My Weblog

What's in a Name?

This week I mailed out two copies of Some Like It Hawk, my latest book.  One was a thank you present and the other was by way of an apology.

The thank you present was to reader Sarah Smith of Nevada.  Some months back, Sarah noticed I was having a contest on my website, looking for bird titles that I can use for future books in my Meg Langslow series.  The deal? If you submit your title, and I like it enough to send it to my publisher and they like it enough to let me use it--then you win a signed copy of the book, assuming I can still track you down.  Sarah's brilliant suggestion was--you guessed it--Some Like It Hawk.

It's an ongoing contest, so anyone who's interested can check out the potential titles that are already taken here and submit any new ones that come to mind.  Although the title for my 2013 book is already set--and I'll be giving myself the signed book for that one: The Hen of the Baskervilles.

The other book, the apology one, goes to Melissa Banks and her daughter, Kate.  Some while back Melissa bid on and won the naming rights to a character in one of my books, and asked me to name a character after Kate.  And I planned to, in Some Like It Hawk.  I thought "Kate Banks" sounded perfect for one of the characters, a young, ambitious reporter from the Washington Star-Tribune (which is the newspaper I have invented so that real newspapers like the Washington Post and the Washington Times won't get offended and sue me.)

My Kate Banks started off as a walk-on, but I liked the character, and I gave her a larger part.  She showed up on Meg's doorstep way too early one morning, demanding information.  She hung around enough to drop a few clues.  I liked her.  Heck, Meg's brother, Rob, liked her and flirted with her.  Some readers have suggested that Rob's overdue for another romance.  I pondered whether Kate Banks should be a recurring character.  I've done that before. The continuing character of Rose Noire, Meg's New Age cousin, whose real name is Rosemary Keenan, arrived in my fictional world when the real Rosemary's father bought naming rights in an auction. Tempting. But not something I had to settle right away, so I focused on gettting the book finished, and then getting the next one started.

Finally came the day when I had real, live pritned copies of Some Like It Hawk, I sat down to inscribe one to Kate.  And I flipped through the book to find where her character first appears, so I could note the page number on the title page as part of my inscription.  And then I saw the fatal words.
    "Ms. Blake is with the Star-Tribune," Randall said.

NOOOOOO!  She's supposed to be BANKS!  How had Kate Banks morphed into Kate Blake?  She's not supposed to be Blake--Blake is the last name of Meg's grandfather. And--

Oh, dear.  I suddenly realized what had happened.  I even almost remember when it happened--the day I was reading over a section of the book, and realized I'd called Meg's grandfather Dr. Banks.  Twice. 

Not an uncommon occurrence.  I once wrote an entire draft of a book with Meg's cousin, Horace Hollingsworth appearing under the name "Harold."  No idea why. Some kind of mental block. An alert critique partner spotted it, though I suspect at least one Harold made it past the proofreader.  And then there was the book where I realized, just before sending it to my editor, that I had a character named Bob in addition to Meg's brother, Rob.  Which happens a lot in real life, but doesn't work well in a book.  So I went through and switched Bob to Jim.  After checking, of course, to make sure I didn't have any Tims lurking in the manuscript.

And I didn't use global search and replace Bob, either.  I still remember the time when a fellow writer brought something to a critique group and realized, too late, that she'd made a global faux pax.  She had a character named Ed, and she decided, at the last minute, that she had too many plain vanilla WASP names, so she'd change Ed to something else.  Like maybe Angelo. And she used global search and replace, leading to sentences like this:

She wantangelo to tell him how much she missangelo him, but she decidangelo instead to work on the dangeloication of her book.  And then she fangelo the dog.

You'd think I might have learnangelo from her example, but no.  I'm pretty sure I used global search and replace to make sure Meg's grandfather was consistently Blake instead of Banks.

And I swept away poor Kate Banks with him.

Sigh.

Not the first time Meg's grandfather's name has given me name trouble.  At another auction, a reader bought the naming rights and asked if I could name not one character but two--a couple.  I was willing to try.  But when I heard their names--Phyllis and Henry Blanke--I panicked.  How could I have a brace of Blankes in my book if I already had a Blake?  The reader would be too confused.  And then I realized that there was a way to use that similarity of the names, and advance the plot at the same time.  I won't tell what.  You'll have to read the book.  (The Penguin Who Knew Too Much.)

It's always fun figuring out how to work in the name of a real person who's bought naming rights.  Sometimes it's tough--like the time Marguerite Johnson bought the right to have a Tennessee Belted Fainting Goat named after her.  The challenge wasn't to name the goat, of course, but to figure out a situation when the goat's owner would plausibly use her full name.  (And the answer: when she's being naughty.  Check out Swan for the Money to see just how naughty.)

As you can see, I've done this thing before.  I thought I had it down pat.  I check with the person who bought the naming rights to make sure they're okay with what I'm planning to do.  I don't make people murder victims or bad guys (or, for that matter, goats) unless they WANT me to. And this time I thought using the name I'd been given was going to be a piece of cake.  Kate Banks was the perfect name for the character.  And a likable character, too.  And one who got a big part.  I was so looking forward to see how the real Kate and her mother liked it.

Ah, well.  I guess this means that fairly soon there will be another Kate in one of my books--and this time it will be Kate Banks.  It might even be in The Hen of the Baskervilles, if I can find a suitable character.

So congratulations to Sarah.  And apologies again to Kate and Melissa.  I owe you one.

A Novel Diary

Chapter 1: Where Do You Get Your Ideas? 

 

By Elaine Viets

 

NOTE: This is a continuing series about my May 2013 Dead-End Job mystery, from conception to publication. 
I grew up Catholic. Many of my female relatives followed the traditional ways: They had lots of children. "One out and one on the way," they’d cheerfully declare.

I write two mysteries a year. I’ve become a literary version: one book out and another on the way.

"Final Sail," my eleventh Dead-End Job mystery, was published in May 2012. This is a tense time.

I survived the mystery trifecta: good reviews from the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and Oline Cogdill, who reviews for major outlets, including McClatchy Tribune Wire Services, which go to some 200 newspapers. Other readers and reviewers liked it, too.

I had a six-city book tour and visited local bookstores. When I returned from the "Final Sail" tour in mid-May, I did a blog tour that lasted into July.

At the end of April, I’d turned in the manuscript for my new Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper novel. "Murder Is a Piece of Cake" will be published this November and Josie gets married.

My duties as Josie’s mother-of-the-bride were ending. "Final Sail" was launched. Time to plan the birth of my next Dead-End Job mystery.

This long-running series is set in South Florida, so I face a different challenge than an author starting from scratch. Many of my readers are familiar with my main characters: St. Louis woman Helen Hawthorne and her husband, Phil Sagemont. Their landlady at the Coronado Tropic Apartments, Margery Flax. The other Coronado denizens, including Peggy and her parrot Pete.

Helen’s awful ex-husband, Rob, made Helen’s life a misery until he was bopped with a ball bat and buried in a church basement in a St. Louis suburb. Helen and her sister Kathy covered up Rob’s death (in more ways than one) to protect a young life. Not even Margery, Helen’s surrogate mother, or Phil know their secret. But someone has been blackmailing Helen and Kathy for more than four novels.

I want my readers to see these characters as old friends, and each book is a visit with them.

In "Pumped for Murder," I changed the series’ focus and made Helen and Phil private eyes. The PI partners open Coronado Investigations. This would prevent "Cabot Cove syndrome." The village’s death rate in "Murder She Wrote" was higher than Manhattan’s. Helen was funny, but not a joke.

Helen still works dead-end jobs. My series seems most successful when those jobs reflect South Florida. In "Final Sail," Helen is a yacht stewardess. Perfect. Fort Lauderdale calls itself the Venice of America.

I met my editor Sandy for breakfast in early May to discuss Helen’s next job. Sandy is  smart, supportive and points out plot holes and flat characters.

We ordered breakfast. For business dining, my criteria is: How will this meal look on my shirt? When I’m nervous, food leaps off my fork and slides off my spoon. I settled on melon chunks that could be speared and green tea.

I came armed with a list of jobs. Sandy shot them down and explained why they wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, she was right.

By the time she’d called for the check, I’d drunk enough tea to float the yacht in "Final Sail."  Now I sipped and prayed for inspiration.

"You like tea," Sandy said. "Why not write about tea?" "Tea?" I said. I pictured polite women with dainty flowered hats, sweetly slipping poison into Blue Willow cups. I was horrified.

"No!" I said. "This is South Florida. It’s sex, sun, skin, and scandal. Drugs and booze, yes. Tea, no!"

Sex, sun, skin, scandal. That was the trigger.
"Beach concessions!" I blurted. I told Sandy about newspaper report on Florida  companies that rent or give lessons for JetSkis, parasailing, paddleboarding and other sun and fun recreation. The paper said they’re bitter competitors for tourist dollars, hurling accusations of theft, graft and skulduggery at one another.

"In my novel," I told Sandy, "that competition will be cut throat. For real."

I smiled. So did Sandy. "I like it," she said.

I took a last sip of tea. "Cheers," I said.

                                    ****

Love CSI? Listen to my interview with crime scene investigator Sharon Plotkin Spotts.  She’s handled crime scenes from burglary to homicides for 18 years in South Florida.  "The Dead End Jobs Radio Show" streams Monday 1 P.M. ET and Wednesday 6 P.M. on global Internet radio, radioearnetwork.com.

 

 

 

Femmes Fatales of the Past

by Dean James

Once a month I (as the self-appointed history of mystery guru in the group) am going to blog about Femmes Fatales of bygone days. Some of them readers will surely be familiar with, others might be a bit obscure. The presence of women in the genre has always been important, at least in terms of quality, although at times they were not as visible as their male counterparts.

For this first dip into the past I chose a writer who was one of the best-known mystery writers in the world in her day, Ngaio Marsh. Born in New Zealand in 1895, she was an eminent Shakespearean producer as well as one of the finest of Golden Age mystery writers. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966 for her services to the theater, but readers knew her best as the creator of that most urbane of detectives, Roderick Alleyn.

A Scotland Yard man from a distinguished aristocratic family, Alleyn first appeared in 1932 in A Man Lay Dead. He appeared thereafter in 31 more novels and made his last bow in Light Thickens in 1982, the year Dame Ngaio passed away. Marsh was hailed by critics for her witty dialogue, her ability to stage her scenes impeccably, and for her complex plots and inventive methods of murder. Four of the novels are set in her native New Zealand, the rest in England.

Among my favorites are Death of a Peer (called Surfeit of Lampreys outside the US) and Killer Dolphin, the latter one of her excellent theatrical mysteries. A contemporary of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham, Marsh was one of the "Queens of Crime" during the Golden Age (the period between the two World Wars) and beyond. If you like sophisticated, well-written detective novels and haven't yet discovered Marsh and her creation Roderick Alleyn, they await you like a fine vintage and a rich multi-course repast. Dig in!

Watching the departed

by Kris Neri

Like most writers, I’m a devoted people watcher. Sure, many of the traits we give our characters come straight from our imaginations. Or do they? For those of us who’ve spent our lives observing our fellowman, how many odd struts, or curious expressions, or great names have we unconsciously filed away?

Sometimes I take it too far. In restaurants, on occasion, Joe has had to remind me to pay attention to him, rather than those people seated across the room. But I can’t help it. A big part of people watching isn’t just observing what they do, but figuring out why they do it. That often means grasping the nature of relationships. If I haven’t figured out whether those people across the restaurant are a couple having a contentious discussion or an adversarial pair of business associates engaged in a tough negotiation, I can’t stop slipping them glances them until I do.

My real favorite form of people watching involves observing aspects of the life of someone who isn’t even here anymore — I love going to estate sales. I love estate sales because they involve so many of the things I enjoy. Although it never occurred to me to become an architect, or a real estate agent, or a designer, which would have allowed me to envision houses or to have access to loads of them, I still really like looking through homes. I enjoy noting the way they’re put together, the way rooms flow into other rooms, and I especially love to check out the way they’re decorated. There aren’t that many occasions when strangers simply invite you into their homes, so I consider estate sales to be a rare treat. Also, on occasion I find some object I’ve been looking for, and I have the chance to snag it at a bargain price.

Mostly, though, I go to learn something about someone who is no longer here, someone I didn’t know. Others might find it creepy, but I actually feel something like a sleuth in the process. I learn loads about the departed by checking out the homes they left behind, and I’m sure I bring those observations back to my writing. It says something about the former inhabitant if the outside of someone’s home is spectacular, while the inside is seedy and neglected, and something entirely different if it’s the reverse. I’m always so impressed by creative design choices that might transform a modest home into something impressive and unique.

Sometimes I learn touching things about the person who lived in that house. I might, for instance, conclude from the makeup for sale in the master bath that the departed was a woman. And that makes me wonder, when I go into the master closet, to see the estate sale operators are also offering men’s clothes. I wonder whether a widow held onto her late husband’s things because it gave her comfort to see them there every time she entered her closet. Or did she simply have a boyfriend who never bothered to pick up his stuff after she passed on. Either way, it interests me.

Of course, the area of people’s lives that I most enjoy picking over are their books. Occasionally, I come  across a home that contains absolutely no books. It’s always possible that they were pre-sold, but if there are also no bookcases, and no spaces for bookcases that were sold, it’s a good bet that the person who owned that house never read. That both shocks and saddens me. I know we’re all different, but I simply can’t grasp what a life without books would be like.

When there are books, which I’m happy to say is most of the time, they reveal so much about the tastes and beliefs of the person who has passed on.

Sometimes their books even hide their secrets. Once I attended an estate sale in a grand home with a library that contained beautifully crafted cherry wall-unit bookcases. Those bookcases held an assortment of mostly high-minded tomes. But stuffed into a giant storage closet, to the point of exploding, were easily over a thousand paperback romance novels. Had she gone to her grave keeping her secret? I wondered. Or had her friends happened onto her guilty pleasure?

While it saddened me that she felt she had to keep that secret, I really enjoyed making that discovery! What can I say? My people watching might benefit my writing and character-creation, even when I’m reaching into the Beyond. But the truth is, discovering that woman’s guilty pleasure is my guilty pleasure.

What about you? Writers and readers, where do you do your best people watching? Is your guilty pleasure as much fun as mine?

 

That's why they call it a CURSOR?

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Do you know the feeling? I’m sitting at the computer, and the little cursor thing is blinking—as if it’s sneering at me. “Yeah? What are you going to do now?”

(It crosses my mind that this is why they call them cursors.)

Because, dear pals, I am about 3000 words away from the end of my new book. (In Hank-world, that probably translates to about 5000 words, but that’s another blog.)

And 3000 words from the end does not seem like that much, I suppose, how many pages is that? 12? (Okay, I’m farther away than 12 pages.)

But suddenly, I feel the urge to, oh, clean my closets. Reline my kitchen cabinets with new shelf paper. Arrange my spices in alphabetical order. ANYTHING but writing the end of the book.

So. Why is this? You might think the beginning would be the most difficult…after all, beginning anything is difficult. And beginning a book means you’ve found that wonderful nugget of an idea that will carry an entire novel. Nothing is more difficult than that.

And yes, that first line, that’s tough. And such a joy when you find it. But that part was fine. I found my story, and I loved it. Love it. I do.

The middle’s hard, too. Entire books have been written about ‘the muddle in the middle,’ that middle half of the book where you have to juggle the characters, and make sure it’s not just a here-they-come-there-they-go lit of visits to various suspects and a series of setbacks and disasters an challenges. But this book, it didn’t seem like it had a “middle.” It was just a good juicy story and I powered through it. It was interesting and fun and even surprising to me from time to time.

And there I was a 6000 words, then 16000 words, then 60000 words, and then…80, 90, 100, 000 words. Now it’s too long , and the story is not over.

But okay, fine, I think. That’s a good problem. Cutting is better than creating, and cutting is even fun.

But here’s the problem. I have no idea how this book ends.(It’s the sequel to THE OTHER WOMAN, called THE WRONG GIRL.) I could write the end, I could, if I knew it. But I’m a pantser, and just barrel along with the story, seeing what happens and enjoying it (mostly) along the way.

Still there comes the moment where you have to –as my mom used to say—fish or cut bait. You have to reveal the bad guy. I wish I knew who did it, I say to Jonathan. “You don’t?” He looks at me as if that can’t be true. Yup, I mean, nope, I have no idea.

Now just between us, that’s only mostly true. I have SOME idea. I do. But I know I could be wrong.

SO there’s where I should be, at the computer, letting the end show me what it is. And it will. It has to, right? I have a deadline, and so does it.

It could be I’m a little sad, to face that it’s going to be over. I admit, I do feel the tears prickling a bit thinking about nearing the end. It’s an adventure, after all, a world I created from nothing. And that’s very exciting. It’ll also be exciting to type “the end.” Soon. Very very soon.

Do you have trouble with your endings? Readers, can you tell that we struggle?

And to celebrate endings and beginnings-- here’s a special offer! I’m giving away a your choice of a Kindle, a Nook, or a hundred dollar gift certificate to the bookstore of your choice! Just click here for details!  http://hankphillippiryan.com/newsletter-7-12.html

Nobody Knows Anything -- Or Maybe It's Just Me

by Toni L.P. Kelner

 

In speaking of Hollywood, William Goldman once said, "Nobody knows anything." These days I think that's just as true of publishing. Or maybe it's just me.

I spent this past weekend at the science fiction convention Readercon, and tonight I'll be participating in a panel about mystery writing at the library in Medford, MA. So it's arguable that for the past few days, I've spent more time thinking and talking about writing than actually writing.

Not that I mind talking about my work. Whether you call it self-promotion or self-centered, I usually thoroughly enjoy it. But as I was going over my notes, I've realized that I was getting more nervous than I should have been. After all, I've done dozens of these kinds of talks since my first book came out. This isn't going to be a new topic. I'll talk about where I get ideas, designing characters, picking settings, my writing process, and how I got published. So why was I worried? I eventually realized it was that last piece: getting published.

Chances are there will be some aspiring writers in the audience, and they are going to want advice on how they can get their own work published. For most of my writing career, this has been an easy answer:

1. Write a query.
2. Get an agent.
3. Let the agent sell your book to a publisher.
4. Let the publisher do the rest.

I actually considered myself a poster child for this procedure, since unlike many writers I'd met, I had no connections in the publishing industry until after selling a book. If people had questions about self-publishing, I discouraged them as gently as possible, and nobody mentioned electronic publishing or print-on-demand because they didn't exist back then.

Then the industry started changing, but for most of that time, I'd still discourage people from self-publishing because it was impossible to make any money with it. Plus you'd never get an agent or "real" publisher for that work, let alone movie deals or subsidiary rights. Ditto electronic publishing. Yeah. Right. Tell that to J. A. Konrath and Amanda Hocking and E. L. James. I knew that publishing would eventually change, but I had no idea that it would change so quickly. Now I'm worried that I've given scores of aspiring writers bad, or at least incomplete, advice because I wasn't keeping up.

So what will I tell people who want to hear about publishing? I'll still start out with my own story, because taking my route does still work for a lot of writers. But I'm also going to talk about the other avenues , without discouraging anybody from anything. Fortunately for the audience, I won't be alone. I'll be sharing the stage with Sharon Love Cook, who publishes with a small press, and J.R. Reardon, who self-publishes. So they'll be able to give their invaluable perspectives. This audience will get a much better view of the field than a lot of my previous audiences.

But folks, especially aspiring writers, please remember this. When we writers share our experiences with you, take them with a grain of salt. It's not that we're not trying to help you, but we can only  share what we know. And nobody knows anything.

Why I Write What I Write

By Dean (aka Miranda) James

For my inaugural blog I thought I would introduce myself to the readers by talking about the kind of mysteries I write and why I write them.

I write mysteries with almost no explicit violence or sex, and the murders occur offstage before the corpse is discovered. My sleuths are amateurs who sometimes get in the way of the official invesitgators of the crimes but who try not to interfere too much. The term often used for this kind of book is "cozy."

Someone once described the cozy as a "nice little mystery where nobody gets hurt." That's perhaps an apt description in some ways, but characters do get hurt -- especially the murder victims! A better way to express the sentiment, I think, is to say that, while the order of things is disturbed by the violence, by the end of the book that order is restored and life can go on, though not precisely as before.

Cozy mysteries are generally set in the everyday world in which most of the readers live -- small towns, urban neighborhoods, the countryside, and the occasional estate isolated by geography or bad weather. I have always loved this kind of mystery, ever since I discovered Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, and other classic English detective story writers.

I cut my mystery teeth, however, on Nancy Drew, one of the classic amateur detectives. Through Nancy I enjoyed vicariously many thrilling adventures, and through the eyes of the modern amateur sleuth I get to do that again. I also like to think that my readers can do that by following the adventures of my hero, Charlie Harris, and his sidekick, Diesel, a Maine Coon Cat.

I like the settings and the atmosphere of the cozy mystery. They are reminiscent of my mundane world, but more exciting than my daily life. I like it that I don't have to wade through the blood, gore, and sex one finds in the harder-edged mysteries these days. I can always watch the evening news for that.

I do read other types of mysteries -- like the spy thrillers of Alan Furst, the psychological suspense of Ruth Rendell, and historical mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear, Anne Perry, and Laurie King, just to mention a few. But when I create my own mystery world, I like it to be cozier and more intimate than those broad -- and sometimes terrifying -- canvases.

 

The Mystery of the Fat Trap

By Elaine Viets

I came back from my May book tour with an ugly souvenir -- six pounds of flab.

I went back to a healthy diet: Green tea. Steamed vegetables. Salads with low-cal dressing. Two stingy squares of 70% dark chocolate for dessert.

 

Those six pounds hung around like an unwelcome houseguest.

I couldn’t see how else I could pare down my food. There was a fat trap in my diet. I needed an expert detective to solve this mystery. A doctor recommended a nutritionist called Sunny. Her name suited her: she was smiling, smart and slender.

"What do you have for breakfast?" Sunny asked.

"Green tea, fresh fruit and one scrambled egg," I said.

 

"You should probably eat more for breakfast," she said.

More? My favorite four-letter word.

"Add half a cup of oatmeal," Sunny said. "Don’t load it with milk and sugar. Try a tablespoon of honey and some walnuts."

I liked those, too.

 

"How are you scrambling that egg?"    

"In PAM," I said.                                                               

 

Suddenly, Sunny frowned. "How much cooking spray?"

"Well, I cover the bottom of the pan."

Actually my single egg was swimming in a sea of canola oil spray. "PAM doesn’t have any calories," I added.

"Read the fine print," she said. "It’s zero calories per serving size. That’s one-fourth of a second."

A quarter of a second? But that’s nothing.

Thanks to a quirk in the US regulations, Sunny explained, manufacturers can claim food has "zero calories" if it has less than five calories per serving.

That sneaky PAM.

My stop watch shows fractions of seconds. Know how much PAM I sprayed in one-fourth of a second? A spot about the size of the cap on the can.

I thought of the minutes – no, the hours – I’d been spraying my food with PAM.

I also sprayed the baking pan with PAM when I made what I thought were low-fat oven fries. Those potatoes were surfing in canola oil. But the front label said "for fat-free cooking" and I took PAM at face value.

Canola oil has 120 calories in one  tablespoon, so I was unknowingly adding an extra 500 to 600 calories a day to my food. No wonder I didn’t lose weight.

Sorry, PAM, but I’m not sticking with a slick like you.

The label said there were "about 571 servings per container." So what am I going to do with some 500 servings of PAM?

The Internet is awash with suggestions.

I can use it on my car, said Gomestic.com. "Bugs will wipe right off your car grill if you spray it first with cooking spray. Spray oil on a soft cloth and rub onto grill. Not only will it keep bugs from sticking but it will brighten and shine your grill."

That will work. An 1986 Jaguar is a fat-cat car. I’ll oil the grill.

 

Cooking spray can keep grass from sticking to lawn mower blades. Baseball players spray it on the bottom of their shoes to keep mud from sticking to them. Moms use it on kids’ soccer cleats for the same reason. PAM can get gum out of children’s hair.

 

There seemed to be a thousand uses.

But what’s the chance that I’ll ever use PAM with my old abandon?

 

The same as its per-serving calorie count: Zero.

Celebrating the birth of another book

by Donna Andrews

Time to celebrate!

I have a book coming out next week.  Some Like It Hawk hits the streets on Tuesday, July 17, 2012.  Here's the super short description:

When eccentric hermit Phineas Throckmorton is accused of murder, everyone in the town of Caerphilly knows someone's framing him.  But it's up to Meg prove his innocence--and save the town from financial ruin.

Even though Some Like It Hawk isn't my first book--in fact, it's number 14 in the Meg Langslow series--you'd think I'd be taking time for a prolonged celebration.  Maybe popping a champagne cork.  Having a steak dinner. And in a perfect world, you'd be right.  But in a perfect world, I wouldn't still be writing the next book.  Which means that any celebrating I do will have be short enough to fit in between writing each day's quota and all those little luxuries I can't seem to live without, like breathing and sleeping.

Still.  The box of author's copies arrived last night, and I'm going to take one to Mom tomorrow.  It’s a real book, at last. So let's pop some cyber bubbly together and celebrate today! 

I celebrated a little already when I got the Booklist review, which called Some Like It Hawk an "engaging tale." 

And then again when Katrina Niidas Holm posted a very nice review over at the Criminal Elements blog.  I once reviewed Loot by Aaron Elkins for an online publication and received a note from him saying that he didn't often respond to reviewers, but he wanted to thank me, not because my review was positive (although it was) but because it showed I had gotten exactly what he was trying to do in the book.  I'll have to drop Katrina a line and tell her the same thing. And being able to do that is definitely cause for celebration.

I'm also celebrating the fact that entries are pouring in to the contest Dear Reader is running for free copies of Some Like It Hawk.  Celebrating because the folks who subscribe to Dear Reader tend to be noisy readers--my favorite kind of readers: the ones who, if they like a book, will tell the immediate world about it.  Keeping my fingers crossed that at least a few of the people who get the books like them as much as Katrina did.  (And if you're not already on Dear Reader, hearing about new books and, quite often, free books from me and a bunch of other writers, check it out.  Just be prepared for a dangerous expansion of your to-be-read pile. )

If you prefer Good Reads--why yes, I'm giving away copies there, too, hoping for a few more noisy readers.  (And if you haven't found Good Reads you should check that out, too.  Just brace yourself, because finding out what other people are reading will turn your to-be-read pile into a to-be-read mountain.)

And I'm also delighted to announce that thanks to some expert help from my publisher's digital marketing crew, my Facebook author page is finally visible to everyone, instead of just me.  At least I think it is.  Check out DonnaAndrewsBooks, and if the gremlins have hidden it again, let me know.  I'll be sharing publishing news there, and signing news, and amusing tidbits and yes, news about free books, so definitely click the like button while you're there.

If you're keen on having your books signed or even signed and personalized, I'll be doing events at two local bookstores soon, and both Kathy Harig of Mystery Loves Company (on July 21) and Eileen McGervey of One More Page Books (on July 19) would be happy to take your order.  In fact, they'd probably be delighted if people ordered enough books to give me a bad case of writer's cramp.  And if you're close enough to Arlington, Virginia or Oxford, Maryland, I'd love to see you at one or both events.

Now I've done it.  I'm now officially more in the mood to celebrate than to write.  And the book won't be available until July 17.  (Although you can preorder it already from a variety of sources.)  And I need to buckle down and keep doing my quota every day, or I won't have a reason to celebrate next year.  So I should bring this to a close and return to the far less entertaining but very important job of writing the book.

Still . . . after the quota, there will be time for that steak and bubbly.  Or maybe just a hamburger and a Diet Coke.

Any questions about the upcoming book?  And any thoughts on just how I can celebrate properly without trashing my writing schedule? 

A "Fangborn" series on the horizon!

by Dana

As some of you already know, I've just signed on to do three novels based on my Fangborn world! Awooo!  Actually, it's three novels AND three short stories, as described in the trade press:

“Multiple Edgar, Agatha, Anthony and Macavity-Award nominee and winner Dana Cameron's SEVEN KINDS OF HELL, in an urban fantasy series, pitched as “Dan Brown with Fangs,” and featuring the Fangborn shapeshifters and an archaeologist, to David Pomerico at 47North, in a three-book, three-short-story deal beginning in March 2013 and continuing with alternating stories and novels every six months through the fall of 2015, by Josh Getzler at Hannigan Salky Getzler (World).”

The books will be available in all formats (print and ebook).  This means I'm expanding my horizons:  a new project, with a new set of characters, in a new genre, with a new publisher.  You can bet I'll be keeping busy in the foreseeable future!  

As you can imagine, I'm wicked psyched about this!  Ever since I started writing about the Fangborn in “The Night Things Changed,” I've loved that 'verse, and now I get to explore it on an epic scale.  Siblings Gerry and Claudia Steuben take part in the adventures, but I'm introducing a new protagonist:  Zoe Miller is a young archaeologist with more secrets—and more problems—than most. 

When I shared the news with my fellow Fatales, jubilation reigned, and they immediately jumped to the most important question:  Who will star in the movie(s)?  Can Hugh Jackman and Benedict Cumberbatch be in the film?  Where will the premieres be?

While there are no plans for a movie (but, hey, anyone know a studio head?), it never hurts to dream.  It got me thinking:  Who would play the Steubens?  Who would play Zoe?  Who would direct?  Clearly, it was time for a little game of “Fantasy Casting.”  Any actor, director, etc., living or dead, from any period, any movie.  This is what I came up with:

I know Gerry the best, so he was easy:  I've always seen John Krasinski as Gerry.  All-American, hopeful and earnest, I think he's a great fit.  Also, he's a local boy, born near Boston, so he's familiar with how we talk around here.  

Claudia's always been a little harder for me to pin down:  she's empathetic, but tough, and a little uptight.  Maybe Jessica Pare, who plays Megan Draper, from "Mad Men?"  She looks right, but can she fight?  Perhaps Rose Byrne, who played Dr. Moira MacTaggert, in "X-Men First Class?" 

The first thing I said when I was saw Mary Elizabeth Winstead in "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" was:  I don't know that she is, but to me, she's Zoe!  Some casting choices are easier than others!  Maybe you'll see her as Zoe, too, when you get to read Seven Kinds of Hell in 2013 (boy, do I love saying that!).

So, Gentle Readers:  have I nailed it, or missed it by a mile?  Who would you cast in your favorite books?