Why I Will Survive an Alien Attack

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by Rachel Brady

I confessed a strange behavior to a friend this week, and rather than receive the mockery I expected, I was shocked to learn that my bizarre activity was not unique. This has inspired me to publicly embarrass myself so that I might poll the Stiletto Faithful. Maybe it’s true. Maybe we are not alone…

Lately I’ve been tracking my spending and noticing that, rent and utilities aside, my biggest expenses are childcare and groceries, with fuel a close third.
Sometimes I try to see how many days in a row I can go without buying something. It makes me stop and reflect on whether what I’m buying is a want or a need. Most things are wants, and when I don’t buy them I excel at my private game. Sometimes I can make it a whole week without buying so much as a stamp. (Not often.)

But groceries are needs.
Or are they?
Enter my other game, Alien Apocalypse. What if you were home right now and malevolent aliens landed in your town? You can’t go out to Kroger’s because they will either harm you or eat you or put you on the Mother Ship. You must subsist only on what is currently in your pantry, refigerator, and freezer. How long will you survive?
Trust this alien survivor. It’s longer than you’d think.
Periodically I do this exercise to pare down my food inventory. Rather than buy fresh produce for the week, I’ll eat through all my frozen veggies. You know the ones. Those bags in your freezer that you don’t even see anymore because they have been there since 1994. When we run out of cereal, we eat through the eggs, toast, and oatmeal before I’ll buy more breakfast foods. I look at meat in the freezer, rice in the pantry, and those two cans of tomato paste I bought when leg warmers were still in style and I start thinking about how to eat them as a meal. Shopping isn’t allowed because it’s not worth jeopardizing my safety by going outside. That only provokes them.
I don’t mean to suggest that I’m on the steps of the poorhouse, so please no aid drops by helicopter. But I am something of a minimalist by choice and this approach of spending down my resources before bringing more into the house serves me well. It helps avoid clutter. Keeps things tidy. And it minimizes extraneous expenses.

So if any of those side effects appeal to you, before you head out to the store this weekend, see how many meals you can make first with the supplies you already have on hand.

If it comes down to you versus the neighbor in the Alien Apocalypse, you’ll be all trained up. Bon appetite.

When this piece posts on Friday, I’ll be schmoozing with aliens–I mean mystery writers–at the Malice Domestic Mystery Convention in Bethesda, Maryland. I’ll check back to visit your comments as soon as I can. Enjoy your weekends!

You Make Me Want to be a Better Writer

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by Maria Geraci

There is one thing above all others that makes a writer’s work stand out. It’s not great grammar, or great story structure, or even a unique story line (because let’s face it, pretty much every story has been done before in some form or another).  What makes a writer stand out is voice. Voice is what makes you unique. It’s what sells your books.

I clearly  remember the day that I met my editor (Wendy McCurdy at Berkley) for the first time. It was at the RWA National convention in Washington DC. We had breakfast together and were talking about things in general, and then we began talking about my books. And at some point in the conversation she looked at me and said, “I really love your raunchy voice.” I must have looked a little stunned, because she smiled and said, “I mean that in a good way.”

I’ve thought about that comment a lot (as you can probably imagine.) I write fun, romantic women’s fiction (kind of a cross between chick lit and contemporary romance). The heroine in my first book (Bunco Babes Tell All) meets my hero when he catches her peeing in the bushes. In my second book (Bunco Babes Gone Wild) my heroine accidentally “flashes” my hero, and in my most recent book (The Boyfriend of the Month Club) in the very first opening scene, my heroine chips her tooth trying to open a shrink wrapped tampon. Huh. I think I get what Wendy was saying. Voice is not just about how you word things, it’s your unique look at the world. It’s the author’s “big picture.”

When I stumble across a really great book, one that I can’t put down, it’s usually because of the author’s voice. This always makes me sit up and take notice. I’m not just a reader, I’m also a student and a good book always teaches me something (bad books teach me something as well, but we won’t get into that today.)

I recently finished reading Eleanor Brown’s debut novel The Weird Sisters. The story is about three sisters who reunite in their home town (each with secrets of their own) when their mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. The hook? Their father is a Shakespearan scholar who recites The Bard pretty much every time he opens his mouth. But what makes the book special and memborable is Eleanor Brown’s voice. She creates such a unique world that you can’t help but feel it, smell it, live it. The book is told in first person plural (we) and is absolutely fabulous. I used my Kindle highlighter to note some of the lines that really stood out for me.

Here is just a tiny selection:

See, we love each other. We just don’t like each other very much.

She had gone from most favored nation to useless ally, from Cordelia to Ophelia.

Because despite his money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and well, let’s just say this is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put.

Can I just say, I really really love that last line? I’ve read it countless times now and each time it makes me smile more. Reading Eleanor Brown makes me want to be a better writer. It makes me want to hone my own voice and sharpen it until it becomes all me, with nothing held back. Just a stick that pokes at my reader’s emotions and makes them laugh or cry or startles them.

It’s French to Me

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There came a time, around my junior year of college, when I realized I had enough credits to qualify as a French minor to go along with my English major.  There also came a time, when I realized I really, really liked this guy in my French pronunciation class, that if I continued to take more French courses, I could graduate with a double major, French/English.

That doesn’t mean I can actually speak French.
The cute guy eventually became my tutor, and then my husband.  My mother often tells him how much money he owes her because, dag nabbit, if she sent a kid to college to get a French major, said kid ought to be able to at least order off a French menu with a modicum of confidence.
As my French teacher, the wonderful Madame Marzi, once said to me, “You have a wonderful accent.  If only I could teach you to actually speak French.”
Why do I bring this up?  Well, as luck would have it, tonight, we welcome a French exchange student to our home for ten days.  She is visiting us from a coastal town in France—the same one that my husband visited when he was part of the first group to partake in this exchange thirty years ago.  We are all very excited:  my daughter, because the young woman visiting us is the same age as she is and seems to have the same interests; my son, well, because he’s twelve and what twelve-year-old wouldn’t want a female French exchange student living in his house?; my husband because he is thrilled that the program is still in existence and thriving; and me…
Well, I’m not so sure.  See, the French exchange student will be spending most of her free time—the time when she’s not at school with my daughter or visiting New York City—with me.  The French major.  The woman who once told her children, in French, while on vacation in Quebec, that we would soon visit the factory to make cheese.  (What I meant to say is that we would soon visit the pool to go swimming.  Trust me, a lot of these vocabulary words sound the same.)
The goal of her visit is to speak as much English as possible, something that will be necessitated by spending time with me, the non-French speaker.  I am hoping that her English will be better than my French, but based on our meeting with last year’s participants, it’s a virtual crapshoot.  Some students have more English than others and are very enthusiastic about using the language, while others have a rudimentary knowledge of English and prefer to speak their native tongue. 
Regardless, it should be interesting.
And fodder for future books.
At the very least, it has gotten my family on board with cleaning.  She will be staying in my son’s room, which has become the de facto guest room for all visitors.  He remarked the other day that his room never looked so clean, and that he liked it that way.  (We’ll see how long that lasts.)  I spent the better part of Saturday at the laundromat washing blankets, comforters and sheets so all bedding in our house is nice and fresh.  I scrubbed the bathroom tile and grout so that the room feels new again.  If nothing else, her visit has prompted us to make this place spic and span.
Stayed tuned for updates on her visit and for the misadventures of “Maggie, the Only Diploma-ed French Major Who Can’t Speak French.”
Maggie Barbieri

Hanging Out With Youngsters

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Yep, that’s what I’m doing here.

When I read some of your posts I know I’m truly over the hill. Oh, don’t get me wrong, some of the blog posts are truly heart-rending when you talk about your bouts with life-threatening diseases. I can remember what it was like when you talk about challenges you’re facing while raising your kids. I’ve certainly been there with five of my own and the several grandkids that lived with us at different times. (We are in fact going to lose our latest house guest soon when he moves to the state of Washington to work with his brother. We’ve been thrilled by how he’s matured since living with us.)

I’ve never run a marathon though I used to walk 3 miles every day with my mom–when she was in her 80s. Needless to say we didn’t walk all that fast.

I love your posts about writing, though I’ve probably been at it far longer than any of you, I still face the same problems as you all do. And though I started out with a New York publisher, since then, my publishers have all been small presses, and I’ve very happy with the two I’m with now.

I know that some of you are still working full-time and juggling families AND writing books. I retired from my job a few years ago but I can tell you that I seem to have less time now then I did then. I think when you’ve got so many things that have to be done you prioritize better.

I still do a lot of online promotion–certainly this blog is something I do faithfully. I’ve never done a book tour where I’ve gone from store to store. I do go to some bookstores but usually when I’ve been invited to give some kind of talk. I make appearances at libraries, sometimes solo, sometimes with other writers. This year I’m giving talks at two different colleges, one to lots of students, the other to only 16. I love giving presentations to writers groups and at writers conferences. Though the big cons are fun to go to, because I’m not a big name author, the smaller cons are more beneficial to me. I also do book and craft fairs where the book selling is often quite brisk. The older I get though, the harder it is to get to some of these things, so I know in the future my promotion will probably become more centered on the online.

And as most of you know, I have a big family which means a lot of family events to attend. The big one coming up next is my great-grandson’s high school graduation! And I’ll also be going to the celebration of my youngest granddaughter’s high school graduation right after that.

Life goes on whether I get that book written or not.

Marilyn

Building a Brand

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I’ve watched with fascination the growth of The Pioneer Woman empire. PW is Ree Drummond, whose website (http://thepioneerwoman.com/) is a smart and sassy mix of delicious recipes, incredible photography, and homespun stories. I like her easy-breezy writing style and have enjoyed her step-by-step instructions to making yummy dishes.

Essentially Ree Drummond has parlayed a blog she began five years ago to keep in touch with her extended family into a multi-dimensional career. The Pioneer Woman has become a brand. Its base is the complex web site that includes sections on cooking, homeschooling, family life, gardening, and more. The site is designed to be interactive, with a separate section for readers to contribute their own recipes. Thousands of her fans comment on each of Drummond’s posts. She uses all forms of social media. You’ll find her twittering several times a day. Same chatty style as her web site.

But the web site was just the beginning. She’s written one cookbook that came out 18 months ago (undoubtedly an easy sell to her publisher because she already had a built-in market). On her web site, she serialized the story of her transformation from suburban Yuppie to wife of a cattle rancher. She then compiled the installments into a book, which was published last Fall. That book has now been optioned by Reese Witherspoon for a big-screen movie treatment. Last month, Drummond children’s book about her bassett hound was published. And last week, it was announced that she will be hosting a daily cooking show on the Food Network. Forgive me if I’m using the wrong business term, but isn’t that what they call synergy?

I suspect one reason Ree Drummond can do all this, besides being incredibly talented and creative, is because she married a very wealthy man, The Drummond family own one of the largest cattle ranching operations in Oklahoma. Having money when starting a new venture, be it widgets or web sites, gives you a flexibility that many, if not most, entrepreneurs don’t have. Still, there are plenty of failures amongst those for whom money isn’t a consideration. So kudos to PW — she works hard and has earned her success.

But her story made me focus on the concept that authors can be a brand. In some ways that can be limiting: Can you only write one kind of story and if you try to break out into a different genre, will your audience and critics be suspicious or even angry? Imagine Stephen King writing a romance novel. How would readers react? Drummond can do the cookbook and the children’s book, because the brand is about her family life on the ranch – cooking and pets are part of both.

One compliment often given to cozy mystery writers (which is how the collective Evelyn David define ourselves) is that “you’re ready for a bigger book.” Bigger being somewhat loosely interpreted. The stakes are higher (the world will come to an end unless the sleuth can find the terrorist). The message is bigger (drugs are bad and the sleuth needs to find the head of the drug cartel). The carnage is messier (think multiple body parts as well as death). A “bigger” book, almost by definition, gets more respect.

But while I wouldn’t mind the respect, I also have no apologies for the fun mysteries that I hope we provide for our readers. A friend once remarked, “Not only do I not want to write the great American novel; I don’t want to read it.” I’m probably closer to that point of view than to the idea that I’ve got the next War and Peace in me if only I’d sit at the computer and stop playing Minesweeper.

So, if anyone wants to brand Evelyn David, I’m thinking we could start with a perfume – the scent, of course, would be a mystery.

Marian aka the Northern half of Evelyn David

Brianna Sullivan Mysteries – e-book series
I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries- Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
The Dog Days of Summer in Lottawatah- Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
The Holiday Spirit(s) of Lottawatah- Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Undying Love in Lottawatah- Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
A Haunting in Lottawatah – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords

The Sullivan Investigation Series
Murder Drops the Ball (Spring 2011)
Murder Takes the Cake- Paperback – Kindle
Murder Off the Books- Paperback – Kindle
Riley Come Home (short story)- Kindle – Nook – Smashwords

Romances

Love Lessons – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords

Winner of MY JANE AUSTEN SUMMER

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The winner of the signed copy of MY JANE AUSTEN SUMMER by Cindy Jones is…Susan L.!  Congratulations, Susan, and thanks to all who commented and entered.  (And thank you, Cindy, for your wonderful guest post and the book give-away!)

Susan, you’ll be hearing directly from Cindy via email re. mailing your book.  Enjoy! 

True Writing Crime

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By Cindy Jones

I’m thrilled to be a guest of the Stiletto Gang today. However, now that I find myself in the bosom of mystery writers, I feel the urge to confess a crime.

I stole a house.

What can I say? I needed a house for my novel. An English Country House to be exact. We don’t have them in my neighborhood so I looked on the internet. Bingo. When I found the house, I knew it was perfect. I studied the pictures, read everything I could find, and began lifting that house, brick by brick from the website, via my imagination, into my story. I did not reproduce any pictures or commit plagiarism, and if the operation had stopped there, I could live with it. But I visited the scene of the crime (in England). And that’s when it got bad.

The downside to helping yourself to another person’s house (without actually seeing it) is that you might get it wrong. If my understanding is flawed or incomplete, the depiction will seem inauthentic. So there I was driving on the wrong side of the street in a foreign country, worrying that I might have missed the point of the house I’d already appropriated for my book. Or missed the point of English Country Houses, which might mean I’d missed the point of England, for all I knew. What if I had to re-write the whole book? My hands started sweating and butterflies danced as I anticipated actual reunion with the house I’d spent years imagining.

When I finally found the sign on a rural road in the middle of nowhere directing me to my Manor House’s parking lot, I was giddy with excitement. A man on a backhoe was shoveling dirt. I got out and stretched my legs, making sure I had my camera. The man on the backhoe asked if he could help me. When I told him I was there to see the house, he told me they were closed.

What?

Backhoe Man did not care that I had come halfway around the world to see my house. The fact that the concierge at my hotel spread misinformation about their hours of operation was my problem, not his. The fact that I was an unpublished novelist in love with his house was also my problem. He would not even allow me walk close enough to glimpse the house through the thick copse of trees.

Really?

We got back into the car and pretended to leave. My mother (who loaned me her wedding dress when I needed a queen costume in 6th grade) masterminded the plan to stop the getaway mobile at the end of the driveway long enough for me to run up and look at the house. Backhoe Man was shoveling dirt again. There was no time to lose.

Frightened and desperate, I snuck up the drive. It was worth it. The house rose magnificently from the grounds, far more beautiful in reality. I memorized the look of the old bricks, the swirly glass windows, the serene grounds. I’d gotten it all completely right. I hated to leave. But it was too late. Backhoe Man saw me looking at his house. He dismounted and came after me, not even civil.

I offered to pay.

Writing can lead to a life of crime. Being creative—joining unlike things to make something new—is not a crime, but sometimes acquiring the unlike things to be joined raises problems. (My sisters never greet me without first narrowing their eyes and asking, “Is that mine?”) The English Manor house is just the tip of the iceberg.

So don’t show me your membership roster or your high school yearbook—I’ll be memorizing names to use in my next novel. Don’t talk on the phone around me, I harvest unguarded conversations. Do not tell me secrets because secrets are pure gold in my business. Above all, do not reveal your humanity to me, because I will take that glimpse of your inmost heart and apply it to my character, breathing your life into my creation so that my fiction might resonate with readers I’ve never even met.

If you would like to tour the house I virtually stole for my novel, check out My Jane Austen Summer. The House first appears in all its glorious splendor on page 42—brick by virtual brick.

**The gracious Cindy is giving away a signed copy of My Jane Austen Summer to one lucky Stiletto Gang reader!  Just leave a comment sometime on this post between now and Sunday, April 24 at noon (Central Time), and Cindy will randomly drawer a winner!  Thanks, Cindy, and good luck, everyone!

About Cindy:  Born in Ohio, I grew up in small mid-western towns, reading for escape. I dreamed of living in a novel and wrote my first book in fifth grade. After a business career, husband, and the birth of four sons, I wrote My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park, winner of the Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Contest. I have a BA from Mary Washington College, an MBA from the University of Houston, studied creative writing in the SMU CAPE program, and belong to the The Squaw Valley Community of Writers. I live with my family in Dallas where I have discovered that, through writing, it is entirely possible to live in a novel for a good part of each day.

Lessons Learned from Dancing with the Stars

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I love Dancing with the Stars. Every Monday night if I’m not sitting in front of my TV, my faithful DVR is recording away every beat of every samba, rumba, quickstep or waltz that’s taking place. I love the costumes, the music, the dancing, the so called “stars” and the professionals. Every season I quickly get attached to my favorites and agonize when they get voted off.

This season there’s a lot of good going on. All the celebrities are decent dancers (with the exception of Psycho Mike and Wendy Williams who both quickly got the boot). I love that every week a different couple comes out on top on the Leader board and that as of right now, it’s any one’s season to win.

It occurred to me while watching this past week that there’s a lot I could correlate between the show and my career as a writer.

First, there’s the skill element involved. Every season there are celebrities who start out with an edge. Some previous dance experience. Or natural talent, that kind of thing. But then there is the celebrity who rises above their talent level with good old fashioned hard work. They continue to improve week after week and the audience sees this and rewards them with votes. These are my favorite celebrities. Like Emmitt Smith, the ex-professional football player who won his season. Sure, Emmitt started out with some rhythm, but by the end of the season he was a dancer.

Lesson learned? Work hard and keep working harder and it will pay off. Make each book better than the one before.

Then there is the judge’s criticism. In case you’ve never watched the show, there are three judges: Len, Carrie Ann and Bruno. Sometimes I honestly think Len is smoking crack. But, I have to say, for the most part he’s pretty consistent in what he likes. Len loves a good clean dance. He doesn’t like the fru fru stuff. He wants to see the dance elements done properly. Bruno is more about the “feel”. He’s the emotion behind the judging and I love his crazy comments. Carrie Ann is somewhere in between Len and Bruno. She’s also the Lift Nazi. Heaven forbid your feet come off the floor in a dance that doesn’t allow it. She’ll dock you a point for it. Count on that.

So here’s the thing. The judges’ opinion is important. They give you a score and that score is averaged in with fan votes and decides whether or not you are booted off the show. But you can’t choreograph your dance each and every week to please the judges, because you simply can’t please all three of them. You have to dance to entertain. To tell a story. You have to have fun out there. You have to take risks. The best dances do all the above.

Lesson learned?  Write the best story you can. Have fun. Take risks. Dare to go where no writer before you has gone. Never forget who you are writing for (and it isn’t Publishers Weekly or Bookreview or Kirkus). It’s for you and your fans (the people who buy your books!)

Every season, there are celebrities who earn my admiration and celebrities who end up disappointing me. The show puts a lot of pressure on the stars. Besides keeping up with a grueling dance schedule, many of them are still doing their regular job- filming talk shows, soaps, shows in Vegas, etc. I understand that the pressure can get to them, but there’s something to be said about showing grace under said pressure. No one at home wants to hear about how horrible your life is because you have to catch your limousine or miss your private jet to go on your television tour and how you are working fourteen hour days to keep everything afloat.

This past week, super model Petra Nemkova got the axe. I was so disappointed! I’ll be honest, I had no idea who she was before the show. But I sure do now. She’s a survivor of the 2004 tsunami that hit Thailand. Her fiancee was killed and Petra suffered serious injuries. She has since founded a charitable organization called Happy Hearts Fund that helps children who have suffered through a natural disaster. Petra was not only beautiful and a graceful dancer, she let us see her heart. She made herself vulnerable. She took the judges’ criticism like a trooper and vowed to work harder each week. The show is really going to miss her.

Reality star Kendra Wilkinson, a former Playboy bunny and Hugh Heffner love interest is another story. I’ll admit, at first I kind of rolled my eyes at Kendra. But I saw her working hard week after week and I began to really like her. Then last week, she kind of got into a brouhaha with Judge Carrie. Kendra blew her dance and instead of taking the judges’ criticism like a woman, she interrupted Carrie’s critique and told her she didn’t care about being elegant. I’m not sure how Kendra survived last week. The judges gave her extremely low marks and you would have thought that the American public would have kept their votes to themselves. Still, I think Kendra’s days are numbered. No body likes a crybaby.

Lesson learned? Criticism is there to help you grow. Listen to it, take what you can from it and be better. Show your audience your vulnerabilities. People love people who are real. If you can’t be a professional, at least learn to hold your tongue.

So that’s it. My Dancing with the Stars lessons on writing. This season I’m rooting for Ralph (Karate Kid) Macchio (who knows how to take criticism with a smile), Kirstie Alley (who shows us her vulnerabilities and makes us like her more each week), Hines Ward (who works harder each and every week to improve) and Chelsea Kane (who takes the big risks and gives the audience a super performance each and every time)!

Maria Geraci writes fun, romantic women’s fiction. Visit her website or connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.

Lesson Learned

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The Stiletto Gang is delighted to welcome good friend Joe Wallace to our site. And no, we didn’t make him wear stilettos in order to guest with us today.

I believe that retribution for an act of prejudice should be swift, unsparing, and impossible to ignore. Why do I believe this? Because that’s what it took to show me my own previously unrecognized prejudices.

My crime: I discriminated against a book genre. Back in the 1990s, when Mark Zuckerberg was still a child, when Twitter wasn’t yet a (pithy) gleam in its creator’s eye, the AOL Bulletin Boards were the place to be for people who loved books. It was amazing: You could discuss nearly every author you could think of, living or dead, with fellow enthusiasts. (In a given day I’d find myself discussing Jane Austen and Walt Kelly, Sue Grafton and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.

I was never one to pick a fight until I happened to check out a board entitled “Women Who Read.” It took me only a few seconds to figure out what the women there were reading.

I couldn’t allow this to stand. With all the great books in the world, why on earth were they resorting to romance? Just a few words from me, I was sure, would set them on the path to reading fulfillment.

So I weighed in. I pointed out the flaws in the genre. I suggested some alternatives. I played the part of the wise Sherpa.

I was eviscerated. The women on “Women Who Read” were doctors, lawyers, college professors, captains of their school debating team. They were whip-smart, self-confident, and not afraid to show it.

I fought valiantly—actually, I think the proper words are “feverishly” and “shrilly”—but every day I had my head handed to me in yet another creative way.

One day, I was telling my wife about my latest attempt to “win” the argument. She is a far more adventurous reader than I, often taking on ambitious literary novels while I read mysteries, thrillers, and popular nonfiction. At first glance, you might consider her the one more likely to be snobbish about genre.

But she looked at me and said, “Joe, why on earth are you doing this? These women get together online to share their love of reading. Why are you trying to ruin it.

I said, Um….

“And you’re always saying how people don’t give mystery stories the respect they deserve,” she went on. “Seems to me you’re doing exactly the same thing with romance.”

I said, Um, well…

“I think you should apologize,” she said, and went back to her copy of something long and dense that I likely would never read.

I didn’t sleep well that night. The first lonely hours were spent justifying myself and my actions. The rest were spent phrasing and rephrasing my apology.

The next morning I logged on, clicked “Women Who Read,” and wrote, “I am really sorry that I’ve been acting like such an obnoxious jerk. Can we start over?”

And you know what happened? I was forgiven. They’d seen it all before, having spent their lives being insulted over their reading choices. Insulted by people who questioned their intelligence, their taste, even their happiness and mental stability.

Just as readers of mysteries and thrillers had once been. And sometimes still were.

The years that followed among the Women Who Read were as much fun as any I’ve spent online. They welcomed me into their wide-ranging discussions, and they understood (once I’d read and enjoyed a few that they recommended) why romance would never be my preferred genre. That didn’t matter: We had plenty of other things in common, including an all-around passion for books.

There was one woman there, though, who was deeply disappointed in my apology. “Can we please keep fighting?” she wrote me. “I haven’t had so much fun in ages.”

Thank you, I replied, but no. I’d learned my lesson, once and for all.
___________

Joe Wallace is the author of several books on nature, science, and baseball history; noir stories (including “Custom Sets,” which was chosen for inclusion The Best American Mystery Stories 2010); and a novel, Diamond Ruby which itself began life as a story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He lives north of New York City with his wife, children, a large dog, and a put-upon cat.

Visit Joe’s site at http://www.josephwallace.com/

Glorious Day with the Reading Club

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There I am yakking away about my books at the Reading Club. Oh my, I wish there were more of them around, I had so much fun and I think they did too.

My daughter-in-law was the designated driver and a good thing because the traffic was horrendous for our 3 1/2 hour drive. We just made it for our luncheon date with the program chair and the president of the group–two delightful ladies.

Over forty women showed up for the event. They meet twice monthly and always have a speaker who might talk about a book she’s recently read or some other topic that the others might be interested in, afterwards tea is served. Tea in the old-fashioned sense of the word, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

They’d asked me to talk about my writing history and then the inspiration for my books. One thing I’ve learned over the years is to tell something fun and interesting about the book or what I had to do for research, and to be sure and make the audience laugh–which I did. When I felt like I’d talked long enough, I asked for questions and had plenty to answer. Once I was through, the women rushed up to buy books. Thank goodness I brought my daughter-in-law because she handled the money while I autographed books.

We stayed long enough for a cup of tea before packing up and heading home–which was an easier drive than getting there.

What I learned.

Most of these women were in the fifty through seventy age range, though I spotted a couple that might have been in their forties, and one lady apologized for her shaky handwriting as she wrote her check and she was 90. Many had been school teachers and several married to professors at the local university. (Of course I didn’t hear everyone’s backgrounds, but this was from those who shared with me.)

All were nicely dressed and many in spring colors like the room was decorated. Reminded me of other women’s groups I’ve spoken to over the years.

None of them owned a Kindle. We did talk about e-readers a little and some agreed it would be nice to have one while on a trip. My daughter-in-law told me she’s downloaded a Kindle Ap to her iPhone and that’s how she plans to read all the Sookie Stackhouse vampire books.

Turlock is a medium sized city located on 99 between Merced and Modesto (Central Valley, California) which is mainly agricultural) and all three cities have colleges.

Many of these women liked to read a series in order, but when I assured them each of my books has a satisfactory ending despite the ongoing characters, they chose the book that most interested them when I talked about it.

And to emphasize what I’ve learned when I first began doing this, people seem to like it that I don’t have to refer to my notes–I didn’t have any–and they love it when I make them laugh.

So that’s the report on my glorious day with the Reading Club in Turlock.

Marilyn
Books by Marilyn