A workday and a happy happy hour

 

Have I mentioned I have a new Irene in Chicago Culinary Mystery coming out at the end of the month? Just joking, because I know I have. It’s easy to think by now it’s all done, and I am idle, but that is not the case. Today I fired off two guest blogs to tell the cozy world about Irene in a Ghost Kitchen and tonight I’ll try to post on some cozy mystery groups web sites. I still have to proof the final version, when the formatter sends it, and get it up and available on Amazon, decide who gets comp copies, etc. A lot of details to wrap up, and so that’s where much of my day went today.

Jean and Jeannie Chaffee came for happy hour tonight, bringing with them a bountiful feast of dips and quesadillas and all sorts of good things. Despite our best efforts, they wouldn’t take any of it home with them, so I have a loaded refrigerator. Jeannie also brought Benji a bag of new toys, and he took an instant shine to her, plopping his slobbery tennis balls in her lap, crawling over others to get to her. I haven’t seen as much of Jeannie in recent times, so it was fun to reminisce about the days we shared office space—well, the administration didn’t know it, but that was what it amounted to. We had glorious funny lunches and all kinds of adventures. It was a good life, and we will always treasure those memories.

Those two ladies are getting ready to set off on an adventure—they leave this week for London for a couple of days and then a ferry across the Channel to France. June 6, D Day, will find them on the beaches at Normandy, with a crowd of at least thousands, marking the 80^th anniversary of that event. It gives me goosebumps to think of them crossing in a ferry, replicating that journey taken by all those men, many of whom never returned. I know the trip will be fun, and I suppose they’ll have lots of rich experiences—they will, for instance, spend a half day with the Bayonne Tapestry. They will probably also eat some really good, country French food, the food of the villages and not Paris—I offered Irene’s menu advice, but so far they have not taken me up on it. But it will also be a somber trip, commemorating a day when many lives were lost. It seems significant that we mark today the men and women who died for democracy when democracy itself is so challenged. A part of me will be with my friends as they make this journey.

Tomorrow, the world gets back to business, and I have a list of phone calls to make, questions to ask. We are supposed to have a cold front (lower eighties, which is just fine, thank you) coming in, with possible storms tonight. I will be glad if the world is a bit cooler, although the heat hadn’t struck me until late this afternoon when I opened the patio door for Benji and a blast of hot, wet air hit me.

I haven’t seen much of “In Flanders Field” by John McCrae this year, so here’s the final verse. It amounts to a challenge to Americans to fly the flag high and remembers those who gave all on June 6, 1944.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

 

 

 

The suddenness of it

 

A friend died yesterday. In the morning, before first service, he was at church drinking coffee. In the afternoon, he was gone.

I didn’t know Father Bruce Coggin well. Over the years we met occasionally because we had a few mutual friends. But recently he and I have had some good conversations in my cottage about the publishing world and what to do with all the things we’ve written. Father Bruce’s legacy includes an incredible amount of material, some published, some not—sermons, essays on history and the church, a memoir, travel pieces, accounts of growing up in a small Texas town and also of ten years spent teaching in Mexico, and a lot of miscellany. (You can find his published work by searching for Bruce Coggin on Amazon; the works include a book of selected writings by his grandmother, a remarkable woman way ahead of her time—Bruce saw himself in part as inheriting her writing ability and outlook on life. The book is A Soul Housed Up.)

Father Bruce was a gifted writer, with a clear style, an incisive wit, and an ability to see through the follies of mankind. He wanted to do something with all this work but wasn’t sure what. We talked about various possibilities, conversations that were as enlightening to me as they were to him. The last time we talked, he left with the enthusiasm of a man with a job ahead, one he was looking forward to. He was going to start with a web page, and a friend tells me he talked to her about it as recently as yesterday. I was looking forward to keeping up with his progress—and more conversation.

Sudden death is sometimes a blessing. The deceased is spared the pain, suffering, and indignity of a lingering illness. But it is devastating to those left behind. In this case, it seems especially tragic that a man is cut off when he had so much he was looking forward to accomplishing. Whether or not you want to believe that God had another, more important calling for him is up to you.

Not only do I mourn for this man, his family and friends, and the many former parishioners who are devoted to him, I am shaken by the suddenness of his death. I saw him less than a month ago; a friend tells me she had lunch with him a week ago; another friend talked with him about his web page Saturday; yesterday, he was at church drinking coffee, though apparently not feeling well. And then, suddenly he’s gone.

RIP Father Bruce. I hope you’re up there, finding God’s fingerprints in old and new places and writing furiously. And I hope someone down here publishes some more of your work.

Me, ten years ago

 You know that old saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” And it’s true—the last ten years, my years of retirement, have flown by. And yet it’s been a long time encompassing many changes. All that is on my mind this evening because three things popped up on my computer—those automatic memory things that the computer world offers (or forces on) us.

First was a reminder that ten years ago today I posted about the publication of my second mystery, No Neighborhood for Old Women, featuring Kelly O’Connell, the intrepid real estate broker/renovator who led me down the mystery trail for eight books. When I submitted my first manuscript and notes on the second to a major NY publishing house, the editor, an old friend, wanted me to scrap the first and replace it with the second which was about a serial killer—no fears, it was still cozy, just with too many bodies. I didn’t want to do that, and I declined. I liked the way the first book, Skeleton in a Dead Space, set up the backstory for the series. Sometimes I wonder how different my career would have been. I might be rich and famous, or at least an inch closer, with the backing of a big house and more people would have read Kelly’s stories, but I’d had have to deal with sales quotas and contracts and deadlines. I think in the long run, I made the right choice.

The novel is still available in print and digital form. And, yes, for those who think the title is familiar, it is a play on Cormac McCarthy’s much more successful—and much grittier—No Country for Old Men. Since that novel, I have published, either through a small press or independently, fourteen more mysteries, two non-fiction titles, and a cookbook, which I’m now thinking of updating. Retirement has been good for me.

The second thing that came up was a picture of me, taken ten years ago by neighbor and photographer par excellence Polly Hooper. It was one of several shots she took that I used on book jackets, blogs, etc. for years because I thought it flattered me. Do you look at other people and think something like, “My, she’s aged. I am so glad I haven’t”? I do that, or, snarkily, I look at women my age and think, “I’m sure glad I don’t look that old!” Truth is, as the photo shows, I’ve aged a lot.

But it’s been a tumultuous ten years. Ten years ago I lived in a 2,000 sq. ft. house—today I am in 600 sq. ft. No matter that I love my cottage, it’s still an adjustment. I did say to someone today, however, that it seems like I’ve lived in the cottage forever, and I’m so content in it that some of my friends worry about blasting me out now that we don’t have to quarantine as strictly. Jordan, Christian, and Jacob lived clear across town in Hulen Bend, but I saw Jacob almost every day and kept him a lot. Pictures of that cute kid pop up a lot too, and they really make me nostalgic.

In these ten years I’ve broken an ankle so badly it was beyond surgical repair, had major hip surgery which landed me on a walker, been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and acute kidney failure, and had scary eye surgery. Ask me today, and I’ll tell you I’m in good health. It’s all relative, but I sure hope the next ten years bring a more peaceful health scene.

Baby Sophie

Finally, a picture of Sophie popped up. She was a new pup, probably about nine months old. I still had Scooby, my beloved Aussie, and the two were inseparable, though Scooby tried hard to teach Sophie to be a good companion. She was wild, full of Border Collie energy and puppy mischief. If I have aged, so has she—in some ways. She’ll spend days, as she is now, lying by my desk. But when she takes a notion that there are too many squirrels in the yard, Katie bar the door! She is getting a bit of middle-age spread though I defensively claim that once she is groomed next week, she’ll be thin again. She’s a girl with a strong personality, a diva among dogs, and I’ve loved the last ten years. Hope we both get ten more.

So that’s my ten years. I won’t say I wouldn’t trade for a minute of it, because if I could go back in time, I’d change some things and hope not to have the health problems I’ve had. But I’m sure happy with where I’ve landed. Taken as a whole, it’s been a good ten years.

The book that was snake-bit

Apologies in advance for a whiny post, but my latest Kelly O’Connell Mystery, the eighth, Contract for Chaos, was snake-bit from the beginning. The manuscript was finished, ready to go in June, with publication scheduled for early September. That left the summer for advance publicity.

I was “under the weather” most of the summer, so lethargic I barely turned on my computer. My publicist was distracted by severe illness in her family—she has nothing but my most sincere sympathy. Blogging and review opportunities were missed—I just couldn’t bring myself to write much. Contract didn’t get much attention, though I shared its terrific cover when I could.

Then I tangled with Amazon. I thought I was posting the book for advance orders before September publication; instead, they listed as published June 18—which calls to mind that old saying, “IF a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”—and the listing said, “Limited availability.” Limited! I wanted to scream, “No! Lots of availability! Come one, come all!”

 Today, there was to be a guest blog, one I was rather proud of. It dealt with what a character looks like. I suppose most authors envision their characters in their mind—you must in order to get an adequate description. But you rarely actually see them. This time, I sent the designer several descriptive passages about Keisha, Kelly’s idiosyncratic assistant, along with a request to have her in the cover art. Thanks to artist Sherry Wachter, the art work came out spot on—Keisha was every bit as flamboyant and larger than life as I’d written her, and I was delighted to have put that into words in a blog post.

So the post this morning showed the cover (above) and talked about the agrarian myth as it relates to two previously published small-town novels: The Perfect  Coed and Pigface and the Perfect Dog. The agrarian myth, the concept that life in small towns is somehow more simple and pure, is really hard to relate to an urban novel about racism, complete with neo-Nazi protestors and snipers with deadly aim.

I’m not even sure if I should share that misplaced post wide and far or not. You suppose it would do the two earlier novels any good—or simple confuse people? Or worse yet, make them think I’ve finally gone off my rocker?

As you can tell, my health is better, my lethargy gone, and I’m energized—but frustrated. Sure, this is a subtle plea for each reader to rush to order Contract for Chaos. But more than that, I wanted to explore and explain how delicate and complicated indie publishing is. You can’t just put your book out there and forget it—it becomes like that silent tree falling in the forest, lost in the forest of books that are published daily. Authors often spend more time marketing their books than they did writing them. Gone are the days when you wrote, and a publisher publicized.  It’s enough to make a person take up scrubbing floors. Remember Erma Bombeck? Writing in pre-computer days, she said a blank sheet of paper always gave her the urge to scrub floors.

I’m going back to defending the Alamo. I guess some day I’ll have to explain that. Suffice to say now, I’m working on a book about the second battle of the Alamo.

A whole day spent reading

Sophie at her leisure

This pose always cracks me up, 

but it means that she' feels perfectly safe and relaxed

It’s not quite as decadent as the header sounds. I was not reading Silver Screen and eating bonbons—references that may be too old for many of you but always signified the useless, idle life to me. I was reading a novel, one of four books on my desk to be read for a competition by July 15. I was slow getting started on them, picked up one and couldn’t get into it, feeling daunted by the idea of four books. So I chose a different starting point.

A third of the way in, it dawned on my I’m reading a romance—me, who’s used to the tensions of mysteries. Granted, this is a romance set against WWII in England and could stand more tension, but it’s about people and their feelings and eventually I was hooked. So now I’m avidly reading. Since the contest is involved, I consider this work. Soothes my Puritanical conscience to look at it that way.

I did take one giant leap forward on my own work this morning. Formatted, to the best of my pitiful ability, the manuscript for Contract for Chaos, the next Kelly O’Connell Mystery due out September 20, this year. Submitted it to CreateSpace for publication on Amazon and am awaiting their always helpful critique and suggestions. I think by now I’m an old pro at submissions, but it took me four or five tries before I got the details right. And I don’t even know if I did then.

Also, and this is a biggie, I took my car for the final repair today—gluing the back window to the canvas convertible top. They tell me it probably won’t last. They have to do it on a hot day and stretch the canvas. In winter, when things shrink with the cold, it will pop loose. But I figure by then I’ll know how much I drive and whether or not it’s worth popping for a whole new top. Jordan went with me this morning, because she still doesn’t want me driving alone. The driving part is okay, but the business of getting out of the cottage with walker, to the car, folding the walker, and getting settled to drive still needs practice and work. Baby steps. I’ll get there.

Naughty Sophie! Tonight, I put a piece of good sourdough out to thaw, so I could toast it for my dinner. I made a large batch of salmon dip for two parties over the weekend and was going to have leftovers on toast with asparagus on top. But when I went to fix my supper, the bread was gone. I looked in the toaster oven—no, I hadn’t put it there. Finally, it dawned on me the only possible answer was that I left it too close to the edge of my butcher block, and she got it. She did not have the grace to look one bit guilty.

Going back to my book. ‘Night all.

Let the good times roll

Watch for it in print on Amazon soon--I hope

 For a lot of people I know, 2015 has not been a good year. Everything from deaths in the family, job problems to health and financial worries. For me, it’s been a year of poor health, principally problems with my low back and left leg and, of course, my balance. I began to think it was the year in which I suddenly become an old lady. With physical problems and the associated pain—believe me I did hurt some of the time—came depression, and I felt like I was becoming an old lady with a sour disposition. I had no energy and no ambition to do laundry, household chores, things around the house. In addition, my publisher went out of business, and all my mysteries disappeared from Amazon and other sources. So on both a professional and personal level, I’m glad to put 2015 behind me.

2016 is going to be a much better year. My neighbor, who has just started a new job, and I agree on that. I felt my depression lifting about a month ago, and now feel I’m back to being cheerful which is my normal state. A dear friend from out of town visited in early December and said, “Well, you seem just fine.” Jay, the neighbor, said, “You should have been around here the last four months!” But to me it’s like a whole new world.

I don’t hurt, and I’m going back to physical therapy next week, to restore my self-confidence and balance. I’m working on getting my last book on Amazon in print—proofing is taking me an extraordinary amount of time but the holidays do bring distractions. Then I plan to put the rest of the mysteries up as e-books, one every month so I’ll have something to crow about in publicity. And I will publish my historical novel about the Gilded Age in Chicago in the spring. It’s a heavy work load, but I can do it. Watch for news about The Gilded Cage—it’s a departure for me and a book I’m really excited about.

This year will also bring major changes in housing—the merging of the Burtons household with mine. So Jordan and I will spend many afternoons downsizing my belongings, and then I’ll live through construction.

Busy hands make happy hearts, and I expect to be busy and happy in 2016. In fact, I think something wonderful will happen, and I will live in anticipation.

I hope 2016 brings each of you magical good things.

 

Publishing is A-changing

 

Please welcome my Wednesday guest, Vinnie Hansen, www.vinniehansen.com. Vinnie is the author of the Carol Sabala mystery series: Murder, Honey; One Tough Cookie; Rotten Dates; Tang Is Not Juice, Death with Dessert and Art, Wine & Bullets.  She was a 2013 Claymore Award finalist for her upcoming Carol Sabala mystery, Black Beans & Venom. Vinnie lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband, abstract artist Daniel S. Friedman.

 

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The publishing industry is changing and I’m happy to be part of the change!

In May misterio press re-released the first in my Carol Sabala mystery series, Murder, Honey, as an e-book with a trade paper edition to follow in June. The sixth and most current book, Art, Wine & Bullets, is also available as a misterio press e-book with a paper version soon to follow. I look forward to the re-release of all six titles in my series.

Misterio press is part of a new phenomenon known as cooperative or collaborative presses. Its name means mystery in Spanish, and the imprint’s mission is to produce top-quality fiction for mystery lovers.

The press originated when Shannon Esposito and Kassandra Lamb, two self-published authors, grew concerned about both the stigma attached to indie authors and the cost of self-publishing. These concerns gave birth to misterio, a cooperative that operates as a small independent press.

I submitted work to misterio as one might to any press. Once my book was accepted by misterio and I became one of its authors, I also became part of its work pool. We are dedicated to swapping talents—proofing, editing, formatting each other’s finished works. (The talent pool does not serve as beta readers or as a critique group.) To insure quality, a mystery must pass through the hands of two members before it can be published as a misterio book. Belonging to the cooperative allows one the pride of producing a quality product with a publisher’s name on it.

The printing expenses still fall to the author, but huge sums are saved by not paying for other services. At Left Coast Crime 2014 I heard authors say they had paid up to a thousand dollars for editing alone!

Misterio is a cooperative, not a vanity press. There is no charge to join and misterio does not keep money made from the sales of misterio books! While misterio authors cover printing costs, they keep all the profit from their sales.

We pool not only our talents, but also our promotional efforts. Misterio maintains a professional website and active blog to which members may contribute.

Even though my upcoming Carol Sabala mystery was a finalist for the Claymore Award, conventional wisdom says that it difficult to find a traditional publisher for a series once an author has self-published. When I heard about misterio, I was very excited by the idea of a cooperative. Now that I am one of their authors, I am thrilled.

 Here’s a taste of Carol Sabala’s adventures in Vinnie’s books:

 In Art, Wine & Bullets, an innocent visit to a premiere Santa Cruz gallery turns into a nightmare case for Private Investigator Carol Sabala. The strangled body of the gallery owner offers an opportunity to cement her reputation and to save her employer from insolvency. But precious time spent assisting her photographer boyfriend impedes her investigation, while his sudden obsession with photographing her impedes their relationship.

When Carol plunges into an art world offering urban graffiti to paintings of polka-dotted cats, she confronts the age-old questions: What is art? What defines an artist? She also confronts what defines a successful private investigator as she unravels much more than a murder case.

 

A writer’s crossroads

I’m at a crossroads tonight and thinking of Robert Frost’s poem about the road not taken. I don’t have an active work-in-progress right now, though I have several thoughts and possibilities. It would seem the holidays would be a good time to be “between projects,” but I’ve done most of what I’ll do for the holidays—a small amount of entertaining, packages wrapped, plans made. Now it’s a question of waiting.

Like the narrator of Frost's poem, I have two roads open to me. The first would be to continue the two series I’ve started—Kelly O’Connell Mysteries and Blue Plate Murder Mysteries. A Blue Plate book would be next, and I have the opening catastrophic incident in mind but I’m not sure where to go from there. I don't have the answers to those old questions—Who? Why? I guess I’m waiting for inspiration to strike. It may be that inspiration hasn’t struck because I’ve been busy, but I’m not the sort to sit and think it out. I either get a bolt out of the blue or I don’t. Sometimes if I start writing it all becomes clear to me, but that’s a dangerous path.  And my publisher wants a synopsis before issuing a contract.

There are advantages to continuing the series. I get wonderful comments about them, though not an abundance of reviews. Maybe people who review aren’t the people I’m writing for. As books from a small publisher, they sell relatively well—I was after all the best-selling mystery author for Turquoise Morning Press for 2012. Not sure I’ll make it again this year, and I may have fallen behind on promotion in frustration over the gap between e-book and print (my July title has still not appeared in print). Other than that I’m settled into a comfortable relationship with a publishing company I like. The familiar always beckons.

But then there’s the thought that if you don’t branch out and try a new road, you stagnate. I have two new projects in mind—an academic murder mystery, which is in draft form, and a series featuring a dog rescue person. I think each has possibilities, but it’s like taking a big step into Frost's deep undergrowth. Would I pitch them to my publisher or would I self publish?

Self publishing as an indie is beginning to look a little less rosy these days, with stronger, lower-priced competition from the big houses. I read an article today that suggested Darwinian theory is about to hit independent publishing. Would I be foolish to give up the comfortable berth I have (I think it’s secure—hope so).

Fortunately, I don’t depend on my writing for living expenses—it’s “walk-around money plus”—so the decision is not crucial in that sense. Nor am I trying to build a huge career. But it is crucial in that I want to find projects that challenge me, keep me engaged, and keep me young at heart. And, egotistically, I like the satisfaction of people telling me how much they like my books. All writers are egocentric to one degree or another.

I have pondered this a long time and find my thoughts going in circles. Your thoughts and comments will be appreciated. Dare I take the road less traveled?