Introducing: Mickey Cozart--cozy sleuth

One of the reasons I moved from L.A. is that I wanted more time to write. Now that I've been herein Bellingham six months, I've been able to go through my pending projects and start getting them into shape. Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services  has been helping me with that--providing covers and formatting and other assistance. Check out Indie Author Services here.
I've been writing a lot of fantasy lately, which is fun, but my heart will always belong to mysteries. This is the first of what I envision as a three-book series about Mickey Cozart, a woman of a certain age whose best friend is an actress making the awkward transition from leading lady to character actress. (She keeps losing parts to Glenn Close.) She has a daughter whose best friend is a gay man who works as a production designer on a "pretty people" show on the CW. Mickey--which was my mother's nickname--is a no-nonsense type who was widowed early. She met her husband when she was waitressing at a pie place near JPL where he worked. He was 20 years older. He died when she was 37 and she still misses him, even though she has a full life. But there's this cop...
I have been working on this book on and off for a few years. Some of it even got written longhand during the hours I was sitting at the eye clinic waiting for the monthly shots of Lucentis to wear off. (And wasn't it a treat tramscribing those scribbles?) Unlike a LOT of the stuff I write, this is a book I think my mother would have enjoyed. I hope so anyway. It'll be out this summer. Finally.

Huzzah! the Third Summer of Shakespeare is coming!!

All Shakespeare.
All Summer.
Because it is all about the Bard!

Masterclass with James Patterson

As you know, I habitually cruise Craigslist looking for jobs and gigs. I'm on there enough that I've seen the same scams posted over and over ("Quick, fast writing gig") and noted the emergence of the phony Yelp rating business and marveled at the unbelievable gall of people who are trolling for people to exploit. But I've also made about 50 percent of my income from CL ads in the last eight years and among the gigs I scored was one beta-testing this MASTERCLASS WITH JAMES PATTERSON.

Yes, I was paid to take a class (complete iwth workbooks and assignments) that is being offered to the public for $90.  the "lessons" are edited from a series of interviews and in them Patterson takes his "students" through his process--from getting ideas (one of the lessons I found most engaging) to marketing. Along the way he tells some engaging stories.

You might want to check it out.  Here's more information on the people behind the Masterclass concept.

Blood Ties by Nicholas Gjuild

My review of Nicholas Guild's Blood Ties is live over at Criminal Element. In it I ponder sexism in crime fiction and note that in a book written by a guy, the women are strong and dimensional. And just saying that seems sexist to me. But I have gotten awfully tired of seeing women crime writers ignored or shuffled to the side or marginalized or dismissed or ignored. But I'm repeating myself. I enjoyed Blood Ties and wouldn't mind seeing more in the series.

REVIEW The Devil's Making by Sean Haldane

The Devil's Making by Sean Haldane--a review

 Darwin and the edge of the Empire

Amateur naturalist Chad Hobbes—the atheist son of a preacher—has come to the colony of British Columbia to learn a bit about life before he settles down to a life as a lawyer. Unfortunately for Chad, he’s just missed the Gold Rush, which means that nobody in Vancouver or nearby Victoria really needs a lawyer. But what they do need is a policeman. The wilderness settlement has several police officers but none with Hobbes’ particular set of skills. The idea of being a “peeler” appeals to Hobbes and he’s soon thrust into the heart of a murder mystery that has racial and colonial implications.

Hobbes is fascinated by his duties and dutifully records everything he observes in a leather-bound journal his mother gave him before he left home. There’s plenty to observe. Elections are pending and one of the questions is whether B.C. will become part of America. Passions run high on both sides of the question but not as high as when an American “alienist” is found dead and the most likely suspect is a medicine man.

Sean Haldane’s novel transcends genre here with its literate (but never ponderously literary) style and the sharp observations on everything from class to vegetation. (Hobbes is fascinated by the quality of blue in the sky, so different from the English sky back home.)

Fans of historical mysteries are in for a treat with this book.

Hullabaloo over the Hugos

I can't believe I didn't know about this for a whole month.
somehow, possibly because I'm juggling an implacable publishing deadline with the annual meat grinder that is prepping my clients for the Cannes festival, I somehow didn't know about the messy political scandal that has rocked the Hugo Awards. (Read about it here. Katy Waldman of Slate, you are my hero!)

When I first heard about the gaming of the system, it was disappointing but I spent decades in L.A. where gaming the system at awards time is a fine art. (Remember how many people were shocked, SHOCKED that Pia Zadora got a Golden Globe Award?)

But I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy. I write it now. And the stories I write and the characters I create reflect the world I live in. Complicated. Diverse. And women do more than open hailing frequencies and get rescued from towers.

The idea that there are writers out there who are trying to hijack two entire genres of writing to advance their political agenda is just not tolerable. I'm not a member of the WSFS but even so, I have skin in the game. Because I love these genres. And it is a delight to discover writers whose work inspires me. And entertains me. Call me a "pissypants" if you like (see above Slate article) but what that cabal of writers did will NEVER be okay for me. And it wouldn't be okay if they'd had a liberal, left-leaning agenda either.

On the official Hugo Awards site, the list of people and publications withdrawing is mounting but they're not addressing the elephant in cyberspace. It's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out by August, when the ceremony is supposed to happen.

Nearly noir and something more...

Full disclosure--I was the developmental editor for this book. The writer found me through a CraigsList ad and trusted me with his raw manuscript. Now, almost a year later, the book has been published. (the cover conceit, in case you can't tell, is meant to be a throwback to 50s style "girlie magazines." When you read the book, you'll see why.)
Jason Lustmann (not his real name, but you wouldn't recognize his real name anyway) is not a household name. But he could be.
I say that because I've read his next book, SEX SLAVES, and it's even better than JERKOFF. In fact, I will say right now that if the author had the full weight of a publishing house marketing team behind him, they'd be booking him on every talk show there is. Remember James Frey's A MILLION LITTLE PIECES?  This book is better. It's fiction based on fact and not the other way around.
(And what actually happened to talk shows, anyway? Was Oprah the last woman standing?)
The writing in JERKOFF reminds me of the writing of:
Chuck Palahniuk
Arthur Nersessian
Paul Neilan
One of the things that really hooked me about the book is that the author had a real knack for balancing really painful truths against really hilarious moments. Jason's not only looked into the abyss, he's spit in the eye of the monster who looked back at him.
this is a book about survival.
And redemption.
And hope.
And it's also about sex. And porn. And obsession.
Ultimately, it's about life.
You should read it.
Because it's that good.
Find it here.

Brain Food is Free

Sometimes you've just got to write a zombie story. Or two.  Or in this case--five. I decided to bundle up my zombie children and put them out there in a mini-collection. It's free until the 5th, so if you have a TASTE for the walking dead, you might enjoy it. Pick up BRAIN FOOD here.

Darkblade is coming...

 It has been a tough month for writing my own stuff but it looks like I'm going to make my deadline for publishing DARKBLADE at the end of the month. I don't write a lot of dark fantasy but I'm really happy with how this has turned out. Here's an excerpt:

darkblade

Liam had found the sword in the witch wood two days after his 11^th birthday.

He knew his mother didn’t like him playing in the little copse of trees but he hadn’t been playing; he’d been running from Jude.

Jude was fat and stupid and mean. And though he was 13, he and Liam were in the same grade at school.

Liam picked on the younger, smaller kids, but even the teachers were afraid of him. Because in addition to being fat and stupid and mean, he was also big, standing nearly six feet tall with big hands that he could transform into fists like hammers.

He’d hit their science teacher once and got suspended for a week. Everyone had hoped he’d be expelled but Jude told his mom that Mr. Safrani had touched in in the bad places and she had called a lawyer and what had happened was that Jude came back to school and Mr. Safrani left.

It bothered Liam that after that, the adults were too scared of Jude to intervene when he was bullying one of the little kids.

Liam had mostly mastered the art of being invisible but sometimes, Jude looked right through his cloak of invisibility and pulled Liam out into the open.

And if that happened, Liam knew that he was in for a pounding just because Jude liked to pound people.

And he liked to take his time.  It wasn’t any fun for Jude if his victims just gave up and passively submitted to his abuse.

Liam liked chasing down his victims.

He liked them to run.

An Ember in the Ashes--TBR

Over at Bitten By Books, Rachel Smith is running a poll about reading reviews. Do you read them, are you influenced by them? I realized that I almost never read reviews. For me, it's all about the title. That's what attracts me first. I really enjoy fantasies with fanciful titles that aren't "twee." I hate twee. I also hate whimsical. Which brings me to covers--the second reason I'll pick up a book. I love cozy mysteries and I also love urban fantasy and PNR. But if I see one of those silly chicklit covers that look like they borrowed their graphics from the animated opening credits of the old Bewitched series, I click away. (I will make an exception for Dakota Cassidy's books, which are aewsome!)

Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes is a book that caught my eye long before I heard the hype about it. I tend to be pretty impervious to hype. (I work in Hollywood and before that I worked for magazines and no pitch letter ever began, "This is a mediocre idea with limited audience potential.") I was immediately interested because epic fantasy is so dominated by male writers. I yield to no reader in my admiration for Brent Weeks' Night Angel books but I keep wondering if there's a woman out there writing the same kind of fantasy. (And don't talk to me about that epic fantasy about the girl who is chosen to be a prostitute for people who like to inflict pain. Yes, sacred prostitution served up with exquisite world building It has hundreds of reviews and if I found my daughter reading it, I'd be appalled.)
But Tahir's fantasy is based on ancient Rome and it comes with blurbs and enthusiastic quotes from the trade and popular press. It looks like it has large dollops of romance in there too. Well, who doesn't like romance? it was published today and I'm off to buy my copy.

Happy Birthday WilliamShakespeare

Brainy Quotes has a whole section of William Shakespeare quotes. Just for fun, check it out. And be amazed all over again by the genius that was the bard! (I love that when he couldn't find just the right word, he made one up.) Attached is the image I bought last week for the cover of my Shakespeare Noir collection of short stories. I know. I know. Nobody really buys short story collections. But over the years, what with one story and then another, I ended up with enough for a book. And this is a neat image. So sometime this summer, it'll be out.

Donuts--not just donuts any more

In the beginning there were three kinds of donuts: cake, jelly-filled, and glazed. The cake donuts were often covered in cinnamon-sugar, the jelly donuts were dusted with powdered sugar (making it impossible to eat one on the sly) and glazed (both cake and yeast) were dunked in a transparent bath of sweet syrup that grew translucent and crackled as it dried. Three kinds of donuts—the holy trinity of pastries. Wanting more seemed almost … blasphemous. But that was then and this is now. Now, thanks to the whims of the foodie gods, donuts are a “thing.” And as donut shops get more and more competitive with the varieties they offer, we have to ask—how much modification can a donut take before it’s not a donut any more and some sort of strange (but quite possibly delicious) frankenfood? It used to be that if you ordered a donut, you would get a circle of fried dough with a hole in the middle unless said donut was filled with jelly or custard where the hole should be. Then bagels made the jump from ethnic food to everybody’s favorite nosh and things got a little more confusing because bagels are also round dough with holes in the center, though they were baked and not fried. It was a lot simpler when cupcakes were the pastry du jour. A cupcake either is or is not a cupcake. There are no transitional states as there are with donuts—hybrids inspired by everything from Pop-Tarts to croquembouche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquembouche . It’s all good, but is it a donut? So we have to ask—what’s the most outrageously delicious donut configuration you’ve ever tried and where did you get it?

All sunset photos do not look alike

I used to have a roommate who was fascinated by cloud formations and she took endless photos of them. And they all pretty much looked alike. I find that to be true of a lot of sunset photos also. But a friend sent me this gorgeous photo he took out the window of a train heading north back to Bellingham. I think it's poster-worthy.

How excited am I???

One of my producers sent me this photograph from MIPTV, the big global marketplace for buying and selling television shows.He's there to hawk a project I'm involved in and I could not be more excited if I were actually there. (This is the 21st century, so much of our lives is already taking place in virtual space that I feel like I AM there.) So wish us all luck!

Trying Out Amazon's Beta Cover Creator

I'm playing around iwth a new series from my alter-ego Delia Fontana (La Bruja Roja) and decided to try my hand at creating my own covers for each of the "episodes" before going to my usual cover creator for the entire "season" of episodes. I don't know...what do you think? I have this image in color as well, and I hope to use it on the final cover of the Vetiver Quinn stories. One of my concerns is that although the story is tagged "romantic suspense," this instalment (episode/chapter) is the introduction and I haven't had my protagonists fall in love (or fall into bed) right away. But that cover photo suggests they're already hot and heavy. Thoughts?

When someone gushes over a book

I was wearing the earrings I bought in New Orleans today and the checker at my supermarket complimented me on them. I told her I'd bought them in NOLA and she told me she'd loved the city. I told her about a cab driver taking me by Anne Rice's house and she told me how much she loved Anne Rice's books. And that made me think of the time I was in a supermarket in L.A. looking over the new paperback books. An older woman, a total stranger, pointed out a book by James Patterson--The 9th Judgment, a book in the Woman's Murder Club series. "That's a really good book," she said.

How cool is that? Can you imagine how great it would be to have total strangers recommending your book to people? You cannot buy that kind of word of mouth. When the first of the Twilight books came out, they came highly recommended to me by a friend's daughter, who was in middle school at the time. She's now in college, a writer herself, and I still rely on her for opinions in all things YA and paranormal. Forget being a best-selling author. What I want to be is an author that people recommend to strangers. (Well, don't forget it but you know what I mean.)