Finally! I'm a Real Author! by Julie Hyzy

Born and raised in Chicago, Julie Hyzy knew she wanted to be a writer from the time she was old enough to hold a pencil. But life kept her busy and it wasn't until about 2002 she was able to make writing a priority. Now, the author of several award-winning short stories, Julie has also won awards and critical acclaim for many of her novels.

Julie writes the White House Chef Mysteries, featuring Ollie Paras who feeds the First Family and saves the world in her spare time. The first book in that series, State of the Onion, won an Anthony Award and a Barry Award at Bouchercon in 2009. The novel also garnered a Lovey (Love is Murder Readers' Choice Award).

Julie's newest series - the Manor of Murder Mysteries - begins with Grace Under Pressure which earned a *starred* review in Publshers Weekly.

Julie's books include:
Artistic License (standalone romantic suspense)

Alex St. James series:
Deadly Blessings
Deadly Interest

White House Chef Mysteries:
State of the Onion
Hail to the Chef
Eggsecutive Orders
Buffalo West Wing (January 2011)

Manor of Murder Mysteries:
Grace Under Pressure

Please visit Julie's website at www.juliehyzy.com

Finally! I’m a Real Author!

by Julie Hyzy

I started writing when I was about six years old. My mom, bless her soul, saved quite a few of my first attempts at novel writing and they are the source of much hilarity around my house these days. My kids—trying to make me feel good?—have even said that maybe, if I ever get really famous, these folded-notebook-paper tales (with accompanying artwork!) will be worth something someday. Gee, thanks, kids!

But… I didn’t feel like a real author at age six. Nor at age eleven, even when I started writing my Mary King Mystery stories. Watch out, Nancy Drew, I thought. I planned to be published by the time I was twelve.

Didn’t happen.

My first real novel came out in 2004. Although I’m still quite proud of it, it had quite a few flaws. And I learned a lot. Still… one novel… did that make me a real author? Nope.

Something was missing. Something big.

Fast forward: Here I am in the middle of 2010, and my eighth book, Grace Under Pressure, was released last week. Finally, I feel like a real author! But not because of the new book’s release. Nope. It’s because in the fall of 2009 I finally achieved something momentous. And I’ll bet you can guess what that is…

I got a cat.

Everybody knows that writers and cats go together. Especially mystery writers and cats. But even when I was little I knew there would be no felines in my future. My dad said, “No cats!” and when I got married, my husband said, “No cats!” How could I ever be a real writer with such limitations?

From the time we were married my husband let it be known that we would never have a cat in our house. His family hated them and he professed to hate them too (note the use of the word: “professed”). My cat requests became a bit of a joke because we knew that it was probably the only argument he consistently won. And that made him feel very good.

Every six months or so, I’d remind him of his ongoing triumph and we’d have an interchange that went something like this:

“I’m a writer, I need a cat. Can we get one?”

“No.”

“Okay, you win.”

Dogs are great. I love dogs and when our beloved lab/mix, K’Ehleyr (it’s Klingon) left us last summer, I was devastated. No more pets, I vowed. It hurts too much when you lose them.

It was about that point I decided to stop my humorous pleas for a cat. Just wasn’t funny anymore.

And that’s when Kitka entered our lives.

My middle daughter happened across two sister strays up at school. She couldn’t keep them up there and none of the overcrowded local shelters would take them. My eldest daughter adopted the all-black one, but that left the tiny tuxedo cat we’d named Kitka (from the original Adam West Batman movie). My husband and I agreed to keep Kitka for a week until our daughter could find her a home. 

That was last September…

Now Kitka sits on my lap as I type, crawls into an empty box atop my desk for afternoon naps, and paws pitifully at the door when I close it to take important phone calls. She’s a cutie and I’m nuts about her. My husband, the professed cat-hater, rassles with her when he gets home at night, pets her on his lap as we watch TV and constantly says, “I didn’t know cats were so friendly. I didn’t know they had personalities.” Of course, he has been known to call Kitka by another name: Pita-cat. Pita being short for pain-in-the—youknowwhat. To be fair, Kitka can get into trouble… but most of the time even the trouble makes us laugh.

So thank you, Kitka! Finally, finally, I’m a real author. And now I even feel qualified enough to give one of my protagonists a cat as a pet. If you pick up Grace Under Pressure, you’ll meet Grace. But it isn’t until her next adventure, the one I’m writing right now, that you’ll meet Bootsie…

Woo-hoo! I’m a real author now!

Janet Rudolph announces the Macavity Award Nominees

Macavity Award Nominations Announced

My congratulations to all the nominees!!! 

Janet Rudolph, editor of Mystery Readers Journal, announced this year's Macavity Award nominations yesterday (6/8/2010), as follows:

"The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International. The 2010 Macavity Nominations are for books and stories published in 2009. Mystery Readers Journal is MRI's publication. The winners will be announced at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, in October. Bouchercon will be held in San Francisco in 2010. This award is named for the "mystery cat" of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats)."

*Best Mystery Novel*

• *Bury Me Deep* by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
• *Tower* by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman (Busted Flush Press)
• *Necessary as Blood* by Deborah Crombie (Wm. Morrow)
• *Nemesis* by Jo Nesbø, translated by Don Bartlett (HarperCollins)
• *The Brutal Telling* by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• *The Shanghai Moon* by S.J. Rozan (Minotaur)

*Best First Mystery Novel*

• *The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie* by Alan Bradley (Delacorte)
• *Running from the Devil* by Jamie Freveletti (Wm. Morrow)
• *A Bad Day for Sorry* by Sophie Littlefield (Minotaur)
• *The Ghosts of Belfast *by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)
• *A Beautiful Place to Die* by Malla Nunn (Picador)

*Best Mystery Nonfiction*

• *L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City* by
John Buntin (Random House: Harmony Books)
• *Talking about Detective Fiction* by P.D. James (Alfred A. Knopf)
• *Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life* by
Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
• *The Line Up: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of
Their Greatest Detectives*, edited by Otto Penzler (Little, Brown & Co)
• *Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of
Modern Art*by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo (Penguin Press)
• *Dame Agatha’s Shorts: An Agatha Christie Short Story Companion* by Elena
Santangelo (Bella Rosa Books)

*Best Mystery Short Story*
• “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” by Ace Atkins in *Crossroad Blues* (Busted
Flush Press)
• “Femme Sole” by Dana Cameron in *Boston Noir* (Akashic Books)
• “Digby, Attorney at Law” by Jim Fusilli, (*AHMM*, May 2009)
• “Your Turn” by Carolyn Hart in *Two of the Deadliest *(Harper)
• “On the House” by Hank Phillippi Ryan in *Quarry: Crime Stories by New
England Writers* (Level Best Books)
• “The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away” by Marcus Sakey in *Thriller 2:
Stories You Just Can’t Put Down* (Mira)
• “Amapola” by Luis Alberto Urrea in *Phoenix Noir* (Akashic Books)

*Sue Feder Historical Mystery*

• *A Trace of Smoke* by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge)
• *In the Shadow of Gotham* by Stephanie Pintoff (Minotaur)
• *A Duty to the Dead* by Charles Todd (Wm. Morrow)
• *Serpent in the Thorns* by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur)
• *Among the Mad* by Jacqueline Winspear (Henry Holt)

Writing and Living in Paradise by Marcia Talley

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of ALL THINGS UNDYING and eight previous crime novels featuring survivor and sleuth, Hannah Ives.

Marcia is author/editor of two star-studded collaborative novels, NAKED CAME THE PHOENIX and I’D KILL FOR THAT set in a fashionable health spa and an exclusive gated community, respectively. Her short stories appear in more than a dozen collections and have been reprinted in several of THE YEAR’S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES anthologies. A recent story, “Can You Hear Me Now?” is featured in TWO OF THE DEADLIEST: NEW TALES OF LUST, GREED AND MURDER BY OUTSTANDING WOMEN OF MYSTERY, edited by Elizabeth George.

Writing and Living in Paradise
by Marcia Talley

My friend, mystery novelist Elaine Viets who lives there, says that Ft. Lauderdale is the farthest south you can live and still get meaningful work done. I’ve checked the maps, and my present location, 26° 35.51 N, 77° 00.36 W to be precise, is exactly 28 minutes of latitude — approximately 32 miles — north of Elaine’s condo in Lauderdale, so as a novelist, I figure I’m safe, but it’s not always easy writing while living in paradise.

We’re in a rented house on Dickie’s Cay, a tiny strip of land that forms the harbor that protects Man-o-War Cay, a settlement of boat-builders and church-going people with a year-round population of approximately 150. There’s a hardware store —“if we don’t have it, you don’t need it” — where items that went on the shelf twenty years ago are still for sale, with their original price tags. There’s one sit-down restaurant — best hamburgers in the world at the Dock-n-Dine, my husband says — a couple of gift shops, a sailmaker’s shop where four ladies sit at ancient sewing machines turning out the most beautiful and practical canvas bags, and two groceries that don’t sell cigarettes or booze. No law against it, they simply don’t. Albury’s Harbour Market, where I shop, is the size of your average two-car garage, but I can’t think of anything that Phyllis doesn’t have — even half-and-half! — in that tiny, neat-as-a-pin store. I shop, she puts it on our tab, and we pay up at the end of the month. With a tab, I feel like I really belong.

No TV, no daily newspaper. There are no ATMs, the bank is open on Tuesdays from 10 to 2, and few cars. Rush hour is two golf carts meeting on The Queen’s Highway, an eight foot wide strip of concrete that bisects the narrow island.

There are no roads where we are on Dickie’s Cay, and our family “car” is an Avon dinghy — to go shopping or to eat out, we walk out to the end of the pier, climb down a wooden ladder, fire up the outboard and putt-putt across to Man-o-War. I couldn’t resist setting my eighth Hannah Ives novel, Without a Grave, in these islands, although I took the very great liberty of sandwiching my fictional islands between Scotland Cay to the north and Man-o-War Cay to the south while pushing Fowl Cay a bit further out into the Atlantic Ocean. I must apologize in advance for an inconvenience this will cause to cruising sailors.

On the porch of “Tradewinds” where I’m sitting right now riding a rogue wireless signal — thank you, whoever you are! — I’m working on my next Hannah Ives novel, drinking a cup of coffee, and watching the sun come up.

Just a few minutes ago, the first boat of the day came by, filled with Haitians from Marsh Harbour who come here every day to work building boats and houses, doing yard work, anything to earn a few dollars to send back to their families in Haiti. They are a friendly, hard-working people who often spend their lunch hours reading passages from the Bible aloud, and seem delighted when I speak to them in my passable French.

I’ve adopted a cat, “Dickie,” who showed up one day so hungry that he ate plain, cold spaghetti and bits of

garlic bread. We don’t know what happened to his family, but he may be a boat cat who fell overboard and swam ashore. We’re feeding him to help protect the local bird population. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

And speaking of birds, as I was writing yesterday a hummingbird whizzed by like a giant wasp, reversed suddenly and hovered just two feet in front of my face, wings a blur. I’d seen hummingbirds visiting the yellow flowers on the oleander in the garden, but I couldn’t figure out what drew this little fellow to me, until I realized that on his side of my computer screen there is a brightly-lit white apple.

A sudden rainstorm followed by a rainbow, a sunset that sets the horizon ablaze, a tiger cat purring for the first time in who knows how long nestled against your side, and a hummingbird checking you out. As I said, there are distractions while working in paradise, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

2010 Anthony Nominees

The 2010 Anthony Nominees have been announced

My heartfelt congratulations to all the nominees!

BEST NOVEL

THE LAST CHILD, John Hart
THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ERASING ALL SIGNS OF DEATH, Charlie Huston
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, Stieg Larsson/trans. Reg Keeland
THE BRUTAL TELLING, Louise Penny
THE SHANGHAI MOON, S.J. Rozan


BEST FIRST NOVEL
 
THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, Alan Bradley
STARVATION LAKE, Bryan Gruley
A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, Sophie Littlefield
THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, Stuart Neville
IN THE SHADOW OF GOTHAM, Stefanie Pintoff


BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
 
BURY ME DEEP, Megan Abbott
TOWER, Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman
QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE, Max Allan Collins
STARVATION LAKE, Bryan Gruley
DEATH AND THE LIT CHICK, G.M. Malliet
AIR TIME, Hank Phillippi Ryan


BEST SHORT STORY

"Last Fair Deal Gone Down", Ace Atkins
"Femme Sole", Dana Cameron
"Animal Rescue", Dennis Lehane
"On the House", Hank Phillippi Ryan
"Amapola", Luis Alberto Urrea


BEST CRITICAL NONFICTION WORK

TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION, P.D. James
THE LINE UP, Otto Penzler, ed.
HAUNTED HEART, Lisa Rogak
DAME AGATHA'S SHORTS, Elena Santangelo
THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH, Joan Schenkar


The 2010 Anthony Awards will be presented at the San Francisco Bouchercon's Sunday Brunch on October 17.

How long, oh Lord, how Long? by Alex Sokoloff

Alexandra Sokoloff is a California native and a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, where she majored in theater and minored in everything that Berkeley has a reputation for. After college she moved to Los Angeles, where she made an interesting living doing novel adaptations and selling original suspense and horror scripts to various Hollywood studios. Her ghost story, THE HARROWING, debuted from St. Martin's Press in 2006, and was nominated for Bram Stoker and Anthony awards for Best First Novel. Her supernatural thrillers THE PRICE, and THE UNSEEN are out now; BOOK OF SHADOWS is coming in June 2010, and THE KEEPERS in fall 2010. She's a Thriller award winner, a former Director of the Writers Guild of America, west and a current board member of Mystery Writers of America. She is also the founder of WriterAction.com, a large and unruly cyber-community of professional screenwriters. AlexandraSokoloff.com   ScreenwritingTricksForAuthors.com  

How long, oh Lord, how long?

by Alex Sokoloff

I’m about to go on tour for my newest book, which means that I actually have to start talking to people coherently about the whole process of writing.    And I’m remembering that one of the questions I most often get at book signings and panels is, “How long does it take you to write a book?”

Well, my feeling is what’s always being asked is not how long it takes ME to write a book, but how long it would take the person asking to write a book.   Which of course,  I have no way of answering, unless it’s to cut to the chase and shout,  “Save yourself!   Don’t do it!”    But that’s never the question, so I don’t say it.

What I usually answer instead is,  “About nine months.”     Which, from Chapter One to copyedits, I guess is true enough.    But the real answer is almost always:   “Decades.”

Because honestly, where do you even start?   I’m quite convinced I’m a professional writer today because my mother made me write a page a day from the time I could actually hold a pencil.   At first a page was a sentence, and then a paragraph, and then a real page, but it was writing.   Every day.    It was an incredibly valuable lesson, which taught me a fundamental truth about writing:  it didn’t have to be good, it just had to get written.   Now I make myself write however many pages every day.    And now, like then, it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get written.   Some days it’s good, some days it’s crap, but if you write every day, there are eventually enough good days to make a book.

Then there were all those years of theater, from writing and performing plays in my best friend’s garage, to school and community theater, to majoring in theater in college, to performing with an ensemble company after college.   Acting, dancing, choreography, directing – that was all essential training for writing.

And then the reading.    Again,  like probably every writer on the planet, from the time I could hold a book.    The constant, constant reading.    Book after book – and film after film, too, and play after play – until the fundamentals of storytelling were permanently engraved in some template in my head.

Hey, you may be saying,  that’s TRAINING.   That wasn’t the question.    How long does it take to WRITE A BOOK?
 

I still maintain, it takes decades.     I think books emerge in layers.    The process is a lot like a grain of sand slipping inside a clamshell that creates an irritaion that causes the clam to secrete that substance, nacre, that covers the grain, one layer at a time, until eventually a pearl forms.    (Actually it’s far more common that some parasite or organic substance, even tissue of the clam’s own body, is the irritant, which is an even better analogy if you ask me, ideas as parasites…)

My fourth supernatural thriller for St. Martin’s,  BOOK OF SHADOWS, comes out next week, June 8.    When did I start it?   Well, technically in the fall of 2008, I guess.    But really, the seed was planted long ago, when I was a child growing up in Berkeley.   Which pretty much explains why I write supernatural at begin with, but that’s another post.    Those of you who have visited this town know that Telegraph Avenue, the famous drag ending at the Berkeley campus,  is a gauntlet of fortune tellers (as well as clothing and craft vendors).

Having daily exposure to Tarot readers and psychics and palm readers as one of my first memories has been influential to my writing in ways I never realized until I started seeing similarities in the two books I have coming out this year (the second, THE SHIFTERS, will be out in November) and discovered I could trace the visuals and some of those scenes back to those walks on Telegraph Ave.

Without mentioning an actual number, I can tell you, that’s a lot of years for a book to be in the making.

Over the years, that initial grain of sand picked up more and more layers.   BOOK OF SHADOWS is about a Boston homicide detective who reluctantly teams up with a beautiful practicing witch from Salem to solve what looks like a Satanic murder.   Well,  back in sixth grade, like a lot of sixth graders I got hooked on the Salem witch trials, and that fascination extended to an interest in the real-life modern practice of witchcraft, which if you live in California – Berkeley, San Francisco, L.A. –is thriving, and has nothing at all to do with the devil or black magic.    Hanging out at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (more Tarot readers!), I became acquainted with a lot of practicing witches, and have been privileged to attend ceremonies.  So basically I’ve been doing research for this book since before I was in high school.

And my early love of film noir, and the darkest thrillers of Hitchcock, especially NOTORIOUS, started a thirst in me for stories with dark romantic plots that pit the extremes of male and female behavior against each other.   BOOK OF SHADOWS is not my first story to pit a very psychic, very irrational woman against a very rational, very logic-driven man; I love the dynamics – and explosive sexual chemistry - of that polarity.

So to completely switch analogies on everyone, this book has been on the back burner, picking up ingredients for a long, long time.

Now, what pulls all those ideas and layers and ingredients into a storyline that takes precedence over all the other random storylines cooking on all those hundreds of back burners in my head (because that’s about how many there are, at any given time), is a little more mysterious.   Or maybe it’s not.   Maybe storylines leap into the forefront of your imagination mostly because your agent or editor or a producer or executive or director comes up with an opportunity for a paycheck or a gentle reminder that you need to be thinking of the next book or script if you ever want a paycheck again.   I know that’s a powerful motivator for me.

But the reason a professional writer is able to perform relatively on demand like that is that we have all those stories cooking on all those back burners.    All the time.    For years and years, or decades and decades.   And if a book takes nine months, or six months, or a year to write, that’s only because a whole lot of stuff about it has been cooking for a very, very, very long time.

A long time.

If there are other writers reading, today – how long does it take YOU to write a book?   Or your latest?   How many stories do you figure you have on the back burner at any one time?

And readers, do you ever notice certain themes – or recurring scenes or visuals - in your favorite authors’ books that make you suspect that story seed was planted long ago?

BURY YOUR DEAD by Louise Penny

 Cover for the Canadian and UK version

I was the lucky recipient of an ARC of Louise Penny's newest - BURY YOUR DEAD, which is scheduled to be released in late September.

wow.  

Repeating myself - this is, I think, one of the best series being written today.

Repeating myself yet again - I felt as though her last book, THE BRUTAL TELLING, was masterful and that it carried Ms. Penny to a new level. 

I know sometimes when a book in a series reaches as high as THE BRUTAL TELLING, we've been known to feel a bit let down with the next entry.  Not to worry.  I can't imagine anyone feeling that way about BURY YOUR DEAD.  The magic of Ms. Penny's writing continues.  The subtle humor, the restrained poetry of word play and the emotions emanating amongst the characters, along with meticulous research.  


This one is a bit of a departure for Ms. Penny.  There's a plot line dealing quite extensively with the history and founding of Quebec City which I found to be fascinating.  I love well researched novels and this one strikes me as having been exceptionally and lovingly meticulously researched.

Mentioning that I felt this was a bit of a departure is not to mean we don't still have everything we've come to expect and love in one of Ms. Penny's Three Pines novels; as I said - the magic is still there.  The  intricate plotting we expect is there. The gentle subtle humor is there.   Its also got a surprise or two.  or three.  It's also profoundly sad. I found myself wiping away tears more than once.

We don't spend quite as much time in Three Pines as we sometimes do, but the time we do spend there is as quirky as ever.  Where else are we going to find favorite characters having dinner in their local bistro in their  jammies, with no one batting an eye?
For fear of giving anything away, I'm going to hold off on saying any more . . .   

Well - okay - one more thing . . .  there's a major aspect concerning our beloved Gamache that is heart wrenching - keep that box of tissue handy!

Last year after reading THE BRUTAL TELLING, I think I immediately knew it would be at the top of my 2009 favorites, and told you all I thought you should add it to your "gotta read" list.  Well, I'll repeat all that this year for BURY YOUR DEAD.  

And now that I've finished it and know what happens, I'm going to immediately bury myself in it again to just savor the poetry of the writing, the ambiance of setting, and pure joy of words put together perfectly to tell a perfect tale.  

I adore this book.

and its author.

FTC Disclosure

An Advance Reading Copy of

BURY YOUR DEAD

was sent to me by the publisher

in hopes that I might review it.

No additional compensation was made

or offered.

Adapting Our Writing Routine...and How to Survive Our Kids' Summer Vacation by Elizabeth Spann Craig

Elizabeth Spann Craig  writes the Memphis Barbeque series for Penguin as Riley Adams, the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink (under her own name), and blogs daily at http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com,  which was named by Writer’s Digest as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers in its current issue.

Delicious and Suspicious releases July 6, 2010. 

As the mother of two, Elizabeth writes on the run as she juggles duties as Brownie leader, referees play dates, drives carpools, and is dragged along as a hostage/chaperone on field trips.

Adapting Our Writing Routine…and How to Survive Our Kids’ Summer Vacation

By Elizabeth Spann Craig

I have a week and a half until my children’s schools let out for the summer.

This time last year, I was completely horrified at that realization.

This year? Not so much.  Because I managed to write the better part of a novel over summer break last year.  It had to be done…I was under a deadline.  I developed my own routine last summer.

Now I’ve got a routine for every occasion, not just summer break:

My routine when writing at home isn’t working for me and I need to escape:

Yes, sometimes writing at home isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.   That’s because when you’re faced by a dog that sleeps a lot

and cats that hang off the side of small tables while they sleep,

 sometimes it can make you feel a little bit sleepy.

Or sometimes the house is too interactive.  The dishwasher stops running, the dryer buzzer goes off, a table sassily says “dust me.”

So I go out and write where the background noise is there but means nothing to me.  

• I’ll write at the library, the coffee shop, or a diner. 
•  If the background noise starts edging into the foreground, then I put headphones on and listen to music I’ve downloaded to my computer while I write.

The I’ve-only-got-15-minutes-to-write-today routine:

• I make it count by planning the writing the night before. 
• What am I going to cover? 
• Where am I picking up the story? 
• What’s the point of the scene? 

If I know ahead of time that I have a really, really limited timeframe to write in (I’m travelling, it’s a holiday, etc.) then I make every little minute count.

The it’s-a-beautiful-day writing routine

• I go to the park after school with the kids. I take a laptop and a folding chair (and, yes, I look nerdy as heck and don’t care a bit.)
• I write in the hammock
• I use a notebook and pencil if the sun is glinting too much on the computer screen.

And now, for you parents out there, my routine for surviving the kids’ summer vacation (and still get a book written): 

Go completely with the flow.  There is no routine over summer break…that’s how summer break works! But I do have tips for you: 

Go on an outing—the kids and your manuscript. If your kids are older, the park, skating rink, bowling alley, swimming pool, etc, work out well. If they’re younger, try one of those indoor playgrounds with inflatables. 

Bring a friend for your child. Or more than one. They’re much happier if they are on outings with a friend or two. And they’re more inclined to let you get some work done. 

Plan some dedicated time with your child to play one on one. This time can be either before or after the time that you need to get some work done. Here’s the deal with this time: you need to be completely focused on your child. No thinking about anything else. You play Monopoly, read a few books, whatever they want to do with you---and then you explain you are going to spend X amount of time writing. 

Quiet time works for everyone. Even my older child (12) needs time to unwind in the afternoon. My kids unplugged for a while with a book or played quietly in their room while I worked on my laptop. When I had a toddler, I’d put her in her room and give her books. The rule was that even if they couldn’t sleep, they had to “read” (look at pictures.) 

Host playdates. I know—this sounds like more trouble than help. But usually (this depends on your kid and the kids you invite over), my children disappear to hang out with their friends. It’s the perfect time to write. 

Remember that the more adaptable we are, the more writing we can get done!  Best of luck, everyone!  And Happy Memorial Day!

 

 (My corgi, Chloe, desperately wanted a cameo in my post because she’s a huge admirer of Kaye’s Harley. So excuse the gratuitous corgi photos. :) )

Ceepak and Danny Rise From The Ashes Aboard The Rolling Thunder by Chris Grabenstein

Chris Grabenstein is an award-winning mystery writer and children’s book author, and a former advertising executive and improvisational comedian.

He performed in the same Greenwich Village comedy troupe as Bruce Willis back in the early 1980s.

Chris spent almost twenty years writing commercials for America’s top advertising agencies, representing clients such as Seven Up, Miller Lite, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dr. Pepper, and many others. He was, perhaps most famously, the copy writer who created Trojan Man, a radio campaign that still rides the airwaves today.

He went on to become an Executive Vice President/Group Creative Director at Young & Rubicam in New York.

Chris’s writing talent was first discovered by international bestselling author James Patterson, his Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising. Patterson had come up with a Writing Aptitude Test, which ran as a full-page as in the New York Times under the headline “Write If You Want Work.” Over 2,000 applicants responded. Chris was the first writer hired.

Chris has written screenplays, made-for-TV movies, Muppet scripts, and the occasional grocery list. In fact, he’s been writing since he moved to New York from Chattanooga, Tennessee—bringing along seven suitcases and the Smith-Corona typewriter he got as a high school graduation gift.

He won the Anthony Award for "Best First Mystery" (given at Bouchercon 2006) for his debut TILT A WHIRL—the first in a series of John Ceepak stories to be set "Down The Shore" in a New Jersey tourist town called Sea Haven. The second book, MAD MOUSE, was called one of the "Ten Best Mysteries of 2006" by Kirkus. WHACK A MOLE came out to great critical acclaim in 2007. The New York Daily News called the fourth Ceepak book, HELL HOLE, a "must-read." The fifth book in the series MIND SCRAMBLER was published by St. Martin's Minotaur in 2009. ROLLING THUNDER available in 2010, rounds out the first Ceepak six pack.
Chris’s fast-paced Christopher Miller holiday thrillers include Slay Ride and Hell for the Holidays.
On May 27, 2008, Random House will publish The Crossroads, the first installment in Chris’s ghost series for middle school children.

Chris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. He lives in Manhattan with his beautiful, beloved wife J.J., along with their dog Fred and three cats, Jeanette, Parker and Tiger Lilly.

CEEPAK AND DANNY RISE FROM THE ASHES ABOARD THE ROLLING THUNDER

by Chris Grabenstein

www.ChrisGrabenstein.com

It was about this time last year that I was making plans for John Ceepak’s funeral. Danny Boyle’s too.

MIND SCRAMBLER, book five in my Jersey Shore mystery series that started with TILT A WHIRL (winner of the 2006 Anthony Award for best first mystery) had just come out. We were holding our annual launch party at Partners & Crime, a terrific indie bookstore down in Greenwich Village. The wine, beer, and saltwater taffy were flowing. Mark the Magician was prestidigitating, because the murder in MIND SCRAMBLER takes place backstage at an Atlantic City casino during an illusionist’s act.

I glanced around the room. Friends and fans had assembled. My agent, the fantastic editor of my YA books at Random House, and the narrator of the Ceepak books for Audible were all in the house. So, of course, was my amazing wife who has been on this roller coaster ride with Ceepak and me since the start.

However, nobody from Ceepak’s second home, the folks publishing MIND SCRAMBLER, attended the event. Scheduling conflicts, I suppose. Not even an assistant to the assistant publicist’s assistant was there. Trust me -- this is never a good sign.

Anyway, I thanked everybody for coming, did a short reading, and then asked if anybody had any questions.


“So what’s the next book going to be called?”

Yep. It was the very first question out of the box

“Well, uh, um, I don’t know,” I had to reply, because Ceepak’s code won’t allow me to lie or fudge or prevaricate. “This may be the last book.”

To say the life was sucked out of the room would be an understatement.

You see, the Ceepak series had started at Carroll & Graf, a fantastic fiction and mystery imprint, which published TILT A WHIRL, MAD MOUSE, and, the purple one, WHACK A MOLE. Unfortunately, C&G was wiped off the face of the earth when its holding company was swallowed up by a bigger holding company that only held on to non-fiction imprints.

As luck would have it an editor who had been a fan of the Ceepak series soon acquired two new books for a Major Mystery House. But then, as often happens, Ceepak’s champion left that Major Mystery House to go off and write some Major Mysteries of his own.

And so Ceepak was orphaned. After HELL HOLE and MIND SCRAMBLER, we didn’t hear much about “future plans” for the series.

Crickets started to chirp. Carrion birds to circle. The verdict was clear: There would be no more Ceepak stories from publisher number two.

So, to keep the character alive, I decided to write a Ceepak short story, RING TOSS, and was thrilled when Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine agreed to run it in their June issue.

But then, the mystery fans started to speak up. I was moved to find e-mails like these in my in-box and on DorothyL:

“Please say you weren't serious when you said that Ceepak #5 was the last! I love this series and can't wait for each new one to come out. Now you're saying there won't be any more? It's just too cruel...!”

“I have to know, Chris, is there anything we can do? Would letters from librarians work? This is just too, too awful to contemplate.”

Yeah. Mystery lovers are amazingly fantastic.

On July 5, 2009, Oline Cogdill, one of the top critics in our field, IMHO, blogged that “Chris Grabenstein’s novels deserve to find a home”
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/features/arts/offthepage/blog/chris_grabenstein/):

I was quite dismayed when I heard recently that Grabenstein's series had been dropped. With the abundance of dreadful nonfiction "written" by celebrities and commanding big bucks, it doesn't seem fair that someone with talent such as Chris Grabenstein should be dropped.

Of course, Grabenstein isn't alone in being dropped. Many talented mystery writers with loyal followings also have been dropped. Many have found homes with other publishers. Others haven't.

I am not alone in my admiration for Chris Grabenstein's work. On the message board DorothyL, several readers have weighed in about his work.

Sheila Simonson, author of Buffalo Bill's Defunct and An Old Chaos (Perseverance Press), had this to say "Ceepak is a different kind of protagonist altogether. Under the surface simplicity, he is an ethically complex person in a world made for villains. . . Without being a boring superhero, Ceepak manages to come out on top, using his courage, intelligence, and honesty, and that is a very special kind of comedy indeed. When I finished reading the first Ceepak book, I turned back to page one and reread it. Surely Chris will find another home for Ceepak."

Sheila is so right.....and I hope there is a home for Ceepak.

And so, I said to my agent, Eric R. Myers, let’s see if we can find Ceepak and Danny yet another home.

Somehow, he did.

Folks, for a mystery series to live in two, let alone three, different publishing houses during its lifetime is nigh on impossible.

Miraculously, Pegasus Books picked up the series and published ROLLING THUNDER in May, 2010. They even brought back Michael Fusco, the original cover designer.
http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2010/05/13/the-return-of-chris-grabensteins-day-glo-covers/

And, I am pleased to report, that this week Pegasus Books sent ROLLING THUNDER back to the presses for a second printing -- two weeks after its intitial publication date.

There’s a very reason Ceepak #6 is dedicated to Eric R. Myers.

My agent is a very good house hunter.