The recap so far.

I've been plugging my whirlwind life recently. I'd feel bad about this, in that "what kind of narcissist are you?" way, except that I've been plugging the events that I think other people would enjoy attending. 

It's not exactly my fault that I'm going to them, too.

So how did everything go, you may ask. Seriously. You have my permission to ask that.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WRITERS CONFERENCE - LA:

As usual, this was a fun weekend of talking about writing, learning about writing, and laughing about everything. I seemed to have picked up a bad habit - the day of the conference, I came down with a cold. In San Diego, I did the same thing. Each time, I sounded worse than I felt, but sounding worse meant that I practically lost my voice.

Helpful hint: Losing your voice when you have to teach a workshop or two is not a good way to spend a weekend.

My most vivid memory of San Diego is having to teach public speaking at the very last workshop of the very last day. Dearest woman Laura Taylor bustled into the workshop with a tray of herbal tea with lots of lemon and honey. It was like pulling the thorn from my paw. I will adore her forever.

At Irvine, my survival instinct took over, which meant I did not get to close down the bar with my tribe every night. But I did get to spend a little time, here and there, with some of my pals. My workshops went very well. At least, the participants told me they liked it. I hope they're not privately emailing (SCWC director) Michael Steven Gregory and saying, "Please stop her."

I sat in a couple of workshops that taught me a lot. Both were about leaving the worry about plotting behind and Just. Writing. Suzanne Redfearn taught "Pantsers: Keep the Creativity Flowing" and I loved her exhortation to not worry so much about where you think the story HAS to go, and let your characters take you where they NEED to go. We did some writing exercises in her class that were fun and freeing.

Then I was pleasantly surprised in Jeff Michael's class, "Write from the Heart." He discussed The Muse and Her role in our writing. I've always struggled with the middle of my books, and as he spoke, I realized that my Muse tends to feed me inspiration for the first part of my book, and the last part. I see the scenes setting up the story, as well as the end. But in the middle, She seems to abandon me to go shoe shopping.

"Oooh, pretty, shiny," said Whimsie, Gayle's Muse

I have to say, I admire her style.

So I asked Jeff to discuss it, and he had a lot of helpful things to say in class. Afterward, we sat down to lunch and discussed it further. We were joined by his wife, Jill, of course, and our good friend and ultra-entrepreneur, Garrett Miller. Jeff had some excellent suggestions for making certain that my second act is true and necessary and worth the read. 

As always, I told him how thankful I was for his kindness, as well as to Jill and Garrett for their indulgence. Take note, folks. Always show gratitude. It costs nothing and its value is priceless. 

And in case you want to get in on the fun, the San Diego conference is in February. Go here to learn more - http://writersconference.com/sd/

On to...

LADIES OF INTRIGUE:

The good news is that it was a rousing success. We had a room full of people who met new authors and heard about Sisters in Crime. Our panels were smokin' - these women were funny, insightful, intelligent writers. And our guest speakers could not have been more engaging. 

Catriona McPherson had everyone laughing with her story of how she came to writing. I love her easy, down-to-earth personality. She's won numerous awards, and she deserves them all, and more. Honestly, her Scottish (working class, she says) accent is so entrancing, I would listen to her read the phone book. 

Carol Higgins Clark was equally charming, discussing how her mother's novels led her to her author's life. It turns out, in her teens, she typed up one of her mother's manuscripts for her. The experience was a deep memory for her, and started her on her path. She was also funny, describing how we all think she's super-famous, and yet people can't even get her name right. We may think she's super-famous, but we know she's super-fabulous.

The not-the-best news is that the event was tremendous work for all involved. I'm writing this after two glasses of wine and about five naps. Ask me more about it after another week of sleep and more wine.

WHAT'S NEXT?

What's next is an interview with Garrett Miller on his popular and fun Rated G Radio show (click here to find it - http://www.blogtalkradio.com/garrettmiller). I've been interviewed on his show before and I'm always excited and a little nervous, only because I want to be a good guest. Garrett is The Perfect Interviewer and should have his own talk show. He actually listens to your answers and asks questions from there, very much like my interview-idol, Dick Cavett. 

So tune in at 7 pm, PST, and listen to me talk about humor and books and...

My launch party at Tri-City Park on October 10th! It's the Placentia Heritage Festival, and I'll be selling my three new collections of humor columns, to honor my 10 years as a humor columnist for the Placentia News-Times. 

Come on out to the park and find my booth - I don't know where I'll be, but my canopy is bright yellow. The park festivities open around 10 a.m., but I won't be there until I've ridden in the parade. I think we get to the park around 11 or so. 

Once I get there, we will have prizes and treats and a generally fun time!

Hope to see you this Saturday!

Growing pains

I'm desperately trying to finish the fourth Peri Mystery and it's not going as fast as it needs to go. Sure, I'm down to the last third of the book, but it's like being in that dream where I'm running toward a door and it keeps getting further away. I was blaming a lot of things for the delay, from too much outside interference to illness. 

Then my friend Michael Steven Gregory wrote a blog post for the Southern California Writers Conference titled, "How Good is Good Enough?" You can read it here - http://writersconference.com/sd/sd-group-blog/how-good-is-good-enough-2/ but basically, Michael is asking the question all writers need to ask, and that's "why am I writing?" Depending on your answer, your final product ends up on the sliding scale of quick-read-entertaining vs word-as-art-beauty. 

I commented on the post as follows: 

***
This post makes me wonder where my goal is on this scale of "how good do you want to be." I realize my stories are what publishers call "midlist." To be honest, I'm more interested in my characters and in writing well. A part of me would love to write a literary tome, except I need my books to go somewhere and do something. In the meantime, I want people to enjoy my imaginary people and travel with them on their adventures, and I want to know that each book is better than the last.

***
And there's my problem: "...each book is better than the last." I want each book to be better, and that's good, except that being better means I must grow my writing skills. Growth is hard and it takes time and patience.

In the past, I moved from one scene to the next in my own very natural way. The good news is that my writing hand has a voice, one that people recognize. But now, I want the words to be more right, more lyrical without sounding like writing. I want to tell the story that makes people enjoy both the story and the telling of it.

I thought writing novels would get easier. Turns out, if I want to always improve, the work gets harder. Good thing growth requires persistence. 

I'm going to leave you with this interesting promo for a show I remember liking, even if it lasted barely a season. 



If you'll excuse me, I have to go persist.

Next up: gracious hosts, grateful company.

Did I tell you with the last post that Dale and I drove to Portland? 

I know what some of you are saying. Drive from Orange County to northern Oregon? Were you insane at the time? Who does that?

Well, we do that. First, we took two days to get there, stopping overnight in Santa Nella. Second, having the car meant that while I was doing my thing at Left Coast Crime, Dale could wander off and do stuff because he had wheels. Stuff like visit with his brother, go to the driving range and hit some balls, watch his nephew compete at a track meet.

Third, after LCC was done and over, we could drive south a couple of hours and visit with our friends, Michael Steven Gregory and Chrissie Barnett. I've known this couple for a number of years. Michael (aka MSG) is the director of the Southern California Writers Conference, which I have attended since 2007 or so, and encourage everyone who wants to be a writer to attend. His wife, Chrissie works the behind-the-scenes administrative/technical conference stuff, so she never attends.

So while I've spent many a conference evening at the bar, discussing the art of storytelling with Michael, I don't get a lot of time to talk with him due to the nature of the where we are and what's going on. And although I've communicated with Chrissie via email, Facebook, and phone, I'd never actually met her in person. Until now. 

They live in a resort near Bend, called Sunriver. Beautiful scenery. Quiet beyond measure. Nice homes, most unoccupied due to the season. The houses are either owned by private owners (some of whom live there year-round, some of whom rent them out, and some of whom use them part of the year), or by the resort company. 

It's kind of a perfect place to run away and sequester yourself, retreat and work on that project, the one that keeps getting interrupted by life.

Dale and I had a great time visiting with Michael and Chrissie. They are endlessly fun. Chrissie and I had a lot in common, which is weird when you consider we grew up in different countries. I could tell you all kinds of tales about wonderful food and conversations, of the nearly-enchanted nature of their home, of wandering outside in the cold to look up at the billions of stars and trying to identify them. 

But I'm not going to. For some reason, I feel protective of our visit. It's not that we discussed private matters, or that anything needs to be hidden. I guess it's just that at the conferences, I watch Michael being a very public figure. He spends his time solving problems, trying to stay ahead of any storm that might brew, and making certain that every attendee gets what they paid for. Although Chrissie is not physically at the conferences, I know how hard she is working behind the scenes. They stress over every part of the weekend.

It makes me want to treat their home as a sanctuary. Everyone needs a place where they can relax and not worry about the outside world looking in. I'm no paparazzi. What happens in Sunriver, stays in Sunriver.

One photo, to prove we were there.

We tried to be easy houseguests. To me, that means being as self-sufficient as possible, accepting what's offered graciously, and remembering always that the most important thing is the time spent with my hosts. Oh, and being conscious of Ben Franklin's words: "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."

Three days later, it felt like we had to physically tear ourselves from our friends and hit the road for home. We had wanted to be on our way by 9. We pulled out of the drive around noon. 

I was so happy to have that time with Chrissie and Michael. My heart was full - from laughs, insights, connection. It's a memory I can take out and look at with joy whenever I'm feeling a little low. 

Thank you, friends.

Speaking of writers' conferences

Yeah, I know. No one was speaking of them. So just listen while I speak.

You all probably know that I have a new book coming out in a very few weeks. From the Horse's Mouth: One Lucky Memoir is my horse's story about his life, and how breaking his leg changed us both.

You also all probably know that I go to two writers' conferences a year, both run by Southern California Writers' Conference, headed up by Michael Steven Gregory and Wes Albers. They hold one conference in San Diego on President's Day weekend and one in Newport Beach in September.

I've told the story of how I was inspired to write Snoopy's book after attending a workshop by Charmaine Hammond. What I don't know if I've made clear is that all of my novels have come from SCWC.

ALL OF MY NOVELS, PEOPLE.

Even if I don't get the inspiration for each plot at these conferences, this is where I've learned the rules of the fiction-writing road. I learned how to tell what genre I'm writing and what its rules are. I know that no one walks in a novel -- they stroll or amble or wander (willy-nilly is optional). I know that a chapter should never end with my character going to sleep. (Being knocked unconscious doesn't count.) All of these things came from sitting in workshops, or reading my first few pages in a read and critique session.

If you are a writer, especially one who is floundering about the publishing arena, you need to go to a working conference. Naturally, I'm recommending SCWC, but if you can't get there, get somewhere. Meet other writers. Mingle with agents and publishers without seeing them as aliens from Planet YouSuck. Find out whether complete strangers are enthralled by your writing, and if they aren't, find out how to make them enthralled.

Also, a good conference should teach you how to learn about the business. The times, they are a'changing.

SCWC is offering a discount if you sign up early (the "Early Bard" discount), so if you're interested you should hop over and sign up. Space, as they say, is limited (even if it is the final frontier).

Michael and Company made a series of animated videos dealing with writers, agents, and editors. They are humorous AND timely, which is amazing since they were made three years ago. I suppose that makes them timeless. Here's the first one:



Check out the others.

Also, if you want information about Snoopy's book launch, go to his blog. He's got the scoop.

What day is this?

Finally met Andrew Kaufman. Sweet!

Howdy, Peeps! I'm home from the Southern California Writers' Conference in San Diego, where I spent three glorious days and one semi-conscious morning talking, teaching, learning, and laughing. I barely have a voice left, and my brain feels like pea soup, but I did want to give you a few highlights:



Tameri at High Tea on the Queen Mary

1. My workshops went over really well and they were fun for me to teach. The PowerPoint slides were invaluable, as they kept me on track and slowed my pace enough. In my first workshop, I thought I breezed through everything a little too quickly,  and kept saying so. My buddy Tameri Etherton, who attended the workshop, threatened to smack me if I didn't stop saying that, so I've modified my opinion - my workshop on Rhythm, Pace, and AMUSEment was perfect.

Rick gave out prizes!

2. I learned a lot from attending other workshops. One example: Rick Ochocki taught me some great tools for keeping my writing process flowing. He was referring specifically to NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month), wherein writers everywhere try to produce 50,000 words in 30 days. This  is something I've tried once and failed miserably at. I don't know that I'll try it again, but I'll certainly use some of the tools.

3. I laughed a lot (and learned) from the conference directors Michael Steven Gregory and Wes Albers. Michael is mostly about film, and when he discusses why certain movies do and don't work, he gives me ideas about why certain books do and don't work, too. And in his new(ish) job as a coordinator for hostage negotiation/standoffs/SWAT activities, Wes gave me some rather fabulous insights into the recent Dorner case, psychological insights I can use in my books.

4. I discovered that if you are hopping from table to table in the bar and you leave your cell phone with one rowdy group, they are happy to take rude pictures on your cell phone. I don't know if they're happy to have said pictures posted on my blog...

Prepare yourself...

They only get worse

There may be more insights and discussions (and rude photos) later in the week, but this is the most I could muster with my thick gooey brain cells, and I didn't want to leave you hanging, wondering how the conference went.

Trust me, it was fabulous!

Where do I start?

I know you're supposed to keep blog posts short and sweet because, God knows, no one has seen their attention span since the 50s, but I've done so much in the past week, it's hard not to tell you all about it in EXCRUTIATING detail.

But I'll spare you and give you the highlights.

On Tuesday, I drove up to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference to be on a panel of entrepreneurial authors. Marla Miller asked me to join her, and of course, I was delighted. My other partners in crime were Sheri Fink, Madeline Sharples, and Jennifer Aderhold. I love panels because I learn as much as I share.

Sheri contacted me before the event to see if we could carpool to Santa Barbara. She lives in Mission Viejo (or as we like to call it, "Bitchin' Viejo"). Normally, I like driving long distances solo so I can sing along to my iPod, but I wanted to get to know Sheri better. Two-and-a-half hours, each way, seemed like a great way to either learn about each other, or start a cat fight.

As it turns out, Sheri is The Sweetest Woman in the World. When she arrived at my house, she had to run the Doggy Gauntlet in order to use the restroom. Duffy immediately jumped on her bare legs and scratched her, to the point of needing first aid.

I'm SO SORRY, Sheri!!! (Note: abject groveling and apologies are the only grammatically correct time to use more than one exclamation point.)

The panel was wonderful. The workshop attendees were interesting and savvy and asked great questions. All of the panelists had insights and information, and Marla facilitated effortlessly, so what was not to love? In addition, Sheri is insanely savvy as a businesswoman. I learned as much from her on our car ride as from the panel.

After the panel, we all scampered down to the bar and met up with good friends Michael Steven Gregory and Jeremy Lee James, who were giving a workshop on the following day. I wish I could've stayed for that workshop, but I had places to go...

Like Tameri Etherton's house on Thursday. I met her at her home in Carlsbad, where I went with her and her darling daughter, Alexzandra, to dinner and a play. The dinner, the play, and the whole experience was beyond fun, but started with a bang - I got a present!

Such a pretty box, what could be inside?

For me? Squee!

I didn't expect it. I may not deserve it. But I'll take it - now I can rule the world.

Thank you, Tameri! Thank you thank you thank you!

Back to busy-ness

Now that my cold is better, I can tell you all how truly great this year's Southern California Writer's Conference, LA Version, was. Good workshops, good speakers, good information, good inspiration. If you are in the southern California, I recommend these conferences. (Major Caveat: If you require that life be taken seriously, the SCWC will be too casual for you.) If you live elsewhere, find a conference, dang it.

Conferences are a great source of face-to-face networking with other writers, which you need to meet even if you think you don't, because you can't just sit in your little room typing-typing-typing all day. You need to find your tribe. You can also meet experts at things writers need, like publishers and agents, media manipulators, etc. Someday your manuscript will be ready for these things, so start making your connections now.

Some of my own personal highlights of the weekend:

1. Marla Miller and Jennifer Silva Redmond gave two great workshops on how to fix what's wrong with your pitch or query letter. I love to go to these workshops, even if I have nothing to read, just to hear how Marla and Jennifer approach the problem with each pitch/query. (And nearly everyone has problems - that's why they're there!) I am currently having a problem with the pitch for my humor books, so even though I didn't read anything, I got a lot out of listening to other people.

2. Scott Sigler, along with Back My Book gave an excellent workshop about some of the things the entreprenurial author should have in their tool box. I couldn't write fast enough, and now I have a big To Do List of things for my website.

3. Stacey O'Brien had a really nice workshop on writing memoir. It was fun, in that her workshop mirrored her own writing process. Stacey is a scientist whose specialty is owls. She lived with an owl for nineteen years, and after his death, wrote her grief in large, disorganized clumps, after which she started organizing in the most scientific of ways, until she had a book. It is Wesley the Owl and it is a gem. Her workshop followed that pattern of being a little disorganized at the start, then snapping into focus. I ended up learning A LOT.

4. In Judy Reeves' Read and Critique, I got to read the first chapter of my third mystery. I hadn't read it aloud for anyone but myself and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. Thanks to Judy and the rest of the writers, I found it. The read and critique format at these conferences is the best I've ever encountered; they are constructive, they are helpful, and you walk away feeling like you want to get to work on your changes, not like your back is still bristling from the arrows.

In between the workshops, I hung out with my old friends and made new ones. We laughed at the bar, then went to dinner and laughed there, then went back to the bar and laughed some more. Of course, when we weren't laughing, we were talking books, publishing, and where we all were on our paths. It was glorious, and I can't thank the directors, Michael Steven Gregory and Wes Albers, enough.

So, what's on my list of things to do? Among other things, these are three things I want to put into place on the website as soon as I can:

1. Put the Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds back. When I was building the site, I didn't like where they were, so I removed them and never re-installed them. What was I thinking?

2. Add a form for people to sign up to receive news about new books, appearances, etc. I put that stuff on the front page of the site, but maybe people want to be told, instead of going to the site. Never know. Could happen.

3. Podcasts. Free podcasts. Scott does a free podcast of one chapter of his latest book each week, along with a little four-minute sales pitch. Four minutes sounds a little harsh - I promise not to take that long, but I could start with Freezer Burn and give people a chapter a week. I'm actually really jazzed about this one.

How does any of that sound?

Shh... I'm not supposed to be here

I'm writing this from my horse trainer's home office while she and her hubby are out at a movie. I've been working for Tina every other week for a coupla months now, and I'm kind of officially off-duty but I need to hang around because Duffy-puppy is in her Monday night obedience class.

Mostly, I'm here to tell you how much complete and utter fun the Southern California Writers Conference LA (Newport Beach) was this weekend. I drank a little too much wine and my eyes feel like they're full of ground glass, but damn, I'm energized! My workshop was superb. Right people for the message, right message for them - does it get any better? They were so lovely and willing to listen and take a chance on the funny side of life. I'd have 'em all over to dinner if I knew how to cook. I sure hope Michael and Wes invite me to do the San Diego conference, if Gordon decides not to do it. That'd be the bomb.

But back to the ranch -

I was going to call up some school districts and ask them if they're interested in field trip information because we're offering ranch tours to children's groups, BUT... after Googling all the districts and getting phone numbers, I can't find Tina's phone in her house to call anyone. I can use my cell phone except it sometimes decides it doesn't want to hear me now and flakes out on me. I did go out to the barn office to try to make the calls but it's hot out there. As in, 113 degrees hot. As in, a dress rehearsal for Hell. I made one call from the barn phone, and said, "Dear God, why am I out here?"

So I'm sitting here in Tina's home office, using her computer, which is a Mac but it's okay, I'm bilingual. Tina's left-handed, which means I'm reaching across with my right hand to click on the mouse. And I'm wearing my bifocals, which means I'm craning my neck up so I can look down through the correct part of the lens.

And Duffy-puppy could be laying outside in the kennel with his friend, Buddy, under the misters, which make it very cool and pleasant. Instead, he's standing at the kennel door, barking and making me miserable.

Yeah, the life of a writer is a glamorous one.

Here's my version of a de-brief.

I've been back from the Southern California Writer's Conference for a week now, and I'm just beginning to get it all processed in my brain. Part of this is because I came down with a cold on Saturday evening and am still in the residual-congestion phase, which makes it hard to concentrate. Part of it is because I spent too many late nights in the bar with everyone, cold and all, and my bio-rhythms get all wacky when I disrupt my schedule. And part of it is because I had so many interesting discussions with so many smart people, my mind goes down a million rabbit holes when I think of any of the topics we covered.

The cold was unfortunate on a couple of levels. For one thing, cold meds hamper your taste buds as well as your drinking, and the Crowne Plaza has a fun sushi bar. The only thing I could really taste was the spicy tuna. Yum. For another, Dale joined me on Saturday for a romantic evening, in honor of Valentine's Day. I'm afraid I was passed out on Sudafed instead.

The worst part of having a cold was that I was on a debut writer's panel on Sunday. Five of us were supposed to be talking about what our experience was like, being newbies, and what we wished we had known before we jumped into the publishing waters. The wonderful Cricket Abbott asked us questions first, then opened the floor to questions from the audience.

I've been on a panel before, and knew I had a tendency to be a mike hog, so I was careful to give short, yet clever, answers.

Here's the thing: the lady next to me couldn't stop talking. I'm not trying to disparage her; some people can't say in one word what they can say in ten. That's why their editors are so vital. But when you're on cold meds and the person next to you is talking so much that they begin to sound like they're kind of droning, you start looking around the room to see who's here and thinking about what you're going to have for dinner and before you know it, the microphone is in your hands and you've forgotten what the question was.

And you can't ask, "What was the question?" because everyone will know you think the previous author was talking too much and then it becomes embarrassing. So instead, I either gave an answer that covered all the bases, hoping I'd get lucky, or I just mumbled that I was on cold meds and gave some vague response. At any rate, I'd like to apologize for sounding like an idiot at various points during the session (in between bursts of brilliance, I'm sure).

I'd tell you lots of "late nights at the bar" stories, except I've been sworn to secrecy for most, and what happens in San Diego stays in San Diego. I'll give you one snippet: track down Gordon Kirkland or Rick Ochocki, and ask them to tell you the story of what happens when a serial prankster (Gordon) and the nicest guy in southern California (Rick) play a prank in the men's room. I heard the story twice, on consecutive nights, and laughed, in convulsive, weeping guffaws, each time.

Now then, for the deep discussions part: one of the guest speakers was David Mathison, former vice president of Reuters News Service, who sold 5,000 copies of his book, Be the Media, in a single day, as the result of one Tweet. Before all my author friends run off to the liquor cabinet, let me say that there was a lot of luck to his exceptional feat. He's a man who travels in the mid-to-upper stratospheres of society and has Facebook and Twitter friends who can say, "Hey, David, come up to the golf tourney this weekend and let's talk about a mass distribution of your book to my legions of students." And he has canned DMs (Direct Messages) he sends out to anyone who follows him - something I dislike - but apparently works when you're up with the Big Boys.

At any rate, his message was pretty simple: "The containers are dying, but the contents will always remain." In other words, LPs went to tapes, both cassette and 8-track, then to CDs, and now we're buying MP3s and iTunes. We didn't stop wanting music. We just changed the container it comes in. He thinks the same thing will happen to books. People still want to be told a good story, but the tactile experience of holding paper in their hands isn't as necessary as the words. He thinks we will all arrive at e-books, eventually.

Michael Steven Gregory (Executive Director of SCWC) and I sat in the bar (amidst a cast of thousands) and talked about the speaker's words. Michael was bemoaning the fact that, as a society, we are spending all of our disposable income on things we don't actually own. We don't own the recordings on our TiVo. We don't own our iTunes. This was recently evidenced when Amazon pulled all the Orwell books from everyone's Kindles because of some copyright question. He wanted to know what I thought.

You know me. I've always got an opinion.

"Our first experience with books starts with cloth books we can chew on, then we go to the thick board books, pop-ups, books with fluffy bunnies we can touch and flowers we can scratch and sniff. This prepares us for the experience of hard covers and thin pages. How are we going to replace those early learning tools electronically, so that the Kindles and nooks and eReaders are as second-nature to us?"

Michael, as usual, waxed philosophic. "Hell if I know."

So, my minions, what do you think? Will the container(s) for our words ever become as invisible as the containers for our music? At what point will society ever look upon books the way we look on old 78s?

Now you know why I go to this conference.

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things

First of all, I'm going to ask that everyone reading this post, stop and offer a prayer to Whoever you believe in, to give our California firefighters victory over this battle. The closest fire is a good 25 miles from my house, yet there is a layer of ashes on my car, and the sun has been filtered through a brown haze all day. The heat won't stop, either, as though the clouds are on fire and pressing down on us. We need relief, either in temperature or humidity, or (miraculously) even rain. If you don't pray, then donate some $$, volunteer at a shelter, or grab a bucket.

It's time to help.

Now, let us move on to other subjects.

Back in August, I offered up another contest for an autographed copy of Freezer Burn. The rules were amazingly simple: just crawl around my website and answer five questions. The first person to answer correctly would win.

Not only did Nancy Sharpe answer everything, she did it the first day of the contest, and no one else even tried. Tsk, tsk, people, I'm a little disappointed, although I hope Nancy isn't disappointed with her book. Email me your address, Ms. Sharpe, and I'll get it in the post.

Finally, let's have a little fun, shall we?

Back in April, Michael Steven Gregory, of the SCWC, put a little teaser together for my book and unleashed it on YouTube. Here it is again, for those of you who are interested:




At the time, MSG promoted it on the SCWC blog, with these words:

Columnist and longtime SCWCer Gayle Carline’s Freezer Burn is out shortly from Echelon Press. Here’s a little glimpse into the characters Gayle had to wrestle with in her debut comedic mystery.


I bring this up because I subscribe to Google Alerts (who doesn't?) and receive scheduled emails telling me where my name has appeared on the 'Net recently. Well, not exactly my name - I get a lot of Gayles who aren't me, and some Carolines because Google thinks it looks an awful lot like Carline, but there's usually at least two or three links that are correct.

This week, one link caught my interest. A certain "jamesdanieluc" re-posted MSG's original blog. This is how it ended up:

Editorialist and longtime SCWCer Gayle Carline 's Deep-freeze Burning is out deadly from Echelon Pressure. Here Holds a trifle glance into the characters Gayle shoulded wrestle with in her launching comedic enigma.

I don't know who this person is, but I admire their attempt to translate MSG's words into their own language and back again. Poetry. Sheer poetry.

What more can I say? Please read Freezer Burn, my debut comedic enigma.

I'm not God, although I keep trying

Here is my very first teaser for Freezer Burn, as assembled by the incomparable (or is it incorrigible?) Michael Steven Gregory of the Southern California Writer's Conference. I like it. It's professionally casual, gives you a hint into who I am, how I write, and how shocking it is to find I'm not a wordsmithing deity. There'll be a couple of more like this, I think, before we get down to the plot. Michael is posting a higher-resolution version on YouTube in the next couple of days.

Whaddya think? I think I sound pretty smart, and look, well, my age. Maybe next time, I'll speak through a sock puppet. Now I know why Streisand always monitors which side she's photographed from.

I really hope Karen (you know, Echelon Press) likes it!