WICKED WEDNESDAYS

Conference fever!

Have you booked your registration for Bloody Words 2012 yet?

If not, just a couple of weeks left to do it. So you'd better get cracking. Because you'll need a hotel and air travel, too. Of course, you knew that. I'm really aware how quickly this conference time is approaching because I'm trying to sort out the rest of my stay in Beautiful B.C.

I have relatives and friends to visit both before and after the conference. Some will involve B&B stays, others there's the whole transportation thing to sort out. Of course, I'd like to get the best rates possible. But have you tried checking out all the listings? It's a dedicated morning's work. Oh, for the services of a personal assistant!

I've compared the web travel sites (Expedia, ITravel, Travelocity, etc.) and their prices appear the same as those I've found on my own. I guess my real problem is just deciding what part of town to plunk myself in.

The conference bit will be a snap. I'm on two panels and neither require preparation, just hopefully a brain in full operating mode on the Friday evening and first thing Sat. morning. That's the challenge.

I've downloaded the tentative programme schedule from the BW website
http://bloodywords2011.com and made my selections of what to attend. It's always a challenge when two panels that equally pique my interest are booked in the same time slot. I could always go the rude route -- sit near a door & divide my time between both.

Along with the panels, other programming involves interviews with the Guest of Honours, two special workshops on Sunday morning, a mass autograph session, a special entertainment feature with two 1940's radio plays on Friday night, followed by a walk through the haunted streets of Victoria. Chillingly fun! And of course, the banquet on Saturday night.

It's a good thing I have an agent and don't have to try to slot in an agent appointment. Ditto the Manuscript evaluation. Both are excellent opportunities offered at Bloody Words and I know they book up fast.

So much to do at a conference, so little time...especially when there's all that schmoozing -- a must, considering all the conference friends you see only once a year. And what a great opportunity to make new friends.

If you have time in your busy schedule, be sure to do some of your own sightseeing in Victoria -- it's a fabulously beautiful city. And, we're all thinking positive about the weather...aren't we!

Only 3 more weeks until Bloody Words! Once I nail down this final B&B for my extended stay, I'm all set. Hope you are, too!

Will we meet in Victoria?


Linda Wiken
writing as Erika Chase
A Killer Read, coming April, 2012 from Berkley Prime Crime

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

A room of my own -- not!

You'd think I'd have this writing thing down pat by now. I've been at it for many years now. Over 20 to be exact. That's when I first turned my journalistic typewriter into a fictional keyboard and started book one. You may not remember it because, sad to say, it was never published. Never even sent out, I admit. I had the good sense to recognize drivel when I read it and tucked it away. I used to look at it every few years just to remind myself that there was no way to go but up from there.

There are two such full manuscripts tucked away, and a couple of partials, too. When I finally got around to sending out my babies, it was after adopting a more serious approach to writing. I belonged to Capital Crime Writers and soaked up the words of our guest speakers -- cops, forensic pathologies, arson investigators and that ilk. I had my fabulous critiquing group, the second I would join, and it eventually morphed into The Ladies' Killing Circle. I would get up early and write for at least one hour every weekday morning before getting me son ready for school, and me, too (I worked as a Community Educator with the local school board).

Two manuscripts in that series are completed, a third is a partial. The first was sent out, several times, and although I received lots of encouraging words, there was no contract involved. So I moved on to short stories. These were more in keeping with my new lifestyle schedule and LKC had anthologies to produce!

Now, I'm back to writing novels full time. Well, some days it's full time. You know how life loves to intrude when you're having fun!

Which leads me to my writing room. I thought for several years I could no longer write fiction at my desk, in my home office. It was the place I did my store paperwork when I owned Prime Crime Books, the place I pay my bills, the desk my cats love to sprawl across.

Enter my new keyboard. It's one of those massive ergonomically correct numbers from Microsoft, my monitor is positioned at proper height (physiotherapist's orders), and my Notebook will be relegated to writing when traveling. The walls in this office are lined with books, unlike the dining room walls, where I was using my Notebook. The books should set the mood. The distractions of dirty dishes and sun-bathed deck are now removed. Back to being a full-time writer.

But it's still not my room, not totally. It's the space the cats allow me to use. If they want to saunter across the keyboard, it's as a reminder to me to take a short break, stretch, give them a quick massage. Don't tell me to close the door and shut them out. These are cats we're talking about. If you live with one or more, you know what I mean.

So, here's to writing, the proper space to do it in, comfortable new keyboards...and cats!

Do you have a room of your own, for writing or whatever you may do? Or is it shared space with something furry?


Linda Wiken
writing as Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming from Berkley Prime Crime in April, 2012

MAYHEM ON MONDAY

Thanks, Mum, for the gift that keeps on giving

I am writing this on Mother’s Day, a day that will begin with the New York Times read in bed and end curled up my bed with the latest book I am reading (Slow Recoil, by C.B. Forrest) and with an interlude on the sofa with an Agatha Christie biography. I am thinking, after twenty-five years, how much I still miss my mother, every day and not just on Monday’s Day. She’s left me plenty of reminders of who she was and the legacy she left.

First of all, she made sure we lived in a reading household. It was tidy and even elegant, but newspapers and books and magazines in various stages of being read were a natural part of our lives. We all read everything in sight and talked about what we were reading.

My brother and I were read to every night as toddlers and knew our way around books before we went to school. We were both adopted children and my mother found a book that explained this to pre-schoolers in a memorable and emotionally satisfying way.

My mother taught me that the library was there for my use and enjoyment and time spent in it was time well-spent. It was the only place I was allowed to walk to on my own. She shared my grief when our Sydney library burnt to the ground when I was eight years old and all 80,000 volumes were lost.

She believed that a trip to the local bookstore could be a pleasure and I remember visits to MacLeod’s to pick up the latest Nancy Drew. She also believed that these books were a good investment and encouraged my aunts to send them as gifts.

She was proud of the fact that I read so much. In retrospect, she probably thought it kept me out of trouble at least some of the time. It’s just as well she didn’t know what I was up to when I wasn’t reading.

She read everything I wrote with the same interest she would give to her latest novel and she loved to laugh. No one appreciated humour in writing more than she did.

She believed in having comfortable places to read around the house and we always had large easy chairs you could curl up in and sofas you could stretch out on. We still do. We had our financial ups and downs but I learned that one can always afford to read and humour is often better than money in the bank.

She accepted reading as an excuse for not doing a lot of things: “Not now, Mum, I’m reading.”

My mother married a man who loved to read too. Come to think of it, so did I! It ran in the family.

Is it any surprise that of her two children one turned out to be a writer and a READ volunteer and the other a publisher?

Thanks, Mum, for everything you did for me, but especially, for encouraging free and happy reading and the joy of laughter. Those are the gifts that keep on giving. I only wish you’d been around long enough to read my books and share a laugh today.

I hope some of you will pop by and tell us what it was like reading in your home.




Mary Jane Maffini rides herd on three (soon to be three and a half) mystery series and a couple of dozen short stories. Her thirteenth mystery novel, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder, which hit the bookshelves last month, is brimming with names, no two the same.

CRIME ON MY MIND

Sure signs of spring!

Is this spring in the air? For real, this time? Sure looks like it. Sun and warmth. The start of Ottawa's Tulip Festival this weekend. Green lawns and flowers in bloom. And, the blossoming of new mystery novels being launched within the next couple of weeks!

Next to the fall (read Christmas sales) launch season, the spring launches bring much joy to all mystery readers. Long-awaited sequels are springing up, vacation reading lists can now be fulfilled, and there's always a new crop of writers being launched to add to the colourful array.

In Ottawa, the celebrating starts on Monday, May 9th with the double launch of Mary Jane Maffini's latest Charlotte Adams mystery -- The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder is number 5 in the series -- and, the new Const. Molly Smith from Vicki Delany, Among the Departed, the fifth in this series.

The place to be is Library & Archive Canada, 395 Wellington St., at 7 p.m., in the Sunken Lobby. There will be greetings, readings, refreshments (including chocolate, as always), a donation wine bar by the Friends of Library & Archives, and books for sale by Books on Beechwood. The authors will happily sign your purchases and will also read from their new works.

The following Sunday, May 15th, 4-6 p.m., mystery authors Brenda Chapman and Barbara Fradkin launch their latest projects, part of the Rapid Reads line from Orca Press. These are books for "reluctant readers" and ideal for juveniles and adults who are developing their reading skills or an avid reader with little time on their hands who wants to read through a finely crafted plot in a hurry. The Second Wife by Brenda Chapman and, The Fall Guy by Barbara Fradkin will be available at the launch at the Clockwork Pub, Bank Street. Books on Beechwood will be selling, along with the latest adventure novel by Jeff Ross, The Drop .


On Wednesday, May 18th, Thomas Rendell Curran launches his eagerly-awaited Eric Stride mystery, set in Newfoundland in the late 1940's. The event is being held at Collected Works Book Store, 1242 Wellington Ave., at 7 p.m. There'll be refreshments, books of course, and Tom will read from Death of a Lesser Man, the third in this series.

It's exciting to have so many launches happening in Ottawa. The mystery novel is alive and well...and these events offer readers a chance to join in with authors and celebrate. Hope you'll be able to make it to all three to show your support, and to scoop up some great reads.

To paraphrase a wonderful song title, May is launching out all over! (with apologies to lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II)


Linda Wiken
writing as Erika Chase
An Ashton Corners Book Club mystery
coming from Berkley Prime Crime, April, 2012

EBooking


Barnes & Noble says they sold a million e-books last Christmas. If you tried to use your WiFi that day, you probably noticed everything was slow, due to the high traffic volume. Naturally, on the same day, they sold zero regular books, as the stores were all closed. eBooks have been around for many years, so why this sudden leap into eSales?

Many people were waiting for the hardware to become useful, as in affordable, right-sized, and right-weighted. That seems to have finally happened, with the Sony eReader, the Kindle and the Kobo. Or everybody who was interested finally met someone who had an eReader, and got a personal report. Or many baby boomers are finding they need to get something with slightly larger print. Whatever the reason, the stars aligned and the eGods made it so.

We have a friend with a Sony, a Kindle, and an iPad, so we got a tour of the relative merits. After much discussion, we went with the iPad.

I love it. Yes, it was more expensive than a Kindle, but it can do so much more. It is like a stripped down laptop. It can surf the web. It can YouTube. It can bring my mail, and let me answer mail, but it won’t let me create an address book, so I can only reply to messages, or write to people if I know their email by heart. It can deliver books in seconds, and will let me adjust the font size, screen brightness, and choose either white paper or sepia.

Used to be I would have breakfast every morning and then go to my office, boot up, and wait for 5 to 20 minutes for my computer to go through its virus-checking, update pasting, and whatnot. Now I go to the kitchen, put the kettle on, start up the iPad, put the toast in, and before the toast has popped, I am reading my fantasy hockey team score and my email.

And then there are the apps. I immediately downloaded free Sudoku, free crossword puzzles, Freecell, a Tim Hortons finder, a Starbucks finder, a piano, a guitar tuner, several newspapers, a kick-the-can game, and air hockey. There is even an app that will listen to the music playing on your stereo for 10 seconds, tell you what it is, who the artist is, give you the lyrics, the chords, the artist’s bio, and by the way, do you want to buy this from iTunes right now? There is no end to the apps.

My objective was to read a few free books to get the feel of it, see if I liked reading on a screen or if it hurt my eyes, always an issue when you have eyeballs that aren’t lined up properly. There were a heap of books to choose from. Only thing was, they were pretty old and/or boring. Walking by Thoreau. Walden Pond. Moby Dick. Gaak, I read Moby Dick in university and will not read it again. I started reading Winnie the Pooh, but interest soon faded and I found I was having more fun playing crokinole or bowling.

Finally, I downloaded The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. It’s old, but it’s free. And I started enjoying the story, and totally forgot to notice if I liked the eReading experience or not. So I guess I do.

People who object to eReaders often say either they like the feel of a real book, or the hardware is not up to par, or eBooks are expensive.

The hardware is up to par now, all of the devices currently on sale. eBooks are cheaper than real books, but not dirt cheap. And who among you can deny paying the author for his/her work?

Yes, real books feel nice in your hand, the firmness of the cover, the crisp smoothness of the paper, the sound of the pages turning.

The iPad feels nice, too. It is silky smooth beyond imagining, is gently warm, and it will make page-turning noises for you if you want.

Nobody is asking you to give up real books entirely. Just find a little place in your heart for eBooks


Vicki Cameron is the author of Clue Mysteries and More Clue Mysteries, each of the 15 short stories based on the board game Clue. Her young adult novel, Shillings, appeared in 2007. Her stories appear in the Ladies' Killing Circle anthology series and Storyteller Magazine. Her young adult novel, That Kind of Money, was nominated for an Edgar and an Arthur Ellis.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

Diary daze of a mystery writer!

And so, the next stage in my mystery odyssey begins. I have been asked to prepare some information for my editor to use at the "cover conference" which will take place shortly.

This is particularly exciting as they also want any ideas I might have (not all publishers allow this input). And also, this brings me one step closer to the publication date, even though it's still far away -- April, 2012. The dream is closer to becoming a reality.

To continue the birthing analogy that others often use -- if the release date is the birthdate of the writer's 'baby', then this is the ultrasound stage. Some form is being given to what has previously been a bulky manuscript. Yes, I have it printed out here even though it was sent electronically. Thank God for the computer age. Could you imagine the cost of mailing this mass of paper down south?

This prenatal bulk will also be formally named. The working title will be exchanged for something that more befits what the novel has become. My baby will have a name!

I'm still awaiting the editing stage -- and I know there will be a lot for me to do when we get there -- but just think, a cover! That blank website will have something to capture a reader's interest. I can start with promo material -- bookmarks at the very least. Uh, something else to add to that long To Do list.

This is all very exciting. Can you tell? You authors with a long string of titles to your credit may have forgotten the ultra-sound stage. But for me, being my first born, it's a delight.

So, on to the joyful task at hand...and then back to draft #2 of book #2 and the deadline that's looming. Maybe it's a good thing I'm now a dual personality, what with so many tasks.

Any tips on multi-tasking?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
Mystery Book Club series coming
from Berkley Prime Crime, April, 2012

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

Write what you want to know.

There is an old adage: Write what you know. I’d like to change that to: Write what you want to know.

I know all about designing computer systems for the banking industry, growing (and eating) tomatoes, driving long distances, and reading mystery novels. All of which hardly makes for fascinating books. So I set myself to learning what I wanted to write about.

I write a traditional village/police procedural style novel in the Constable Molly Smith series. I have no experience in law enforcement whatsoever. None. The books are set in Canada, in the British Columbia Interior. Thus I am at a disadvantage because as consumers of popular culture we Canadians read British books and watch American TV and some aspects of policing are different here in Canada. Veracity is important to me in my books.

Yet I love police novels in the British vein and that’s the sort of book I wanted to write. Before beginning the first book in the series, In the Shadow of the Glacier, I wrote to the police force in the real life town upon which Trafalgar is based asking for help and got a very positive response. Over the years they have helped me enormously. When I moved to where I now live, I contacted the local police detachment (and gave them a copy of In the Shadow of the Glacier). I’ve since been on police ride-alongs, to watch in-service training, to the firearms range, and even had my own private training session in close quarters combat. I had a lot of fun and learned a great deal about what I wanted to know.

My next book for Poisoned Pen Press is a standalone suspense in the Gothic tradition, tentatively titled Walls of Glass. (Fear not dear reader, Molly Smith will be back). I decided to set the book on an organic vegetable farm because that’s something I’m interested in. (Wondering how an organic farm can be a gothic setting? You’ll have to read the book.) Now, my tiny tomato patch is nothing at all like a working, viable farm, so I set out once again to find out what I wanted to know. Which is how to run a thriving, small-scale, family farm. I happen to live in agricultural country, and there happen to be a good number of small scale farms near-by. I contacted the farm owners (off season, these are busy people come summer and fall) and spent some very pleasant afternoons touring the farm and talking about the ins and outs of the modern organic food culture. This fits nicely into one of my primary interests these days which is the locovore movement – eating good food grown close to home and supporting local farms at the same time.

The backstory of Walls of Glass concerns Loyalist settlers, i.e. refugees from the American Revolution who settled in Ontario in 1783. This is another topic I wanted to learn more about since I moved to Loyalist county three years ago and so I’m very much enjoying doing the research.

Being a writer doesn’t pay very well, so it’s nice to have unexpected benefits. Like having the opportunity to learn what you’d like to know more about.


The fifth and newest book in Vicki Delany’s critically-acclaimed acclaimed Constable Molly Smith series, Among the Departed, will be released on May 3rd 2011. Vicki is also the author of the Klondike Gold Rush series (Gold Fever) and standalone novels of psychological suspense (Scare the Light Away, Burden of Memory).
Having taken early retirement from her job as a systems analyst in the high-pressure financial world, Vicki is settling down to the rural life in bucolic, Prince Edward County, Ontario where she grows vegetables, eats tomatoes, shovels snow, and rarely wears a watch.
Library Journal gave Among the Departed a starred review saying: “Her exceptional ability to create characters, both realistic and sometimes creepy, makes this another terrific addition to her outstanding body of work.”
Visit www.vickidelany.com. She is on Facebook and twitter @vickidelany.