Yay! My advance reading copies of The Desert Hedge Murders, the second Sylvia and Willie mystery, arrived yesterday. Today I’ll begin proofreading the book again. It’s unlikely I’ll find any mistakes, but it happens from time to time. I know of authors who found perfection in the advance review copy only to find upside down …Read More
Write…or Tweet?
My friend Kerrie Flanagan is the director of Northern Colorado Writers. She is an energetic, hard-working woman on a mission to motivate and educate writers, especially local writers, and help them reach their goals. From the Northern Colorado Writers Conference in April to the fall writers retreat, and all the workshops, classes, and special events …Read More
Extra Cranky Today
I couldn’t resist following up on yesterday’s post about my late paper. Turns out it never arrived. I hopped out of bed this morning with high hopes. After all, it was just a transition problem with first-day production. The paper will now be printed in Denver, an hour away from my town. I suppose we’ll …Read More
When My Newspaper is Late
The newspaper and coffee start to my day began when I retired eleven years ago. The habit is firmly entrenched. This business of newspapers dropping like flies bothers me more than drops in the stock market. When one of the Denver papers bit the dust not too long ago, I was upset, even though I …Read More
My Colorado Authors Project — Mike Befeler
I love the authors of Colorado. Once a week I plan to blog about one or more of those talented and friendly folks in the hopes a few more people take a look at their books. Today I want to tell you about Mike Befeler, a Boulder resident whose first mystery was published in 2007. …Read More
Happy Mother’s Day!
Note that I, being a mother, slept in today. Doesn’t matter than my kids are all grown up and live many states away. I pamper myself on Mother’s Day. I already called my own mother, who is celebrating her 90th birthday today. My brother is preparing k-bobs on the grill for her. He already made …Read More
The Grizzly Dream
I have a lot of bizarre dreams, sometimes nightmares. I’ve plucked a couple of story ideas from those subconscious, unconscious mind pictures, even created a character for a short story that has grown into the fourth draft of a novel. The dream I had night before last has curious possibilities. I was walking on a …Read More
Do Short Blogs Attract More Readers?
I don’t know about the rest of you blog readers, but when I’m blog-hopping from favorite to favorite, I tend to skip the long blogs so I can cover more ground, visit more bloggers, and leave more comments. My intentions are good. I always make a note of the longer blogs so I can go …Read More
Introducing Sylvia Thorn and Willie Grisseljon
After years of reading mystery series, and wishing some of those authors would put out a book every six months, I decided to write a mystery of my own. I wanted to understand more about the writing process–creating a character who can grow through multiple stories, properly construct a good story arc, and place clues …Read More
Avoiding the Aaaargh! Moments In Blogging
The best books on writing tell us to set our manuscripts aside for days, weeks, even months before we do final revisions. If we give ourselves time away from our work, we have a better chance of seeing our prose as a reader (or agent or editor) would see it. We can catch errors we …Read More