It’s been a long time coming, but here it is. Next up, getting it onto CreateSpace for folks who want to buy a paper version. I signed up with Kindle Select for some additional promo, which means I can’t make it available in other formats for 90 days. If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow this sucker for free. Clicking on the cover will take you straight to the sale page. They don’t have the search inside the book feature turned on yet, so if you want to sample it first, go here.
Mystery Most Cozy is both a website and a Facebook page that’s a great forum to talk about cozy mysteries. Unlike a lot of other sites, it’s not cluttered up with a bunch of self-promotion. I’ve gotten a lot of great recommendations from them. Right now, they’re celebrating TEN YEARS with a series of author interviews, and I was lucky enough to be one of those authors — and yes, one lucky commenter will get the first two books in the Tripping Magazine mystery series (plus I’m going to slip in some other nice surprises). There’s a little more to it than commenting, actually. Here are the instructions.
So what are you waiting for? Oh, right. A link.
Our temperatures have been in the single Fahrenheit digits for a couple of days now, so to get Josie O (my Chihuahua) her quota of mental stimulation, I’ve been taking her to stores. Yesterday we went to Marshalls. I put her carry box in the front of the cart, and she stood with her front paws on the edge, like the figurehead of a ship if the figurehead of a ship were covered in fur and made licky faces at people. (Note to self: horror movie idea: seafaring werewolves.)
Afterwards, I stopped by Ideal market and bought Popsicles, because no weather is too cold for Popsicles unless you’re in a tent.
In other news, I’m reading Maddy Hunter‘s Passport to Peril mysteries, which are hilarious. In Pasta Imperfect, two bestselling romance writers bicker about how “ten inches of flaming virility” really behaves.
“People have actually done surveys and the consensus is, it doesn’t throb!”
I cleared my throat and raised a tentative finger in the air. “If you ladies don’t mind my asking, if it doesn’t throb, what does it do?”
“Maybe it quivers,” Nana said thoughtfully. “You know, kind of like a handheld blender.”
So I’m going to put Maddy Hunter on my list of fantastically funny mystery writers, up there with Laura Levine, that goddess of laughter.
Lastly, I seem to be over my embarrassing writers block and working well on Critter from the Black Lagoon again, although there was a moment when it was possibly going to be Beaver from the Black Lagoon, because in addition to killer hogs, prehistoric central Florida was also home to beavers the size of black bears.
Luckily, a cooler head prevailed (my head, just cooler), and I’m sticking with pigs.
I’m still shooting for a July release date, which is the soonest I can bring it out according to my contract with St. Martin’s.
P.S. If you don’t understand the title of this post, it’s a reference to the movie Groundhog Day.
My best, funniest interview ever is up on Scene of the Crime, and it includes a page from my SUPER SECRET journal from when I was a kid. What dark thoughts lurked in my childish noggin? Apparently they involved novelty socks. You can read it here.
Just want to take a moment to pimp fellow mystery author Steve Hockensmith, who writes a bunch of stuff, including the Holmes on the Range series, which I love. In his recent blog post, he writes about the art of the short story.
It’s short, so here’s the whole thing:
Scary messages in the soup, slugs in the bedroom, strange lights in the woods — and a painting that seems to age while its subject does not.
All that — which may have Oscar Wilde chuckling in the clouds — takes place in “The Portrait of Doreene Gray” (306 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.99), the second in Esri Allbritten’s series of Chihuahua mysteries featuring the staff of Tripping, a magazine devoted to the paranormal: editor Angus MacGregor, writer Michael Abernathy and photographer Suki Oota.
This time out, the three are off to Port Townsend, Wash., where rich, 58-year-old Doreene has put the painting by her twin sister, Maureene Pinter, up for sale. Determined to make a feature story out of the supposedly magical portrait, the journalists soon see the stakes elevated when death enters the picture. Meanwhile, Doreene’s Chihuahua, Gigi, finds herself depending on the kindness of strangers.
Clever and comical, Allbritten’s second outing is as entertaining as its predecessor, and the reader’s verdict on it is reached quickly: Aye, Chihuahua.
Yet another good writer/reviewer. I like “death enters the picture,” and I LOVE “Aye, Chihuhaua,” ’cause he spelled “Aye” the Scottish way, not the Mexican way. Clever.
Here’s a link to the full article. He reviews four other books.
Angus, Michael and Suki bring the banter to the Killer Characters blog today. It’s like a short bonus chapter of The Portrait of Doreene Gray. Come on over, ask them a question, suggest a location for a book, or tell about some inexplicable experience you’ve had, especially if it’s motel-related.
It wasn’t until I read my own first line in a review of The Portrait of Doreene Gray that I realized I’d used one of the oldest writing tropes in the book.
Outside the darkened windows of Doreene Gray’s second floor bedroom, a squall buffeted the house and whistled across the gingerbread trimming.
Yup. I’d essentially written, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Then I thought about the word “cliché,” and then I wondered what the heck it meant in the original French.
Wikipedia to the rescue.
The word is borrowed from French. In printing, a cliché was a printing plate cast from movable type. This is also called a stereotype.[6] When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. “Cliché” came to mean such a ready-made phrase. Many authorities say that the French word “cliché” comes from the sound made when the molten stereotyping metal is poured onto the matrix to make a printing plate,[7][8][9] including the statement that it is a variant of cliquer, “to click”,[10] though some express doubt.[11][12]
Pretty interesting, non? Anyway, this is all by way of pointing out that there’s a new review for Portrait. Bonus points for her use of “inveigling.” Haven’t heard that word in ages.
Heads up: Angus MacGregor will be on Dru’s Book Musings tomorrow to talk about what it’s like being the editor of Tripping Magazine. (Your guide to paranormal destinations.) And yes, one lucky commenter will win a hardback copy of my newest book, The Portrait of Doreene Gray.
If you’ve read both my books, drop by anyway and ask Angus some personal questions. He loves those.
In honor of Angus, here is a photo of a very fat Chihuahua in a kilt.
In body I may be at a conference in Vegas, but in spirit I’m on Lois Winston’s blog, Anastasia Pollack’s Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers, talking about how to construct a local legend. Comment there, and you could win a book! Come say “hi,” so I can continue to tap away on my smartphone while people smarter than me talk in the front of the room.
Esri Allbritten 