Killer Excerpts and Killer Prices

by Tracy Weber

I'm so excited I can barely see straight!  A Killer Retreat, the second book in my Downward Dog Mystery Series, was a BookBub featured deal on Saturday!  It's still on sale for only $1.99 (Regularly $10.99) on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo!

Sale ends April 23, so don't wait!

Below are a few excerpts (and some photos that inspired them)  to whet your appetite.

Excerpt 1:

Bella didn’t share my initial dumpy-digs disappointment. She charged gleefully through the door and explored her new surroundings, completely ignoring the “Please Keep Dogs Off Furniture” signs. First she ran into the kitchen and placed her paws on the counter, hoping to find pot roast, I assumed. Then she jumped on the couch and furiously dug, as if searching for buried treasure. Finding nothing of interest there, she leaped onto the room’s only guest chair, sat, and regally stared across the room at Michael and me. A German shepherd queen commanding her subjects.

 

Excerpt 2:

The night was completely black, almost obsidian; its darkness, impenetrable. A carpet of moldy leaves and fragrant pine needles crunched under my shoes. Bella and I passed several empty campgrounds, a few fallen trees, and a pair of beady red eyes that didn’t belong to a German shepherd. I played the flashlight in front of me, grateful for its tepid illumination. With it, I could see the broken branches that were strewn haphazardly across the path. Without it, I’d be blind.
 

 

A sharp sound cracked behind me. Bella stopped, sniffed the air and looked over her shoulder. The hair on the back of my arms tingled.

 

“Hello, is anyone there?”

Excerpt 3:

I stood near the bluff’s jagged rock outcroppings, entranced by the view. Greenish-blue water extended for miles and birthed powerful waves that crashed over fifty feet below. The smooth, crescendoing sound was both calming and awe-inspiring at the same time. I moved closer to the edge, as if hypnotized.

“Kate, what are you doing? Get away from there.” Michael pointed to a sign several feet behind me.

“Danger. Cliffs are unstable. Walking prohibited less than three feet from edge.”

As if on cue, a rock broke free and clattered over the edge. I took several large steps back. “Suicide Bluff” suddenly felt more like a warning than a quip. The steep, dark cliffs dared me to come closer. Goaded me. Urged me to jump. An inexplicable chill burned the back of my neck. I couldn’t explain it, but the cliffs felt malevolent—evil somehow. Like they hungered for human sacrifice.

I looped Bella’s leash handle around my wrist and pulled her in closer. Gorgeous view or not, I wouldn’t come back here again. I didn’t trust this place.

Excerpt 4:

The terrier sniffed the air. His brown eyes glinted with interest.

My pretend authority morphed into all-too-real terror. I vigorously gesticulated at the phone-engrossed woman. “Hey!” I yelled, pointing at Bella. “This one doesn’t like other dogs!” The oblivious owner looked up from her phone, frowned, and turned away.

The pup took one last glance at Bella, then made his decision.

Target acquired.

This was not going to end well.


Thanks for reading!  Remember, you can purchase A Killer Retreat at a Killer Price at the links below, but only until Saturday!

• Amazon http://tinyurl.com/gmkqj3j
• B&N Nook http://tinyurl.com/jf5oewg
• Apple iBooks http://tinyurl.com/zlry2ea
• Google http://tinyurl.com/hmhy4jd
• Kobo http://tinyurl.com/jkfjeeo

Many, many thanks to Eileen Rendahl for trading blog dates with me.  I was too excited to wait until the 4^th Monday, and by then the deal would have been over anyway! 

Mystery and Mayhem—Animal Style!

I have adored animals for as long as I can remember.  From my first German shepherd, a lovely animal named Duchess, to my Holstein cow Beauty, to my first kitty, Smokey. Then there was my childhood horse, Becky, and the other assorted, dogs, cats, turtles, fish, parakeets, gerbils, canaries—even a pigeon named Lollipop—that followed.  Each has commanded a special place in my heart.


My favorite childhood cow, Beauty.

When I was a child, cats followed me wherever I went like children chasing after the Pied Piper. I nursed injured butterflies back to health. One day, I tearfully convinced my fourth grade teacher to let me release the winged grasshoppers she’d accumulated for the science class’s dissection.  I’m pretty sure the grasshoppers were happier about my success than the school’s groundskeeper.

Hanging out with a herd of cats on "Cat Island"

Not much has changed since then. When I see a drowning earthworm, I relocate it. I move caterpillars off walking trails so they don’t get smashed. I save snails and slugs.  (Don’t tell my neighbors!) If it weren’t for my husband, I’d surely be locked away in whatever prison they use to hold well-meaning hoarders. 

So it’s not surprising that animals play prominent roles in my mysteries. How could they not?  After all, I write what I love, and I love nothing more than animals.  The mystery in Karma’s a Killer gave me the perfect opportunity to weave in some unusual animal characters.  The story revolves around an animal rescue group, a wildlife rehabilitator, and a group of animal activists who clash with deadly results.

Animal rescue and animal activism collide in Karma's a Killer

As always, my writing is fiction, but it’s strongly informed by my life. Many of the animals in Karma’s a Killer are based on real-life creatures.  Bella, the German shepherd, is in many ways a carbon copy of my own special needs German shepherd, Tasha. Blackie—a rehabilitated crow who plays a prominent role in the story—is modeled after a wild crow that has befriended her. Their relationship has touched me and changed my opinion of crows forever.



Tasha and a murder of her crow friends at Green Lake--one of the pivotal locations in Karma's a Killer.

Mister Feathers, the pigeon that “decorates” the entrance to Kate’s yoga studio, is similar to a pigeon that roosted above my own yoga studio, Whole Life Yoga, a few years ago. I saved him from a hawk attack, and the experience changed me in a profound way.  If you're interested, here's a blog I wrote about that day.

Raising goats is still a pipe dream, but I’m chiseling away at my husband’s resolve a little more every day.  If I have my way, pigs and a few chicken-girls will soon join the menagerie.  ;-)

Someday I'll have some chicken-girls!

How about you?  What animals are important in your life?  Tell me about your favorite furred, feathered, scaled, and exoskeletoned creatures in the comments.  Who knows?  Maybe they’ll end up in my next mystery!

Tracy Weber

PS--all three books in my Downward Dog mystery series are now available!  Learn more at http://tracyweberauthor.com.  Thanks for reading!

Finding Clarity

“Ignorance is bliss. Until it isn’t.”—Kate Davidson in A Killer Retreat.

 

Although the primary intention of my mystery series is to entertain, I’ve been known to weave in the occasional yoga teaching. One of the themes in my second book, A Killer Retreat, is overcoming fear. Kate, my yoga teacher protagonist, believes she will soon have to make a decision: marry her boyfriend, Michael, or end their relationship. She’s terrified of both options, so she tries to avoid the issue, hoping that if she hides from the problem, it will eventually solve itself.

Good luck with that, Kate.

The Yoga Sutras say that one of the primary goals of yoga is to learn how to see clearly. But how do you know when you’re clear? For me, clarity comes with a calm certainty. When I’m clear, I know that my decision is right, whether I want it to be or not. Lack of clarity, on the other hand, carries with it an often-uncomfortable energy. That energy can feel like a jittery high or an immobilizing fear. The Yoga Sutras refer to this psycho-emotional suffering as Dukha, a “hole in the cavity of the heart.” For me, it usually feels more like a hole in the lining of my stomach. Some people feel this sensation in their chests, others in their throats, still others as jitteriness and irrepressible activity in their limbs.

In my last teacher training, a student told me that she wanted a crystal ball to guide her decisions. I’ve wished for that same crystal ball many, many times: when I was trying to figure out if I should leave Microsoft; when I considered writing my first book; when I first thought about opening a yoga studio. In each of those cases, I kept reflecting, gathering data, and tapping into my intuition. One day, I knew. And once I know, I never look back.

There are many right choices in life. In fact, the Sutras assert that the exact paths of our lives are largely irrelevant. All that matters is how we relate to them. If I could give Kate—or any of my readers—one piece of advice, it would be this: find a calm place of knowing, choose the path that feels right, and walk it with grateful acceptance. Hopefully Kate will come to a similar conclusion. You’ll have to read the book to find out!  ;-)

May you all have paths filled with light, joy, and an abundance of beauty.

Tracy Weber

          

About Tracy:

My writing is an expression of the things I love best: yoga, dogs, and murder mysteries. I'm a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, WA. I enjoy sharing my passion for yoga and animals in any form possible.  My husband and I live with our challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha. When I’m not writing, I spend my time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at my favorite local ale house.

For more information, visit me online at http://tracyweberauthor.com/ and http://wholelifeyoga.com/

Do Awards Boost Anything Except Egos?

My editor, the fabulous Terri Bischoff here at Midnight Ink, recently published a blog article in which she wondered out loud if winning an award—be it the Agatha, Lefty, or Edgar—meant anything to readers or to the future sales of an author.

It’s a valid question. We all bemoan poorly written manuscripts that manage to become New York Times bestsellers. I’ve yet to see a positive correlation between number of awards won and number of copies sold. So, other than hoping for an ego boost, why even bother?

The answer, for me, became clear last Sunday night when my first book, Murder Strikes a Pose, won the Maxwell Award for Fiction. Most of you have probably never heard of the Maxwell awards. In the mystery world, they are barely a blip on the radar. But in another writing community—people who write about dogs—the Maxwell Awards are important. They are the Academy Awards, if you will, of the dog writing community.

If you’ve read my work, you know that I’m dog crazy, and that a 100-pound German shepherd plays a prominent role in my series. Still, I’m a crime writer and my primary goal is to entertain readers.

But that’s not my only goal. My second goal is to save lives.

This moment might not have been possible
without the kindness of a stranger.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, the idea was planted nine years ago. I was walking my then-six-month-old puppy, when I met a man with a gorgeous, healthy-looking male German shepherd. The man stopped me to share that his dog—I’ll call him Thor—had an autoimmune disease called Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency (EPI), and that without special medication with each meal, Thor would starve to death. He warned me to watch for the symptoms of EPI in Tasha, as the rare genetic disorder occurs most commonly in adolescent German shepherds.

Fast forward a year and a half. Tasha began losing weight. A lot it. Twenty-five pounds in a month, to be exact. The vet theorized cancer and recommended exploratory surgery. I insisted that he test for EPI first. When the results came back positive, my now-former vet made it sound like a doggie death sentence.

I remembered Thor, switched vets, joined an EPI support group, and began the process of successful lifelong management. Simply put, that five-minute conversation with Thor’s owner saved my dog’s life.

The tragedy of EPI isn’t the disease itself. Tasha has been thriving with EPI for over eight years. The tragedy is that so few people, veterinarians included, know about it. Dogs often go months or longer without a proper diagnosis. Many die before anyone figures out what’s wrong with them. Even worse, about twenty percent of animals who are diagnosed with EPI are needlessly euthanized without any attempt at treatment.

Writing has done so many great things for me. It’s connected me with fabulous authors, brought out my creativity, and helped me to make new friends. I hope it also spreads the word about EPI. EPI is not a death sentence.

What does any of this have to do with awards?

Winning the Maxwell Award for Fiction has put my work in the hands of other dog writers. The award is making dog readers pick up the book. I’m pretty sure the award-related exposure even sold a copy or two, though honestly, not enough to get excited about. Still, each new reader helps spread the message. Maybe someday one of them will have an animal that is wasting away for seemingly no reason. Maybe they’ll remember Bella, the dog in my books. Maybe that memory will help save a life.

I’ll admit, it’s a lofty goal for a piece of metal strung on a ribbon. But even if the award does nothing else, it gives me hope. Hopefully it provides someone else hope, too.

Tracy Weber


          

About Tracy:

My writing is an expression of the things I love best: yoga, dogs, and murder mysteries. I'm a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, WA. I enjoy sharing my passion for yoga and animals in any form possible.  My husband and I live with our challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha and our bonito flake-loving cat Maggie. When I’m not writing, I spend my time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at my favorite local ale house.

For more information, visit me online at http://tracyweberauthor.com/ and http://wholelifeyoga.com/

Yoga Mysteries, Imperfect Sleuths, and Book Launches!

Reader and yoga teacher Rene de los Santos patiently waiting for A Killer Retreat

I never wanted to be a writer, but then again I never wanted to be a yoga teacher. I always thought yoga was for woo woo Gumby wannabes who got their jollies contorting themselves into pretzel-like positions. The whole idea of it flummoxed me.

Then I got into a car accident.

Seven years later, I was still in significant chronic pain every day, and I couldn’t turn my head more than an inch or two. None of my doctors gave much hope for my recovery. At one point, I told my friends that if I thought it would help, I’d travel to Africa and dance naked around a witch doctor’s fire.  I’d have done anything to escape the pain. Even yoga.

I stumbled into my first yoga class out of desperation. I hate to admit it, but I left feeling significantly worse than when I arrived. I told my husband when I got home that the word yoga obviously meant “much pain.”

But I kept going, for months. You see, the balm I’d hoped to find for my body was actually easing my soul. I was calmer, happier, more balanced. When that yoga teacher left town for a month, I tried several other classes and stumbled upon a style that would soon become my yoga home—Viniyoga. For the first time ever, I left class with a body that felt as great as my mind.

Viniyoga is breath centered, adaptive, and therapeutic. It worked like magic on my neck and upper back. Within a few months, I was off the prescription pain meds and I could turn my head again. Shortly thereafter, I decided to quit my corporate job and make my living sharing these ancient teachings with others.

My yoga teacher-protagonist Kate teaches this same style of yoga. Kate’s wounds are more psychological than physical, and she’s far from the perfect yogi, but the practice serves her nonetheless. Yoga’s philosophy gives her compass that guides her life. True, she’s often a few degrees off north, but she’s learning. Someday she might even find the healing and peace that she offers to others.

Rutledge won't come out until his human reads him A Killer Retreat

Whether or not you ever decide to try yoga, I hope you’ll give my series a shot. The Downward Dog Mysteries, like most cozies, are lighthearted, often funny, gore is off-screen, and sex is behind closed doors.

Even if the only pose you’ll ever practice is Corpse Pose—and that after one too many margaritas—the series has something to offer. Love, growth, mystery, and hope, not to mention some laugh-out-loud moments, especially those with Kate’s German shepherd, Bella.  The first book, Murder Strikes a Pose, is available now.  The second, A Killer Retreat, launches January 8. Rumor has it you can pre-order A Killer Retreat for your electronic devices and have it on New Year’s Day.  The perfect way to start 2015.

Yoga, dogs, and murder. What could be more fun?

Tracy Weber

          

About Tracy:

My writing is an expression of the things I love best: yoga, dogs, and murder mysteries. I'm a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, WA. I enjoy sharing my passion for yoga and animals in any form possible.  My husband and I live with our challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha and our bonito flake-loving cat Maggie. When I’m not writing, I spend my time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at my favorite local ale house.

For more information, visit me online at http://tracyweberauthor.com/ and http://wholelifeyoga.com/

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

If you look close, there might be a hidden message on this shirt!

Several months ago, I decided to form an author street team. 

A street team is basically a group of people who like an author’s work and volunteer to help promote it.  In exchange, the author gives out swag, hosts special online events, and does other fun things with those fans. 

I’m sure there are lots of proven best practices for street teams. I even bought a Kindle book on the subject.  But since I don’t own a Kindle, I haven’t read it.  (Yeah, I’m THAT person.)  I’m basically making this up as I go along. I’m in the middle of my street team launch now.

As any Microsoft alumnus knows, you can’t have a launch without a free t-shirt, so I decided to give free shirts to my first wave of volunteers.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

I knew t-shirts would be pricier than bookmarks, but I’d survived the coffee cup giveaways without becoming homeless, so I figured why not?  How expensive could a few dozen t-shirts be, anyway?

There were a couple of flaws in my plan. First, I got a lot more volunteers than I originally thought I would.  (This is a good and awesome thing, and I am SO HONORED!) Next, I learned that I had priced t-shirts with single color printing. (The red shirts with full color printing I had my heart set on were about three times the cost.) And I forgot all about postage costs to mail them around the world.

My husband joked that I’d make heck of a lot more money if I gave up writing and watched TV all day, but I was still happy.  Soon my t-shirts would be flying world-wide, making my readers happy, and hopefully spreading the word about my newest book.  I wrote a nice letter to go along with them, a friend of mine packaged them up, and they went on their way.

The first recipient sent me a photo.  The shirt looked great, except for what I thought was a very odd shadow. I narrowed my eyes, but couldn’t make out what it was.  The next had the same shadow, only in a different place.  Then the third.  You get the idea. Turns out, the ink from my friendly letter had transferred to the printing on the shirt, leaving my welcome letter in the clouds, across my protagonist’s shirt, sometimes stamped solidly across her face.

I was mortified.  I felt like a well-meaning (but somewhat senile) aunt that sent all the kids broken Christmas presents. I called up my husband and told him to mentally prepare to do it all over again. He asked if I’d learned my lesson. I told him probably not.  (At least I didn’t lie.)

But here’s the learning.  My readers rallied behind me.  They experimented with and shared ways to get out the ink, sent notes assuring me that I wasn’t the worst Santa ever, and even started an “I love you” thread on Facebook.  One reader assured me that she likes her shirt BETTER now that it has a flaw.  Others offered to pay for their replacement shirts. (Which I won’t allow, of course.) Some of the shirts were salvageable, others I will soon be replacing.  But somehow I suspect that the error has drawn us all closer.

I always was a little off-kilter.  Why should my shirts be any different?


Namaste

Tracy Weber

          

About Tracy:

My writing is an expression of the things I love best: yoga, dogs, and murder mysteries. I'm a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, WA. I enjoy sharing my passion for yoga and animals in any form possible.  My husband and I live with our challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha and our bonito flake-loving cat Maggie. When I’m not writing, I spend my time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at my favorite local ale house.

For more information, visit me online at http://tracyweberauthor.com/ and http://wholelifeyoga.com/

Can Yoga Really Be Murder?

Photo Courtesy of Christopher Brown

How do you reconcile writing both about yoga (which advocates nonviolence) and murder?

I was recently asked this question when talking about the second book in my Downward Dog Mystery series, A Killer Retreat.

 

This is such an interesting question, and one that I’ve only been asked a handful of times. First, I’ll say my genre, cozy mysteries, helps.  By convention, gore and on-the-page violence are minimized. There are definitely some tense and challenging scenes, however. I try to balance them with humor.

But even if I wrote horror, I could still combine murder and yoga in the same work. The yoga teachings never promise that yogis will live in a world without violence. In fact, they say that suffering is inevitable. What they do promise is that people who practice yoga—which is so much more than doing poses—will be able to survive life’s traumas with less emotional suffering.  They also ask that yogis personally practice compassion, honesty, and nonviolence in actions, words, and thoughts.

Yoga practitioners, like everyone else, live in the real world. We are exposed to the same triggers and conflicts and traumas. Yoga doesn’t stop what happens around us; it simply gives us choices in how we react to it. So it’s not a big stretch (so to speak) to have violence, tension and other challenges in the world of a yoga teacher. In an ideal world, she would simply be better prepared to deal with them.

But the truth is Kate—my yoga sleuth—doesn’t live in an ideal world, and she doesn’t always react like the perfect yogi. She has a terrible temper, and she often acts impulsively, only to regret it later. When Kate’s at her best, she responds to the tension and heartache in her world with self-deprecating humor and compassion. When she’s at her worst, she lashes out in sometimes embarrassing ways.

Overall, Kate tries to be compassionate and generous. She helps others when it would be much easier not to.  When she screws up, which is often, she tries to learn from her mistakes and to do better in the future.

To me, that is yoga.

 

What do you think?  Can a book contain both yoga and murder while still being loyal to both the mystery and the teachings?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Namaste

Tracy Weber

          

About Tracy:

My writing is an expression of the things I love best: yoga, dogs, and murder mysteries. I'm a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, WA. I enjoy sharing my passion for yoga and animals in any form possible.  My husband and I live with our challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha and our bonito flake-loving cat Maggie. When I’m not writing, I spend my time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at my favorite local ale house.

For more information, visit me online at http://tracyweberauthor.com/ and http://wholelifeyoga.com/