Diary of Murder is a free download today (Sunday). Who killed mystery writer Georgi Turnsby? Was it her husband or a woman selling door-to-door alternative medicine? It could have even been her brother-in-law, the sheriff or any one of her husband's girlfriends. Dana Logan and her friend Sarah Cafferty rush to Wyoming through a Rocky Mountain blizzard to learn what happened? In the process they nearly lose their own lives when  they discover a vicious drug ring.

Download a free Kindle copy today at: http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Cafferty-Mystery-Suspense-ebook/dp/B005JFRROI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337503794&sr=8-1

Going Digital and Getting There

by Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series

It was sad news when Capital Crime Press, my honest, hard working publisher, decided to throw in the towel, but more than that, it was scary. How about the agreements with the distributors? Where were readers, bookstores, and libraries going to find my books? And what made it the scariest was how fast change was happening all around me. But how could I be surprised, though, with major bookstores going belly up and taking their WiFi and coffee bars with them? Larger publishers than mine were calling it quits; eStuff was replacing dead tree stuff so fast it just felt rude. Okay, maybe books must go, but why not with a little more dignity? Nope, no time for that––the future had arrived.

The truth is, I wanted to go all Pollyanna and believe that things would take care of themselves, after all, folks weren’t going to stop reading books––were they? So I let much more time slip by than I ever should have before reading some altruistic Joe Konrath rants and seeing the light. Joe has a way of throwing that switch. No more dragging my feet, I had to go digital or I would be the last writer in the neighborhood to do so.

For me, going digital, meant penning 2nd editions of the first four Baby Sharks and releasing them on Kindle Select. This was the beginning of the “process” part of leaving one world and entering the next.

 

Okay––making the books available for Kindle readers was step one. But how about all those folks who like holding a “real” book in their hands? After all the badmouth that has been given Print On Demand (POD) by the traditional publishing guys (to serve their own purposes, I fear), I was happily surprised to learn that POD books look EXACTLY the same as the book traditional publishers print. Hooray! That meant all readers would be served.

So, new covers for the PODs would need to be arranged, as well as some other details, since I was now the publisher, but it was all within reach. I think it is fair to say that Amazon (Kindle) makes it easy to self-publish, but that’s relative. If you want to go this route, be prepared to exert some effort. It ain’t rocket science, but there are many niggling details that must be addressed. Patience and perseverance are required, and also some thick skin, since there is still a lot of resistance to “going it alone,” even if it is the American way.

The final stage of the “process” is the marketing, of course––the Sisyphean task of making folks aware of your books. Amazon offers help, but as in all things, you must help yourself, as well. I am now in that final stage.

 FREE BOOKS!!

 Baby Shark will be offered free for five days on Kindle –– Click HERE on May 18 thru May 22, 2012 for your free book. The other books in the series will also be offered free in the near future––go to www.robertfate.com for that information.

 Watch for the summer 2012 publications of Baby Shark’s Showdown at Chigger Flats, book five in the Baby Shark series. And, Kill the Gigolo, a contemporary standalone with a male protagonist and a femme fatale that is one dangerous piece of work.

If you TWEET, on May 18th, please Tweet this: Free Baby Shark on Kindle http://tinyurl.com/freebabyshark

Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series, is a Marine Corps veteran who studied at the Sorbonne in France, rough necked in the oilfields of Oklahoma, fashion modeled in NYC, sold show scenery in Las Vegas, and has been a chef in Los Angeles. As a Hollywood special effects technician, he won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, a ceramic artist, and his daughter, a cum laude graduate of USC. A regular guy, he has a dog, two cats, and a turtle named Pharrell.

A Review by Pat Browning

Meet the mystery writers -- who they are, what, why and how they write. Jean Henry Mead edited this worthy collection from interviews and essays she published on one of her blogs. Entertaining and instructional, the collection is available as a trade paperback and the e-book version is on sale this week for $2.99 on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble .

On the list are working journalists such as Vincent Zandri whose experience includes bribing his way out of West Africa. A prolific author, in the spring of 2011 he sold more than 100,000 Kindle E-book editions of his noir novels. He does a lot of work for Russia Today TV and is a part-time rock drummer for the punk band Blisterz. He advises beginning authors not to get married: "For the first ten years of your working life, the writing will be both spouse and mistress."

Ohio journalist/author Craig McDonald's ROGUE MALES was nominated for a 2010 Macavity Award and his newest novel, PRINT THE LEGEND, asks: Was Hemingway murdered? He picks Hemingway as the 20th century's most important author: "He liberated the language and reinvigorated the American novel."

Then there's broadcast journalist Hank Phillippi Ryan, who has won 27 Emmys and 12 Edward R. Murrow Awards. Her current Charlotte Mcnally series features a broadcast journalist, and her new series launches this fall with THE OTHER WOMAN, featuring a Boston reporter tracking an ex-governor's secret mistress. Small wonder that this fearless journalist/author keeps a Zen saying on her bulletin board: "Leap and the net will appear."

Bruce DeSilva is a retired journalist whose first book ROGUE ISLAND made PW's list as one of the 10 best debut novels of 2010. His advice: "Read books the way boys of my generation tinkered with cars, taking them apart and putting them back together again to see how they worked."

J. Michael Orenduff's background as an educator includes a stint as president of New Mexico State University in the 1990s. In his popular POT THIEF series, the protagonist is part-thief and part-social critic, who finds popular culture unfathomable.THE POT THIEF WHO STUDIED EINSTEIN won the 2011 Lefty Award.

Timothy Hallinan, who has three series going - the Poke Rafferty series, the Junior Bender e-book originals and the Simeon Grist reprints - calls this a golden age for mysteries and thrillers. "... And in one of the most remarkable shifts in modern marketing history, women became the driving force in mystery writing ... The e-book has broken New York's stranglehold on what we read -- and what we can write, too."

Randy Rawls, a retired career Army officer and ghostwriter, is the author of the Ace Edwards series and currently working on new series with a Florida-based PI named Beth Bowman. He says: "I believe that one of the successes of writing is knowing when you've bombed. I've bombed on several efforts. They rest on my hard drive, waiting to be saved. Maybe someday I'll get back to them. There are few bad stories, just bad writing."

Another author who retired to write crime fiction is Leighton Gage. He wrapped up a stellar international career in advertising before settling in Brazil and publishing his first book at age 65. Gage comes from a line of Yankee sea captains, which might explain his wanderlust and curiosity about the world.

Of his popular series about Mario Silva of the Brazilian Federal Police, he says that after learning most mystery fans are women, he toned down graphic violence and added an element of romance. "As to why I write, remember what Samuel Johnson said? `Anyone who writes for anything except money is a fool.' Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I wish it were true. But with the pittances we writers earn, I gotta admit, I do it for glory."

Equally frank is Shane Gericke (pronounced YER-key), who gave up a 25-year editorial job at the Chicago Sun Times to write fiction. His advice: Get the writing habit by writing something every day, even if it's a blog or a letter to your mother. "Commercial fiction is, at base, factory work, as you're putting out product for people to buy, and your production line needs to run smoothly. If you love to write, that shouldn't be a problem. If you don't love to write, find another business." Gericke's latest thriller TORN APART was a national finalist for Thriller Award for Best Paperback Novel of 2010 and named a Best Book of 2010 by Suspense Magazine.

Alafair Burke grew up with a father who was writing and a mother who was a librarian. "We were a family that not only told stories, but thought it was perfectly natural to write them down. My mother would take me to the library every Saturday for a new stack of books. The rhythms of storytelling and character creation become ingrained when you read all the time."

A former prosecutor in Portland, Oregon, Burke teaches criminal law and procedure at Hofstra Law School in New York, and writes two crime series -- the Samantha Kincaid series about a Portland Deputy D.A., and the Ellie Hatcher mysteries about a NYPD Detective. In LONG GONE, Burke's first stand-alone thriller, an art gallery manager finds her boss dead and the gallery stripped bare.

Ever the pro and perfectionist, Burke writes that after she finished her eighth book, she "... paused a moment to celebrate having a beginning, middle, and an end. Then I opened a new, blank document on my computer and I started again from the beginning. Yep, I rewrote my book."

THE MYSTERY WRITERS is chock full of good advice and interesting personal tidbits. In all, there are 60 mystery writers within 12 categories.
The categories and authors are:
SUSPENSE: James Scott Bell, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Joan Hall Hovey, Ellis Viler, Cheryl Kaye Tardif.
CRIME NOVELS: Lawrence Block, J.A. Jance, Bruce DeSilva, Diana Fanning, Craig McDonald, Geraldine Evans.
POLICE PROCEDURALS: Leighton Gage, Alafair Burke, Martin Edwards, Pat Brown, Marilyn Meredith, Bob Sanchez, Maryann Miller.
THRILLERS: Robert Liparulo, Vicki Hinze, Shane Gericke, Timothy Hallinan, Lise Glendon.
PRIVATE EYES: Sue Grafton, Randy Rawls, Mark Troy.
NOIR: Vincent Zandri, Roger Smith.
TRADITIONAL MYSTERIES: Sandra Parshall, Gerrie Ferris Finger, Madeline (M.M.) Gornell, Earl Staggs, Holli Castillo, Alan Orloff.
HISTORICAL MYSTERIES: Julie Garwood, Ann Parker, Nancy Means Wright.
CONTEMPORARY WESTERN MYSTERIES: Vickie Britton and Loretta Jackson, Curt Wendleboe.
HUMOROUS MYSTERIES: Lois Winston, J. Michael Orenduff, Rebecca (R.P.) Dalke, Marja McGraw, Susan Santangelo, Ann Charles, W.S. Gager,Chris Redding.
COZIES: Elizabeth Spann Craig, Anne K. Albert, Ron Benrey, Maggie Bishop.
AMATEUR SLEUTHS: John M. Daniel, Margaret Koch, Jacqueline King, Lou Allin, Karen E. Olson, Pat Browning, Leslie Diehl, Sunny Frazier, Jinx Schwartz.

FREE Download of ESCAPE, A Wyoming Historical Novel

Ever wonder what really happened to Butch Cassidy and his gang members? A free download of Escape, A Wyoming Historical Novel tells all in this historically based novel of a young woman kidnapped by a Wild Bunch member and taken to the infamous Hole in the Wall outlaw hideout. There she manages to hide her gender (disguised as a 12-year-old boy). She listens to  the outlaws plan the ill-fated Belle Fourche bank robbery and falls in love  with the youngest outlaw, whom she attempts to reform of his errant ways

A ten-page epilogue details the actual fate of Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and other members of the gang. The novel was heavily researched and is generously laced with humor, suspense and romance.

Download the book now FREE through Monday at: http://amzn.to/K8UW4l

AND THE WINNERS ARE . . . (Drum Roll, Please)

Winner of the print copy of The Mystery Writers is Tricia Lee.

And the winner of a Kindle or Nook copy of The Mystery Writers is Jake (no last name listed).

Please email me at: Seniorsleuth@aol.com.

Madeline (M.M.) Gornell Talks About the Art and Craft of Writing

Madeline, welcome to my mountaintop on the last day of our Mystery We Write Spring blog tour.. It's great to have you visit here from California's Mojave Desert. 

Jean, so glad to be here today. I’ve so enjoyed our previous conversations! You’ve asked me to talk about the craft of writing—a BIG topic—and thought provoking. That’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about our blog tours, making the time to think about what I’m trying to do, and why. In my eyes, the “craft” of writing is two pronged—“craft, and art.”

I love reading fiction novels (mysteries mainly) that have a strong sense of “place,” with characters I like, and in the case of mysteries—a tricky plot I can’t figure out, but makes sense at the end. I also like reading work that has a good sense of language—using just the right word (I’ve spent hours rewriting until it’s “just right” for me—or pressing the DELETE button!). I even like long sentences, and don’t mind being sent to the dictionary a couple times.

All that being said about what I like to read, the art and craft of writing for me is my telling a good story, in an enticing and suspenseful way, with interesting and appealing characters, a murder that needs to be solved (with all the emotional baggage that entails), and using language and style that will appeal to readers and is also satisfying for me to write. A mouthful, I know.

And it’s a really big mountain to climb—but writing a book you’d love to read, I think, is key. So, in today’s writing world, one of my main challenges is balancing all those elements in an artistic and well crafted way. And a key activity for me in trying to “get there,” is rewriting. On a practical/technological level, word processing software has been a tremendous enabler for me. And the author I take inspiration from to achieve those goals, and enjoy reading the most—is P.D. James. To me, she balances all the “craft, and art” elements I most admire.

Thanks, Jean, for inviting me back on this tour and letting me spout-off!
Sure enjoy visiting with you.

My pleasure, Madeline. Thank your for your good thoughts.

You can buy Madeline's books on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and Smashwords in print and e-book editions. And you can visit her online at her website or her Blog. You can also email her directly.

Book Giveaway:

Madeline will be giving away 3 copies of her latest book to visitors who leave their email addresses with their comments.

About the Author:

Madeiline (M.M.) Gornell has three published mystery novels—PSWA awarding winning Uncle Si’s Secret (2008), Death of a Perfect Man (2009), and Reticence of Ravens (2010—and her first Route 66 mystery). Reticence of Ravens is a 2011 Eric Hoffer Fiction finalist and Honorary Mention winner, the da Vinci Eye finalist, and a Montaigne Medalist finalist. In 2012 Lies of Convenience—Book One of a Margot Madison-Cross Route 66 Trilogy, and Pronouncements of Ravens—a sequel to Reticence of Ravens are being released. Lies of Convenience is a tale that fictionally connects murder, truths untold, and Chicago’s Lake Michigan with California’s high desert on the opposite end of The Mother Road. Pronouncements of Ravens takes Hubert James Champion III one step forward in his quest for peace and solitude in the Mojave. But before Hugh can come to terms with himself and his desert home, new obstacles rear their ugly heads—one being a heart wrenching murder. No, there is no easy path for Hugh in the Mojave.Madeline is also a potter with a fondness for stoneware and reduction firing. She lives with her husband and assorted canines in the Mojave in a town on internationally revered Route 66.

Click here to buy her novel, Reticence of Ravens:

Anne K. Albert: Sites, Settings and Scenery

Welcome, Anne, to my mountaintop.  It's always great to have you here. Please tell us about "Sites, Settings and Scenery."

Beginning writers spend considerable time and energy creating believable characters, writing snappy dialogue and developing action packed plots. It’s understandable, therefore, their tendency to ignore setting, but they do so at their own peril.

By definition, setting is the locale or period in which the action of a novel takes place. It can be urban, rural, tropical, wintry, foreign, indigenous, and/or everything in between. A sleepy English village on a clear, crisp winter’s day for example, is a profoundly different setting from a bustling Asian city of fifteen million battered by a category five typhoon.

Setting, however, is more than just scenery. It establishes mood. It creates conflict and causes turmoil. It impacts and changes the characters. A great setting can solve a sagging middle. 

It can (and should) move the story forward.

 For my romantic suspense series, the Piedmont Island Trilogy, I created a fictional island community in northeastern Minnesota near the Canadian border. It’s surrounded by Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world. It’s four seasons, tall pines, rugged rock cliffs and panoramic vistas are the perfect backdrop. This is a small island community where troubles outnumber residents. It allows for a small cast of characters who would naturally know each other. The setting fits the requirements of the genre, and resonates with readers.

Niagara Falls in western New York State is a very different place. It’s urban, hectic, touristy, and echoes the colorful characters and mayhem in Frank, Incense and Muriel, book one of the Muriel Reeves Mysteries. Readers around the globe are already familiar with the region. They think of Niagara Falls as a natural wonder and a romantic destination.

The homes, office buildings, and businesses frequented by the story people, however, are of my own creation because cities, like humans, are in a constant state of flux. Nothing stays the same forever. To retain authenticity in this series I provide a taste of Niagara Falls without being slave to its current reality. The city and surrounding area may change over the years, but its amenities, eccentricities and flare will remain consistent throughout the pages of each book.

Setting isn’t just scenery. It’s a vital tool in every writer’s tool kit. Use it wisely, and happy writing!

Blurb: FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL is set the week before Christmas when the stress of the holidays is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves. Tensions increase when a friend begs Muriel to team up with a sexy private investigator to find a missing woman. Forced to deal with an embezzler, kidnapper, and femme fatale is bad enough, but add Muriel’s zany yet loveable family to the mix and their desire to win the coveted D-DAY (Death Defying Act of the Year) Award, and the situation can only get worse. This cozy, comedic mystery is recipient of the prestigious 2011 Holt Medallion Award of Merit.

Thanks so much, Jean. It’s always a pleasure to drop by and chat! I’d like to remind readers I’m giving away an e-copy of FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL at the conclusion of the Mystery We Write tour. Leave a comment to automatically be entered in the draw. The winner will be announced April 28 at http://anne-k-albert.blogspot.com.

Thank you, Anne. It's always a pleasure to have you visit here.

Anne K. Albert’s award winning stories "chill the spine, warm the heart and soothe the soul…all with a delightful touch of humor." A member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and married to her high school sweetheart for more than a quarter of a century, it's a given she'd write mystery and romantic suspense. When not writing she loves to travel, visit friends and family, and of course, read using ‘Threegio’ her cherished and much beloved Kindle 3G!

You can visit Anne at her website: Anne K. Albert. and her blog site.
You can buy her novel, Frank, Incense and Muriel at Amazon.com