No matter how efficient I work, I still have this growing list of things I want to read/learn/get better at that I never seem find time for. Maybe in 2010…
A few things I have not yet learned to do:
Writers have always exchanged high-praise blurbs with each other (with the most famous example being the writer who blurbed himself using one of his pseudonyms). But lately I’ve been exploring other types of promotional swaps that are less direct, but also effective. For example, a group of us who have been networking through a Yahoo group recently paired off to post articles about each other on Wikipedia. Read more →
Simon & Schuster is the newest publisher to offer digital ARCs (advanced review copies) directly to reviewers, media, bloggers, journalists, librarians, and booksellers. So far, the galleys are available by e-mail invitation only, but early-readers can register with Galley Grab for consideration. I expect more publishers will follow. Others, such as Clarkson Potter, a Random House imprint, have already been experimenting with e-galleys. Read more →
And the winner is…Carol M who “loves mysteries.” Congratulations! E-mail me with your address. Thank you, everyone, for participating and for the supportive comments. If you’re curious how authors randomly pick a name from a bunch of blog comments and e-mails, here’s how I do it: I copy and past all the comments into a Word document, then print it, then cut the comments into equal-size strips and fold them into squares. I put all the entrants into a bowl and let my husband draw one. Read more →
A brutal murder, a suspect with a strange story, a missing woman with secrets to hide, and a detective who won’t give up— SECRETS TO DIE FOR. Win the second book in the Detective Jackson series just by posting a comment or sending an e-mail.
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I try to practice being grateful every day, but it’s important to put it into words sometimes. Today, these are some of the things I’m grateful for.
It is serendipitous that I became aware of the National Federation of the Blind’s complaints against Kindle just days after deciding to make my novels more accessible to visually impaired readers. NFB is filing a lawsuit claiming that Kindle’s lack of a voice menu makes the device impossible for blind people to use. Several universities are supporting NFB by boycotting the product as a replacement for text books until Kindle makes the e-reader more accessible to the visually impaired. Read more →
I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month for the first time. To hit the goal, I need 1667 words a day for 30 days. Right! But I’m in it for the motivation to write as much as I can every day for a month and finish the draft of my novel in progress. Today I rewrote a scene because it was wrong, losing some words in the process. Tomorrow I’ll interview a SWAT leader, then rewrite the scene again. Both rewrites will be a setback to my NaNo word count, but they’ll bring me closer to my goal of a finished Read more →
Characters everywhere! You can run into the most interesting people just cruising around, but as newspaper writer, I get sent to interview them. It’s wonderful! One day last week, for example, I interviewed Omer and Dave Orian, red-afro-sporting Israeli brothers who operate Off the Waffle out of their home (and a cart near the UO). “Obsessed with waffles” is how Dave describes them and their business, which has a very loyal following. (You have to click through for the photos!) Read more →
Readers care more about gender than I realized. Recent mystery forum discussions revealed some startling proclivities: Some women read only male writers. Other women often avoid female writers and protagonists because they fear they’ll fit into certain stereotypes. As a novelist, all of this concerns me. Especially considering four of the top five current fiction authors on the New York Times bestseller list are men, and that Oprah Read more →
