The Glamour of It All

Tom Schreck













Author of TKO






TKO, A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery has been released and you know what that means--that's right, the excitement and high style of a tour to support the promotion.

That started last night for me and here's some quick notes from the road.

* It's nice landing your own means of transportation at the Hamburg NY airport. It's not easy to land a 2001 Lincoln Town Car with duct tape on the front bumper at an airport.

* I'm on the two-day trek to Southfield Mi for the famous Michigan Basset Hound Waddle. The main picnic where I am the feature author was moved indoors to the ballroom. 500 hounds in a ballroom. The bid to have your dog named in my third book is now the top or near the top item in the auction. I'm not sure if Sotheby's is running the auction.

* My three dogs Roxie, Wilbur and Riley are on the trip in the same car. An hour from home Roxie takes a leak on the back seat. Riley insists on laying his head on my thigh which gives me a cramp. Wilbur has gas.



* I start cursing at the GPS because it keeps telling me to "Keep Left". I want to get to the hotel.

* We are staying at the the Five Star "Red Roof Inn". The woman at the desk looks like she's a professional wrestler. There are lots of teenagers hanging out of the rooms.

* We have an exquisite dinner of Domino's Pizza and I drink five beers faster than I ever have in my life. I decide that my prescription for "occasional anxiety" is needed and I pour myself an Evan Williams Bourbon ($10.99 per quart) that wouldn't fit in a Hellman's mayonaise jar.

* Riley and Roxie get in a fight at 12:30 am over a synthetic bone I bought to calm them.

* At 2:46 I awake to find Roxy not eating the $5.46 Pedigree "Busy Bone". She is eating my leather wallet. I repeatedly yell the word "Fuck!" while Wilbur has a barking fit.

* At 5:16am Riley again threatens Roxy's life.

* At 6:55am I take the dog's for a walk. For some reason the other guests of the hotel don't seem very friendly. They all seem to give me a dirty look and mutter "asshole" when I walk by with the three hounds. When my wife lets me back in the room I think I hear her mutter the same thing. Though when I ask what she said she says "nothing."

* 7:42 and time to write the blog to stay in contact with my millions of fans. My wife is in the shower and Roxy is trying to join her. I'm guessing after last night Roxie has a better shot than I do.

* Soon you will read about an incident at the Canadian border involving 3 hounds, a woman and a raving lunatic having a fit.

Ahh...the big time life of an author.

Money for Nothing

by G.M. Malliet

An author with a book due out begins to divide the world into two categories of people.

The first category will say, when you tell them about your book, "That's great! When and where can I buy it?" One friend of mine was actually sensitive enough to ask, "Where should I buy it so you get the bigger royalty? Online or in the stores?" These people are going straight to author's heaven.

The second category of person (and this is rare, fortunately) will say, when you tell them you have a book coming out: "That's great! When do I get my free copy?" While you are tempted to think they're kidding - they must be kidding - they're not.

Now, think about it. Would you ask me to paint your house for free? Alter your jacket? Wash your dog? Well, maybe some people would, since the concept of writing a book as involving actual labor, possibly spanning many years, doesn't seem to have occurred to them.

I'm still working on a snappy comeback to this. After all, I think this request for a free book has everything to do with ignorance of the writing biz and nothing to do with greed. I think the request is even meant to be flattering ("I am curious to read your book, just not curious enough to pay for it" may be the subtext). But the fact is, I would rather take $14 out of my purse and set fire to it than give my work away - to treat it as something of no value.

The belief that authors receive all the free copies of their books they want may play into this. But MI authors get only ten copies of their books, and mine are long since ear-marked for people who, like, saved me from drowning. I got ONE free copy from the publisher of an anthology in which my short story appeared.

It's a simple equation: Books cost money. Selling books is how authors pay the rent. Please don't ever ask an author for a free copy of his/her book.

And don't even think about asking to borrow the book so you can read it.

Thank you. The rant has ended; go in peace.

Why Do We Have to Read This Crap Anyway?

Okay, confession time. I was a closet geek in high school. Well, okay, maybe I wasn’t so much in the closet as I might think. Sure, I played baseball all through high school and I even played football for one year before I realized that football is the modern equivalent of the gladiatorial games – and I wasn’t the lion. So I had my cool clique to hang out with. I wasn’t the kind of nerd that did extra credit trigonometry problems nor was I on the chess team or the kid with the clichéd pocket protector. But I was a kid that loved to read.

Hey, I was 16 – it wasn’t cool to “read” anything that wasn’t glossy and had half clothed to mostly unclothed women in it. But I did. And I liked it. And I don’t think anyone at my high school but Mr. Macmillan knew how much I like it. He could tell. He could see the signs. All of us in the literature cult know the signs. I bet some of you in the audience know the signs.

And although I haven’t reread many of those novels we read back in Advanced Literature, I do remember them. I remember the feeling they gave me. The feeling of power. Of understanding human nature just a little bit better – at a time in life when all of human nature and motivation was a snake ball to me. I still haven’t figured out why Lisa Ackerman hated me. But I’ve gotten over it...

Anyway, the books were my friends – closet friends – but good friends nonetheless. They got me through some weird times and I’m thankful for their service – then and now. Because just as they taught me lessons back then, they teach me lessons today. Like I said, I haven’t reread most of the classics, but they’ve stuck with me as I pull together stories and ideas and themes and plots and all the other building materials that make up a novel.

So 20 some odd years later I say, “Here’s to you good and noble friends! Thank you for being there – then and now!”

Times, they are a changin'

Somebody asked me recently about how Joe and I research our books. The person thought it had to be so tedious and boring. I started to think about that because research is probably one of the highpoints of writing the kinds of novels we do. It is amazing how one thing leads to another, then chains another thought and suddenly out of nowhere there is a miraculous connection and the storyline gets tighter and tighter. We have often thought that there have been so many omens and coincidences in our writing and research that it is more than we can ignore. Some kind of woo-woo factor.

I also started thinking about how much things have changed. When I first started writing historical fiction ages ago, under the name Lynn Armistead McKee, there was no information highway—Internet. I would spend hours and hours in the library thumbing through sources, some I couldn’t even check out. Then I’d come home with a bundle of books (2 trips to the car) that I would spend days going through. Now, with a couple of keystrokes I have the world at my door. I look at my grandkids, the little ones, and they will think I have gone completely senile when I mention Wolfman Jack, or church key, bop, pink elephant sale, cake walk, Maypole dance. When they hear that I am related to Dolly, they will shudder at the thought their grandma has a cloned sheep in the family—which means grandpa had to be doing what? It was Dolly Madison to which I was proudly referring. Then I think about my generation and when we were hip teens. A browser was the same as a grazer, and the first handheld calculators cost a pretty penny (now they come free on computers and almost free as accessories to planners, etc.). If someone said “cell” I thought of things like cell membrane and nucleus. Now, it’s just a common communication device. Years ago texting, beeper, online, internet, DVR, memory stick, digital, and Amber alert meant nothing to me. Wow, how times change.

InkSpot News - 10 May 2008

Jess Lourey is currently on a virtual blog tour promoting August Moon, the just-released fourth book in her Lefty-nominated Murder-by-Month series. Check out her website (www.jesslourey.com) for links to the tour and to learn about about August Moon and the Murder-by-Month series.

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Tom Schreck's second Duffy Dombrowski Mystery, "TKO" has been released and is available at all the usual places. "On the Ropes", the first in the series was a finalist for Best First Mystery by Crimespree
Magazine and at the Love is Murder Convention where it was also nominated as Best Suspense Mystery.

Tom is featured on the cover of Crimespree this month along with fellow fighter and mystery writer Mike Black.

Tom is the guest author at the world famous Michigan Basset Waddle next weekend May 16-17 in Southfield Mi where thousands of bassets and their human food slaves will gather. Tom wants everyone to know that he was chosen over James Patterson and Stephen King. Tom will be signing books(and giving the proceeds to basset rescue) and is auctioning off a chance to name a character(dog or human) in his third Duffy mystery "Out Cold."

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Friends of Mystery wants to know what your favorite mysteries are. Between now and August 1, 2008 Friends of Mystery is collecting and compiling fan favorites in the categories of cozy, hardboiled and thriller published in 2007/2008, as well as favorite author and all-time favorite mystery. To share your favorites, use My Favorite Mystery online form, or or mail your favorites to FOM, P.O. Box 8251, Portland, Oregon 97207.

Results will be published in the September 2008 Blood-Letter, the newsletter of Friends of Mystery.

Thanks, Mom

by Felicia Donovan

As we celebrate the goodness and giving spirit of mothers all over this weekend, I'd like to take a moment to thank my mother, Sharon, for many things.

I was not the easiest child to raise, being the baby of the lot. I learned to tell tales early on, so it's no coincidence that I ended up being a writer. In fact, some of my more memorable "tales" somehow manage to resurface with regularity at family gatherings.

There was the time I deliberately bit my own hand in an attempt to frame one of my sisters. My mother, a devout mystery fan, quickly deduced that the bite mark had two missing teeth. I just happened to be the only one with missing teeth at the time. Caught...

When I cleverly scribbled my sister's name on the furniture, Mom wondered why my sister would use a color crayon she knew she hated but I loved. Caught again...

Mom always said she had to raise each of us differently because we were all so unique - something I only came to appreciate once I became a mom.

Most of all, I remember my mother with children perched on each knee, snuggled in arms and tucked beside her as she read to us. She imbued a love of reading in all of us. As adults, we still can't get enough books.

My early attempts at writing were feeble, but you would have thought I'd written a Pulitzer the way my mother gushed over them. She, too, was a writer and I remember her excitement at seeing her name in print in a magazine for the first time.

Like my main character's mother in THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY, my mom has an incredibly strong outlook on life. She treated not one, but two bouts of cancer as a minor inconvenience and an interruption to her plans to get to Foxwoods. No big deal. If luck be a lady, it's my mom. She's won grand prizes and free cars, but I feel like I'm the luckiest of all.

This weekend, as we celebrate all the Mom's out there, remember the very special women who've made a difference in your life. Sometimes they're not always biologically related, but if you know of a special lady who's always been there for you, take the time to thank her. I know I just did. Love you, Mom.

What Scent Defines You?

Last night I watched an unusual and captivating movie called Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I love historical mysteries and as this movie was based on Patrick Suskind's Das Parfum, I thought this might be right up my alley. With the exception of one scene I could have done without, it was. Try to imagine a combination of Les Miserables and a Hannibal Lecterish physiological, serial killer-type thriller (without Dr. Lecter’s penchant for eating people). I was especially impressed with the camera work, which brought both the noxious and luxurious scents of 18^th century Paris. And I love the costumes of that time period too! Now, I only recommend this film if you can handle a mixture of the seductive, disturbing, and extremely creepy.

Regardless of the fact that I had already stayed up way past my bedtime, I started thinking about the individuality of scent. From our perfumes to our lotions to our shampoo, we like very distinct smells. Even the candles we light can vary dependent on the season or our mood. We also tend to change our favorite scents from time to time. For example, I wore Anais Anias for years and then, without any reason, decided that it wasn’t the smell I wanted to define me.

So let’s trade the perfumes, colognes, and lotions that we’ve used for years. The olfactory hints that remind others of us. What does your pillowcase smell like? Your clothes? Your hair? The center of your wrist? Here are my favorites:

• Perfume – Happy by Clinique (it really buoys my spirit and smells fresh, light, and festive)
• Lotion – Moisturizers with a hint of aloe
• Cleaning Products – Lemon or orange scented dish soap and air fresheners
• Flowers – Gardenias. I just melt over the smell!
• Food – An apple crisp cooking in the oven during autumn
• Candle – Any of the triple fragrances by Virginia Candle Company. If you enjoy layers of scent, check out this website!

How about you? What scents would you fill in?