Beth Groundwater's News: Sniplits has chosen Beth's holiday story, "Biscuit Connection," as one of their featured audio short stories this week. For just 88 cents, you can listen to this touching story about a modern-day Scrooge who learns the true meaning of Christmas from an unlikely source.
On Monday, November 30th, from 4:00 - 4:30 pm MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME, Beth will be interviewed by Sylvia Dickey Smith on her blog talk radio show, Murder She Writes. Please listen in, either live during the show or afterward.
On Tuesday, December 1st, from 1:00 - 2:30 pm, Beth will discuss her writing with the public and the members of the Rockrimmon Fiction Book Club at the Rockrimmon Branch of the Pikes Peak Library District, 832 Village Center Drive, in Colorado Springs.
By now, most folks who have any connection with the fiction writing community have heard of National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in November. The goal of each participant in NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word first draft of a fiction novel during November. Participants record their daily writing totals at the website and form support groups to keep each other moving toward that lofty goal. By now, I'm seeing some "NaNoWriMo Winner" logos popping up on Facebook pages of writing friends, meaning they've met their 50,000 word goal. Congratulations to all the winners and kudos for your hard work!
I've resisted participating in NaNoWriMo the past because, let's be honest here, I'm a slow writer. I follow an outline and write one scene at a time, at most, in each 2-3 hour session I spend at the computer when I'm working on a rough draft. I need time in between each session to let the two-sentence or so description of the next scene in my outline percolate in my mind until the characters involved are ready to start talking to each other. Sometimes I can fit two sessions in a day, but many days, only one. This kind of writing routine does not lend itself to producing high daily page counts.
To encourage writers like me in Southern Colorado to participate in the annual November fiction-writing frenzy, Pikes Peak Writers this year set up a NaNoTryMo program, where members are encouraged to set realistic goals on their current works-in-progress and provide mutual support in TRYING to reach those goals. I set a goal of adding 20,000 words to my Evil Eddies manuscript, the second Mandy Tanner river ranger mystery that will be published by Midnight Ink. I already had about 20,000 words written, and if I met my goal, I'd be about two thirds of the way through the rough draft. I tend to write a lean first draft and add more words, mostly description, scene setting, and narration, as I go back and edit.
I'm working with a small group of local writers I know, and we're reporting our page count progress to each other in emails, along with encouragement. I'm in awe of the progress my partners are making on their works. Two are approaching the actual 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal, while I'm struggling, sitting at about 16,000 words added so far this month with three days to go. Yes, I've had a lot of distractions (this week I'm skiing in Breckenridge with my hubby, for instance), but I've got to admit the procrastination is all my fault. So, today I'm staying inside and off the slope and sitting at my computer. Hopefully my characters will cooperate and start arguing with each other so I can record their disagreements.
Please wish me luck, because I'm looking forward to attending PPW's NaNoTryMo celebration party on November 30th, and I'd sure like to be able to report that I met the modest goal I set for myself!
I can’t believe another year has passed by so fast, and the holidays are upon us once again!
First, let me say I am thankful, as always, for my family and friends and the well-being bestowed on all of us. I’m also thankful my husband enjoys cooking turkey and making stuffing. I’ve never had my hand in any bird’s “cavity,” but we’ve put a Thanksgiving feast on the table for his family and mine for seventeen years now. Better yet, both sides of the family get along…as long as the conversation doesn’t wander into religion or politics.
In honor of the holiday, I wandered over to http://www.history.com/ to check out a few fun facts about Thanksgiving. Here’s the remix of what I read:
In 1621 the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast which is now commonly thought of as the first Thanksgiving. They may have eaten wild turkey but also cod, eel, clams and lobster. They did not eat sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie, as these items were not common at the time.
Benjamin Franklin thought the turkey would be a better national symbol for the United States than the bald eagle. He thought the turkey was “a much more respectable Bird" and "a true original Native of America."
Abraham Lincoln was not the first American president to proclaim a national day for thanksgiving. George Washington, John Adams and James Madison all issued proclamations urging Americans to observe days of thanksgiving.
In 1863 Lincoln did, however, declare the final Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving. But in 1939, Franklin Roosevelt decreed the holiday should always be celebrated on the fourth (instead of the occasional fifth) Thursday of the month in order to extend the holiday shopping season by one week. Great controversy broke out, and it took Congress two years to pass a resolution making the fourth Thursday a legal national holiday. [Some things never change]
Minnesota is the top turkey-producing state in America.
The cranberry is one of only three fruits—the others are the blueberry and the Concord grape—that are entirely native to North American soil, according to the Cape Cod Cranberry Grower’s Association.
Three towns in the U.S. take their name from the traditional Thanksgiving bird: Turkey, Texas; Turkey Creek, Louisiana; and Turkey, North Carolina.
The first Thanksgiving NFL football game was broadcasted in 1934: the Detroit Lions versus the Chicago Bears at the University of Detroit stadium.
Snoopy has appeared as a giant balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade more times than any other character in history. As the Flying Ace, Snoopy made his sixth appearance in the 2006 parade.
My son, a great fan of Snoopy the Flying Ace, is celebrating his birthday today on Thanksgiving. [Okay, that’s not on http://www.history.com/ but maybe it should be] Happy birthday to my teenager! Love you lots!!
So what’s your favorite Thanksgiving food, fact, or memory? And Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Gobble, gobble :)
My story starts out the same--loved Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and the Hardy Boys as a kid, was always drawn to puzzles--but takes a sharp turn toward a cliff after that. You see, I never intended to be a mystery writer. In fact, around age 15, I stopped reading mysteries in favor of sci fi and fantasy. Then came college, and a Master's degree in English, and I couldn't break up with genre fiction fast enough.
I still devoured novels, but they were of the John Steinbeck and Thomas Hardy variety. I took a few detours through Carlos Castaneda and Tom Robbins, but otherwise it was the classics, books that some elite "they" had signed off on, The Canon of Dead White Guys Born in a Previous Century. Lots of good stuff, none of it mysteries, which were, in my mind, the fluff of the fiction world, second only to romances. How soon we lose our roots.
Then came 2001, the year I lost my husband and my world became unmoored. I had a difficult time focusing on anything for any length of time, forget reading. But my aunt shoved a Tony Hillerman book in my hand, maybe so she wouldn't have to see me wandering aimlessly, maybe as a kindness to redirect my looping mind. I couldn't step out of my loss and into the story at first, but I read the words out of habit. Soon, though, I was completely immersed in this other world, and I can't describe to you the relief not thinking about myself for those few hours gave me.
It would be a stretch to credit my recovery from that dark pit to mystery novels, but they played their part. I swung from Hillerman to William Kent Krueger to Sue Grafton to Laura Lippman, and each one gave me relief and justice. I was feeling human again by the time I got to Janet Evanovich, and it was when I found myself laughing out loud at someone else's story that I realized I wanted to write funny mysteries, too.
And so I do. And that's why I write mysteries.
My thanks to those of you out there who write and read these fabulous books.
I made beer-cheese soup. Brown the sausage, drain. Brown carrots, onion, celery. Add chicken stock. Simmer. Add grated raw milk cheddar dredged in flour, salt, pepper, Worchestershire, dry mustard, sausage and a bottle of Sierra Nevada pale ale.
Kind of made a mess.
I made bread. Easy peasy if you use the method in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which I highly recommend. But I mixed enough starter to last for two weeks. In a bucket. With my hands.
Messy.
Then there was the butter. Call me weird, but I like cultured butter but I don't like to pay eight dollars a pound for it at Whole Foods. So I mix piima culture into a jar of local cream and two days later let the standing mixer beat it to death until I get butter. And buttermilk. The real stuff. Salad dressings, pancakes ... mmmm.
Simple, but it can get a little messy.
This weekend I worked on a new writing project. First draft stuff. Notes all over my desk, stacks of books with post-its poking out, character's names changing from page to page, a notebook full of clustered plot ideas.
A real mess.
Lengthy descriptions here, not enough detail there, so many adverbs I'm surprised they didn't spill off the computer screen. Too many of the qualifying words that are my weakness -- just, only, sometimes, quite.
Blech. Such a mess.
This weekend I cleaned the kitchen. Wiped down the counters and the cupboards, scrubbed the sink, swept and mopped the floor. I did the dishes and scoured pans and shined up the appliances.
And this weekend I edited some work I wrote last week. Trimmed words, clarified dialog, rearranged awkward grammar, added sensory detail, eliminated an entire scene and sketched out a new one.
Last night I ended up with good food, and hopefully good prose. And watched the Broncos game, recorded from earlier in the day. Which was a real mess.
Michael Liedtke of the Associated Press put Keith Raffel's new book, Smasher, on his list of holiday gift recommendations. Click here to read.
And Mike Cassidy of The San Jose Mercury News wrote about Raffel and Smasher on the front page of the business section. (See image to right.) Click here to read.
I had a lovely Author's Tea last night in Okeechobee, the small, countrified Florida town that's the real-life inspiration for my books' fictional setting. Pretty china teapots and a hand-crocheted tablecloth transformed a meeting room at the public library into a parlor. My friend and fellow author Jan Day generously promoted me on her home turf. And the readers couldn't have been warmer, or more welcoming.
Which makes the contrast with another event earlier in the week all the more jarring. A friend who runs a bookstore has a theory: The number of candy wrappers she spots on the floor always predicts the level of rudeness in the crowd. Let's just say I waded through a sea of wrappers at this earlier event, held in the much more urban setting of South Florida, where I live.
A woman in the front row smacked and popped her gum so exuberantly, I feared I'd have to stop talking to pick bubblegum-pink flecks off my face. Someone else took a cell phone call in the middle of my presentation. One brazen old gal cut to the front of the signing line, and then kept pushing books at me from her cronies near the back. I was prepared to shove the line-cutter back to her rightful spot when an annoyed cut-ee did it for me. We were lucky, I guess, the police weren't called.
Where are people's manners?
And it's not just readers. I've also seen plenty of authors behaving badly. One Florida writer I know got drunk at a signing and tumbled off the podium. At the crowded, confusing Miami Book Fair, another author snapped at a fairgoer who spotted our official-looking table and innocently asked for directions:
''We're here to sign books, not help you find your way.''
She could have just pointed out the Book Fair volunteer standing three feet away who could have provided assistance. And how about those panel-hog authors at conventions? On they drone, as eyes glaze over in the audience and their fellow panelists drum their fingers on the table and seethe.
Why don't people behave?
Yeah, I know public venting isn't polite, either. But I have a final rant before I open the floor to comments. I'm the first to say booksellers deserve a special place in heaven, and I've met some truly wonderful ones in the year since my first Mace Bauer Mystery came out. Except for the one I met recently who acted like I was too insignificant an author and Midnight Ink was too obscure a publisher for this store to possibly carry my books. When I suggested she might want to see one of our catalogs, she said, ''I'm not bored. I don't have to comb through catalogs and search out new books to sell in my store.''
Really? Isn't that your job?
Okay, enough. What's your favorite example of an author, reader or bookseller behaving badly? Names can be withheld to protect the ill-mannered .... or not.
Tomorrow night at 6:00 I begin my stay-cation. A stay-cation is when you take vacation days but stay home instead of traveling. I can’t wait! Counting weekends, I will have nine full days to do whatever the hell I want – well, within reason. You see, I do have a book deadline coming up in under two months. But in theory, I will have nine days that are all mine.
Mine. Mine. All mine.
Be still my heart.
I’m making a list and checking it twice. (Sorry, Santa.) Clean and organize closet – check Read a book – check Lunch with friends – check Visit the Getty Museum – check Shampoo carpet – check Attend Drag Queen Bingo - check Write until my fingers are bleeding stumps – double check.
Hah! to cruises. Hah! to warm sandy beaches. Hah! to theme parks. I’m vacationing at the corner of Palms and Overland on the west side of Los Angeles. And the exhaust fumes from street traffic and planes on their way to LAX are complimentary. Such a deal.
In this crazy economy, stay-cations have become quite a popular. Are you planning a stay-cation? If so, what’s on your must-do list?
I'll be posting updates on my activities on my personal blog, Babble 'n Blog.
BTW – Drag Queen Bingo is really research for a new book. Honest!
