The April A to Z Blogging Challenge

I started out in January with the intention of keeping up with my blogging and what with one thing and another, I've fallen behind. Not that the world is dying for daily updates from my little corner of the blogosphere, but I find that keeping to a regular schedule on the blog helps me meet my other deadlines as well. And since I have a backlog of projects waiting for my attention, I really need some more structure in my writing life. Otherwise, it's much too easy to let the day-to-day bill-paying stuff take over.

 I thought that the A to Z blogging challenge sounded interesting, so I've signed up. My "theme" is going to be writers. I hope you'll find it interesting.

Saturday Self-Promotion ... Suicide Blonde

Speaking of frugality, I'm a big proponent of free books.  I get all those newsletters DAILY offering freebie books and I just snap those bargains up.  (You do not even want to know how many books there are in my kindle.)
And every once in a while, I want to do MY part to feed your e-reader. Right now I'm running a free promotion for my collection of short stories called Suicide Blonde. It's been well-received, and I'm pretty proud of the stories.  If you enjoyed True Detective, I think you might like this collection. (And wouldn't it be kind of cool if the producers solicited stories for an anthology, the way the makers of the game L.A. Noire did?)

Anyway, Suicide Blonde is free for the next two days. You can snag it here. And if you enjoy it, I'd love a review.

Waste not, want not

I was raised to be frugal.
Living in Los Angeles sometimes sabotages that intent--I pay nearly $2K a month for an apartment so small, I also rent a storage unit for where some of my furniture lives--but basically I live by my granmother's philosophy, which was "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."
I admit I'll spree-spend on things my grandmother would have considered needless luxuries, but when money is tight, I do what I have to do.
That's a lot easier to do when you work at home. You don't have dry-cleaning bills or commuting costs. You don't have to deal with business lunches or office birthday celebrations. (My sister nearly went broke one year buying birthday presents for colleagues she didn't even like because the corporate culture at her job STRONGLY encouraged people to participate in community events like birthday parties and Christmas gift exchanges.
I abhor waste of any kind and living in an apartment building, I see a lot of waste. Whenever anyone moves out, pieces of perfectly good furniture suddenly appear on the easement between the building and the street. Most of the time, this furniture is snapped up by the urban gleaners who cruise the neighborhood, but if it stays otu there too long (more than a day or two), someone always comes along to wreck it. And what once might have been a perfectly serviceable side table is suddenly just a few pieces of splintered wood; and what used to be a nearly brand-new mattress is suddenly soaked in dog piss. 
That makes me crazy.
It doesn't take that long to call and arrange a pick-up from Goodwill or Out of the Closet or some other charitable organization. And while a lot of places don't take mattresses for sanitary reasons, This Green Life offers some suggestions on how you can donate and recycle them.

The best hummus I've ever bought

I love hummus. I never had it until I moved to Los Angeles and I've been making up for lost time ever since.  I have a friend who makes me batches about once a month and in between I've tried a bunch of different brands. This week I stumbled across Fountain of Health's roasted garlic hummus.
O.M.G.
It is the pre-made hummus of my dreams.
For one thing, it's really garlicky, which I like.
There are no preservatives in it.  It's light on the salt.
And it hasn't been blended into the consistency of library paste.
I'd say it's actually the best hummus I've ever had, but then, I'm still trying out other brands. Highly recommended.

Free book and More!

I'm running a free promotion on Whipping Boy, so if you'd like to snag a free digital copy, go here.

But this is not just a shameless self-prootion post.  I used to review books for the paranormal romance site Bitten By Books. One of the features that now shows up regularly is a massive "Free Read Friday" list of books in all different genres.  Here's the link to last week's list, which gets updated and augmented weekly.

If you write in the genre (or just love it), you really need to check out Bitten By Books.  They're constantly running contests and promotions and author launch parties. It's a great place to hang out.

Earthquake Country

We had a small earthquake in Los Angeles yesterday. Well, small compared to the Northridge Quake of 2004, but still the largest quake in the area since 2008.  It was a sharp jolt that registered 4.4 on the Richter Scale. It was centered in the mountains between Westwood (home of UCLA) and Encino, which is in the western part of the San Fernando Valley, a couple of miles west of where I live.

A 4.4 is, in earthquake terms, relatively minor. You might have a knick-knack fall over (a friend posted a picture of one such knick-knack on Facebook) but there were no reports of damage or injury. But throughout the day, people I know who live elsewhere checked in with me to make sure I was all right. I assured them I was but the truth is, I was actually a bit unsettled. Because to live in Los Angeles is to live in denial. The city is criss-crossed by earthquake faults and one day those faults are ging to go off like a bomb. I've seen the movie Earthquake. I've read the script for San Andreas (soon to be a movie near you with Dwayne Johnson). And more to the point, I have a minor in geology. I know EXACTLY what happens when a couple of tectonic plates slide past each other. (Up until the Northridge quake, most of my knowledge was theoretical, but once you've actually heard the sound of the earth grinding against itself, you don't forget it.)

Anyway, the quake reminded me of Lee Goldberg's book The Walk, which begins "one minute after the Big One."  If you haven't read it, you should check it out.  It's a dandy survival story and would make an excellent movie.

Pictures that are worth 80,000 words

I did not think ahead when I purchased the images used for the cover of Whipping Boy. I had already planned several sequels, but for some reason, it didn't occur to me that I should buy several images of the same models at the same time so that the covers images would be related. Now I'm going through hundreds and hundreds of photos and it's kind of like looking at books of murder suspects. It was pretty easy to find the female model in a variety of poses that will work. The male model though? He's proving to be a challenge. For one thing, when you type in key words like "handsome, dark-haired man in suit" you get back images of teenage boys in t-shirts twirling red umbrellas like they're auditioning for a remake of Singing in the Rain.

If you type in "handsome businessman," you get pictures of en with bags over their heads (!) as well as pictures of guys contorted in ways that their bodies were never meant to contort. (That's true of the female models as well, but we're kind of conditioned to women in unnatural poses thanks to years of photoshop and Jessica Rabbit-style images of impossible body proportions.)

I used to oversee cover shoots for a magazine I edited, so I'm used to working with photographers and models who turned out fabulous work. A lot of what I'm seeing on these sites reminds me of Derek Zoolander's "looks" in the movie Zoolander. It's like the photographer told all the guys to give their best "Rico Suave smoldering glance.  The results are ... not pretty.  Sigh. But I press on. There are worse ways to spend an hour or so than looking at photographs of good looking men.