No High Heels!–Guest blog by Edith Maxwell

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Hi, Linda Rodriguez here! Today, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Edith Maxwell, who writes three wonderful mystery series,  the Speaking of Mystery series (as Tace Baker), the Carriagetown Mysteries, and the great Local Foods Mystery series. Her newest book in that last series, ‘Til Dirt Do Us Part, is out right now.

“The
produce is local–and so is the crime–when long-simmering tensions
lead to murder following a festive dinner on Cam Flaherty’s farm.
It’ll take a sleuth who knows the lay of the land to catch this
killer. But no one ever said Cam wasn’t willing to get her hands
dirty.
..


Even
an amateur detective like Cam can figure out that one of the resident
locavores went loco–at least temporarily–and settled a score with
Irene. But which one? With the fall harvest upon her, Cam must sift
through a bushelful of possible killers that includes Irene’s
estranged stepson, her disgruntled auto mechanic, and a fellow CSA
subscriber who seems suspiciously happy to have the dead woman out of
the way. The
closer she gets to weeding out the culprit, the more Cam feels like
someone is out to cut her harvest short. But to keep her own body out
of the compost pile, she’ll have to wrap this case up quickly.“


No
High Heels!

I’m
coming out, right here, right now. Get ready for it: I do not wear stiletto
heels. I do not wear high heels. I do my best to avoid wearing any heels at all
if they aren’t
flat! 
I hope this won’t disqualify me from
writing a guest post here, on this blog with so many authors I respect and call
friends (waving to my buds Debra, Linda, Dru Ann, Marilyn, the Sparkles!). I
love you guys. 
But it became clear to me many decades ago that,
despite being less than five feet, two inches tall, heels were not for me. One
reason was comfort. I have wide little feet and hate having my toes pinched.
Another was safety. I want to be able to run if I need to, whether it’s from threat of
tornado or attacker, whether I’m running toward an approaching train or
sprinting away from a falling tree.
Probably the most important reason was my natural
trend toward things, well, natural. We have bodies with feet that rest on the
ground. We are meant to walk heel-toe-heel-toe. Of course I do wear shoes – kinda have to for half
of the year in New England (even though I’m a native southern
California) –and I drive a car, and so on. But I just don’t believe in high
heels. For me.  

I’m also a long-time Quaker, and we have this
thing called the Testimony of Simplicity, which totally suits my personality.
My path of least resistance is to own one pair of Birkenstock sandals, one pair
of tennies, and one pair of lace-up black suede shoes. Okay, and a pair of fun
knee-high leather boots. Flat-soled boots. And then replace with exactly the same
model every couple of years when a pair wears out. 
Now that I’m a published author,
though –yikes. I have author events at libraries and
bookstores. I’m on panels at conferences. I haven’t snagged a major award
nomination yet, but hope to, and then I’ll be visible at an
awards banquet. And I want to look nice. Respectable. My professional
compromise to date is pair of black clogs, which boost me a hair higher off the
ground but are still almost flat. And I’ll confess to ordering
a pair of nearly flat silver sandals for my 
niece’s fancy wedding today. But Hank Phillippi
Ryan I’m not!

All this non-stilettoing, though? It leaves me more
time to write, which is what makes me happy.

Readers: Are any of you all non-heel wearers? Or do
you prefer to go shoe shopping for the latest stilettos?

 

 

Edith Maxwell writes the  Local Foods Mystery series (Kensington
Publishing), the Speaking of Mystery series under the pseudonym Tace Baker, featuring Quaker linguistics professor
Lauren Rousseau (Barking Rain Press), and the historical Carriagetown
Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction.

A mother, world traveler, and former technical
writer, Edith lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three
cats. She blogs every weekday with the Wicked Cozy Authors. You can find her
here: 

@edithmaxwell

Shorties!

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By Bethany Maines

This past year I have been focusing on my graphic design
business and having a child (see adorable picture of Zoe below) and it’s been
hard to give the time required to write a novel.  
Not that I’ve stopped writing or wanting to write, but the
amount of hours I have available is not what it once was. Since I had shorter
hours I decided to shift to shorter projects and I’ve spent the past year
working on short stories. This has been both hard and rewarding. Hard in that
I’ve always worked in long format and short stories are structured differently
than novels. Short stories have made me practice new skills and work in new
ways and it has been extremely rewarding to see these new skills bear fruit.

But as my life (and daughter) settle back into a routine,
I’m looking forward to returning to the novel structure.  In fact, I have plans for a third
Carrie Mae Mystery, High-Caliber Concealer, and an as yet to be named mystery
set in the San Juan islands.  I
can’t wait to share these new adventures with you, but today I’m releasing the
last of my pre-daughter short stories – Power of Attorney a Carrie MaeMini-Mystery – is now available!  I
hope you enjoy it!

Another ramble by yours truly

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What should I talk about? I have no idea. This is getting harder and harder to find a topic that will interest people to stop by and see what I have to say. Hey, if you’re reading this, thank you!

Someone asked with my daytime situation, how do I have time to do the other things that I do such as the dru’s book musings, quilting, Facebooking, I don’t tweet, writing a monthly blog for The Cozy Chicks and The Stiletto Gang and reading? I don’t know, I just do it. As an introvert, being in the comfort of my home gave me pleasure because I can entertain myself with my hobby of watching TV, going to the movies (although I do this rarely, but Godzilla sent me to the movies last week), so it was a natural transition to helping authors get the word out about their work, especially since I was already telling them I liked what they wrote.

It gets easier with time as you develop a routine for getting it all done. I don’t have deadlines like the authors do, although as I type this on Saturday morning at 5:49 EST, this is due on Monday at 3:00am EST, it will get done. I’m just rambling away filling up space. Do you find rambling help you clear your mind?

I dedicate an hour every day to do my blog activities such as sending out reminders to the author that their blog goes live the next day; selecting a winner for the giveaway; notifying author of giveaway winner; formatting blog posts for their guest appearances and keeping track of schedules and other blog related items. Hey, I have to be done before Jeopardy comes on. On Saturday, I devote up to two hours for my weekly round-up post and making sure the next week’s guest posts are ready for their scheduled publication. Do you use Saturday as your catch-up day?

Oh, in between that I’m reading books. I use to average reading 4-5 books but now I’m averaging 3-4 books per week. I’m reading 90% of my books on my e-reader and the worst thing that can happen is when you get to the good part of the book and the power runs out, especially when you are not near a power source. Has that ever happened to you with your e-reader?

In between that, I have to find time to work on my quilt project. I interrupt this note to say “there’s a cruise ship passing by on its way to port” and I can even hear it blowing it’s horn, it’s a bit foggy out here. Anyhoo, this week I want to finish the quilt I started a month ago, but before that I have to make a quilted pillow for a bride. I’m using her invitation as the centerpiece of the quilt. Are you crafty?

I rambled myself out of topics. See you in a month.

My Writing Vacation – Or Books I Enjoyed When I Let Myself Read for Fun by Debra H. Goldstein

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Many of you know I stepped down from the bench a year ago to give myself the freedom to write during the day.  The results were mixed.  In the beginning, I couldn’t get disciplined enough to do much more than organize my daughter’s wedding, travel, and watch every possible episode of How I Met Your Mother and NCIS. I finally found my writing “legs” and finished a novel that beta readers are now reviewing and wrote and submitted a number of short stories.  Four of them, “A Political Cornucopia,” “Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief!,” “Early Frost,” and the “Rabbi’s Wife Stayed Home,” were published by Bethlehem Writer’s Roundtable (November 2013), Mardi Gras Murder (2014), The Birmingham Arts Journal (April 2014) and Mysterical – E (April 2014), respectively. At the same time, my 2012 IPPY Award winning mystery, Maze in Blue, was re-released by Harlequin Worldwide Mystery as a May 2014 book of the month.

When I received notice that Maze was reissued and the fourth story had been accepted for publication, I

decided to take a two week vacation from writing and rejoin the world of being a reader.  Some of the books I could have done without (diet books – I’ve gained weight since I decided to write), some were simply okay (a biography of Barbra Streisand), but some proved to be pure fun.  One of the exciting things to me, is that many of the books I really enjoyed were written by authors I have met at various conferences and who, in many cases, have written guest blogs for “It’s Not Always a Mystery.”(http://debrahgoldstein.wordpress.com)

For a good suspense read, let me recommend Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Agatha winning The Wrong Girl.  I read her Mary Higgins Clark MWA winning The Other Woman last year and eagerly was awaiting this book.  Then, I picked up the third book in the Skeet Bannon series written by Linda Rodriguez.  Every Hidden Fear was published the week I took my reading vacation, I couldn’t put it down – each book only has hooked me on Skeet since Linda won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition for Every Last Secret.

I wanted to get a little food and farm reading in so I turned to Edith Maxwell’s A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die which I followed with Leslie Budewitz’s Agatha winning Death al Dente. Food wasn’t my only companion during my reading excursion.  I added a little comedy and romance with Kendel Lynn’s Board Stiff.

Much as I enjoy mysteries, I needed to spice up my life with a few good looking men so my bedtime reading was Robert Wagner’s Pieces of My Heart.  Tonight, I’m snuggling up with Rob Lowe’s book, Love Life.  I plan to read fast because tomorrow I’m giving myself back to writing.

Cars, Rats & Anne Perry

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By Kay Kendall
I don’t give a fig how a car works. Or electricity. Or a
computer. They all might as well be black boxes, as far as I’m concerned. Inside
mysterious things happen. Poof! The car turns on. Poof! Electricity powers the
air conditioner. Poof! The computer recalls everything you write.

What I do care about is how people work. Why they do the
things they do. I discovered this passion one teenaged summer when my boyfriend
dumped me and I drooped into churlishness. After a week my mother tired of my
moping around the house and suggested I work at one of her charities.

I ended up volunteering at the county’s psychiatric clinic,
helping with rudimentary clerical tasks. As I typed up forms and patients’
reports, I was shocked to see so much pain appear on the pages. But later I was
gratified to see the clinic’s psychiatric social worker help some of those patients
whose woes I’d typed up. Sometimes the patients left our office with springier steps.
I fancied I could see their anxieties and depression lift, if only a little.
That same summer my favorite cousin began exhibiting
behavioral problems. Merle was super bright but troubled. I never saw him act
out or be mean to someone, but I began to hear stories.  I wanted to help him but didn’t have the
skills. Ah-hah, I thought! I’d study psychology in college and become a
psychiatric social worker so I could fix him.
Please note that I never aspired to be a psychologist or
psychiatrist. Perhaps that was because I’d only seen a psychiatric social
worker in action and therefore could imagine being one. But also note the date
was 1962, the year before Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique.  And
eight years before I became an ardent feminist.
When I entered college in 1963, most courses I took fascinated
me, including for a short time even geology and astronomy, subjects taken only
to fulfill liberal arts distribution requirements. Psychology, however, was a letdown,
a huge bore.

All we studied were rats. I wanted to learn about people. While
two friends in my class did manage to cope with rodentia behavior, I
couldn’t.  These women went on to earn
their doctorates in psychology and help countless people. For me, however, the
gap between the actions of rats and people was too great a leap. I never took
another course after Psych 101.

I toyed with various majors, but English literature was my
mainstay. Fiction encompassed everything about humanity, and I’d always been a
ferocious reader. Writing was a joy. After getting a graduate degree in history—real
crimes that happened in the past, I now say—I fell back on writing and developed
a solid career as a corporate communicator.
I never felt I’d found my niche, however. My heart did not
sing.
When I began writing fiction a decade ago, I finally responded
to an inner compulsion. What I had to explore is why people do the things they
do. Character development and plot are almost synonymous to me. It’s like attending
another high school reunion and seeing old friends again after ten years. I’m
reading the newest chapters in their lives. People are walking, ongoing stories.
Curiosity drives me to learn everything I can and then fictionalize it—showing
their behavior and uncovering their motives.
Anne Perry, author

The mystery comes in when good people do bad things. Anne Perry was the first mystery author I noticed whose killers weren’t thoroughly
evil, but I didn’t know what to make of this. And then the film Heavenly Creatures came out in 1994, exposing her secret. As a teenager she
had helped murder a friend’s mother. Maybe Anne Perry has been trying to fathom
her motives ever since? No wonder the killers she devised—especially in the
first half of her career—are complicated, unfathomable people, jolted into acting
horribly in bad situations.
Each of us is a mysterious black box. Inside are so many factors
all jumbled up—memories, desires, hurts. How can other people ever hope to
understand us? How can we hope to understand ourselves?
Yet still we try. We must try. I was never able to decode
what caused my cousin Merle to derail. I did solve part of the puzzle but was
helpless to alter his sad trajectory. Alas, after living for twenty years in a
hospital for the criminally insane, he wandered off into a field while on
furlough and simply lay down and died. He was forty.
As a mystery author, though, I can put characters into
extreme peril and see if they’ll sort out their own complicated lives as well
as the sometimes vile things that others do. Solving the puzzles of people
living only on pages (or in E files) is a full-time job. After I figure out one
set of interconnecting lives, then I go on to develop another set, another, and
another. This is a job I relish. You can call me a contented Sisyphus.
*******
Kay Kendall is an international award-winning public relations
executive who lives in Texas with her husband, four house rabbits, and spaniel
Wills. A fan of historical mysteries, she wants to do for the 1960s what
novelist Alan Furst does for Europe in the 1930s and 1940s–write atmospheric mysteries that capture the spirit of the age.

Discover more about her at


http://www.KayKendallAuthor.com

Why Do I Keep on Writing?

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That’s a good question, one I must ask myself periodically.

I spend a good percentage of each day in front of my computer either working on a new book, editing, or promoting whichever book is out now.  And guess what? I don’t make much money. And what I do make is spent on promotion.

No, my publishers do not send me out on book tours, though they both do some promotion, the greater share is up to me. I’m the one who arranges my in-person events and does the majority of the on-line promotion.

So what do I get out of all this work?

1. I love to write. I enjoy visiting my characters and finding out what is going to happen to them next. The only way to do that is to write the next book. My writing is not confined to my novels, believe it or not, I get a kick out writing blog posts, like this one, and others where I guest.

2. I love meeting people and making new friends. Of course this happens at book events and at conferences and conventions. (Going to a mystery con is very much like attending a huge family reunion.) The Internet has given me the ability to make many new friends, many I’ve known now for a long time.

3. And of course my books have fans–fans that enjoy my books, have favorite characters, email me, read my newsletter and comment, fans that encourage me to write the next book.

4. Because of the conventions, conferences and places I’ve been invited to teach and speak, I’ve traveled many places I’d never have visited otherwise from the West Coast to the East Coast, many cities in-between, and Hawaii and Alaska.

5. I’ve learned how to do many things I might never have tried if it hadn’t been for my writing career from many computer skills to giving presentations and classes about books, writing and publishing. For ten years I taught writing for Writers Digest Schools, and I just recently retired from many years of being the program chair for the Public Safety Writers Association’s annual conference.

6. And most of all, I’ve met many challenges, grown as a writer and a person, and had a great time doing what I wanted to do.

Marilyn aka F. M. Meredith

Saying Goodbye to a Series – A continuing discussion.

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Some of you might have seen my post over at Sara WalterEllwood’s blog during THE BULL RIDER’S KEEPER blog tour on my bitter sweet
feeling on letting go of The Bull Rider series. Today, I wanted to talk about the journey. Or as Ron White would say when asked how far the plane would go, “all the way to the crash site.”
THE BULL RIDER’S BROTHER marked my entrance into the
publishing world.  On June 4th,
2012, I became a published author.  The
sweet story about four friends (Lizzie, James, Barb and Jesse) who return to
Shawnee for the town’s annual rodeo weekend, each with their own agenda, taught
me a lot about how to tell a story and how to be an author. Most civilians
(those outside the publishing world) think all the work is in the writing.
Everyone who’s ever published through digital first, traditional or even
self-published will tell a different story. 
Between edits and reviews and promotion, a book takes many hours of time
to show up with the buy me button on Amazon.
As soon as I signed my contract for BRB giving James and
Lizzie their happy ever after, I started writing on THE BULL RIDER’S MANAGER.
This was Barb’s story. I knew she worked too much and didn’t have a strong
family support system going in. Barb’s house was the fun one growing up, the
one without rules. So I knew this had to be about her learning to accept and
finding her own family. How it turned into a wild night in Vegas, I’m not sure,
but I’m glad the story took me there. By November 2012, the book had that
coveted buy button.
Then life happened. Around Easter 2013, I signed a three
book contract for THE TOURIST TRAP MYSTERIES. One book written, the second
started, and a vague idea for book three. 
By the end of the year, I had all three done and ready for their release
dates spanning 2014 (GUIDEBOOK TO MURDER-April 17th, MISSION TO
MURDER –July 31st, and IF THE SHOE KILLS- October 28th).
I’d also started a new, cowboy romance that I thought could
be an amazing series. This got put on the back burner when I signed the
contract.
So as soon as IF THE SHOE KILLS went off to my editor, I
returned to the last book in the Bull Rider series, Jesse’s story.  I’m glad I waited, mostly because Jesse
needed the time to grow and change. And I’m very proud of his character arc
over the three books. Little brother all grown up. THE BULL RIDER’S KEEPER
released April 28th and I closed the door on Shawnee and the four
friends.

But what about the stories I didn’t get to tell. Kadi’s
riding instructor deserves a happy ever after. 
Cash Dillon, the dumped, in THE BULL RIDER’S BROTHER, got his story told
in a novella, SHAWNEE HOLIDAY, exclusively available at Amazon. And then
there’s Angie, the Sullivan brothers crazy mom.
It’s hard to walk away. But I don’t have the time now to
write these stories.
Maybe someday.
Do you have series that you or the author hasn’t finished
that you’re waiting for another book? 

How to Keep Your Favorite Writers and Books from Disappearing

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by Linda Rodriguez

Since
my third Skeet Bannion novel, Every
Hidden Fear, came out just last week, I’m thinking seriously about book
sales right now. I’ve written and spoken a number of times about what an avid
reader can do to support the authors s/he loves, and so I thought I’d compile
all of those actions into a blog post for today.
As a
reader of novels, I was often disappointed and horrified when authors that I
loved disappeared or stopped writing series I loved and started writing another
that I might not be as fond of.  After I
became a published and got to know many other published novelists, I discovered
how these things happen and what I as a reader can do about them. 
A couple of
examples—one writer’s books always get rave reviews in the big journals,
usually starred reviews, she always earns out her advances, and every single book
has been a finalist for some of the biggest awards, but her publisher, one of
the Big Five, has dropped her. Why? Her books aren’t increasing in sales enough
from book to book, even though they are increasing and are profitable to the
publisher. She is looking at writing novels in a different genre now. Another
writer had an award-winning series of witty, well-written private-eye novels.
He was dropped because it was determined that private-eye novels wouldn’t be
selling well soon (a prediction that turned out wrong). He couldn’t get a
publisher then. So he had to take a woman’s name and start writing very
successful cozies under that.
Often
even famous writers are just a breath or two away from tumbling down the slopes
in the fickle game of publishing, and success is even more volatile for midlist
authors. There are dozens of other stories like these that I could tell. This
is what’s happening to the authors you love who vanish and what may well happen
to the authors you love now. Even selling enough to earn out their advances is
not enough, if they are not increasing their sales drastically with each book.
How can we help the authors we love to do that so we can keep reading the books
we’re addicted to? Here’s a little list.
Pre-orders— pre-orders
have become more and more important to writers. Publishers often decide how big
a print run and how much, if any, promotion they will give a book based on
pre-orders. Bookstores base orders on that, too. So pre-orders can determine
whether your book will be on the shelves in bookstores around the country or
have to be special-ordered.
Other things you can do to help are
clicking “likes” and “tags” on Amazon. Reviews on Amazon
and Goodreads count more toward sales than those longer ones on my blog or
elsewhere, and don’t
forget Barnes & Noble and Library Thing. Post your author’s book in your
WantToRead file on Goodreads when you know the book is coming. Publishers tell
us that is important, that other readers look at those and often decide whether
to buy the book based on how many other people have listed it as something they
want. But reviews on your blog or other
review sites do help, as well. I know I’m doing a lot more book recommendations
now and not just waiting for folks to ask me.
As soon as I know a book is coming
out by one of my favorite writers, I will request my library system order that
book—and my own pre-orders for those books will be through local bookstores
because that helps them decide whether or not to order in that book to have on
the shelves. Ask
your library to order the book, and then check it out. Library sales are
important to most authors, and we love libraries. If you check out our books,
the libraries will keep buying them and won’t sell us off for pennies at the
Friends of the Library book sale. (Many libraries get rid of books that haven’t
been checked out in more than a year, so even if you own a book, checking out
from your local library helps keep your author alive there.)
When we order books from our local
bookstore, we need to tell them what we like about that author and why s/he
might be a good fit for the store. That not only can convince them to order the
book, but also gives them something to tell people when they ask about it.
Talk up
your author and book on Facebook and Twitter. I know for a fact that people
have bought my books because of wonderful things some of my fans have posted on
those two platforms about them. Word of mouth is still the best advertising.
If
you’re in a book club or book discussion group or anything like that, suggest
your author’s book for the group to read and discuss.
If you
take one or more of these actions for your author, you have given great support
and taken steps to make sure that s/he will be able to continue writing and
publishing the books you love. Anything we can do to help others learn about
the authors and books we love helps to keep them available to us, too.

Are there things you do to support your favorite authors that I’ve missed? Please add them in the comments.

REPLY TO COMMENTS (Blogger still won’t let me comment GRR!)


Sue, you’ve got a good point. Many writers who’ve been dropped in recent years have turned to self-publishing. I don’t think it’s a good route for unpublished writers usually, but it can work very well for those who’ve already built a backlist and a cadre of fans.

Kay, you’re right. I always feel it’s not up to my readers and fans to promote my or any writer’s books, but for those who want to be sure to have more of them to read, these are some ways they can help. I have seen too many writers whose work I love stop publishing–or at least stop publishing those books I love so much–because of the lack of escalating sales.

Debra, yes, the publishing world has been changing ever since the multinational corporations took over most of the big old firms and demanded a much higher ROI than publishing can really sustain. They think the bestsellers are the only way to go, but the old pub houses sustained themselves on the many midlist authors. But midlist authors are no longer respected by the big companies who always want the “big kill.”

Tried and True Shall Be My Guide

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Tried and True Shall Be My Guide
By Laura Bradford

“You won’t know if you don’t try.”

“Sometimes life’s best surprises come in unexpected packages.”

When I look back on my childhood, these two quotes were uttered in my ear most often–usually in relation to eating vegetables (something I still don’t like to this day, but that’s a different post entirely).

But statements like these are considered “tried and true” because, well, they’re tried and true. If I’d never tried my hand at writing, my 19th book wouldn’t be coming out in August. If I’d never gotten in a pool with a dolphin, I’d never know that was one of my happiest (non-mom) moments in life. If I’d never pushed aside my shyness and approached a stranger on the other side of a pool in St. Thomas, I wouldn’t have one of my dearest friends.

So, with the exception of vegetables, I find that those two quotes have guided me (quite successful) throughout my life (thanks, Mom!).

I’m bringing this up because I’ve been uttering those quotes to myself a lot the last few weeks as I embark on a completely new writing project.

The idea came to me about a year ago, but, because of books I’m contracted to write, the time never presented itself.

Until now.

Thanks to a small break in my writing schedule, I found myself with an opportunity to truly dabble. It’s going slow…very slow. And, at times (okay, a lot) I find myself doubting whether I can do it. I question whether I can do the plot justice. I second guess myself on the pacing, the voice, the everything. Yet, that little voice inside myself keeps telling me to write and reminding me of those oh so familiar quotes.

And so I keep writing.

Maybe it will be what I envision in my head. Maybe it will be better (or, gulp, worse). But I won’t know if I don’t try, right? 😉

So how are you with trying something new? Do you second guess yourself, or just dive right in?

~Laura