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Didn't look broke to me

by Donna Andrews

We've been inseparable for several years, but this week we've been going through a patch.  I wouldn't quite call it a spat--I seem to be the only one who thinks there's a problem.  Too soon to say if we'll split or if I'll find a way to make things work. But what do you do when you thought everything was just fine and then someone else decides everything has to change?

No, things have not been good around here this week, not since Apple shoved out its new iOS7 for the iPhone.

I'll get this out of the way right off, because it's not a functional issue, but it is important--I don't like the subtle graphic changes they've made to the interface. I've heard from people who do, but I think the new graphic look is flat, bland, awkward, disorganized, and just not as elegant and classy as I'm used to seeing from Apple.  Someone said it looked more like a design from Fisher-Price or Crayola, and yeah, looks that way to me, too.

Getting to functional issues:  the new standard screen typeface is elegant looking, but very thin and attenuated and hard to read if you don't have 20-20 vision. And I most definitely don't. I've increased the type size to the max and turned on the boldface feature and it's not as bad.  Not quite. But still bad.  Big loss of user friendliness there. And am I the only one who has to hold the phone really, really close to my face to see if it's charging or not?  Not a minor issue, given how seriously the new iOS drains power.

And I'm getting seriously tired of having the icons for features I regularly use disappear.  Some disappeared with the update, and I think others have randomly gone AWOL since. Occasionally they show up in places where I know I didn't put them, but sometimes they disappear completely.  I spent two hours one evening trying to regain the ability to buy songs through iTunes.  The icon for the iTunes disappeared from my desktop.  The feature no longer showed up in the top left corner of the screen in Music. I finally found a help page that suggested resetting all my settings.  The icon came back--and with it a lot of default settings I'd reset to my preferences. Add in another half hour for resetting all of those. Sigh.  No one can explain why the iTunes store icon disappeared, or convince me that other critical icons will not disappear as well, probably just when I really need to use them. And if returning to the factory settings is going to be the solution whenever something goes awry, I can see an Android in my future.

The one feature I originally thought was a good idea--the ability to have all your apps updated automatically, instead of having to do it one by one--nearly got me killed this weekend, so I'm having second thoughts about that.

I took off from my house to go to the Baltimore Book Festival.  I programmed the address of the parking garage I usually use for the festival into the TomTom app on my iPhone.  But I didn't start navigation, because I don't really need the GPS to get me most of the way to Baltimore--only to help me land at the right place when I get there. No need to listen to the GPS ordering me through every lane change for the first hour of the drive.

But I heard a traffic report on the radio that warned of a hideous backup along my intended route. Time for my GPS to come to the rescue!  I found a place where I could pull over, so I could start the route I'd planned, and then ask it to avoid the area of the traffic jam.

The Tomtom application had started automatically updating itself. And stopped, leaving itself not updated but also in limbo and unusable. It's  such a honking huge program that it can't update without a Wifi connection. Which I might be able to find somewhere at the festival, and could certainly have at my house that evening, but neither option was going to help me by the side of the road, with the minutes left until my panel ticking away.

So I found my way to Baltimore without a GPS.  I had printed directions--I'm a belt and suspenders kind of person about that--but the minute I came to a construction detour, I was lost. At one point, in trying to find the festival, I blundered into a neighborhood that looked just a wee bit blighted. In fact, more than just a wee bit; it was the sort of neighborhood in which puking winos lurch across the street at random intervals and careen off your bumper, causing you to reach up in a casual manner and pretend you're drumming your fingers on the windowsill, when actually you are clicking the door lock button repeatedly to make absolutely-damn-sure all four doors are secured.I was just grateful squeegees appear to be out of fashion in this part of Baltimore.

I made it on time. Cranky, but on time. Going home took longer than usual, too, because I found myself in the midst of the vast rush of traffic hitting the roads in the wake of an Orioles game. If my TomTom app had been working, I'd have tried to find another route. Thanks to that automatic update, I had to wait my way through the traffic jam.  Took about 45 minutes to go eight blocks near the stadium.

So I'm going to turn off automatic update. Just as soon as I figure out which way is off.  The little on/off buttons don't say.  Is off to the left, so it's all white? Or to the right, so the color shows? Maybe it's supposed to be intuitive, but it's not to me. Another triumph of form over function--would it kill them to put an on/off marking there? Just for us un-cool idiots who don't quite get it?

On the positive side, I haven't thrown my Windows computers overboard for a Mac, and probably won't, if iOS7 is an accurate indication of the direction the company will take under its relatively new SVP of design, Jony Ive. Then again--Microsoft is just as notorious for doing what it damn well pleases in spite of what the users want.  Still--I expected better of Apple.

And in case you think I'm the only one complaining,. . .

I hadn't thought to blame the headache I've had on and off for the last week on Apple until I saw this article in Forbes about the zoom animation in iOS7 causing nausea, dizziness, motion sickness and headache.  But I'll be keeping an eye on that feature.

In the "wish I'd said that" file: an Australian tech blogger describes the new system as Jony Ive's pastel-infused monstrosity and adds "The tiny new icon font is purely a cosmetic change, highlighting just how arrogant Apple can be when it comes to putting design before the needs of users."

And Infoworld reports that "iOS 7's HTML5 is full of bugs," which means I'm bracing myself for problems using the new version of Safari. Now that I've found it; no idea why the new icon for a browser looks so much like the icon for a compass.

And I completely agree with Lauren Orisini of Read/Write on what The Three Most Annoying Things In iOS77 are, although I'm not sure it's really possible to fix them.  She does try.

In short, this particular geekette is not a happy tech camper this week.

Donna

Hot September Reads

from Mary

 

Summer has been W-A-A-A-Y too down here this year. Whew. I am about done in. June, July, August and most of September have left me feeling totally drained and about as dried out as a cat on a hot rock.

Yah, whisker- and fur-dropping hot! :)

But thanks to the miracle of air-conditioning, I thoroughly enjoyed my reading month.

 

 

Daniel Silva. What's not to love? Is it even possible for him to write a book I don't like? No way. The components of his novels are like a checklist of all the things I love in a story. Strong, capable, intelligent, driven, artistically soulful, flawed but wonderful main character. Great supporting cast that I look forward to seeing again and again. Diverse international settings for armchair travelling. Evil bad guys. A well-told tale in which a wrong is righted. And the big plus for this series is the informed view of what's happening politically out in the world today.

In THE ENGLISH GIRL, Gabriel Allon is the go-to man for a sensitive political situation involving a missing young woman. A strong new character comes on the scene to aide Allon, one I hope will re-appear in future installments. That, along with some other probable shifts in the series' future, were handled very nicely. Can't wait for the next one.

 

 

Okay, where have I been that I've only just heard about CROAK by Gina Damico? I happened on a rave review and bought the audio on a whim. So glad I did!

Lex, a teenage girl, can't understand why she has become more and more rebellious and antagonistic the last few years. Her parents, who've tried everything else, send her to live with her uncle for the summer in upstate New York, thinking that might snap Lex out of herself and back to real life.

Lex thinks her "punishment" will be a dead bore, that she'll be doing farmhand work for her sins. Until she finds out that her uncle isn't a farmer. He's a Grim Reaper, and the little town of Croak is where he and others like him do their reaping. No blood and guts, just helping souls cross on over. 

That's the bones of it. Yet none of that comes close to describing the experience of the actual book. Damico's writing is so fresh, so surprising and fun. Sometimes cute funny, sometimes funny Ha-Ha, and more LMAO ROFLs than usually allowed in a single book by a major publisher. That said, there are dark parts, too. Not for everybody.

The teen sarcasm might be off-putting for some readers. Lex is full of it. I really enjoyed the contrast between that heavy snarkiness and the "normal" teens in Croak. The scenes with these kids are so good at times, so well-written, they made me feel I was watching a movie.

Great stuff. I'm really looking forward to catching up on this series.

 

Question: How many people here are too busy? Do you feel overwhelmed most of the time? Are there far too many things you want/need to do? Writers, I KNOW you know what I'm talking about. 

Well, as the late great bassist Jaco Pastorius might say, Fret No More. 

 

 

THE NOW HABIT by Dr. Neil Fiore is a must for every home bookshelf. It is the very best guidebook for bringing yourself back to yourself when the world is spinning too fast, when you feel lost in all the busy work you must do, or feel there's never enough time anymore to do those things that bring you the most joy. That's what we all want, right? We live for the joy hours - the grandkids' visit, the concert by a favorite musician, walks on the beach, fishing trips. We work hard so we can enjoy "down time" but often get too caught up in that work part.

I got the hardback years ago and recently downloaded the audiobook. I highly recommend the audio which Dr. Fiore narrates himself. I recommend this version because you can hear his goodness, his intelligence, and so it's almost as if you're in a one-on-one consultation. If you've ever had trouble fitting all you want to do into a workable schedule, The Now Habit is the answer to your prayers.

 

 

ACCIDENTAL GENIUS by Mark Levy is another must-have book for writers and other creative types, with emphasis on how to use creativity in the business world. This guy is full of ideas. Many of them have to do with fast writing, that process of keeping your hand in motion and letting thoughts flow, however random, onto the paper. He shows how this can help you make better decisions, whether you're working on a business project at work or on a character sketch for your novel or almost anything else you need help with.

 

Any other fave help books you'd like to recommend?

 

Post-mortem

by Catriona McPherson

Pale-faced, gravel-voiced and dot-eyed with exhaustion, crime fans and crime writers are on their way back home from Bouchercon in Albany.  I blame Sue Grafton, who said this morning at the Guest of Honour round-up that she was a literary vampire who had been sucking our energy all weekend and was now going home stoked up and ready to roll.

So here is my Bouchercon round-up.

Macavity news: Barb Goffman won for her wonderful short story "The Lord is My Shamus":

and Charles Todd, after not one but two nominations, won the Sue Feder Historical Macavity for An Unmarked Grave.

Daniel Friedman won Best First for his hilarious and touching novel Don't Ever Get Old (but left before I could nab a picture) and John Connelly and Declan Burke's Books To Die For won best non-fiction (but they weren't there).  Finally, Louise Penny wone best novel (again!) for The Beautiful Mystery.

The panels were informative, side-splitting, moving and thought-provoking in turns.  Particularly good from those I attended was Laurie King's session Highway 61 Revisited. Here she is with her daughter Zoe Elkaim, looking far too perky for 7.30am at the Sisters in Crime breakfast.

Amongst the other business at the SinC breakfast, dearest FF, Hank, stepped down after her stint as national president.  Here she is handing over the official seal to incoming president Laura Desilverio:

Later on Friday, I was on a panel that's just about the most fun I've ever had, with Brad Parks, Dan Palmer, Tom Schreck, Zoe Sharp, Michael Wiley and Jen Forbus moderating.  Here we all are with our wardrobe choices:

I moderated a panel too, with Jane Cleland, Simon Wood, Hannah Dennison, Russel MacLean and Clare O'Donohue.  It was standing room only and lots of fun, but I fell down a bit on remembering to take a panel-pic.  This will have to do instead, Russel standing in for everyone:

Saturday night, saw the highlight of the convention - the Anthony Awards - and glory for one of the Femmes Fatales when our Dana won for best short story:

As well as awards, panels and elections it was a weekend of laughter, many hugs and some egregious photobombing.

And exhausted as I am, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  Roll on 2014 in Long Beach and, in the meantime, happy reading.

 

 

The Fatales of Fall

It's a busy fall for the Femmes (and Frere) Fatales. Some of us will be at Bouchercon (Donna Andrews, Dana Cameron, Charlaine Harris, Toni Kelner (aka Leigh Perry), Catriona McPherson, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and Marcia Talley). And the absent Femmes--Dean James/Miranda James, Kris Neri, Mary Saums, and Elaine Viets--will be hard at work and have news of their own to report.

The Femmes do Bouchercon!

At the moment, I'm about 90% packed for Bouchercon, and hoping not to stay up too late with that final ten percent.  If you're coming to Bouchercon, mark your program book--here's a roundup of what the Femmes will be doing there.

Here's a roundup of what the Femmes will be up to at Bouchercon.

Thursday
1:30 pm: Catriona McPherson, You're Only Human panel (room 6)

Friday
9 am: Dana Cameron moderates and Charlaine Harris and Leigh Perry (Toni Kelner) appear on the My Journey's End panel (room 6)

12:30 pm: Hank Phillippi Ryan, Somewhere Along the Line panel (room 6)

12:30 pm: Marcia Talley on the You Picked a Real Bad Time panel (room 3)

12:30 pm Leigh Perry (Toni Kelner) moderates She's Right on Time (room 2)

1:20 pm: Catriona McPherson moderates the Entertainer panel (room 2)

1:20 pm: Donna Andrews, State of Grace panel (room 4)

3:10 pm: Dana Cameron, Stop in Nevada panel (room 3)

3:10 pm: Donna Andrews moderates the Light as a Breeze panel (room 4)

9:15 pm: Donna Andrews and Chris Grabenstein serve as auctioneers for the live auction (room 6)

Saturday
10 am: Dana Cameron, Author's Choice

12:30 pm: Charlaine Harris, Famous Last Words panel (room 6)

3 pm: Leigh Perry (Toni Kelner), Author's Choice

Sunday
10:20 am: Hank Phillippi Ryan moderates the Big Shot panel (room 6)

New releases!

Most of us either have works out within the past few months or will in the next upcoming months. Here's a round up of works by the Fatales.

Recent
March 2013: Revenge on Route 66 by Kris Neri
May 2013: Board Stiff by Elaine Viets
June 2013: As She Left It by Catriona McPherson
July 2013: The Hen of the Baskervilles by Donna Andrews
September 2013: Dark Passage by Marcia Talley
September 2013: A Skeleton in the Family by Leigh Perry (aka Toni Kelner)
September 2013: "Fangborn: The Serpent's Tale" by Dana Cameron
September 2013: The Wrong Girl by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Upcoming
October 22, 2013: Duck the Halls by Donna Andrews
October 29, 2013: After Dead by Charlaine Harris and Lisa Desmini
November 3, 2013: Fixing to Die by Elaine Viets
November 19, 2013: Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses by Catriona McPherson
January 14, 2014: Cemetery Girl, Books One: The Pretenders by Charlaine Harris and Christopher Golden
January 28, 2014: The Silence of the Library by Miranda James (Dean James)

Here's hoping I haven't missed any!  Keep watching our blog--we'll be having contests and giveaways as some of these release dates draw near.

Distraction Attraction

 

 

by Elaine Viets

I am five chapters away from finishing my May 2014 mystery, "Catnapped!" It’s due in New York October first. My thirteenth Dead-end Job mystery is set in the intriguing world of cat shows and pet custody.

Right now, I’m in the final days. My home looks like someone threw a frat party in the living room. I crave ice cream and almond cookies. I should be obsessed with finishing. But this is the stage of the book where I am fatally distracted.

Last novel, when I was down to the wire, I cleaned odd, unreachable places in our condo, including the air vents in the fridge. I even gave the dishwasher a vinegar bath and scrubbed the edge seals.

This time, I’ve resisted the call of kitchen cleaning. Instead, I’m seduced by the sirens of the Internet. It started when my friend Dick sent me the Dog Goldberg Machine.

Remember Rube Goldberg, the cartoonist who created incredibly complicated machines to perform simple actions?

Check out this dog food commercial. How did they do that? In one take or several?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/AA56LgpFbSw?rel=0 

I watched it so much, the final message "Play – it’s good for you" was seared into my brain.

That’s when Nancy, my dog loving friend, sent me the amazing video of Jesse the Jack Russell Terrier, a star born in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Jack Russells are known for their energy, but even by their standards Jesse is tireless. He has his own Website, blog and a string of awards.  Watch the little fellow here:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/PztO-OvzRyg?rel=0 

Except, I’m writing a book about cats. Where would the Internet be without porn and cat videos? You’ll have to dig up your own porn, but this is one of my favorite Funny Cat Videos.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNf5VQub_k 

 

That’s Part 3. This series has more parts than a cheap puzzle. I watched cat videos until my friend Kris introduced me to Simon’s Cat, a fat fur ball who stars in an incredibly accurate cat cartoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s13dLaTIHSg&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLagyxbJHFyL11iTef4c6ALIDsD--nXkel

Simon’s Cat has its own YouTube channel, and I’d still be there if I hadn’t stumbled over the photo gallery. Anything to keep from tackling Chapter 29.

http://www.mandatory.com/2012/09/06/a-gallery-of-hilariously-ironic-photos/21

I can keep this up all day, but I really have to finish "Catnapped!"

What’s your favorite Internet distraction? No, wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Not until Oct. 2. Wish me luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"What-if," impossible choices, and "The Serpent's Tale"

by Dana

I hate what-if questions.

This is a problem, because everyone says the backbone of writing is what-if questions.  I hate that people say that, too.  Sitting down and just blue-skying, asking random questions that start with “what-if” is a terrifying notion to me.  It basically leaves the whole universe from which to choose, and that's too much to wrangle. 

Thing is, a girl's got obligations and deadlines to meet.  Seven Kinds of Hell, my first Fangborn novel came out in March; the next two will also be spring releases in 2014 and 2015.  And each fall, a Fangborn short story will be published for the Kindle by 47North.  That means deciding how to tell a LOT of story.  I decided to make all three short stories historicals, set in different time periods and cultures.  I've done this before (“Swing Shift”) and I'll do it again elsewhere (“The God's Games”) because it is huge fun.  It also helps me think about what I'm doing in the next books; I also decided that each short story will refer back to the novel before it and hint at the novel that's to come.  It's a way of filling in the Fangborn universe, 10,000 words at a time (without pesky present-day character time-line issues—I hope.  You never know.).  

I'd borrowed the ancient (and oft-cited) notion of “great power requiring great responsibility,” so I invested the Fangborn—werewolves, vampires, and oracles—with certain built-in imperatives, including self-sacrifice in the secret work to protect humanity from true evil.  In “The Night Things Changed,” I set up the notion of the “Laws and the Lessons,” the cultural rules that are generally held by the Fangborn characters I'm writing about.

I've mentioned the Laws and Lessons in Seven Kinds of Hell, but never go into them.  Aha—a story about Fangborn duty coming into conflict would narrow down the infinite universe nicely!  I like rules, and they narrow down the universe of options nicely.  So for “The Serpent's Tale,” I began noodling around with composing the Laws and Lessons.   

I added more constraints in the form of humans who suspected the Fangborn presence and thought them demons.  Ooh—the threat of demons!  That suggested a medieval setting, and my antagonists, The Order of Nicomedia, who are rabid Fangborn hunters.  Just to complicate things, I made the Order folks who were fanatical, but not evil.  What if they believe they are saving the world from demons, and in that pursuit, are actually slaying those dedicated to protecting humans?  (Yes, I inadvertently dropped the “W” phrase.  Ignore that.  It's not how I work.)

Hmm, external constraints opposed to internal constraints makes conflict—yay, conflict, the heart of every good story!  Then I wondered, “What if other demands, say impending motherhood, come into conflict with the cultural Laws of the Fangborn?  (Yes, yes, I said it again—but never mind, I'm on a roll here)  Would a Fangborn mother sacrifice herself and her unborn child to protect the rest of her family?  Or would she fight to save her child, who would be another warrior in the fight against evil, hoping the others could find a way to save themselves? 

A juicy question.  I immediately asked two mothers.  I got two heart-felt, logical, and conflicting answers.  During the discussion that followed, I snuck off to write.  After all, I had plenty of conflict for my story now, characters to fill it, and a setting. 

And all without a single bit of “what-if.”  ;-)

Women of Influence

This coming Sunday, September 15th, is the birthday of two women who influenced me profoundly. The first of the two is my late mother, Ruth. The second is the late, great Dame Agatha Christie, one of the world's bestselling mystery writers.

My mother overcame much in her early life, and I'd like to think that she passed along some of her tenacity to me. She was the most stubborn person I've ever known, and I can be pretty hard-headed myself. Otherwise I would have given up writing a long time ago.

Dame Agatha Christie became a phenomenon, a publishing juggernaut. Her books have been translated into over a hundred languages and are read and appreciated around the world by people of diverse cultures. She is often dismissed -- unfairly, I think -- as a writer who was all plot and not much else. While it's true that she did not spend a lot of words developing her characters, she nevertheless had the knack of creating characters easily recognizable across cultural divides. There is a universality about her people; we all know them for they are so like people in our own lives. She also had a sly sense of humor, often poking fun at the pretentious, the prejudiced, and the pompous.

My favorite of her detectives is Miss Jane Marple. I love Miss Marple because nothing in human nature really surprises her. She has seen pretty much everything in her life, much of it in her village of St. Mary Mead. She solves crimes by her understanding of what drives people to murder and the quirks in their behavior that give them away. This is why, to me, the Marple novels are psychological mysteries.

I don't claim to have the skill at plotting that Agatha Christie had -- few writers do. But I learned a lot from her and from Miss Marple, and all of my amateur detectives, Charlie Harris included, have been deeply influenced by that formidable spinster and her methods of crime detection. Charlie is not a professional lawman. He's a librarian with a head for detail, and after a long career in public libraries, he has seen a lot of human nature. Those two things make him an effective amateur, I think.

This Sunday I'll be thinking a lot about my mother and Dame Agatha -- as I do every September 15th -- and send up fervent thanks for all they have done for me.

Meet THE WRONG GIRL!

 by  Hank Phillippi Ryan

This is such a big day! Like Christmas Eve, almost. I still have nothing to wear tomorrow, and I’m working on my speech—but Tuesday is pub day for THE WRONG GIRL, with the launch at a wonderful local bookstore, and I am thrilled!

 THE WRONG GIRL has an incredible review from Library Journal:

 “Ryan has a gift for writing superb thrillers and this one is sure to be a big hit!”

 And an astonishing review from Booklist:

  “ A crisp fast moving police procedural featuring reverberating illegalities, increasing danger and suspense, and crackling sexual tension….Another winner from Ryan.”

  And our dear Lesa Holstine just sent me her review, which I am copying into this blog with tears in my eyes—you’ll have to read  the whole gorgeous thing on her blog Tuesday of course, but one sentence is:

 “THE WRONG Girl …one of the must reads of the fall for any of us who like action packed suspense… Hank Phillippi Ryan never misses a step in this complex, beautifully-written novel.”

 Okay, fine that’s two sentences. Sigh.

 I’ve been doing on-line interviews of course: The first question, happily, is always:

 What is "The Wrong Girl" about? 

I love this question.  The story is “about” a Boston newspaper reporter, the resourceful and determined (and struggling a bit after an unfair firing) Jane Ryland, who begins to suspect a respected adoption agency is reuniting birth parents with the wrong children.

I mean—that’s chilling! Why would someone do that? And would the people in involved ever know? How?

If a person says to you—here’s the woman you’ve been searching for your whole life. Here are the documents from your adoption agency, and here are the items your mother left when she dropped you off. Would you believe them? You would, of course—but what if, soon, or eventually, you began to fear that you were not with your real parents? If you were living with someone who was not your real birth daughter?  What if you didn’t know the truth about your own family?

That’s what THE WRONG GIRL is about.

But there’s more. The book is also “about” how difficult and overloaded the foster care system is.  How many helpless kids—who are left behind because of drugs or abuse of a catastrophe or because someone just made a mistake—are sent into a system full of people who may be trying to do their best—but just can’t handle it.

What would happen if someone decided: the system will never work. I’m going to step in and save children—and I don’t care whether it’s legal or not.

 So it’s “about” –our love of family. Our bond with our parents.  How far would you go to find yours? Would you know them if you met them? It’s also about greed, and manipulation, and cynicism, and the power of desire—and what would happen if someone preyed on our primal need to have a family.

 And I’m eager to hear from readers who may have been searching for—or who may have found—their birth families. Email me, via my website, okay? http://www.HankPhillippRyan.com  I’m putting together  a series of posts sharing them.

 Another interviewer asked: what kind of reader is going to enjoy it? 

Easy one! Suspense lovers. Lisa Scottoline is my hero, so are Linwood Barclay, Lisa Gardner and Sue Grafton.  THE OTHER WOMAN won the Mary Higgins Clark award, so you know the books are don’t have graphic sex or violence—but they are smart and surprising and suspenseful.

And because of my two jobs, I often get asked this one: You're an investigative reporter and a novelist -- how do you balance both? 

Ha. I work all the time. Now you’re laughing, but it’s the truth. I go to work at Channel 7 around 9 am—and come home at 6:30. I write til ten, and then make dinner! My darling husband is very patient. I have learned to be very organized. Seriously, I have lists of lists. I have learned NOT to multi-task—to do one thing at a time, to really DO it, and then move on. I think if I try to juggle, say, talk on the phone and answer emails at the same time—neither one gets done very well.

I work on vacation days, and on weekends. Jonathan and I haven’t been to a real movie  in a long time—nor have we been away on vacation. It’s a—well, not a sacrifice, since I’m very happy. Very happy. But it is a lifestyle choice.

And even though the tour is just beginning, and the whole trajectory of THE WRONG GIRL is still to come, I also get to answer:

 What's next for you?

 I am working like mad on the next Jane Ryland book, tentatively titled TRUTH BE TOLD. I’m in the scary part, where I have no idea how it will end!

 

And I’m crazy on tour! It’s amazing, for a person who used to be terrified of flying. Now I look forward to it, because I love to write on the plane. I cannot wait to come see everyone. Visit my website for the whole schedule—you will not believe it!

More questions:

Where did the story come from? A news tip?

This is your sixth novel... what's gotten easier and what's gotten harder as you continue to write?

What book has captured your attention lately?

 

And I’ll answer them, I will—tomorrow on Jungle Red! Come visit, okay? Mention Femmes Fatales….and be double-entered to win a  lovely prize!

 

And thank you thank you thank you…you Femmes and Freres and friends both…I am so very grateful.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS . . . NOT!

I just read Toni's previous blog, about the difference in publicizing a book in the era of computers. I've been thinking about those differences a lot lately as they affect a different area -- friendships.

Last week, Toni L.P. Kelner (aka Leigh Perry), Dana Cameron, and I met to drive to San Antonio for LoneStarCon, the world science fiction convention. I reflected on how strange it was that two of my best friends live in the Boston area. I "talk" to them via email more than I talk to people who live next door to me. And this is thanks to the internet, of course.

This tight friendship would have been difficult (and much more unlikel) when I first became a writer, thirty-plus years ago. We had to be careful about making long-distance calls because they were expensive, and I wrote letters to people instead. I wrote my agent, my editor . . . and I knew I would not hear back from them for at least a week. This is an impatient world, now, and I don't know if people could return to such delays being the norm. Could you?

If this kind of reflection on the past relegates me to Old Fart-dom, let me hasten to add that I don't miss the wait-for-a-reply days any more than a teen can go without texting. I love resolving a crisis with a brisk exchange of emails with my English agent and my UK editor, I love electronic bank deposits (!), and I never think twice about calling long-distance several times a day.

Perhaps I'm less fond of sending my book back and forth in a file. I really liked having a manuscript. I was thrilled to get it in the mail with all the proofreading marks on it and my editor's notes scribbled in the margin, and I enjoyed having the actual pages before me. Typing a clean copy . . . well, I didn't enjoy that very much at all. If any of you have written a book on a typewriter, as I have, you will appreciate how delightful it is to write your first draft (with its multiple changes and moving blocs of material) on a computer.

I say "Yahoo!" to most of the changes in the last thirty years. Seeing an actual typewriter is like seeing a covered wagon, now. And I don't miss it at all, any more than I'd return to the wagon days and abandon my car.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...

by Toni L.P. Kelner and/or Leigh Perry

Tuesday was the Release Day of A Skeleton in the Family, and one might think that it would have reminded me of the release of my first book, Down Home Murder, which came out in 1993. As it turned out, not so much. Things have changed so much.

Of course, a lot of the changes are personal. I'm older, of course. I used to have a day job and no children, and now I have two children and zero day jobs. (Except ferrying those two children to and fro, but that's a different blog topic.) Back then I knew very few other writers, while now it seems that most of my friends are somewhere involved in publishing. And we have guinea pigs--a huge change to anybody's lifestyle. But the really huge changes are in the book part of my life.

The release date for Down Home Murder was June 1993, which meant the first part of the month. But Kensington... No, scratch that. But Zebra Books liked to start putting June books on the shelf in the middle of May, and it was about then that my husband spotted the first copy in Wordsworth Books in Cambridge. A few days later I got my author copies, and soon embarked on author events to promote the book. 

These events were arranged by making phone calls via land lines. For each one, I had to follow up the phone calls by printing copies of my author biography and pulling out cover flats and author photos. I agonized over sending author photos because those things were expensive. (Zebra provided the cover flats, and they were so generous that I still have a stack.) Then I'd get all that into an envelope and go to the post office to mail it. I also mailed out a few press releases to the local papers, my hometown newspapers, my alumni magazine, and various mystery magazines in hopes they'd put in an article.

Then came the events themselves: a B. Dalton in Raleigh NC, a Waldenbooks in Hickory NC, a Little Professor in Charlotte NC, and a Barnes and Noble in Charlotte. The first--and best--was at Kate's Mystery Books in Cambridge, a fabulous store owned by the equally fabulous Kate Mattes, shown below.

That was how I launched Down Home Murder. Now flash forward to the release of A Skeleton in the Family.

First off, I'm Leigh Perry, which is kind of disorienting, and I'm starting my third series. My publisher is Berkley Prime Crime, and I'm not sure that imprint existed twenty years ago. Zebra is still around, but their mysteries have come out under Kensington for years.

The release date is a lot more specific--Sept. 3--though some stores stocked it a few days early. Amazon, which of course didn't exist before, held tight to that date.

Both Down Home Murder and A Skeleton in the Family are paperback originals, but Skeleton also came out as an ebook and an audio download. There never was an audio book of Down Home, but if there had been, it would have been on cassette tapes. The only ebooks I know of from that far back were on floppy disks. Remember those?

Once again, my husband was the first to spot a copy in the stores, but this time it was in a Barnes & Noble that was built after Down Home was released. Wordsworth, once a giant among independent booksellers, is gone.

As for author events, I'm only doing one, at Bestsellers Cafe in Medford, MA. (If you live in the area and are available the evening of Sept. 9, you're invited.) It's not a mystery-specific store and there's no secret passage, but it's lovely and Rob and the other folks serve some great baked goods and soup.

I set the event up via email, and the folks there pulled the information they needed over the web. I don't have a single cover flat for A Skeleton in the Family, but I can print all I want via a file Berkley provided. I did stop by the store to drop off an ARC, but otherwise, it was all email.

Those other stores I mentioned? The B. Dalton in Raleigh NC, the Waldenbooks in Hickory NC, the Little Professor in Charlotte NC, and the Barnes and Noble in Charlotte? Only the B&N still exists, though at least the Little Professor evolved into the equally nifty Park Road Books.

I'll be sending out some press releases, too, but that'll all be electronic, too. In fact, most of my promotion will be electronic: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and of course my web page. At least, having a web page is an "of course" now. I'll do guest blogs, interviews, and post on GoodReads. So without leaving my home, I'll probably reach ten times the number of readers than I would have going to bookstores, and I won't even have to put on makeup.

That's a whole lot of changes, and I'm not even mentioning the interim changes that came and went in two decades. (Printed newsletters? Listservs? Borders Books?)

Of course, the thing that has stayed the same is the reason for it the furor--to tell readers about the book and hope that they'll buy it. These days I'll get sales numbers a little sooner than I did then, but worrying over them is pretty much the same. I suspect that's never going to change.

Tell you what. Meet me back here in 2033 and I'll let you know.