Looking for Fun

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Looking for Fun by Debra H. Goldstein

Sometimes, I don’t feel
like writing a blog.  Other times, I have
ideas galore, but not enough time to address them.  The reality, according to John Lennon is “life
is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” This has been that
kind of week. In fact, it has been that kind of month.

I could complain, but what
good would it do? And, why would I want to? 
Life isn’t perfect (ask my air conditioner), but it certainly beats the
alternative. Besides, sometimes a “bad” thing turns out to be the best thing that
could have happened. Plans falling through may mean extra time to do something
on my to-do list or to simply have fun.

Fun is something I like. I
tend to be super serious, but when there is laughter and fun, no matter what
goes wrong, the world is right. Occasionally, I forget to have fun. I become
too overwhelmed with obligations.  Responsibilities
become burdensome. Eventually, my to-do list is accomplished, but when things
aren’t fun, every task takes longer. Little roadblocks, which usually never
bother me, are irksome. When I reach that point, I need to step away, take
stock, and find my sense of fun.  It may
be a deep reach, but it always is there. Thank goodness.

What about you? How do you
find your way back to an even keel?

Glossed Cause Released

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by Bethany Maines

In book 1 of my Carrie Mae Mystery Series, Bulletproof Mascara, unemployed twenty-something Nikki Lanier was offered a position with the Carrie Mae cosmetic corporation. But soon, Nikki learned that the powder and lipstick were simply cover-up for the Carrie Mae Foundation: a secret organization of international espionage founded for the purpose of “helping women everywhere.”  Nikki’s adventures continued in Compact With the Devil, and High-Caliber Concealer, and today I celebrate the release of book 4 – Glossed Cause!  

And because I love all my Stiletto Gang readers, I’m giving away three digital copies of Glossed Cause.  Simply use the entry form below.  Winners will be notified via email on 8/14.


GLOSSED CAUSE


When Nikki Lanier’s nemesis Val Robinson returned from the dead with a request to rescue Nikki’s long-absent father, Nikki dropped everything to go do it. But soon Nikki realizes that if wants to her life back, she’s going to have not only save her father, but convince her boyfriend that Carrie Mae isn’t a terrorist organization, and stop an international arms dealer. Can she do it, or is it a Glossed Cause?


Buy the E-BOOK or PRINT book now!

or
Enter to win a free copy!
 

ENTER TO WIN

NO LONGER A TEXTING VIRGIN

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By AB Plum

Once, long ago in a faraway galaxy, I vowed never, ever, under any circumstances would I text.
Keeping that oath proved easy for a long time. I secretly felt a kind of snobbish pride for refusing to follow the herd. Hey, I knew friends who bragged they texted in bed before going to sleep. Some claimed they texted in their sleep. One friend crossed the street without looking either way, stepped in a pothole, and broke her ankle while texting.

Yes, I loudly—indiscreetly—disdained dependence on “electronic pacifiers.” I swallowed judgments about addictive behaviors.

Of course anyone who’s ever sworn such pledges or scorned similar vices—er, I mean, behavior—knows what’s coming.

Just desserts. Punctured pride. Public confession.

Earlier this summer, I chatted face-to-face with a young tekkie about helping me create a video for my Amazon author page. We worked out several details about communicating. I thought I made clear my preference of email rather than by phone or text. I thought she agreed. She left, and I shot off an email with a summary of our agreement.

No return message the next day gave me pause. Day Two, I found four texts from her.

I could’ve called—except she’d told me she hadn’t set up her voice mail and rarely answered her phone because she and her friends texted.
Continuing to email her made little sense.

So, I put my thumbs to keyboard. Human thumbs are amazing digits—necessary for all kinds of tasks requiring dexterity. Some evolutionary biologists suggest our thumbs may have helped the brain develop. I hope not. My thumbs definitely failed to expand that part of my brain required to master those infinitesimally tiny keys on my cell phone.

Cursing and stamping my foot didn’t help. Pep talks about my fast typing skills never sparked—let alone fired—a single neural synapse. Gritted teeth hurt my jaw, but I finally took a deep breath.

After repeated tries—I refuse to specify how many tries constituted repeated—I managed to type Ck email pls. My thumbs throbbed. I pressed SEND, pumped my hand in the air, and vowed, “Never again.”

Seconds later, my tekkie assistant texted, “Cmptr unavbl. bad time to tlk. pls txt me.”

Numbers to set the time of day for another consult, I quickly discovered required far more dexterity than letters of the alphabet. But … there’s a tradeoff. Forget wasting time on spaces. Or paragraphs. Capitals, commas, and spelling? Hang-ups from formal writing. Unnecessary in casual speech—which is what texting really is.

Over the next hour, I texted a total of three short—very short—messages. But my texting efforts came to nothing. My tekkie assistant informed me she was leaving town the next day and couldn’t take on my video project after all. She closed with an emojican I interpreted as relief vs regret.

Okay, I’ve lost my texting virginity, but my texting days are behind me. Honest. Instead, I’m putting my energy into goat yoga.

*********** When she’s not practicing goat yoga or commenting on texting, AB Plum writes dark, gritty psychological thrillers in the heart of Silicon Valley. Since no texting is required for publication of her MisFit Series, Book 2, The Lost Days is scheduled on August 15. 

Sign up here for your free copy along with some exclusive content.














A Shakespearean Tragedy by Juliana Aragon Fatula

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I loved all of my students; of course there were the disadvantaged, the shy, the challenged, the misfits, and the freaks; I loved them all. A few of them kept in touch for the last six years. I follow their graduation to college to work to whatever happens next in their lives. I wasn’t prepared for the news I received on Friday. It was heart breaking to learn about one of my student’s eighteen year old brother murdered in cold blood and left like trash to bleed to death at the reservoir.  
I heard one of my students was arrested and in jail for a violent homicide. I thought about that student and the conversations we’d had in my classroom. She was smart, pretty, talented, and young. Too young to realize that being in the wrong place with the wrong person can get you six to ten years in the Colorado State Pen.
Southern Colorado 2016
I feel empathy for the student who lost her brother. She also was smart, pretty, talented, young; she attends college and works part time. She took my advise to look both ways. But I feel something for the student in jail because it could have been me. It could have been any of us if we’d made the wrong choice and dated that infamous bad boy. The only crime she committed was being the girlfriend of a criminal, a murderer, and for not going to the police. Maybe she feared her boyfriend would kill her too.
1972 Freshman in high school

I wish I knew what to say to these two young women. But I do know one thing. You can change your destiny. You can change yourself; become a better person. You can hate life and turn evil because someone murdered your brother and you want revenge. Or you can stay in college and graduate and go out into the world and make something of yourself and change the world. 

I predict one of these two women will change their destiny and do something incredible with their life. I’d tell the young woman in jail that her life is not over but she damn better get her shit together and find new friends and a better life for herself. She can serve her time and still be in her thirties when she’s released. She can become anything she decides to do with her life. She can volunteer at a homeless shelter, she can go to night school and become a doctor; she can travel the world and save humanity.

Denver, Colorado 1990’s
I know it’s possible because I turned my life around and by the time I was fifty, I had graduated from university with a degree in language arts, found work teaching middle school in my hometown, married for twenty-five years and sober for twenty-seven years. I turned my life around because I saw the inside of a jail cell and I freaked out. I vowed to never end up in trouble again. I don’t jaywalk, speed, run red lights. I walk the walk and talk the talk. whatever the hell that means. I decided to make new friends.

Today my friends are writers, artists, educators, film makers, publishers, journalists. My friends used to be drug dealers, thieves, drug addicts, alcoholics, drunk drivers… I was not a thief, or drug dealer but I dated men who were. I made a huge mistake. I made it about twenty times.

I hope my students read this and understand I’m not judging them. I lost a brother in law when I was fifteen and he was nineteen. He died from a gunshot wound that paralyzed  him and eventually his organs shut down. I lost boyfriends who either committed suicide or drank themselves to death. I survived. Life is hard. But it is so worth the work. 

Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming

Black Bridge above the Arkansas River in Southern Colorado

Moving from One Life to Another

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by Linda Rodriguez
I am currently in the final, panic-driven stages of downsizing before our final walk-through with the buyers of our house. I feel guilty even taking time to write this blog post because I know I don’t have enough time left, and we’ll be pulling all-nighters to make it. Those are a lot harder when you’re in your late fifties and sixties than they were in your teens and twenties, believe me.

I have packed up boxes of books to give to my sister and my friends, and that’s not too hard. It doesn’t hurt so much to give them away to people I care about. It’s the other boxes, packed to sell, that hurt my heart.

The same thing goes for the fabric for my art quilting. It’s all beautiful, and though I cannily bought much of it on sale, it’s expensive, high-quality fabric and will cost a bundle to replace. But I have reached the limit I set myself for taking to the new house, which is slightly less than half the square footage of our current home but without its copious storage (attics, basement, two-car garage, many built-in cupboards). It was agonizing to choose which to keep and which to let go. I know I should have sold it, but I feel so much better about the bags and bags of gorgeous fabric going to my friends and to an organization I’m deeply involved with.

I’ve already done this hard work with the glassware and china and silver–and with clothes and linens. I’ve been fighting the papers-and-books battle all along, and I suspect they’ll go on to the end. There’s just so much of both categories. I’ve finally finished the fabric and sewing supplies and am now in the midst of the knitting-and-weaving-yarns-and-needles stash, another heartbreaker. Fortunately, a lot of it will go to my daughter and son, and that will make letting go of half of it so much easier. I don’t even want to think about the spinning fibers yet. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

I’m a quadruple Scorpio, and one of the symbols for Scorpio is the phoenix, mythical creature that rebirths itself out of destruction over and over. I’ve always felt that I lived many lives in this lifetime. There was the life that I call Queen of the PTA while I raised my oldest two kids and a foster son. Then there was the life of the divorce years where I went back for degrees and frantically worked multiple jobs to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. Then there was the life of university administrator, running a women’s center and teaching. Etc., etc. I feel now that I’m coming out of the life of cancer patient and getting ready to move into another with this move from my home of 42 years, so here’s a poem for that process.


A PHOENIX, SHE MOVES FROM
LIFE TO LIFE

and leaves only the ashes
of her old self
behind. She plunges into
the dark
future from the glare of
her funeral pyre
that brightens the sky of
her past
for miles and years and
leaves a legend
told to generations of
children
of a vast golden one
whose gleaming
body rose from the
burning corpse,
blotting out the moon
with huge wings beating
against
the burning air to lift
the dead
ground to the living
night sky
and fly through the moon
to a new place with new
people
where she could be new
herself—
until the destroyer
strikes again.

Like a hunting eagle,
she lands, claws
outstretched,
golden crest and feathers
lost
in transit, her wings
already disappearing.
She grows backward,
smaller.
Now she can only crawl
into and out of shallow
holes
in the ground of this new
life.
Still, the wise avoid
trampling her
for they know
she drags death behind
her.

Published in
Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha, 2009)

Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and
The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family
Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police
chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear December 19, 2017. Her three
earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken
Trust, and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

The Balancing Act Between Reader Expectations and Fresh Writing

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by Sparkle Abbey


Reader
expectation is a powerful thing.
Especially today when readers can jump on the Internet and express with
contagious enthusiasm that what we’ve created has met their expectations. Those
reviews rock! Or they can write a scathing review on Amazon when they’re upset
with a book, promising to never, ever read that author’s work again. Ouch.
We believe every author thinks about what their readers want. And we love the fans who tell
us they really don’t have expectations. They just want to read a good book and
escape from the daily chaos of their life. Hmmm…that’s kind of an
expectation.
If you’re
writing genre fiction, there are a few universal expectations to keep in mind
right off the bat.

In a romance,
readers want a heroine and hero who are worthy of each other. Readers look for
chemistry, tension and a conflict that can’t be resolved with a simple
face-to-face conversation. They want an engaging plot and an emotionally
satisfying ending.

We write cozy
mysteries. There are also basic reader expectations for our genre. The obvious
one—our readers expect a dead body. Two? Even better. Cozy readers often don’t
want to see violence or anything graphic on the page, but they do want rising
tension and a strong conflict. The savvy cozy reader also expects a great
puzzle to solve along with the sleuth.
Those are
pretty straightforward.
It’s the
expectations that come after fans have read a specific author or series that
plant themselves in the writer’s thoughts and can potentially derail or bog
down the storyline. How do you give the loyal reader what they want and still
keep the series evolving?  
Is it
possible to add new and fresh ideas and still not disappoint? An author’s
voice, tone, theme and characters are part of why a reader returns to a
favorite author or series. It’s important those elements remain consistent, but
you can still change things up. Add a twist. Perhaps a new challenge or a new
character.
We write pet
themed cozies—no animals are harmed; only people are dead. That’s an
expectation. Could you imagine if we ever put an animal in danger? Talk about
blowing up reader expectations. We’d lose most of our audience. So we choose
not to go down that path. Is that us being swayed by our reader expectations?
Sure, it is. But we’re not really interested in writing that type of story
anyway, so it’s a win-win situation.
Our readers
of the Pampered Pets series (some anyway) also want Caro and Mel, our Texas
cousin amateur sleuths (who are currently not speaking to each other) to make
up and work together. Will we change the course of the series to meet that
expectation? Probably not. If we did, we’d lose built-in conflict and tension.
You know, those basic genre standards mentioned earlier. However we can’t let
Caro and Mel rehash the same scenarios over and over, or our readers will
quickly tire of the conflict.
To maintain
what readers want and yet keep the story new, you have to throw in some surprises.
Still it’s important to note that while surprises are good, twists that come
out of left-field are not. You want a spin that logically flows from the
characters’ journey, not a jarring bolt from the blue. A revelation, not a
bombshell.  An unexpected development, but one that feels exactly
right for these characters.
To do that a
writer must walk the line. It’s a balancing act. Sometimes a tight-rope
balancing act. You must find that intersection where the story continues to
provide the experience that made readers fall in love with it in the first
place. And yet, you must mix in something fresh and new that provokes readers
and makes them wonder just what you’re going to be up to next!
What do you
think? Authors, do you take into account readers’ expectations as you’re
writing? Have you ever been influenced by fans to alter a storyline or a
character? What methods do you use to keep a continuing storyline fresh?
Readers, what
kinds of expectations do you have? Any things you love or pet peeves about
stories in a continuing series?

We’d love to
hear your thoughts!
Mary Lee and Anita aka Sparkle Abbey





Here’s a little more news from us:
We are busy working on books nine and ten in The Pampered Pets Mysteries.

Also, if you’re missing any of our backlist this is a great time to catch up so you’re ready for book eight. Details on all the titles are available here.
And if you want to make sure you’re up on all the Sparkle Abbey news, stop by our website and sign up for updates at sparkleabbey.com

This blog first appeared on The Seekerville blog in August of 2014.

Road Trip to Las Cruces, New Mejico, los estados unidas by Juliana Aragon Fatula

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2017 Denise Chavez Casa Camino Real, Las Cruces, NM

Hello gang! I’m back. I travelled to the border with a great friend, Dr. Judy Noel. I’ll tell you about my adventures and experiences in the bookstore, Casa Camino Real. A brilliant writer, Denise Chavez, invited me to visit her bookstore. You don’t have to ask me twice. Hey. I’m there. And with a cool traveling companion the infamous Dr. Judy Noel, what could go wrong? Right? Ten Thousand dollars worth of hail damage to my new Subaru. But no one was hurt, no one cried, no one died and no one lied. So I call that a successful road trip. 
Have you ever had so much fun that you felt elevated to a new dimension? Medical marijuana has the same effect. But this high on life came from a writing workshop with the master writer, Denise Chavez. 
I marked my calendar and planned my road trip for months. I saved every penny, literally, I cashed in $25.39 in loose change. I saved my $500 prize money from the 2016 High Plains Book Award in Poetry. (I’m judging poetry books this year.) My pussycat, Vince, gave me some mad money. I didn’t spend it; I’m saving for my  next road trip. So with a full tank of gas in my 2016 Silver Surfer Subaru, Judy and I grabbed our bags and books and hit I-25. 
The writing workshop was magical. I’m pleased that I convinced myself to keep trying until I finally made it to Las Cruces to interview my new comadre and best selling author of Chicana Literature, Denise. Her bookstore has power. It’s sacred in a way only spiritual people understand. The building has wooden beams and is made of adobe. The kitchen opens its arms and says, “Come have a cup of  café olla. The best cupa you’ll ever drink because it’s magical, too. 
Piles and piles everywhere of rare books, old books, signed books and art by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Georgia O’Keeffe. Her vinyl collection made me salivate for a turntable. I know plenty of people who only play vinyl. I saw her rare and unique collection of LPs. 

She gathered nine women and she made ten around her long writing table. The kind you find at the library. Everything had a story. An amazing story. I learned about the holy tortilla with the face of Jesus. I never knew. I learned about history, music, literature, Greek theatre; I created my own myth ofrenda from a recycled cigar box. It became magical, too.

Afterwards, Denise and I sat in the sweltering heat, 108 degrees on Saturday, and I interviewed her for my blog. I used my iPad video camera and it looks beautiful. The audio is perfect. I can hear every nuance in Denise’s voice. Like when she asked how much for an iPad. I said, “a hundred bucks.” She sat up with a jolt and said, “What? A hundred? I gotta get me one of those!” Then the interview began. I asked the questions my husband had argued were too much for first questions. He said ask those later. Denise, said, “No. Those are the questions to ask.” And they were. She told me stories and we laughed. She told me tragedies and I nodded my head and smiled tight lipped. I knew her stories like they were mine. I’ve read her books and she has a style unique to her and her alone.

I’m here to learn from the master and transfer that knowledge to other women writers of color. The doctor orders; she said, “Juliana, drive to Las Cruces and go get you mojo back.” And I did. Denise Chavez changed my life.

When I made it home to Colorado, I walked in the backyard and started the irrigation pump for my Chicana Garden. Everything in bloom, birds chirping, dogs barking…I felt alive and content to be who I am and where I am. So what if I’m not Stephen King, I’m a talented writer with a bright future. I need to surround myself with other writers from time to time to remind myself that I’m a writer. Yes, a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, a teacher, a mentor, but if I don’t write, I get a little crazy. No one understands this dilemma more than a woman writer and in my case a woman of color.

Denise Chavez is my mentor. I’m going to study and learn everything I can from this woman; they don’t make them like her anymore. She’s original, traditional, spiritual, humorous and professional. She’s the cat’s meow. She raises funds for feral cats to be neutered. She holds press conferences at her bookstore for los libros traficantes to support the books that have been banned in Arizona. She teaches writing workshops to the community and welcomes anyone to her adobe.

Someday when I finish my novel: the Colorado Sisters, I’ll thank Denise in the acknowledgements because she taught me something valuable: I am a writer.

My interview with Denise Chavez is coming soon. Keep posted.