Speed Dating For Writers

by Kathleen Ernst

I recently attended Malice Domestic, an annual celebration of the traditional mystery. Participating authors were invited to enter a drawing to earn a place on the roster for Malice-Go-Round. "It's like speed dating for authors," explained Barb Goffman, who organized the event.

I've been involved with Malice for years, but this is the first year my name came out of the hat. I teamed up with my writer-pal Molly MacRae. Convention attendees (i.e. readers) settled down at twenty banquet tables to be enlightened.

Teams of authors moved from table to table. Each author had two minutes to introduce readers to our newest titles, and thirty seconds to move to the next table.

That's me introducing readers to the latest Chloe mystery,
The Light Keeper's Legacy.  (Greg Puhl photo)

The next ninety minutes passed very quickly. At the end I was exhausted. Would I do it again? Heck, yes! I was very glad for the opportunity to make a personal, if brief, connection to so many avid mystery fans.

If you're considering participating in this or a similar event, here are a few observations:

If you have the opportunity, work with a friend. Molly and I quickly developed a rhythm that perfectly fit the allotted time. It also helped, I think, that our books have some common elements.

Me and Molly at Love Is Murder in Chicago Last Febraury,
 where we were each honored with LOVEY Awards.

(I participated in a similar event once where I was paired with a new author at each table. The organizer explained that the rotation was set up that way so no individual was "stuck" with a time-hog for the entire session. A fair point, but it made it impossible to ever settle into a routine.)

I asked several readers afterwards what worked best for them. Their suggestions were simple:  Be friendly. Make eye contact. Share why this book is important to you instead of simply summarizing the plot. Don't over-hype.

Since I'd just received my ARC of the next Chloe Ellefson mystery,
 I couldn't resist showing that too.  And my latest kids' mystery is on the table! (Greg Puhl photo)

The feedback on giveaways was mixed. A few authors walked in with baskets full of little gifties, which immediately instilled in me an inferiority complex. Like most, I passed out bookmarks. I appreciated it when people who weren't interested in my work simply passed them back to me before I left the table. Most of the readers I spoke with said they took everything home to sort through later.

One table was left empty so each author team would get a four-minute rest break part-way through. I assumed "part-way" meant "half-way," and so steered Molly to Table 1. What I didn't notice was that the rest table was the *last* table, so Molly and I didn't get a break at all. Not my best move ever, but hey, somebody had to take Table 1. And Molly's still speaking to me, so all ended OK.

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to Barb Goffman and her team. Malice-Go-Round worked like the proverbial well-oiled machine, thanks to their organization. (And Barb does this on top of organizing panels, too.)

Here are all the participating authors. (Greg Puhl photo)

I've already signed up for Malice 2014, and I'll toss my name into the Go-Round lottery again.   Hope to see you there!

(Until then, you can always visit me at www.kathleenernst.com - I have some great book giveaways going on!)

Dream a Little Dream

By Deborah Sharp
What would you do with $590 million (and change)?

That hypothetical question pondered by Powerball dreamers nationwide is now a reality for someone in Florida. As I write this, the winner of this weekend's drawing has not yet come forward to claim the booty. But the winning ticket was sold at a Publix grocery store in Zephyrhills, Fla.

Five-hundred-and-ninety million! Would you quit your job? Stop writing books? Write MORE books? Buy a full library of books?

Would you invest the money and make even more money? Would you give it all away? Purchase every posh and pricey thing you ever wanted, or start a foundation to do good?

Believe it or not, I've never fantasized about what I'd do if I won more than a half-billion dollars. I think the world is divided into two camps: lottery dreamers and lottery skeptics. I'm in the latter camp; my husband falls into the former. I don't dream about what I'd do with Powerball's megamillions because I don't believe I'd ever win them. The odds are astronomical (175 million to 1). I am not a lucky person. I was 13 years old at the Gold Coast skating rink the last time I won something. It was a limbo song on a 45-rpm record (Kids: Ask your grandparents about 45s).

On the other hand, my husband Kerry Sanders remains convinced that as long as SOMEONE is going to win megamillions, it might very well be him. Kerry dutifully buys a lottery ticket or two every week. He splurged and dropped 20 bucks on Saturday night's Powerball. May I point out we are not living a life of luxury in the south of France from his vast winnings?

As a reporter for NBC, my husband has been covering the story of the winning Powerball ticket from Zephyrhills. Check out Kerry's story at this link: http://www.today.com/video/today/51931523

Doing his report on the Today show, Kerry seemed almost as excited that SOMEONE had won the big jackpot as if he himself had won it.

In my old life as a newspaper reporter, I was once assigned to track down some former lottery winners to see how they'd fared. I was far from excited about what I found. For many, the picture wasn't pretty. The majority had lost most of what they won. Horror stories abound about how money sometimes buys the opposite of happiness.

*  Take a West Virginia man, who became a multimillionaire with $315 million in lottery winnings. He fell victim to multiple thieves, was sued for sexual harassment, got banned from casinos for writing bad checks, and lost both his daughter and granddaughter to drug overdoses. He blamed the money.

* Another man, who won $16 million in Pennsylvania, was targeted by a family member who hired a killer to try to get his winnings. The murder plan wasn't successful. He went on to have six failed marriages, and wound up on welfare before he died of natural causes.

* In Florida, a woman who offered to help the winner of $30 million manage his money stole it instead. Then she fatally shot him and buried him under a cement slab in the backyard.

Woo-hoo! You're a winner!

What about you? Lottery dreamer or skeptic? Do you know any winners personally?

CARVED IN DARKNESS Has Been Released Into The Wild!

By: Maegan Beaumont



Last week was one of those weeks. You know, one of those weeks where you aren't sure if it's real. One of those weeks where you're sure someone, somewhere made a HUGE mistake to your great benefit. One of those weeks that you never want to end. My debut novel was released. I had my very first signing (alongside Matt Coyle and Darrell James) at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, to which my Writer Sisters and our mentor, Les Edgerton flew in from far off places (South Carolina and Colorado are pretty far away...). I received some fabulous reviews... and I contracted salmonella. Food poisoning aside, it was a week dreams are made of.

GREAT panel discussion with Matt Coyle and Darrell James

Matt Coyle, Darrell James and me, getting ready  to sign some books!

me, signing a book--for real!

The icing on top of my literary cake were the reviews I received. This one from Jenny Hilborne at NY Journal of books: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/carved-darkness

and this one from Library Journal... http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2013/05/books/genre-fiction/mystery/mystery-debut-of-the-month-may-1-2013/

I feel like a kid at Disneyland who just got off the Teacups--giddy, dizzy and kinda nauseous .. but ready to do it all over again!

Maegan Beaumont is the author of CARVED IN DARKNESS, the first book in the Sabrina Vaughn thriller series (Available through Midnight Ink, spring 2013). A native Phoenician, Maegan’s stories are meant to make you wonder what the guy standing in front of you in the Starbucks line has locked in his basement, and feel a strong desire to sleep with the light on. When she isn’t busy fulfilling her duties as Domestic Goddess for her high school sweetheart turned husband, Joe, and their four children, she is locked in her office with her computer, her coffee pot and her Rhodesian Ridgeback, and one true love, Jade.

Details, Details

by Sheila Webster Boneham

 



Years ago (at least fifteen), I passed a novel I had enjoyed along to my husband. Roger is a geologist, and the "love interest" in the book is a geologist, and I thought he might enjoy the story and relish meeting one of his own in a romantic lead of sorts. And he did, for the first chapter or so. Then he put it down in disgust.

"Some geologist!" he said.

Turns out the guy in the book had waxed eloquent about the cleavage in a piece of quartz. Problem is, quartz has no cleavage (which means that when it breaks, it has no parallel surfaces). That booboo clattered right by me, but for the reader in the know, it was a book-stopper.

I run into this all the time in books with animals, especially dogs. (I've shown, bred, rescued, written about, trained, and judged dogs for more than two decades, so, yeah, I care that "dog things" are accurate.") I recently read a novel in which the protagonist's dog is identified as a specific rare breed. Exciting! Then the dog is described. She's a color combination that doesn't occur in the breed and she weighs about half what she should. I had enjoyed the first pages of the book, but found it hard to keep reading past such glaring errors.

And then there was the best-selling memoir a few years ago about growing up in southern Indiana, a place of forests, deep ravines, and rolling country that I know well. I perused the book at a conference in Indianapolis, thinking I would buy a copy, but when I read that Indiana is "flat as a pancake," I was finished. Well, almost finished - I did point out the passage to a friend and the two of us snorted and laughed and snarked about pandering to East-Coaster sterotypes about the Midwest. The author's mother was standing right behind us. Ah, well.

I'm sure we've all read things in which some error in our own field of knowledge damaged or destroyed our faith in the author. In fact, almost everyone I've asked about this has produced an example from personal experience. Many of them also express similar reactions. Disappointment ("I was looking forward to this book, and then..."). Loss of trust ("If the author is wrong about the things I know, how can I trust the rest of the information?). Disgust ("It's not that hard to check the facts!").

And really, it's not hard at all. First, of course, we have the Internet. Granted, we have to be judicious about our sources, but as long as we use credible websites, blogs, forums, and other online resources, we can check out almost anything. Or at least get a leg up.

We can also go old school - libraries, books, reference librarians. All good.

We can find people who know. I saved myself from a serious error in Drop Dead on Recall by asking a physician friend read a passage in which a character uses an epinephrin pen on his wife, who seems to be having an allergic reaction. Myfriend's terse response? "Well, he just killed her." Seems my character's technique left a little to be desired. I learned, and he does it properly in the book. In that case, I called on a friend, but it isn't hard to find people in the know, and most people are generous about helping us get things right.

Need the skinny on a location? As my husband, Roger, likes to say, there's nothing like a site visit. Whether its a place or a kind of event or an institutional setting, we can do lots of reading, watch videos and films, peruse photographs, but nothing beats being there. How does the quality of light shift by the minute on the Carolina coast at sunrise? How does the heat dissipate in the high desert as the sun drops behind the Sierras? How does the grooming area at a dog show smell, or the waiting room in a hospital sound? If we can't get there, then once again, finding someone who has been there to read what we write can save us from grievous goofs, and may even give us some telling detail to add.

I'm working on the third Animals in Focus mystery right now, and am planning a couple of site visits of my own. I've already lined up some experts to keep me honest, and I have files upon files of background info. Luckily for me, the research I'm doing for this book isn't tedious at all. I get to interview lots of lovely cats and dogs.

Malice Domestic 2013

by Shannon Baker
Wow. Malice Domestic.

This pic is from the wonderful panel I shared with our generous and funny and talented Jessie Lourey. (Lea Waits, Jess Lourey, Molly Westin, me, Nora McFarland)

This was my first Malice and what an experience! I’m so excited to be able to now put faces to several of the Inkers. I won’t go into too much detail about what kind of faces they are, but almost without exception they were happy and welcoming and I’m so happy to be part of the tribe.

For those of you attending, you know what a great time it is. For those who sadly had to miss it, I won’t rub it in. But I did want to impart just a few choice tidbits I picked up going to panels. I did attend a few, really. I didn’t spend all my time in the bar.

I loved meeting and hearing Harlan Coben speak. What a class act. He’s successful, brilliant and way nicer than I’d expect a super star to be. He’s also not afraid to admit to insecurity. In his panel, he spoke about how he feels when he finishes a book. He slapped that shiny head of his and said, “I’m sure that’s the last one I’ll ever write. Thanks for the ride. I’ll have to go get a real job now.”

He went on to say that all writers are insecure. “Only bad writers think they’re good.” He did not, however, add that if you think you’re bad, you’re actually good. That kind of message might have really made my day. As it is, I can find comfort in knowing that even the great suffer.

I’d like to attribute this little insight to the right person and it might have been Harlan Coben, as well. It’s scribbled on the back of the same bookmark as these other remarks. But it could have been Sara Henry. So much of last weekend is a Jackson Pollack of thoughts, faces and great ideas in my mind. Anyway, the smart writer spoke about how each reader brings their own experience to every book. A writer might have one thing in mind but every reader experiences the images through their own filter. “Ideas in readers’ heads are like snowflakes, each one is different.”

My favorite line from the weekend’s panels again came from Harlan Coben. (Okay, a little hero worship going on here.) The panel members were talking about how they write, quick first drafts, followed by subsequent edits, or painstaking first drafts nearly perfect when finished. Coben said he’s a quick-first kind of guy, then said that for him first drafts were like illicit affairs. They are new and exciting and all-consuming. You can’t stop thinking about them, you want to be with them every second. There is no downside. He added that later drafts are more like long relationships and take work but have their own rewards.

A huge thank you goes out to the conference organizers. I can’t imagine the level of sacrifice it takes to pull off something so wonderful.

Finally, it would be a crime for me to let this opportunity pass without mentioning Midnight Ink’s own, Catriona McPherson and her big win of the Agatha for Best Historical Novel. Congratulations!

Storytelling in Another Medium

By Beth Groundwater

My husband and I are both volunteers for the Breckenridge Festival of Film, which will take place this year September 19 - 22. My husband will be a volunteer projectionist, showing films in one of the viewing venues during the festival. I have volunteered to be the Short Drama Category Head. As such I will watch and review ALL of the submitted short drama films and help the Programming Director select the Short Drama films that will be shown at the festival. Good storytelling is good storytelling, regardless of the medium, and I have been a short story judge for many writing contests in the past. So, I'm putting that experience to use in selecting short films.

My husband and I are also reviewing films in other categories, such as Documentary and Long Drama, when we can. As a fiction author, I'm familiar with the structure of story-telling, and as a former Universal Studios guide and techie friend of Pixar programmers, my husband is interested in the technology of cinematography, sound, and special effects. So, we felt like we had something to offer as reviewers, regardless of the category.

So far, I have watched and evaluated over thirty films. I rated each one on a 5 point scale, with 1 being "a horrible film" and 5 being "yes, definitely include it in the festival." I have also provided a paragraph of text explaining each rating. I've used all of the 5 categories so far, so I've watched some brilliant films and some poorly-made or just plain confusing films.

It's been an interesting experience to be on the evaluation side of the review equation, rather than having my own books evaluated by reviewers and readers. I often find that looking at other people's stories with a critical eye helps me hone my skills in ferreting out negative aspects of my own writing that need fixing. My experience in judging writing contests and participating in critique groups has proven this to be true. And, I expect the same from my film reviewing experience.

It's also exposed me to some very interesting projects. My horizons have been expanded, and I know that attending the festival itself will expand them even more, as it did last year when I attended. I admire the risks that these filmmakers are taking, even when those risks don't pan out. If you have the opportunity to attend and/or volunteer for a film festival near you, I suggest you do it. You'll get a lot out of it. Here's a list of outstanding film festivals to get you started. There are many more, and I'm sure you can find one in your area!

Have you ever attended a film festival? If so, which one? What did you think of it? Please share in a comment!

INKSPOT NEWS - May 4, 2013

Here are the new releases from Midnight Ink for May, 2013. They're all astounding reads!


Brush With Death by Karen MacInerney

"A welcome return to Maine's Cranberry Island and its sleuthing innkeeper, Natalie Barnes."     —LIBRARY JOURNAL

"The fifth Gray Whale adventure provides complex characters, stunning scenery and many recipes."     —KIRKUS REVIEWS

Carved In Darkness by Meagan Beaumont

"Pulse-pounding terror, graphic violence and a loathsome killer."     —KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Beaumont knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat . . . Buckle up for the ride of a lifetime, this one is the roughest rollercoaster you ever had to endure."     —SUSPENSE MAGAZINE

 Heard It Through the Grapevine by Lizbeth Lipperman

“Cozy fans will have fun.”     —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Entertaining, wickedly hilarious, and thoroughly addictive . . . a spectacular reading experience.”     —SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Picture Perfect Corpse by Joanna Campbell Slan

“The characters are so well developed that each installment leaves the reader yearning for the next.”     —KIRKUS REVIEWS

“A damn good read . . . Treat yourself to a wonderful traditional-feeling mystery with characters you will love.”     —CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE

BOOK LOVERS' BUFFET BOUQUET OF BOOKS

by Lois Winston

As you’re reading today’s post, I’m getting ready to attend Malice Domestic, a wonderful yearly convention of mystery authors and fans that will be held in Bethesda, MD May 3rd-5th. I’ll be taking part in Malice-Go-Round, speaking on a panel about how season affects story, and doing a book signing. At the conclusion of Malice Domestic, I’ll be heading to Oakmont, PA for the annual Festival of Mystery on Monday, May 6th.

However, there’s also something else going on over the next three days that I’m very excited about -- the Book Lovers’ Buffet.

A group of authors, many of them bestselling and award-winning authors, have gotten together to offer the Book Lovers’ Buffet, a special “Bouquet of Books” sale running from May 1st through May 3rd. During these three days, more than 175 e-books are reduced in price to just .99 cents. Categories include contemporary romance, young adult, mystery & suspense, historical, paranormal, and more.

I’m taking part in the sale with Hooking Mr. Right, one of my award-winning contemporary romances, written under my Emma Carlyle pen name. Hooking Mr. Right is a story about a guy, a girl, and a matchmaking cat. And because some people believe the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, there are also some mouth-watering recipes included.

If the chance to buy over 175 e-books for only .99 cents each isn’t enticing enough, there are also prizes galore. Visit the Book Lovers’ Buffet website for a chance to win gift cards to your choice of online retailers. $400 in gift cards are up for grabs! A total of twenty-two gift cards will be given away-- one $100, two $50, four $25, five $10, and ten $5 cards.

So click on over to the Book Lovers’ Buffet and fill up your Kindle or Nook full of great summer reading before the sale ends. After May 3rd these books will go back to their regular prices.