My Flirtation with Fame by Larry Karp

 Here I am, as posed by a Seattle times photographer to "look mysterious."  The longcase clock behind me contains a rare music box that plays from folded cardboard 'books'.

 

Larry Karp grew up in Paterson, NJ and New York City. He practiced perinatal medicine (high-risk pregnancy care) and wrote general nonfiction books and articles for 25 years, then, in 1995, he left medical work to begin a second career, writing mystery novels. The backgrounds and settings of Larry's mysteries reflect many of his interests, including musical antiques, medical-ethical issues, and ragtime music. His most recent book, The Ragtime Fool, is the concluding work of a ragtime-based historical-mystery trilogy that covers the birth, death, and revival of ragtime music in America. Larry lives with his wife Myra in Seattle; they have two grown children, and a grandson.

Other mystery novels by Larry Karp include The Ragtime Kid and The King of Ragtime (the first and second books in the trilogy), First Do No Harm, The Midnight Special, Scamming the Birdman, and The Music Box Murders. Larry's mysteries have been finalists for the Daphne Du Maurier and Spotted Owl Awards, and have appeared on the Los Angeles Times and Seattle Times Best-Seller Lists.

Larry's nonfiction books include Genetic Engineering: Threat or Promise?, The View From The Vue, and The Enchanted Ear.

 This is where I write my books, the white outbuilding, down the hill from our house, separated from the neighbor's house by a wall.  No phone, no other people in the room, no Internet, nothing else going on, no distractions outside.  Nothing to keep me from writing. 

 And here I look less mysterious, in my office (with Internet access) in the house, where I go after I finish my day's writing, to take care of the business side of the job. 

A couple new pictures added - Wonderful Pictures!  - - - 
see Larry's comments in the comments section below

MY FLIRTATION WITH FAME

by Larry Karp

I'm Mr. Midlist. My seven mystery novels have gotten good reviews, and sold enough copies to keep me in the game. But no one would mistake Larry Karp for Michael Crichton.

Once upon a time, though, I had my feet on the road to the Big Time. Back in 1977, I wrote THE

VIEW FROM THE VUE, an account of my years as a med student, intern, and resident at New York's Bellevue Hospital. The book came out in hardcover from Jonathan David, a small New York house.

Then, one early-spring day in 1978, I got a long-distance call in my office at the University of Washington Med School. The caller identified himself as an editor at a big publisher of mass-market paperbacks. “I guess you've heard we acquired the soft-cover rights to your book from Jonathan David,” he said.

I told him no, I hadn't heard any such thing.

“Well,” he assured me, “we have.” And then he spent 45 minutes by the clock telling me that everyone at the publisher's was crazy about THE VIEW, and that it was going to be a lead issue several months hence. “Dr. Karp, I'm going to put everything behind your book,” he crowed “I'm going to make you the next Michael Crichton. I want to send out two publicity people to get the ball rolling. Next Saturday OK?”

The publicity people, a cheerful and peppy young woman and a young man to match, came as scheduled, took me to a posh waterfront restaurant, and assured me that a year from that day, my star would be eclipsing Michael Crichton's. It did not escape me that the date was April 1, 1978, but I dismissed the implication with a smile.

The campaign was supposed to go into high gear in a few months, but summer came and went with no further word from the editor, the publicity people, or anyone else. The publication date arrived, as did ten complimentary copies of my book, but that was it.

My calls to the editor went unreturned. My letters disappeared into a bottomless hole. Finally, one morning, I called the editor's office, told his secretary I was Jack Marshall, an editor at Random House, that I needed to speak with her boss, and that it was urgent. And by George, she put me through. Talking as fast as my pipes permitted, I asked the editor to please not hang up, that I was not planning to shoot him or sue him...yet. I just wanted an explanation.

I heard a huge, deep sigh. Then, he apologized for having evaded me all those months. “I was embarrassed,” he said. “Just when we were about to launch your campaign, the company decided they were only going to publish westerns, and they pulled the plug on everything else. They were legally obligated to bring out the book, so they did, but they weren't going to put any money into promoting it. Which makes no sense to me. For what it's worth, I'm going to be leaving here as soon as I can find another job.”

But that wasn't quite the end of the story. Fast-forward some twenty-five years to a Bouchercon, where I noticed that this same editor, now working at another publishing house, was going to be on a panel. Of course I attended the session, then afterward, walked up, introduced myself, and asked whether he remembered me.

If I had had a camera there, I could show you the definition of sheepish. “I was sure that book was going to make your career and mine,” the editor said. “I really did think you were going to be the next Michael Crichton, and I've never been so pissed off or embarrassed in my life. I just couldn't bring myself to call you.”

I told him not to worry, that I'd paved a few roads to Hell myself. We shook hands and wished each other good fortune.

I suppose it might've been nice to be rich and famous, but as Mr. Fats Waller used to say, “One never knows...do one?” No point complaining. I'm having a ball writing mystery novels that get good reviews, and sell enough copies to keep me in the game. And Michael Crichton's dead.

The Perfect Fake and the Real Thing by Elaine Viets

 

Elaine Viets writes two national bestselling mystery series.  Her Dead-End Job series is a satiric look at a serious subject – the minimum-wage world. Elaine and her character, Helen Hawthorne, work a different low-paying job each book, from  telemarketer to hotel maid. Publishers Weekly called her hardcover debut  “wry social commentary.” Elaine’s second series features St. Louis mystery shopper Josie Marcus in The Fashion Hound Murders.  The debut, Dying in Style, tied with Stephen King on the Independent Mystery Booksellers bestseller list.  Elaine won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards.

The Perfect Fake and the Real Thing
By Elaine Viets

 
Retail offers endless opportunities for rudeness. I should know. I’ve had jobs in shops on and off since I was 16. I’ve worked with customers – and for bosses – who inspired me to craft murderous tales where they died horribly.

But retail isn’t always nasty. Occasionally, I see incredible acts of kindness.

I did the research for “Half-Price Homicide” at Hibiscus Place Emporium, a Fort Lauderdale designer consignment shop. When I was there, the store was owned by Manny Lopez, a young man from Ecuador. Manny taught me that real Panama hats are actually made in his country, not Panama.

Manny also possessed amazing tact. Hibiscus Place sells designer purses on consignment. Many of these purses cost $500 to $3,000 new. To me, anything that costs $3,000 should have wheels and a motor, but I’m not a fashionista.

Hibiscus Place clients would bring in expensive designer purses that were barely used – sometimes still in the original boxes – for consignment sale. They got half the selling price and Manny got the other. It was a good system. Many women will not leave the house without a purse sporting a designer logo.

But designer purses are easy to fake. Manny saw a lot of those, too. He refused to sell them at his store. His customers could tell the subtle differences between the genuine article and the imitation.

One afternoon, I watched Manny with a sweet-looking older woman who wanted to sell two fake purses.

The purses were fake – even I could see that, across the shop – and there was nothing subtle about these imposters. Their dull metal trim and poorly matched print fabric were two of the more obvious giveaways.

But the fake purses had been gifts from the woman’s son, and she treasured them. She had no clue they weren’t real designer bags. She wasn’t trying to cheat anyone.

The scene with Manny and the woman was so amazing, I wished I’d taped it. Instead, I put it in my ninth Dead-End Job mystery, “Half-Price Homicide.”

In the novel, the fictional store owner is named Vera and Helen Hawthorne is working yet another dead-end job at the designer consignment store. Here’s the scene from “Half-Price Homicide.”

***

A short, sturdy woman entered the shop. She looked like the perfect grandmother. Her blue pantsuit had a tabby cat on the front. She had fluffy white hair and a sweet smile. She opened a plastic grocery bag and brought out a purse wrapped in a white towel.

Perfect Grandma carefully peeled away the towel and said reverently, “This is a genuine Louis Vuitton.”

Helen could tell it was a fake and a poor one at that. The classic brown monogram Vuitton bag had missing stitches on the leather handle tabs. The brass fittings were dull and the nylon zipper looked cheap.

“Was it a gift?” Vera asked.

“Oh, yes,” Perfect Grandma said. “My dear son Edward and his wife brought it home from their Caribbean cruise. They bought me two designer handbags.” Her face was pink with pride. “I wouldn’t sell this one except that my Social Security doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. And I have my Gucci.” She patted another obvious imitation.

“The Louis Vuitton is a beautiful purse,” Vera said. She held it up and pretended to admire it. “I wish I could buy it, but we’re overstocked right now. But thank you for bringing it here.”

“Maybe later,” Perfect Grandma said, and swaddled the purse like a newborn.

***

Manny had no retail reason to be kind to Perfect Grandma. She couldn’t even afford to buy his real designer purses at Hibiscus Place. He let her keep her pride and her illusions.

She’ll never know what Manny did for her. I hope nobody tells her the truth about sonny boy’s gifts.

“Half-Price Homicide” will be in stores May 4. To order your copy go to www.elaineviets.com.   If you’d your copy autographed, choose Mystery Lovers Bookshop from the three stores on my home page. 

 

(Starred review) Half-Price Homicide: A Dead-End Job Mystery Elaine Viets. NAL/Obsidian, $22.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-451-22989-2

A posh Fort Lauderdale, Fla., resale shop provides the snazzy scene of the crime in Viets's superior ninth mystery starring Helen Hawthorne, the queen of dead-end jobs and magnet for murder (after 2009's Killer Cuts). Helen and Vera Salinda, the owner of Snapdragon's Second Thoughts, are shocked when Chrissy Martlet, a wealthy developer's sexy trophy wife, is found fatally bonked on the head with a Limoges pineapple, then hung with a Gucci scarf after trying to sell Vera some of her designer goods. Identifying Chrissy's killer as well as the culprit who bashes in the head of a model friend with a beer bottle tests Helen's sleuthing abilities to the limit. A teasing plot twist serves up a reminder that even if her greedy ex-husband, Rob, might finally stop pestering her and better jobs appear, there are still mountains to climb before Helen can rest easy with Phil, her PI honey. Viets doesn't waste a word in this tight, fast-paced installment as she deftly balances comedy and tragedy.(May)
 

Agatha Award Winners

Malice Domestic has presented their annual Agatha Awards for excellence in mystery writing.

The winners are:

Best Children's/Young Adult Novel

The Hanging Hill, by Chris Grabenstein


Best Nonfiction

Dame Agatha's Shorts, by Elena Santangelo


Best Short Story

"On the House," by Hank Phillippi Ryan


Best First Novel  

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley

Best Novel  

The Brutal Telling, by Louise Penny

Congratulations to the all the winners and all the nominees!

It's Not Just the Life in Your dogs, It's the Dogs in Your Life that Count by Joanna Campbell Slan

Joanna Campbell Slan is the author of the Agatha-nominated Paper, Scissors, Death, featuring single mom and scrapbooker-turned-sleuth, Kiki Lowenstein. The second book in the series—Cut, Crop & Die—was released June 2009. Photo, Snap, Shot is now available for pre-ordering at Amazon.com.  You can read an excerpt from Photo, Snap, Shot at  http://tinyurl.com/yjaohfg

It’s Not Just the Life in Your Dogs, It’s the Dogs in Your Life that Count By Joanna Campbell Slan    

Recently, Entrepreneur Magazine announced its list of ten hot trends for the coming decade. Trend number ten-and-a-half on the list was pet-ownership.

 Boy, I saw that one coming.

 Here’s the scoop: Love me, love my dogs. It’s just that simple.

 We’re a package deal.

 Yes, I have a thing for cats, too. If my husband and I weren’t so allergic to them, we’d have several kitties. (Although I’d probably stop before I collected seven, like my friend Shari has.)

  Seriously, if a creature has fur and legs, I’m all for it. And it doesn’t have to have the requisite FOUR limbs either. My Bichon-poodle mix rescue pup Rafferty only has three legs. When SPCA found him, Raffie was holding his right rear leg pitifully and not putting weight on it. The vet at the animal shelter thought the leg was broken. It wasn’t. Raffie had been left outside in the elements so long that the fur wrapped around the limb, cutting off the blood supply. Although the vet tried to save Raffie’s leg, it eventually had to be amputated.

 But you’d never know Raffie was one leg short. Trust me. People watch him run around, jump up, and never realize Raffie’s missing ANYTHING, unless they stop and do a paw count. As my son says, “Rafferty falls down, he gets back up. He doesn’t waste time feeling bad. He just enjoys life. Raffie could teach anyone a lesson in not feeling sorry for yourself.”

 I can’t imagine a home without pets. Actually, I don’t think a domicile qualifies for “HOME” status unless it’s co-inhabited by fur children. My husband works long hours. My son is off at college. My life would be awfully lonely without my pets.

  My dogs are my friends; the constants in my life. When we moved to the metro Washington DC area from St. Louis four months ago, I knew I had at least two pals I could rely on: Rafferty and Vicky, my BDF (Best Dogs Forever). They sat in the passenger seat for the 882-mile drive. They were model citizens at the hotels where we stopped along the way.
  Okay, mostly model citizens. There was that one incident when the maid ignored the “Do Not Disturb” sign, and Rafferty felt compelled to play guard dog. He has a powerful “woof” but he’s really just a lover-boy. I guess when you’ve been abused, you want to protect a family that treats you like top-dog. He sure does.

 Vicky and Raffie rode beside me into my new life, and even as I cried a little to say goodbye to our home of 17 years, I knew that as long as I had my dogs, I’d be fine.

  And I am.

 Thanks in part to my dogs. They keep me sane.

 Being an author means spending days and hours alone in front of a computer.  Being a writer means you spend a lot of time with imaginary playmates. My dogs rescue me from myself by forcing me to return to the real world. Rafferty gets hungry around five o’clock. He’ll start nudging me, bumping my elbow, which makes typing really tough. Vicky, my little girl Bichon, takes up the challenge and starts licking me, which makes concentrating difficult. So by about five-thirty, I’m ready to take a break, even if I do come back and work more later. Writing is a very addictive process. If my dogs didn’t interrupt me, I might never, ever move from this spot.

 Shoot, let’s be honest. If they didn’t force me to get up and go out, I might never have a REAL life at all.

 Furthermore, I get my best ideas while we go on walkies. Long, long walkies. In hot weather and cold, in rain and in snow, on sidewalks and down paths. They sniff; I think. They explore; I plot. They piddle; I shout, “Eureka!”


 So, the next time you see my byline on a book, go ahead and smile. Sure, it’s my name on the cover. But you know I had two furry co-authors. Just don’t tell my publisher, okay? 



Photos courtesy of the Connection Newspapers. Taken by Donna Manz.

The Edgars - 2010

Mystery Writers of America has announced the Winners for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction,non-fiction and television published or produced in 2009. The Edgar® Awards were presented to the winners at their 64th Gala Banquet, April 29, 2010 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

 

BEST NOVEL

The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books)


BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur Books)


BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Body Blows by Marc Strange (Dundurn Press – Castle Street Mysteries)


BEST FACT CRIME

Columbine by Dave Cullen (Hachette Book Group - Twelve)


BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Lineup: The World’s Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives edited by Otto Penzler (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown and Company)


BEST SHORT STORY

"Amapola" – Phoenix Noir by Luis Alberto Urrea (Akashic Books)


BEST JUVENILE

Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Books)


BEST YOUNG ADULT

Reality Check by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins Children’s Books – HarperTeen)


BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

"Place of Execution," Teleplay by Patrick Harbinson (PBS/WGBH Boston)


ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

"A Dreadful Day" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Dan Warthman (Dell Magazines)


GRAND MASTER

Dorothy Gilman

RAVEN AWARDS

Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pennsylvania
Zev Buffman, International Mystery Writers’ Festival

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD

Poisoned Pen Press (Barbara Peters & Robert Rosenwald)


THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
(Presented at MWA’s Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 28, 2010)

Awakening by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books)

Our sincere congratulations to all the winners AND all the nominees 

Bridges to Memories by Mary Reed

Mary Reed is co-author with Eric Mayer of the historical novel series featuring John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian. The eighth entry, Eight For Eternity, appeared in April 2010 and is set during the murderous Nika Riots of 532, which destroyed much of Constantinople and almost cost Justinian the throne. Details about the series and their other writings plus essays on a variety of topics, links to etexts of Golden Age mysteries and classic supernatural tales, a list of mystery author freebies, and much more can be found on their website at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/

Bridges to Memories

by Mary Reed

Imagine my delight when I read this year's Crimefest conference in the UK is co-sponsoring a special programme item offering a conversation with Mike Hodges and a screening of the original version of Get Carter, which he directed.

Get Carter features Michael Caine returning to Newcastle-on-Tyne in northeastern England to establish the true circumstances of his brother's death. In the process he wreaks havoc in the local criminal underworld and the whole thing ends in tears, as noir films so often do.

Unfortunately for me, I'm unable to attend Crimefest, for although I've viewed the film several times, I still enjoy seeing its familiar settings, especially now many of them have changed or been demolished in the march of time and progress.

Locations in the film bring back pleasant recollections of growing up in the grimy industrial city. Pink Lane, where Jack advises his niece not to trust boys -- oh, the irony of it! -- stirs faint memories of tripe purchases in a shop in that narrow alleyway, and glimpses of the quayside recall to mind the Sunday morning market to which my brother would sometimes take my younger sister and I. After a bus ride along Scotswood Road from Elswick we'd gulp down huge glasses of made-on-the spot sarsaparilla and buy bulging bags of assorted sweeties from our shilling a week pocket money.

Though the green arch of theTyne Bridge shadowing the quay is a Newcastle icon it did not feature strongly in the film, whereas two of the other bridges spanning the river made appearances: the Swing Bridge and the High Level Bridge.

I must point out however our wallpaper was not as shocking as some shown in the film, as my mother generally favoured white with a discreet stripe and tiny motif. Nor were our back stairs roofed like those in the back lane scene with the six-chimneyed Dunston Power Station belching smoke in the far background, though our street was only a few bus stops away.

During the Inspector Morse series my family got sick of me exclaiming "Hey, that's the Ashmolean Museum, I worked right around the corner and used to boggle at its Pre-Raphaelite paintings in my lunch hour!" or "The Trout Inn in Woodstock! I lived  twenty minutes' walk away from there and sometimes imbibed a lemonade on that very terrace!" Filmed largely in and around Oxford, the settings provide quite a contrast to Newcastle -- though Morse's sidekick Lewis has a Geordie accent, meaning he's from Newcastle or elsewhere on Tyneside. Given the softness of Lewis' speech, if pressed I would guess he was from the County Durham side of the river, possibly Gateshead. Thinks: *was* his home town ever revealed?

Since we've managed to come back to the old stamping grounds, the 1950s thriller The Clouded Yellow starring Trevor Howard and the lovely Jean Simmons is in my opinion an overlooked gem, a Hitchcockian drama about a young woman (Simmons) falsely accused of murder and her subsequent flight from police and other interested parties with the aid of a former secret service operative (Howard). During the chase, the couple go to Newcastle, where at one point they emerge from a chare (a very narrow alley, often with steps and landings, leading down between warehouses and other buildings to the river bank or the quayside), which is more or less where we came in.

How about you? Have you seen a familiar place on-screen?

Lost (and Found) in Books by Barbara Fister

Barbara Fister is an academic librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, where she buys books with other peoples’ money, shows students the ropes of research, and teaches courses on international crime fiction, research strategies, and the place of books in contemporary culture. She writes a weekly column and occasional features for Library Journal, reviews books for Mystery Scene Magazine and Reviewing the Evidence, blogs about Scandinavian crime fiction, and looks for time to write her own mysteries. Her second Anni Kokinen mystery, Through the Cracks, comes out in May. According to Publishers Weekly, “thoughtful attention to the complexities of police work and social justice lift this gritty mystery well above the norm. Koskinen's empathy with both cops and victims as well as her fierce, brittle independence make her easy to root for." 

Lost (and Found) in Books

by Barbara Fister

Victor Nell, a psychologist, conducted experiments to find out how using your eyes to decipher squiggles on sheets of paper can immerse us in an imaginary experience that somehow offers transcendence from everyday life. What’s going on in our heads when we’re “lost in a book”? What is it that leads us to hit the pause button on our own existence, check our prejudices, personal history, and time/space coordinates at the door, and deliver ourselves willingly to a vicarious experience, spending hours absorbed in an activity that has no practical purpose? In Lost in a Book, Nell called this phenomenon ludic, which comes from the Latin word for “play,” though it is one Latin root that has very nearly disappeared from our language. (Have our lives have become too purposeful?) When we’re in this peculiar state of mind, we are no longer aware we are reading, only aware of the sensations and events in the story itself.

Ludic reading isn’t indolent escapism, however. Though critics of the novel in the 19^th century warned that reading fiction was like using opium, a drug that induced craving for more, but dulled the intellect, reading fiction actually engages more of the mind than many other activities, such as watching a story on film. Reading can be so intense an experience that it shuts out all other distractions and becomes totally absorbing. And it’s a form of thinking that engages both cognitive and emotional parts of the brain. Other researchers have found reading fiction can enhances one’s ability to engage in empathy, appreciate diversity, and understand social issues better than non-narrative forms of writing can do. Reading for pleasure can help us understand ourselves and the world.

Yet curiously, one of the defining qualities of this kind of reading tends to be that it doesn’t serve any purpose other than itself. When we read for pleasure, we aren’t seeking information, but what we encounter enters our knowledge base. We come away from a book knowing more than we ever thought we wanted to know about Laos or change ringing in English churches or how to crack a safe. We are learning—but without ever having to worry whether what we’re reading will be on the test.

I think there’s a corollary, ludic writing. When I was drafting the final chapters of my third mystery, Through the Cracks, I finally had enough time away from work to focus, and the story was far enough along that it began to take on a momentum of its own. That’s when I realized that much as I enjoy the nuts and bolts of writing—the crafting of sentences, the pacing of a scene, the constant revising that trims out the unnecessary bits or finds a new way to hide important information in plain sight—there is a very different kind of writing experience, a transcendent state that is intensely pleasurable. When I finally reached that point, it ceased to be craft and became an alternate reality, more vivid, more intense than real life. During those weeks, I would emerge from the story, confused about what day it was, what month—because the moment I had been in was ticking away on book-time.

I told my husband that it reminded me of playing “let’s pretend” when I was a kid, another experience that was all-immersive. We’d set up a scenario, become other people, and leap into an improvised world, only coming back to earth when we heard our parents calling for us to come in. “No, it’s not dark yet,” we’d argue, though it was. Our eyes had so gradually adjusted to twilight, we hadn’t noticed the stars coming out. Those summer evenings were a special in-between place, where anything could happen, but when it was time, we knew we’d always find our way home.

When we read or write fiction, we’re remembering something that was lost at around age twelve, when self-consciousness became too demanding to allow ourselves the pleasure of imaginary play. We’re too busy creating a self that will fit into the world, too aware of ourselves, yet at the same time too insecure about who we’re becoming, to leap wholeheartedly into an improvised imaginary world.

But that magic isn’t gone for good. When I read a mystery that works so well that everything else fades away, or when I’m writing a story and forget what time it is, it’s almost like being back in that summer twilight: our eyes have adjusted to the dark, our imaginations are fully open. Anything can happen, but we’ll still get home safe.

Beach Trip, Beach Reads, AND a Give-Away

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.  

 ~Robert Orben

And that's the truth! 

And that's what Donald and Harley and I are looking forward to in just a few weeks.

Vacation.

A whole week of . . . .

            no firm plans

                   no firm schedule

                           loads of leisure time

and lots of reading . . . .

And we'll be doing it at the beach.


Some of you have been kind enough to listen to me moan and groan about vacation since this past winter when it snowed practically every single day for weeks and weeks and weeks.  And if we weren't getting snow we were getting ice.  I was pretty much a wussie about it all and started my beach vacation count down as soon as we put the Christmas decorations away.  

Thank you all for being so patient with my whining.   Good things come to good people, you know.  And to thank you for being such good people I'm having a give-away.  


But first you have to allow me to squeal about our upcoming vacation!  otay?!


Hey - I'm not above a little blackmail here.  LOL!

“Don't grow up too quickly, lest you forget how much you love the beach.”

-- Michelle Held

“Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.”

--Robert Henri

“The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

--Jacques Cousteau

“The waves of the sea

Help me get back to me.”

--Jill Davis

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.”

--Isak Dinesen

We're headed back to one of our favorite places on God's green earth

- Topsail Island, NC

We've rented the same house we stayed in last year.

AND -  we'll be celebrating 24 years of marriage. 

We both love the beach, and both feel a primal connection to the water that is impossible to explain to someone who doesn't feel it.  Not everyone loves the beach and not everyone feels the urge or understands the need that Donald and I both feel when it comes to the water.  His comes, I guess, from being born an Aquarius.  Mine comes, I suppose, from being born and raised on the water.  As much as I love our little mountain home, I miss being on the water and have this deep and constant need to travel to the coast and wiggle my toes in the waves.

So, this is a vacation that will also include . . . .

              long walks on the beach

                            long naps 

long periods of time just sitting on the deck watching the waves

and lots of reading

 And we'll pick up pretty shells and sea glass

and we'll eat when we want, maybe  probably at odd times

      and we'll have lots and lots of seafood (and continue our lifelong hunt for perfect pizza)

             and we'll take little trips to explore the island

                  and we'll rent movies to watch on TV and

we'll read

And we'll watch gorgeous sunrises from our deck

and gorgeous sunsets along the sound

and we'll probably play Canasta

                and Scrabble

                            and we'll watch Harley being silly

and read

lots and lots of reading . . . 

oh boy.

I  love having a stack of books with me while I'm at the beach.

This year at the top of the stack is Anne Morrow Lindberg's "Gift from the Sea."  This is the only "old" book I'm taking with me.  It's a book I re-read often, and can't imagine not having it close at hand.  Anne Morrow Lindberg wrote this eloquent book of essays while at the beach; Captiva Islanda, FL.  She writes about solitude and her contentment with it.  There are passages about the ocean and about the beach, and about things every woman thinks about and ponders; age, marriage, relationships, etc.  The gifts from the sea are the shells she collects - “One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach; one can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few."  

I think women universally can feel an attachment and an understanding to this lovely little book, and if you're in love with the beach, and feel the need to renew yourself there, as I do  - the connection will be even stronger.

And some of the other books I'll be dragging along with us are some new ones by some of my favorite authors.  Lucky me that so many were released just in time for our trip to the beach! Yay!

Here's some that I think will be going with me, unless I give in and read them before we go . . .

Book 18 in the China Bayles Series by Susan Wittig Albert

Book 18 in the Mrs. Murphy Series by Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown

A "new to me" writer - Dan Chaon.  A highly recommended book by a couple folks I trust.

Stand-Alone by Harlan Coben

Book 16 in the Inspector Lynley Series by Elizabeth George

Book 22 in the Richard Jury Series by Martha Grimes

Book Three in the Bride Quartet by Nora Roberts

Tenth Book in the Mary Russell Series by Laurie King (I was a lucky winner of an ARC for this - Yay!!)

Book Five in the Monkeewrench Series by P. J. Tracy (its been four years since the last one!)

Tenth book in the Bay Tanner Series by Kathryn Wall

and a book that's getting lots of attention.  I had several people recommend this one  -

by Helen Simonson

Will I read them all while we're gone?!   Probably not - but, maybe.   Who knows which I might be in the mood for - different books do fit different moods after all.  And then too - it could rain every day . . .   Laws, I hope not!  I don't mind a rainy day or two while we're at the beach, but not a whole week's worth!  Cross your fingers for us that that won't happen!

And now . . . . . 

Our Give-Away!

Yay!

Leave a comment telling me what you're looking forward to reading this summer, along with your email address, and I'll toss your name into the virtual hat.  

The winning name wins . . . . . 

Jan Karon's HOME TO HOLLY SPRINGS.

I loved this book.  It's the first of the Father Tim novels -  not one of the Mitford series.  It's a little different  from Ms. Karon's usual fare and has Father Tim facing some tough stuff from his past.  Some things he's had a difficult time facing head on, but finally decides he needs to come to terms with.   And I wish she'd hurry on with things and give us the next in the series - I am hooked!

I'll draw the winning name this Sunday evening, April 25 - check back here to see who the winner is.

FCC Disclosure

this copy of

HOME TO HOLLY SPRINGS

is one I bought.
I have not received a copy of this book from the publisher or from the author or from any other interested party.