A week from tomorrow, July 28 at 5:30 p.m., I’m going to be speaking on the above topic to the Scottsdale Society of Women Writers at the Marriott Old Town Hotel in (where else?) Scottsdale, AZ. Check out the details on my “Events” page. I asked other authors what they wish they had known before embarking on a writing career, did some reading, pondered my own experience, and in the end wished there only was one thing. I did come up with what I think is the most important thing I’ve learned over the past decade, and I promise it isn’t what you think it is.

The newest Alafair Tucker novel, Crying Blood, is at the printer. I’ve seen a couple of prospective covers, and I’m going to try and use my newfound picture-posting skills to try and post them here, Dear Reader. The publisher has sent me another couple since these came, and I think I’ve chosen the one I like best - it’s a variation on one of these. Any opinions on which is better? Click on the image to make it bigger

Also, Don’s new book of poetry, The Road, has hit the shelves, so to speak. It contains some 54 poems, most of which were published first in small poetry magazines before Don was approached by Bellowing Ark Press to do a collection. It’s really interesting to me how personal they are and how they reflect what has happened over the course of a lifetime. Of course, I often can tell exactly what was going on in our lives at the time the poem was written. I find them quite affecting. You can order the book by clicking here.

Why, you may ask, are you so slow in updating this web site, Donis? I shall tell you, Dear Reader. It seems that my new book, Crying Blood, which I assured everyone was nearly finished last month, wasn’t as finished as I thought. I have basically added a new character and side story to the book, which takes quite a bit of rewriting when you already have a complete story. So just about all I’ve been up to lately is writing, much to the detriment of everything else in my life. You’ll be glad to know, though, that I am in the midst of the final proofread right now, and will send the completed MS off to my editor next week. God willing.

The Webinar that I told you about last month came off without a hitch and was great fun. If you’re interested in doing some writing yourself, I’d suggest catching a webinar sometime. It’s a great way to listen to authors expound about their work, their process, and the business of writing, and it doesn’t cost a thing.

This coming Sunday, June 20, I’ll be down in Tucson presenting a mystery-writing forum for the Society of Southwestern Authors at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel on Speedway Blvd. (check out the Events page for details.) I hope you’ll come if you’re anywhere near. Over the space of one hour I intend to tell the attendees everything they need to know about constructing a mystery novel. Never let it be said that I don’t set ambitious goals for myself.

I’ve been trying to sharpen my computer skills lately. Thus the lovely picture above. I finally learned how to adjust the size of photographs and upload them to this blog! I’m so proud of myself I could cry. I took this photo last night at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale at an event featuring four mystery authors. They are, starting with the man in the glasses, green shirt and black trousers and going to your right, Larry Karp (Ragtime Fool), Simon Wood (Terminated), Barbara Peters (MC, bookstore owner, and my editor), Peter Steiner (The Terrorist), and Dianne Emley (Love Kills)

Last but not least, I’ve finally updated my movie blog! My beloved husband Don Koozer’s new book of poetry, The Road, will be coming out from Bellowing Ark Press very soon, and I posted a video interview with him about it. It only takes a couple of minutes, so have a look. Just don’t expect anything in the way of production values. I forgot to put a lamp in front of us, so our faces fade in and out of shadow. This doesn’t keep the video from being illuminating, however. It also gives you an opportunity to get a load of my accent. I’m always aghast. To check it out, click on “Gallery”, above, then on “Movies”.

Enjoy!

On Sunday, May 16, 2pm-3pm, Pacific Time, author Larry Karp and I will talk with author-host Don McQuinn, on the Wired Writers Webinar. Larry (for the most part) and I both set our books in the United States of roughly 60 to 110 years ago. Please drop by and hear what we two Poisoned Pen Press writers have to say about the whys and wherefores of what we write, and how we go about the process. Information and free registration for the webinar is at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/212854609. This will be an open forum - you can ask me or Larry questions, or you can just listen. See you on the computer.

While you’re at it, check out the Wired Writers website if you are at all interested in being a writer yourself.

I’ve finished the first draft manuscript of the fifth Alafair Tucker novel, Crying Blood. This doesn’t mean it’s done. The story needs at least one more go-over before I send it to my editor after the first week in May, and after she gets a gander at it, she’ll have suggestions. At least I hope she only has suggestions and doesn’t tell me this or that is unacceptable. That hasn’t happened before, and I don’t anticipate that it will happen this time, but believe me, the author really has no idea what her book looks like to other people until they lay it on her.

Right at the moment, I’m working on the extra stuff. If you’ve read my work, you know what I’m talking about: recipes, historical notes, cast of characters, definitions, maps, that sort of thing. I spent my entire writing day yesterday drawing maps. The precipitating event in this book is something that happened pre-Oklahoma statehood, when the eastern half of the area was still the Indian Territory. Now, I was raised in Oklahoma, and learned all about the IT and the Five Civilized Tribes, the Trail of Tears, and tribal allotments when I was a winsome little schoolgirl. But I’ve discovered over the years that non-Oklahomans, and that includes the entire rest of Planet Earth, has no idea. So the question is, how much explanation of places and events is helpful and interesting, and how much will make the reader’s eyes glaze over? Of course, you don’t actually put historical exposition in the story. You just add some short and hopefully interesting notes at the back in case anyone wants to know a little more.

In the new book, Alafair and her husband’s cousin, Scott Tucker, take a day trip in an automobile from Boynton to Eufaula, OK. Any idea where either of those places are, you non-Oklahomans, you? I didn’t think so. So I drew a little map. Since the story also deals with the Indian Nations and the privatization and allotment of their lands, I also drew a map of Oklahoma showing where each of the nations were located. The truth is, when you’re raised immersed in the history and lore of your place and your people, it doesn’t really occur to you that most other people in the world don’t know it. I wouldn’t have thought to include maps if a reader hadn’t told me it would be helpful.

Same with the Family Tree at the beginning of the books. Seems readers were having trouble keeping Alafair’s ten kids straight. Really? I know them all perfectly well. In the fifth book, now that the older kids are beginning to collect spouses and kids of their own, the Family Tree became so complicated that you’d have to have a magnifying glass to read it, so I’ve just included a straight cast of characters.

Since I’ve been immersed in working on this book, I haven’t been doing a lot of promotion lately. It’s my own fault. Unless you’re a big name author, you pretty much have to set up your own promotional activities, and after last year, I’m still low on energy and drive. Don is infinitely improved, but still in the doctors’ clutches for the foreseeable future, so we’re still schlepping to office appointments and outpatient procedures two or three times a month. Since I haven’t been to a doctor myself since his health started going south (about three years. Yikes!), I’ve been undergoing a bunch of tests myself lately, which just adds to the chaos. I’m proud of myself for actually finishing another manuscript, at least.

I will be participating in a live broadcast ‘webinar’ at www.wiredwriter.com on May 16, along with fellow PPP author Larry Karp. Check out the particulars on the Events page (link at the top of this page). It should be good.

And finally, as you know, Dear Reader, my fourth book, The Sky Took Him, was one of the five finalists for the 2010 Oklahoma Book Award in the Fiction category. The awards ceremony was held in Oklahoma City on April 17, and my book did not win. That makes me zero for three on the Oklahoma Book Award. The Fiction winner this year was Kirk Bjornsguard for Confessions of a Former Rock Queen.

I’ve been meaning for weeks to post a more cheerful entry than last month’s, but like everyone else I know, life kept intervening. I’ve vowed more than once this year to update these entries more frequently, but it seems like there’s always something more important that needs to be done right now. But never fear, Dear Reader, I feel better today. You know how it is. Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes, the bear gets you.

In fact, the past month has been quite eventful, and in a good way. First of all, I am happy to reports that The Sky Took Him is one of five finalists for the 2010 Oklahoma Book Award in the Fiction category. The awards ceremony is April 17, in Oklahoma City,. I would love to go, but Don has a couple of icky tests and outpatient procedures coming up right about then. Besides, I couldn’t quite justify a thousand dollar weekend trip. If by some delightful happenstance Sky should win, I’d love to spend that money on a driving book tour of the Homeland later in the year.

I’ve also been fortunate to cross paths with several of my favorite author friends recently, as well as to meet a couple of talented folks for the first time. Earlier this month, I had supper with my friends Judy Starbuck and Hannah Dennison, who was in town promoting her newest Vickie Hill novel, Expose’. She was traveling with Kate Carlisle, author of If Books Could Kill (great title), whom I had never before met. After a great meal in Scottsdale, Hannah and Kate teamed up for a program at Poisoned Pen Bookstore with local Phoenix author, Annette Mahon, whose new mystery, A Phantom of Death, was just released.

Then, just last weekend, March 13 and 14, I was down in Tucson for the second annual Tucson Festival of Books on the University of Arizona campus. I did this event last year, just for one of the days, when Don was still housebound with tubes and bags everywhere. It was the first time I left him alone after his Big Crisis. This year we went together and made a weekend of it. It was his first out of town trip in over a year and a half, and we had a really good time. I conducted a mystery writing workshop on Saturday, and on Sunday I participated on a historical mystery panel with Jennifer Lee Carrell. Her novel Interred with Their Bones was a New York Times best-seller. There was quite a crowd for that one. I did a signing afterwards, and got to chat a bit with David Morrell. He’s written dozens of big time novels, but he’s best known for his first. First Blood, which is the basis for Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo movies.

The best fun, though, was Sunday brunch at the Blue Willow restaurant, a Tucson institution, with Libby Fischer Hellman and Cara Black. These women have each written ten mysteries. Libby’s are set in Chicago, and Cara’s in Paris. We had a great time commiserating and kvetching, though Cara had just that morning discovered that her tenth and latest book was reviewed in the New York Times, so she had less to kvetch about that the rest of us.

The weather was gorgeous, literally tens of thousands of people attended the festival, and I had a wonderful time with Don. All in all it was an uplifting get away.

And now back to reality. Friends and loved ones are still facing health problems, and lots of work needs to be done. My editor put a bug in my ear about the new book, so I’m working under deadline, now, trying to get a finished manuscript to the publisher by sometime in June. I think I can do it. I’m going to give it the old college try, anyway. I understand that my book has been penciled in on the publishing schedule for release in March 2010.

Unless the publisher decides something else, I’m calling the new book Crying Blood. You heard it here first.

It’s been a lifelong tenet of mine that nobody wants to hear your troubles, so I have always made an effort, even when things aren’t going so well, to either keep it to myself, or at least to have a sense of humor about it.

I’m not much bothered by things, and I think I have a naturally sunny disposition. But every life goes through periods that must be endured, and the past couple of years have been my personal Ice Age.

My husband’s health problems have been no secret. We endured and he came through, and since the beginning of the year, I’ve been able to return to my own pursuits. But it seems that something has changed. I go through the days with a sense of unreality. I want to hold myself at a distance. My mind wanders. I’ve frozen over.

I joked with a friend recently that it seems there’s some awful alignment of stars happening in the heavens right now. So many of my friends are having their own ice ages. Lesa Holstein lost her husband so quickly. She was so kind when Don was having his troubles. But I got a temporary reprieve, and she didn’t. A second friend just received a cancer diagnosis, and another faces an operation.

Everyone gets to go through these periods, if they live long enough, and this is not my first rodeo, as we say in Oklahoma. It’s the universal life experience, to lose loved ones, to go through extended times of stress and fear. In the past, no matter how unendurable a situation seemed at the time, I lived through it whether I felt like it or not, and the fog eventually lifted. I expect that will happen again. You just have to hunker down and wait for spring.

Time passes so quickly that it alarms me sometimes. How did I get anything done at all in my real life when I worked for other people? The truth is that I didn’t, or at least I was only able to do whatever was absolutely necessary to live.

Now my work is writing, and work at it I do, and yet it still feels to me that I’m always short of time. Days bleed into one another, and weeks, and months, and a year passes without my quite being aware of how it happened. It seems that I’m constantly busy, and yet I feel like I make little progress.

Yet when I remember the monumental events in my past that changed my life forever, or set me on a new path, I realize that most of them happened quickly, sometimes in an instant. I think of that when I’m frustrated, when it comes to me that I have less and less time in front of me to fool around with and wonder if it’s just going to be like this for the rest of my life.

In the words of that immortal philosopher, Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

With that in mind, I keep plugging along on the new book, and I finally see an end to the first draft, at least. I need a few more good weeks of writing. The end of this month is shaping up to be very busy, so I’m working hard to get as much done as I can before things get crazy. And speaking of good things happening, we are finally getting a new fence during the first week of March. I hope that means that there will be no more fence-mending for Donis in the foreseeable future.

As for the new book, it’s interesting to see how it’s shaping up. I may have mentioned before that no matter what you plan to write, things show up in books that never occurred to you when you started out. This book features Shaw Tucker, Alafair’s husband, and I see that he’s dealing with a lot of his demons. Shaw’s always been pretty calm and laid back. I hadn’t realized that he had that many demons. Funny. You dig deep for your characters, and bring up a lot of stuff that was way down inside yourself.

P.S. I have no title for the new book yet. If anybody has any great ideas, I’m all ears.

Yesterday was not a good day. I went to bed Sunday night with a sore throat, and spent most of the night tossing and turning, semi-conscious. You know how it is, Dear Reader. You’re not asleep, but you’re not awake enough to get up, take something, do anything to help yourself. I wasn’t able to drag myself out of bed until 9:30, feeling like the dog’s dinner. I went with Don to his cardiologist appointment. (Everything is very good, heart-wise), then we had a little lunch and tried to get some exercise. I didn’t get home until close to 3:00, and by that time I had about had it. I ended up flat on the couch, sniffing, napping, moaning, and generally blowing the rest of the day. I didn’t even turn on the computer, and I can’t even remember the last time that happened.

That was kind of nice, actually.

Anyway, I feel better today, though I won’t be running any foot races. At least I can try and catch up on some of my correspondence.

Sunday, however, was a great day. I got to speak to a book club, which is one of my favorite things to do. This particular club consists of several young women in Chandler, AZ, who had gone to school together. Like most American adults, they’re all now involved in careers, family, and children, but after one of the women read Lorna Landvik’s Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, she contacted her friends and strong-armed them into starting the club as a way to keep in touch. And, as one of the women said to me, “It’s wonderful to get back to reading.”

Their selection for January was my first book, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, and for the occasion of having the author come and speak to them, they invited their mothers to come, and all the participants cooked something from the recipes at the back of the book! I thought that was the best book club idea EVER. It was really interesting to hear their adventures in cooking old-fashioned food. If you’re not used to cooking like that, apparently it isn’t that easy. I’ll have to do an entry on this on the Fatal Foodies blog this Saturday (click on the link above or type http://fatalfoodies.blogspot.com).

I tried very hard to spend as much of the month of January flogging away at the new book, and by Jove, I think I’m making some progress at last. I have no events coming up in February that I have to prepare for, so I’ll continue the push, and hope to at least have a first draft done by spring, Send me all your good and inspiring thoughts, Dear Reader.

And last, I do want to mention that all four of my books are now available on Kindle, for those of you who like that sort of thing.

It’s about time to let you know what’s going on in Donis World, Dear Reader, considering the fact that I haven’t updated my blog in about a month. I blame the holidays. That makes me feel much less guilt ridden than blaming myself.

After a lovely but busy Christmas, Birthday, and New Years, my sister and niece from Joplin, MO, visited us here in sunny AZ all last week. Carol (sister) and Abby (niece) probably wish they’d stayed in AZ, or left a little earlier, one. They arrived home on Sunday at 11:30 pm, after an hour’s drive from Springfield to Joplin in 20 degree weather, to find that a pipe had burst at my sister’s house and flooded the entire downstairs and basement. Abby lives in an apartment in the “basement”, and her ceiling had fallen in. My brother-in-law is in Taiwan for several weeks. so they had had a friend staying at the house while they were here, but she had left that morning. So apparently the pipe burst that very day after about noon. So much for the relaxing vacation. Carol called me after she got home and assessed the damage, but I didn’t hear from her yesterday. I’m guessing she’s busy.

I swore to myself that I’d spend all of my unalloted time for the rest of January writing on the new book. (As yet untitled. I was thinking of calling it Haints, until I discovered that Nash Black already has a book of the same title.) I keep working on the same 100 pages - changing my mind, unsure how to get where I want to go. But by God, I’m going to plow through even if it doesn’t make sense. I can think of several very popular authors who don’t care if they make sense. Perhaps lack of sense will be what puts it over the top to become a best seller.

My friend Hannah Dennison, author of the Vicky Hill mystery series, who is also currently suffering from a similar writerly brain disorder, pointed out to me that Mercury is currently retrograde in Capricorn. That explains it to my satisfaction. I’ll think of some other reason that I’ve had trouble since long before Mercury went retrograde.

Speaking of Hannah, she has a new book out called Expose’, and will be the guest blogger this coming Sunday on Type M 4 Murder. Her books are too funny, and this one, set in the exciting world of English snail racing, is no exception.

I must go try and figure out what to do next with poor Shaw Tucker, who is being followed by a mysterious … what? A haint?

I’ll keep you posted.

Have you ever had one of those months? I won’t enumerate the many ways things have gone wrong over the past couple of weeks, but there is one SNAFU that I particularly regret. Several weeks ago, I asked Kris Neri if she’d be interested in doing an entry for the Type M 4 Murder blog on December 6, which was my upcoming date to host a guest blogger. Kris and her husband are the owners of The Well Red Coyote, a landmark independent bookstore in Arizona’s most beautiful town, Sedona. She is also the author of several acclaimed novels and short stories, and teaches writing online for the UCLA Extension School. Kris has a new book out, High Crimes on the Magical Plane, featuring fake psychic Samantha Brennan and genuine Celtic Goddess/FBI agent Annabelle Haggerty. Aside from the fact that nobody could resist a book with that premise, I thought that when one considers the flood of paranormal novels and movies of late, Kris’s timing in writing a paranormal mystery is impeccable.

So, lucky me, Kris agreed to do an entry on her new book as well as enlighten us on the technique of writing a book that is both an engaging tale of the paranormal and an effective mystery. She sent me a wonderful article in plenty of time, and I eagerly sat down to post it at the crack of midnight on Dec 6.

Long, ugly story short - one of my regular blogmates had mixed up the dates and had preempted me with a guest blog of his own. No prob. I’ll post on his date, Dec. 13. On Dec. 12, since I was going to be away until late the next day, I programed the entry to come up right after midnight, as I have done many times before. But did it? NO. I had not set the entry for 12:30 a.m., but for 2:30 p.m.

Kris has forgiven me, which shows she’s a better man than I, for had I been in her shoes I wouldn’t have been inclined to be so gracious. But I cannot deprive you Dear Readers of the leisure to read Kris’s article, and so with great pleasure I repost the entire entry on this site. Read, enjoy, and learn.

The Mystery of the Paranormal
By Kris Neri

What if you could have anything in the world you wanted — except the one thing that you wanted most?
That question sparked the creation of one of the protagonists of my new paranormal mystery, High Crimes on the Magical Plane (Red Coyote Press). Combining the supernatural with a mystery is great fun, but it also comes with great challenges. The characters need to work effectively in both realms. Their powers and otherworldly abilities must seem vast enough to be believable within the paranormal framework. And yet they need the same flaws and blind spots as other characters to allow for the growth arcs that readers want. It’s a tough juggling act to create a character that is simultaneously powerful, yet lacking.
Within the world I’ve created, which plays out on the streets of Los Angeles, Special Agent Annabelle Haggerty of the FBI is also a genuine Celtic goddess. While her ancestors have returned to their mythical homeland of Tir na n’Og, their decedents continue to live among us, hiding their true natures. Generations of intermarrying with mortals has diluted Annabelle’s powers, but she has plenty of magical skills left to give herself most anything she wants — yet a burdensome sense of responsibility blinds her to the life she could be living. Too determined to reject the notoriously bad behavior the gods have always engaged in, this resolute goddess keeps her nose so firmly pressed the grindstone, she’s worn it to a nub.
One of the great advantages of injecting the paranormal into your writing is that you get to address the big philosophical questions in life, such as fate and why we are here, and whether we should welcome into our lives the people we want, or those we need.
Annabelle has little choice about the latter when plump fake psychic and scam ancient deity, Samantha Brennan, crashes into her case. Despite her dubious professional choices and highly eccentric wardrobe, Samantha embodies everything Annabelle’s family believes she should be. While Annabelle is cautious and responsible to a fault, Samantha is joyous, lusty and daring. Only a universe with a twisted sense of humor would put those two together.
When movie star Molly Claire is kidnapped and made the centerpiece of an inexplicable gangland siege that brings the City of Angels to its knees, these polar opposites are forced to work together, a relationship made harder by the fact that each of those women lives the life the other secretly covets.
The most enjoyable part of writing a supernatural mystery is choosing the creatures that will populate it. I wanted to draw on beings that were wacky and new. First I recruited Angus, Annabelle’s ancestor, the ancient Celtic god of youth and love and laughter. In Celtic mythology it’s said that anyone who has heard Angus playing his sweet harp is unable to resist him. In my modern world, he becomes a lounge performer, not to mention Samantha’s love slave.
But I didn’t stop there. I brought in banshees to patrol Griffith Park in Los Angeles, leprechauns that go undercover in schoolyards to spy for Annabelle, as well as flower fairies and dolphins. And I can’t forget the shape-shifter/FBI agent who isn’t from some distant realm, but whose ability to transform himself is the result of some nasty toxins in the air. (Watch what you breathe!)
Ultimately, though, a mystery, even when it contains elements from other genres, needs to hold together as a mystery. It must have sufficient plot twists, strong suspects, rising stakes and some plausible red herrings. Most importantly, we need to feel the outcome of the struggle could go either way, that the villain could outwit our sleuths and evade justice. With a supernatural being, it becomes that much harder.
But that’s where character flaws and blind spots come in. Annabelle misinterprets her psychic visions, and in her effort to behave more like an ordinary mortal, she overrides her own judgments. We’re left to think that if she and her family of deities are no match for the Demon of Darkness that Annabelle believes is masterminding L.A.’s own Armageddon, a poor little fake like Samantha will have no chance at all.
It’s a fight to the finish. Along the way, each woman learns something from the one she considers the last person who could teach her anything. Even when you’re a goddess, it seems life holds some wicked surprises.
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Kris Neri’s web address is http://krisneri.com
The Well Read Coyote website address is http://wellredcoyote.com