most of the time the copy editor is on target, but sometimes he or she makes a change that goes opposite the character's voice, so I type in STET, which means, keep it the way I had it.

I did have a problem with page proofs for PRETTY IN INK. While proofing them, I realized that I have a love affair with the word "just." I have no idea why, but it was peppered everywhere throughout the book, so much so that it was clearly noticeable. So I took most of them out. Because of that, I was more than aware of my overuse of the word "just" in DRIVEN TO INK and managed to take them out during the copy editing phase.

I've been through four chapters so far and have yet to find a typo or an extra space or line or even an overused word. It worries me a little. It makes me realize that I will be going through this at least twice before I have to get it back to my editor in two weeks because it can't be that clean. It just can't be. (See, there's that word again.) I spent almost 20 years as a copy editor and I know I can find something wrong. Copy editors are by nature anal. Writers are not. At this stage, I put on my copy editor hat and I cease to be a writer.

When you read something, do you immediately zone in on that typo or an overused word? Are you a secret copy editor?

Mysteries and ghosts

2010-05-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

I am just back from Pittsburgh after a rather turbulent flight. For those of you who know me, I don't much care for flying but always have my trusty Xanax on hand. This was also one of those little planes, the ones that have one seat on one side, two on the other and even the bigger carry on bag has to be whisked away and stored in the bowels of the plane.

The main reason I went to Pittsburgh was to attend this year's 15th annual Festival of Mystery run by the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, which is a very cute place with lots of little shops and restaurants and the fabulous bookstore and a great library, where all the authors attending were invited to a tea before the festival. I went to the festival in 2006 and 2007, but hadn't been back since. It was as wonderful as I remembered.

Mary Alice and Richard, the esteemed bookstore owners, were just back from New York themselves, where they received this year's Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The little raven statue held court on the front counter during the pizza party after the festival. Mary Alice and Richard are amazing people as well as booksellers and any mystery writer who hasn't enjoyed their annual festival should definitely put it on their calendar in the future.

There are usually about 50 authors, and we are seated alphabetically with all our books lined up in front of us. This year I was seated between two writers I'd never met before: Kevin "Vicious" O'Brien and Diana Orgain. Kevin writes serial killer thrillers (someone once wrote him to ask "What's with all the killing?") and Diana writes the Maternal Instincts Mysteries featuring a new mom turned private eye. I haven't read their books yet, but I bought them so I'll let you know what I think. If they're half as good as their creators' senses of humor, then they'll be real winners. We had a ball.

I also met up with friends Hank Phillippi Ryan, Nancy Martin, Kathy Sweeney, Kate Carlisle, Sheila Connolly, and many more.

One of the things I also love about going to Pittsburgh is that I can stay with my friend Sam Bennett, who is also a former newspaper journalist. We worked together at the New Haven Register many moons ago, and she left for Pittsburgh and the Post-Gazette about a year or so after we met. But we've stayed in touch and are great friends. She now edits an economist journal with a really cool gig on the side: Sam is the narrator for the Haunted Pittsburgh dinner theater shows at the Grand Concourse. I was thrilled to be scared by the stories she told Sunday night and equally thrilled with the amazing meal served: top sirloin with gorganzola cheese, fabulous potatoes, and a salad with a dressing that was outstanding but I still can't figure out what was in it.

And Sam is not the only friend I can see when I'm in Pittsburgh. My best friend from college drove up from Frostburg, Maryland, with her husband to spend the day with me on Monday at the festival. It was all the more sweeter because I could see Liz and hang out with her, too.

A potpourri of questions today: Have you ever been to Pittsburgh? A dinner theater? A book festival? Do you like ghost stories?

On the Edgars and being a fangirl

2010-04-30T10:53:00.001-07:00

I'm just back from New York City and the glamorous Edgar Award banquet last evening. It was a sequin-studded evening and everyone looked fabulous. Even Lee Child in his Land's End suit. Laura Lippman, the incoming Mystery Writers of America president, and outgoing president Lee Child were the masters of ceremony, and Laura was also stunning in her evening gown and amazingly gracious when she introduced me on stage.

Yes, I was on stage to present the Edgar statue to Mary Downing Hahn, winner of this year's Best Children's Edgar Award for CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. I was the chair of the Best Children's committee last year, and our committee read close to 100 kids' books. They ranged from picture books to chapter books, and one of the finalists was a graphic novel called CREEPY CRAWLY CRIME. Mary was so shocked to have won, but in a good way. After a year dedicated to judging this award, it was really wonderful to meet her and tell her how much we all absolutely loved her book.

For someone who is a book geek, seeing writers like Michael Connelly, SJ Rozan, Lee, Laura, and so many others in one place at one time is just so much fun. Although I admit something here: Michael Connelly intimidates me so much that I can't talk to him. I get tongue-tied around him. I have no idea why, especially since he blurbed DEAD OF THE DAY for me and I actually interviewed him for Romantic Times Magazine a couple years back. On the phone, I was fine with him. But in person, I just don't know why I turn into such a fangirl that I can't even gush. (I did gush with Sara Paretsky at the Shamus Award dinner at Bouchercon in October, and I think she was scared of me after because she sort of avoided me...at least it seemed like it.)

Is there anyone who makes you feel too intimidated to speak to, someone whose work you admire so much but can't even imagine having a conversation with that person like he's, well, a real person?

Welcome

2010-04-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that this is the first time I'm going solo. On a blog, I mean. For the last four and a half years, I've been a part of the First Offenders with Jeff Shelby, Alison Gaylin, Lori Armstrong, and Anthony Neil Smith. We are all writers, and Jeff, Alison, Lori and I met at Bouchercon in Chicago in 2005 and decided we'd start blogging together. We were one of the first group blogs by mystery writers. But all things must come to an end, and we all have many other commitments. So we have decided to close up shop over at First Offenders.

Striking out on my own seemed logical, only because my website lacks a place where I can post breaking news, and without First Offenders, I could wallow in obscurity. Except, of course, for my Facebook page. But not everyone is on Facebook, even though it might seem like it.

So please come back occasionally and see what's here. I can't promise to blog every day—I do have a book to write—but I hope to generate some conversation at times. I hope you'll join in.