Best Buy

It seems to me that lots of people use the internet as a way to vent. They take to the blogosphere to complain about bad service, bad products, bad experiences. I want to go the other way.

Last summer we switched cell phone service to another company, but instead of buying the phones directly from the cell phone provider or online, we went to Best Buy. We had T-Mobil but they didn't have a tower near my home or something because we couldn't use our phones in the house and they didn't work at my daughter's school, either. When our contract was up, we switched to Sprint.

We bought our phones at Best Buy. Their prices were better than the cell phone provider store and their staff seemed to know what they were doing more than the staff at the other store. Plus they had live demo models that they just handed us to try out while we shopped. It was a really unusual experience. We went out for dinner and afterwards we went to the Best Buy near the restaurant, signed up for a family plan, bought four phones, took out the Best Buy service plan on mine and my daughter's phones and went home. We were the ones who always had phone problems. I hate to admit it but my husband and my son take much better care of their phones than we do.

My family all got Androids and I decided to try one too. But I have long nails which precludes me from using a touch screen easily. I found it very frustrating, and the phone wouldn't sync with my email. It just wasn't working for me so the next day I went to the Best Buy around the corner from my house and returned my phone. I was a little anxious about it, the return line was always long and slow moving. But I didn't have to get in that line, I just had to take it back to the cell phone department.

While I waited for someone to help me, I noticed that the phones my family had bought the night before were half the price at this store. A few minutes later I was waited on, and with no fuss at all a credit was applied to my account for my family's phones and I swapped my Android for a new Blackberry. All was good.


About 5 weeks later I noticed my battery started running out by midday. It was driving me nuts, I wasn't doing anything different than I ever did with my phone and I couldn't figure it out. I called Sprint and they said it sounded like the battery may be defective. They had me make an appointment at a Sprint service center half an hour away for the next night. Instead, I went back to Best Buy. They showed me how to check and see what programs I had running and it turned out that the UberTwitter app was constantly updating and the bluetooth was seeking and I don't remember what else but they cleared it up for me. I told them what Sprint had said about the battery and they told me that the warranty on batteries was only 30 days, and that had passed. With my service plan I got one free battery but I didn't think that I should have to use it a mere 5 weeks after purchase!

The tech who was helping me talked to the manager. Next thing I knew they opened up a new Blackberry and pulled the battery for me. Then they told me that it never happened and have a nice day.

Over the Christmas holidays my daughter told me her phone kept crashing. We went to Best Buy and a nice young man named Kevin helped us. He took her phone and found that she had over 5000 text messages stored on it. That was causing the crashing. He had to clear off some games, downloaded some apps to help clear it up and literally spent three hours working on her phone. She went off to play video games while I sat and read on my Kindle. He got her phone working and we were on our way. I was impressed with his patience, but especially with his kindness. Plus he explained what he had done and how she should take care of her phone to avoid another problem.

While he was working on her phone, I mentioned that I was having a little problem with my phone, nothing major, just that the "Y" key was a bit sticky. He worked on that for a little bit and it seemed better when we left. But a few weeks later and the "Y" was sticking again and I finally took the phone back in on my day off last weekend.

A nice young girl named Allison helped me. Again I sat reading my Kindle while she worked on my phone. Next thing I knew she was asking me for my drivers' license and home phone number and reams of paper were coming out of the register. I asked her what she was doing and she said I'm giving you a new phone. I was amazed - a new phone because one key was sticky? Really? Brand new. Unbelievable.

The Best Buy service option was about the same price as the plan from Sprint, but it covered so much more. And boy has it paid off.

So hats off to Best Buy in Boca Raton. Your techs are awesome, they are kind and patient and smart. Your service plan really works the way us customers imagine that it would, but usually doesn't.

Bottom line? I wouldn't buy a cell phone anywhere else.

And for the record, I do not work for Best Buy, I don't know anyone at Best Buy, I am not a stockholder and I have absolutely no motive to share my story other than the fact that I can. It makes me feel good to do something nice for a store that has been so good to me.

Boycott HarperCollins

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

Contact
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Library Users, Librarians, and Libraries Boycott HarperCollins Over Change in Ebook Terms

New York, NY -- Library users, librarians, and libraries have begun to boycott publisher HarperCollins over changes to the terms of service that would limit the ability of library users to borrow ebooks from libraries. A new website, BoycottHarperCollins.com, is helping to organize their efforts to get HarperCollins to return to the previous terms of service.

On February 24, Steve Potash, the Chief Executive Officer of OverDrive, sent an email to the company's customers -- primarily US libraries -- announcing that some of the ebooks they get from OverDrive would be disabled after they had circulated 26 times. Soon after, librarians learned that it was HarperCollins, a subsidiary of News Corporation (NWSA), that intended to impose these limits. Immediately, library users, librarians, and libraries began voicing their opposition to the plan by HarperCollins, with several library users and librarians urging a boycott.

As Joe Atzberger, of Columbus, Ohio, one of the first librarians to address the issue, wrote on his Atzblog: http://atzberger.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-overdrive-drm-terms-this-message.html

"The previous model already forced libraries to pretend a digital 'copy' was a single physical thing. Only one library's user can have it 'checked out' at a time. And only on one device. The clearly misapplied language around this tells you what a terrible idea it is. To be clear, this model eliminates almost all the major advantages of the item's being digital, without restoring the permanence, durability, vendor-independence, technology-neutrality, portability, transferability, and ownership associated with the physical version."

Information on this grassroots campaign can be reached via a website that went online on February 27, 2011, BoycottHarperCollins.com. The boycott will end as soon as HarperCollins agrees not to limit the number of times a library can loan each ebook.

Guest Blogger: NEIL PLAKCY

I’m often asked where I get my ideas, and the answer to that can range from a title to a sentence to an image. This morning, though, as I was walking the dog, a whole book sprung into my head based just on something I saw.

Sam, my golden retriever, and I turned a corner and saw a man approaching us pushing a stroller. Not just any man, though-- a gorgeous one, wearing only nylon running shorts and sneakers. He had short blond hair and a muscular chest and his face had the kind of angular features you see on male models.

He was pushing a pair of little girls in a double stroller as he ran. The sun was shining behind him so I couldn’t get that good a look without staring, but then Sam and I doubled back on our tracks, and so did he, so I was able to see him again more clearly. This time we nodded hellos to each other.

That’s when the book sprang into my head. Suppose he’s not the dad of those two adorable little girls at all, but their uncle. He’s staying with his sister while she’s -- what -- recovering from an illness? Getting over a divorce? What’s going on in his life that he has the time to do this?

And who’s the other guy in this story? Not me. I’m too old and too settled with my own partner. But a younger guy, perhaps, recovering from a broken heart by bonding with his dog. They’d exchange some smoldering glances as they meet, perhaps a couple of times in the mornings. But my hero would be curious and a bit repelled-- is this suburban dad flirting with me? With his daughters right there?

How would the truth come out? Maybe they meet unexpectedly away from kids and dogs. And then… sparks fly, and the book takes off.

This is the kind of question I always wanted to ask when I went to writers’ conferences as an unpublished guy, struggling to write a book. How do you start? How does it all come together? Attending Sleuthfest years ago gave me the chance to ask those questions, and get some answers. And then, as I got published, I kept on attending Sleuthfest, looking for inspiration on how to keep my career going, how to get over those slow spots in my manuscript. I’m still going to Sleuthfest, because I still have so much to learn, and you never know where inspiration will strike you.

Even early in the morning, walking the dog.




Neil Plakcy is the author of the Mahu mystery series, about openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka. They are: Mahu, Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire, Mahu Vice, Mahu Men, and Mahu Blood (2011).

He also writes Aidan and Liam bodyguard adventure series, Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, Dancing with the Tide and Teach Me Tonight (2011).

His other books are In Dog We Trust, a golden retriever mystery, as well as the novels GayLife.com, Mi Amor, and The Outhouse Gang and the novella The Guardian Angel of South Beach.

Plakcy is a journalist and book reviewer as well as an assistant professor of English at Broward College’s south campus in Pembroke Pines. He is president of the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America and a member of Sisters in Crime.

He edited Paws & Reflect: A Special Bond Between Man and Dog and the gay erotic anthologies Hard Hats, Surfer Boys and Skater Boys (2010). His erotic stories have been collected in three Kindle editions: Tough Guy Erotica, Romantic Erotica, and Pledge Class and Other College Boy Erotica.

Guest Blogger: SHARON POTTS

When’s a Nightmare not a Nightmare?
By Sharon Potts

I once heard a story at a writers’ conference. It seems that an author was on tour. She arrived for her event at a large bookstore, far from home, pleased to see the dozens of chairs arranged in front of the podium. But as time for her talk drew near, only one person showed up and took a seat. The author gave her presentation, disheartened and feeling like a failure. Afterward, the person in the audience went up to her, asked for her to sign her book, and said. “I’m a still-unpublished author. Boy, what I would give to be in your shoes.”

Hmmm. Sometimes things really aren’t as bleak as they appear to be. Of course, I can’t help but remember that story now, as I’m about to embark on the tour of my second thriller, Someone’s Watching, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that no one will show up. It’s an author’s worst nightmare. But that’s only because we tend to lose sight of our dreams.

Mine began about ten years ago, shortly after I retired from the business world and decided to write a novel. Of course, the fact that I had no training in the craft or any idea of how the publishing world worked was no deterrent. I was certain I could become a successful, published author. I wrote my first novel in record speed—about three months—bought a book that taught me how to query agents, sent out a dozen or so letters, then sat back and waited. The rejections arrived soon after. I realized I needed to try a different tack.

Someone suggested I attend the SleuthFest Writers Conference put on by the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. A three-day conference with workshops and panels on the craft of writing given by experienced, successful authors, SleuthFest also offered the opportunity to meet and pitch to agents and editors. I arrived at the Deerfield Beach Hilton cautiously optimistic. I got to pitch my book to an agent, who rejected it on the spot. What did he know? Then I went to several panels and began to acquire some perspective about things I might be doing wrong. But of course, I told myself, I was writing a different kind of book from the ones those authors were talking about.

On Saturday, one of the highlights of SleuthFest is the author auction. I found myself bidding on and winning a critique by one of my favorite authors, Barbara Parker. Surely, she would see the brilliance in my novel. Guess what? She didn’t. But Barbara gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received. I learned that there’s much more to writing a novel than simply putting a story down on paper. There’s plotting, pacing, character development, dialogue, creating tension, and on and on. Things I’d been too impatient to master. Barbara also taught me that the key to writing a successful novel was in accepting criticism from knowledgeable sources, and then in rewriting and rewriting, yet again.

I followed Barbara’s advice and became active in the Mystery Writers of America, attending every SleuthFest conference in the nine years since that first one. I met my publisher at SleuthFest, bonded with other aspiring writers and published authors, and connected with my current critique partners. When my debut novel In Their Blood was published a little over a year ago, it received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Mystery/Suspense Novel. I honestly don’t believe that would have happened without SleuthFest and the Mystery Writers of America.

So now, as I head out on tour for Someone’s Watching, I put aside the nightmare that no one will show up at my book signings. And remember that at least I have my dream.


Sharon Potts worked as a CPA, business executive, and entrepreneur before turning to a career of murder and becoming a crime fiction writer. Potts’s Miami-based thrillers are about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Her debut novel, In Their Blood, won top honors in the Mystery/Suspense category of the 2010 Benjamin Franklin Awards. Her latest thriller, Someone's Watching was called "shiver-rich" by Publishers Weekly, and “stunningly well-handled” by Booklist. She is the Vice President of the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America and one of the organizers of the SleuthFest Writers Conference. She lives in Miami Beach.
Visit her website, www.sharonpotts.com


The 2011 SleuthFest Writers Conference will be held from March 3-March 6 2011 at the
Deerfield Beach Hotel. This year’s conference features Dennis Lehane, Meg Gardiner, and SJ Rozan, as well as many other best-selling authors, workshops and panels on the craft of writing, agent and editor appointments, and much more. www.sleuthfest.com.

Best Holiday Gift Ever!

THE ULTIMATE RIDE FOR THE ULTIMATE LITERARY BUFF

Penguin Publishing Selling Author-Autographed Mini Cooper on AutoTrader.com

ATLANTA – December 13, 2010 – Are you or a friend or family member the ultimate literary fan? Then AutoTrader.com has posted for sale the ultimate gift for you or that special someone: a 2010 Mini Cooper SD with a dashboard signed by 18 Penguin authors, including Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame, Pulitzer Prize winning authors William Kennedy and Geraldine Brooks as well as New York Times bestselling authors Michael Pollan, Sue Monk Kidd, Jan Karon, Rosanne Cash and many more!

Penguin Books purchased the Mini Cooper as part of the company’s 75th anniversary celebration, which occurred throughout 2010. The vehicle traveled to literary and book events across the country and Penguin-published authors signed the car’s interior at each stop, making this truly a one-of-a-kind ride.

The vehicle is now for sale on AutoTrader.com with a Private Seller advertisement at www.autotrader.com/penguinmini for $30,000. The price reflects the unique nature of the vehicle, its excellent condition and an additional bonus: the car comes with the top 75 titles published by Penguin Books over the past 75 years, a collection of books worth about $1,200. Proceeds from the sale of the car will be donated to the New York Public Library.

“We wanted to post this vehicle on a site that had the ability to showcase the features of this car – both the features and options you’d find on any Mini Cooper and these unique autographs – and that had millions of car-shopping visitors so we could ensure the right buyer would find it,” said Kathryn Court, President & Publisher of Penguin Books. “With the ability to show detailed photos of the car and write a description that really highlighted the special and unique features, AutoTrader.com’s Private Seller ad was clearly the way to go.”

Penguin Books utilized AutoTrader.com’s Private Seller options to the max to showcase the vehicle. At www.autotrader.com/penguinmini, interested buyers will find multiple photos of the car’s interior and exterior and a description that highlights the car’s features. The vehicle comes with AM/FM/CD, MP3 player jack, air conditioning, automatic transmission, black cloth seats, orange and black exterior paint (freshly painted) and, of course, those 18 autographs in silver pen along the dashboard, doors and steering wheel. The car has about 15,750 miles on it and is currently located in New York City.

“When Penguin approached us to assist them in finding a buyer for this unique vehicle and for this great cause – the New York Public Library – we immediately said ‘yes’,” said AutoTrader.com General Manager of Private Seller Service and Sales Melanie Kovach. “AutoTrader.com is all about using technology tools to connect buyers and sellers efficiently, and this is a special opportunity to do so that we’re really excited about.”

Full details, photos and contact information for Penguin Books to make an offer on the vehicle is included in the advertisement, or you can contact Paul Lamb at 212-366-2277 or Paul.Lamb@us.penguingroup.com.

Penguin Books, like any private seller, will select the buyer with the most attractive offer. Used 2010 Mini Coopers listed for sale on AutoTrader.com range in price from about $24,000 to $30,000, depending on vehicle options and condition.

“We priced the car at the top of the price range you would find for a used 2010 Mini Cooper on AutoTrader.com because of the special and unique nature of the vehicle,” said John Fagan, VP Director of Marketing at Penguin Books. “We’ll consider all offers, but are obviously looking to get as much for the vehicle as possible as all the proceeds benefit the New York Public Library, one of New York City’s most treasured institutions.”

Guest Blogger: S.G. BROWNE

I first came up with the idea for Fated late one night in September 2003. At the time, I didn’t realize the idea would turn into a novel about fate, destiny, and the consumer culture. It was just this kernel of a notion for a possible short story about a main character who knew certain things were going to happen because he was Fate. And that’s where I left it. As an idea waiting to become a story.

The following July, while sitting in a shopping mall and watching people walk past and wondering what their futures held, I wrote down the line:

I look at people and see what they’re going to be like in twenty years.

What followed was a short scene about a handful of people and where they would be in twenty years. While I connected it to the concept of Fate I’d touched on the previous September, I didn’t pursue it any further. Instead, I filed it away until, more than two years later, the scene became part of the opening chapter of Fated.

But even then, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the idea that I had. When I first sat down to start writing Fated, I had no idea I was going to be writing a social satire on the consumer culture and the stupid things that a lot of people do to screw up their lives. But in the same way I wrote my first novel, Breathers, the social commentary just sort of evolved as the story unfolded.

From December 2006 to March 2007, I wrote approximately half of Fated. Forty thousand words, or roughly one-hundred-and-sixty pages. And I had a lot of fun doing it. Scenes with Fate and Destiny. Lunches with Sloth and Gluttony. Awkward moments with Death and Secrecy and Failure. An unexpected romance with a mortal woman. And, of course, meetings with God.

Personifying abstract concepts led me to do a bit of research on the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Contrary Virtues, and the concepts of Karma, Fate, and Destiny. While most people tend to think of these last two as one in the same, I differentiated between them due to their corresponding connotations. Fate tends to be more negative (a fatal disease, a fate worse than death), while destiny implies a more favorable outcome (he was destined for greatness, it was her destiny).

Because my main character has been around for the entire existence of humankind, I wanted to include references to famous people and significant historical moments in the narrative. So I consulted my Handy History Answer Book for events that took place during the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and the Scientific Revolution. I Googled to verify the passenger list of the Titanic and if someone during Henry VIII’s reign would wear a tunic. And I spent a lot of time researching the population of the planet, the evolution of man, and determining how many people God smote (Jezebel, Saul, Lot’s wife, and some guy who made the mistake of picking up sticks on the Sabbath, among others). After all, when you have God as one of your characters you need to try to get these things right.

Also, since Fate has to tend to the futures of people across the planet, I did research on a number of geographic locations, including Paris, Los Angeles, Vienna, Duluth, San Francisco, and Daytona Beach. But the majority of my research on set locations was for Manhattan, as that’s where Fate and most of the rest of the immortals reside.

Although it was some of the most enjoyable writing I’d ever done, I began to wonder where the story was going. Why it mattered. What was the purpose. I like to discover the story as I write it, so plotting everything out has never been my style. I’m kind of like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’m making it up as I go. Problem is, if you’re not sure where you’re going, sometimes it takes a while to figure out how to get there. So I played with some ideas, tossed them out, went back and revised sections for continuity, and scratched my head a lot.

Finally, in December 2007, I figured out what I wanted to do. How everything would tie together. Why the story mattered to me. At that point, after nearly a year working on Fated, I’d only managed to get another twenty thousand words written. Half of what I’d done in just the first three months. It was a humbling and often frustrating process.

But over the next month I poured out the last twenty thousand words and finished the first draft of Fated on February 2, 2008, two weeks after I sold Breathers to Random House. Twenty-one months later, I finally get to share the story with everyone else. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Visit the author's website: S.G. Browne

Guest Blogger: JERI WESTERSON

Day Jobs
By Jeri Westerson

Maybe readers think that authors spring fully formed into the world, all published and everything. But those of us who publish later in life, usually have a slew of experiences prior to getting that call from a publisher.

As for me, my resume reads a little like I couldn’t hold down a job.

That was not the case. I started out life with an entirely different vocational path. While in high school and college, I had decided that I wanted to be an actress. I was a singer, failed dancer, successful comedienne and dramatic thespian, winning acting awards all through high school. I directed and even, briefly, became a puppeteer in college. But then I went to some real world auditions and had my head handed to me. Standing in a bare room with people in suits discussing your various shortcomings amongst themselves while you stood there, suddenly did not have the appeal it once had. But I was lucky. Like many other people with artistic talent, I had few tricks up my sleeve. Little did I know that the skill of designing all those programs and posters I did for years for various theatrical productions had a name: graphic artist.

I switched majors to art and graduated with an art degree and, with portfolio in hand, dove into the advertising world of Los Angeles. Well, not so glamorous at first. I worked in an in-house art department for a commercial lighting company in Huntington Park, CA. Later I got a dream job in Canoga Park designing video boxes, the children’s line. So basically, I got to watch cartoons and design the boxes and collateral. Family Home Entertainment became the best design job I ever had. If they still exist—and I designed some Inspector Gadget boxes, Pound Puppies, Strawberry Shortcake, for them to name a few—if they ever put together a little animated FHE logo of three crayons with arms and Mickey Mouse gloves like they had planned to, that was my design. I invented those guys.

They got bought out by Carolco, owned by the Menendez family. We all thought that meant an influx of cash to the company. What it really meant is that they fired everyone. The art department was closed and we were all laid off, and there were quite a few of us (since their biggest video line was porn, and yes, I designed a few of those, too). The Menendez name should sound familiar to you. It was that murder case in the eighties where the young men killed both their parents and pled that they had been abused for years. I think they’re still in jail. Revenge for the firing? Hey, I’m not saying if you fire me you’re children will murder you, but...

Not long after that I got into freelancing and did work for Epic and CBS Records. This was all before computers, so I knew all the designer tricks (and I was pretty high tech at home with my fax machine and my copier that zoomed! Oooh.) But I made a lot of money in those fat eighties and semi-retired at that point to have a baby.

Fast forward about two years later and circumstances had us moving out of lovely Pasadena so my husband could follow the job to the Inland Empire (that’s southern California speak for deserty, inland counties, kind of far from interesting things like the coast). There was no question about my getting back into design because the entire world had switched to computers and I, alas, had not.

So this was the turning point for me to decide to become a stay at home novelist. And I did eventually learn to use a PC, but with a young, struggling family, I couldn’t end up just staying at home, at least not on the weekends. We also live in an area of southern California where there is a wine country so I thought it would be fun to work at a winery as a tasting host and tour guide. I also starting making bird houses to sell on the side so if you ever bought a birdhouse at a Temecula winery gift shop (Mount Palomar Winery) in the mid nineties, look on the bottom to see if it’s got my signature! Ah, a real collector’s item. I also made some amusing Christmas ornaments for that same winery (again, look for that signature on the backs.)

After three years of that I turned to newspaper reporter for just about all the local daily and the weekly papers. And during all this, I was writing my novels, sending to agents, and finally landing one. After eight years as a reporter I became a soloist and choir director for a local church. And still I wrote. I moved from that to part time secretary. Still writing. Still getting rejected. Until finally hitting on the right agent (number four) and about twenty novels later before that contract showed up at my door.

All smooth sailing and glamorous life of an author from then on, right? Wrong. Still had to keep a part time day job as an office assistant…until quite recently. They say you have to spend at least twice your advance on your first book to promote it properly and I’ve been doing the same for each book since. So far, all of my writing income has gone right back into publicity and promotion, including travel to various conventions, a nifty book trailer you can see on my website, collateral material, and a yearly fabulous book launch party that involves sword-fighting knights. With a son away in college, our household expenses have dropped and I’ve been sans day job since June of this year, using what little money I have to pay off my credit cards. But I’m writing full time. I've heard that it takes till the fifth book to make a profit. I’m hoping I won’t have to be back in the work force before that happens. In the meantime, I’m practicing: “Would you like fries with that?”




Jeri works at home writing the next Crispin Guest Medieval Noir in the series. The new release of THE DEMON’S PARCHMENT has been very exciting and you can share in the excitement by reading the first chapter on her website www.JeriWesterson.com.

Guest Blogger: DEBORAH COONTS

RULES

I’m not in favor of rules. However, free-thinker that I am, I’m willing to admit they have their place. Just don’t let those little buggers into my writing life. Talk about a great way to strangle the muse.

In the interest of true-confessions, I wasn’t always this…liberated. Like every wanna-be novelist, when I sat down to figure out how to write a novel, I wanted to know the rules. Just tell me how to do it, and I’d write a story the paint-by-numbers way. And, of course, this being the good ‘ol U S of A, the land of the ‘How To’ book, I found no shortage of opinions as to the proper approach to writing the next Great American Novel.

In my quest for the literary holy grail, I eagerly absorbed the proffered information. I learned some of the building blocks of craft—varied sentence structure, elimination of backstory and narrative, description only when necessary to set the scene or characters, adjectives and adverbs are not your friends, realistic dialogue (try reading it out loud), well, you get my drift. I’m sure there are plenty of other rules I absorbed so well that they became part of my subconscious. Others were pounded into intuitiveness by members of my critique group. And all of them helped me become a ‘writer.’

But my goal was to be a ‘novelist.’ So, what’s the difference? Well, a story, for starters. Now that I had some basic understanding of HOW to write (although I was far from being proficient—a reality that most beginning novelists find a bitter pill to swallow—I was no exception), WHAT to write became the burning question. I consulted my writing bibles. Thankfully, they provided a blueprint.

The first one suggested I should write what I read. Okay, I could do that. So I slaved over this international intrigue, romantic suspense, mystery/thriller. Suffice it to say, even after a million rewrites, the story was unsalvageable. It was so bad that I spent a great deal of time destroying every copy. I would rather see naked pictures of myself on the internet than have anyone read that first attempt.

Back to the books. The next suggestion was that I should write what I know. At the time I was a tax attorney in Colorado raising my son on my own. Life was a slog, punctuated by sublime moments, but a slog none-the-less. Who would want to read about that? By this point I was smart enough to know that was a rhetorical question. However, lacking any better idea, I set about writing a story with a lawyer who was a single mother as the protagonist. This attempt was better, and it was sufficiently proficient to garner the interest of an agent. But, while he liked my writing, the story was a bit too workman-like, too mid-list, for his liking.
Back to the books. Which, after offering the above suggestions, were curiously short on further specifics. I needed to be unique, but not too. I needed to find my own voice. I needed to write the story I was meant to write. Great. But how, exactly? I had no idea. So, I did what every good writer does…I punted. Actually, I didn’t punt so much as explore. I stretched other writing muscles.

First, I wrote a few feature articles for various publications. One of them was a bit flip, a bit cheeky—a less-than-confident attempt at humor. And, it worked! I had found my niche! And, I was having fun! Unconstrained, I let the stifled sarcasm run wild. After accepting an offer to write a humor column for a small national magazine, I flexed my humor chops. Along the way, I refined what was funny and what wasn’t, I learned to write tight, and I learned to write even when my muse took an extended leave.

After a few years of this, the dream of writing a novel could no longer be ignored. So, what to do? I can remember sitting at the computer, staring at the blank screen, and consciously deciding to throw away the rules, to shrug off the constraints on creativity, to boldly go where I had never gone before.
The resulting story features a sarcastic female protagonist who is the head of customer relations for a major Vegas strip property, a male lead who impersonates Cher for a living, the protagonist’s mother, who runs a whorehouse in Pahrump, NV, porn stars and swingers in town for the weekend, several mysterious men, and a girl taking a header out of a tour helicopter right into the middle of the 8:30 Pirate Show at the Treasure Island Hotel. Yup, I had a blast.

And, after all of this, I sold the story.


Deborah Coonts' mother tells her she was born in Texas a very long time ago, though she's not totally sure—-her mother can’t be trusted. But she was definitely raised in Texas on barbeque, Mexican food and beer. She currently resides in Las Vegas, where her husband, Steve (a bestselling author in his own right) assures her she cannot get into too much trouble -- silly man. She's spent more time in school than any sane person should, acquiring along the way a bachelors and masters degree in business, a law degree and a masters of laws in taxation (can you say ‘geek’?)

In Memoriam: STEPHEN J. CANNELL

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Stephen J. Cannell has passed away:

>>Prolific TV producer Stephen J. Cannell dies
NEW YORK – Stephen J. Cannell, the prolific writer-producer of dozens of TV series that included "The Rockford Files" and "The A-Team," has died at age 69.

Cannell passed away at his home in Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night from complications associated with melanoma, his publicist said on Friday.

After three decades as an independent producer of TV shows, Cannell in recent years had focused his attention to writing books, and had published 16.

As an actor, he had a recurring role on ABC-TV's series, "Castle.">>


I'd like to add my two cents about Mr. Cannell.

I just met Stephen Cannell in February of this year at Sleuthfest, and I was simply taken with the man. He was the guest of honor and spoke beautifully about his life and family and his work. I blogged about it then and wanted to share it --

>>Lunch was followed by keynote speaker Stephen J. Cannell. He is a man who
>>overcame severe dyslexia to become one of the most successful TV producers
>>ever, then followed up that career by writing bestselling novels. For me, one
>>of the highlights of his talk was the way he spoke about his wife, Marsha, who
>>he has known since the 8th grade. He shared with us that he was constantly on
>>the verge of flunking out of school, but he was "relentlessly positive." And he
>>told us that "you don't have to be the smartest kid in school to get where you
>>want to go." He sure proved that.

I didn't write about how he flew in to Florida with his wife, who suffers from
Alzheimer's disease. He was incredibly solicitous of her, always at her side and
when he couldn't be, he would ask someone else to watch her. He was supposed to take part in a Sunday brunch interview with David Morrell that was to close Sleuthfest,
but his wife wasn't doing well and he ended up canceling that event and taking
her home.

I guess with all the celebrity drama that's always being played out in the media, for me it was rather remarkable to see this Hollywood couple who had been
together for so long.

Rest in peace.

Guest Blogger: ANNA ELLIOTT

Healing Hearts

Dark Moon of Avalon takes place in the shadow of King Arthur's Britain, during the mid 6th century, when invading Saxon armies were increasingly defeating Britain's forces and taking over Britain's lands. My Isolde is the daughter of Modred, great villain of the Arthurian cycle of tales. And she has lost everything, her old life, her family, her home, have all been destroyed by the constant battles and political intrigue.

My Isolde is also a healer, working with Britain's wounded soldiers. She doesn't yet know how she herself can find the healing she offers others every day. But she desperately needs to believe that recovery from trauma is possible, and so she throws herself passionately into her mission as a healer.

As you might expect, Isolde's passion for the healing craft sent me scurrying for the research books. I read medieval herbals and compilations of the folk remedies common to the British isles; I pored over Roman surgical texts. And I was absolutely fascinated to discover just how sophisticated a Dark Age healer like Isolde could have been.

Certainly our modern knowledge of germs and bacteria revolutionized the medical profession, as has anesthesia and modern surgical theaters. But for all that, medical practice in the Dark Ages was not as crude or as brutal as one might imagine. One ancient surgical technique--that Isolde herself uses to conduct an amputation in Dark Moon of Avalon--was a device called a 'soporific sponge.' Texts on the soporific sponge survive from as early as the 9th century, and direct the healer to soak a pad or sponge with black nightshade, hyoscyamus (henbane), the juice of hemlock, the juice of leaves of mandragora, and several other mild narcotics. The sponge was then held beneath the patient's nose during surgery, so that breathing its fumes would keep the patient unconscious.

In Dark Moon of Avalon, Isolde and Trystan are dispatched on a diplomatic mission through unstable and warring lands to persuade rulers of the smaller kingdoms surrounding Britain to join forces to protect the throne. Isolde's skills as a healer are more than once all that stands between success and failure of their mission. Isolde's greatest test as a healer, though, comes when she is faced with the fear that she may not be able to save the wounded man who matters to her most of all. And the most rewarding part of writing Dark Moon of Avalon for me was watching her find the courage to face that fear, and through it find the courage to also heal her own wounded heart.

Brought together under dire circumstances, Trystan and Isolde must confront their growing love for each other and face a battle that will test the strength of their will, their hearts, and the lives of all those in Britain.



To celebrate the release of Dark Moon of Avalon, I'm offering a free prequel short story, Dawn of Avalon, available for free download on my website here: http://www.annaelliottbooks.com/dawn.php

He would become the most powerful wizard in the history of Britain—Merlin. She would become Britain's most storied sorceress—Morgan le Fay. But before they were legends, they were young. And they were lovers. Together, in the sunlight of one day long ago, they saved a kingdom.
Dawn of Avalon. A stand-alone story from the universe of Anna Elliott's Twilight of Avalon.

Guest Blogger: JACK TODD

Writing the Paint trilogy
Turning family history and American history into fiction

It started with a box. A fairly large, unwieldy box, heavily taped and tied with grocer’s string. Sent, with love, from my mother in western Nebraska to me in New York City in 1981.

This time, it wasn’t a box of brownies. My mother, born Maxine Marguerite Morgan in a Nebraska sod house in 1910, had shipped our family history, or as much of it as a single box could contain. Letters, family portraits, fragments of diaries, and one fairly substantial memoir, thirty-five pages single-spaced on someone’s old typewriter, left by my great-uncle Eb Jones, pioneer and frontier character in South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska.

Perhaps, my mother suggested in the accompanying letter written in her elegant hand, I could do something with all this. I don’t know what she had in mind: a family history to be circulated to the relations, perhaps? One of those Aunt Betty and Uncle Bill and the bear at the family picnic things, preserving all the family yarns for posterity?

I did read Uncle Eb’s memoir, pieced together from memory after the diaries he kept for forty years were lost in a house fire in the 1930s. It was lively stuff: frontier murders, a goldrush or two, the Civil War, a drive to bring a thousand head of buffalo from Arizona to Wyoming. The massacre at Wounded Knee, where he was a scout for the cavalry.

I put the box aside and forgot about it. Somewhere along the line, in one of my numerous moves, most of it was lost. Twenty years later, a conversation with my sister aroused my curiosity about those old letters and memoirs, because two things struck me: first, there was a doozy of a story in there, which I had been too obtuse to see the first time around. Second, there was a remarkable confluence, over a period of nearly 150 years, between the history of my family (or more specifically, my mother’s family) and the history of the United States.

The first members of the Jones family had arrived in the Boston area before the American revolution. They drifted south as far as Mississippi, where John Milton Jones was born in 1830. John Milton left the south to walk to California with seven or eight friends after gold was found on the West Coast in 1849. As far as we know, he was the only one to survive. He returned to the Mississippi River with enough capital to buy what he called a “store boat,” which he operated on the river in partnership with a freed slave until they came under Confederate fire during the Civil War.

John Milton sold the boat and moved north to South Dakota, arriving as one of the first pioneers in the Sioux Falls-Yankton area in 1863. He married a woman who was part Sioux and fathered several children, two of whom, Eb and his brother Squier, became the protagonists of my first novel, Sun Going Down.

Both boys were fluent in Lakota, but Eb was perpetually restless. He scouted for the cavalry, worked as a sheriff in Spearfish and elsewhere, tried ranching in a dozen locations at a dozen times. Squier settled down in Brown County, Nebraska and built a ranching empire, beginning with a 160-acre homestead.

It was on that ranch that the essential conflict of this trilogy was borne, when Squier’s daughter Velma, my grandmother, became pregnant by one of his bronc riders. Squier kicked the pair of them off his ranch and set them up in a miserable homestead with a tumbledown soddy. After my mother was born, the bronc rider broke her arm in a quarrel and Squier went a little farther: he drove the young husband out of the state, leaving Velma to try to figure out how to survive, along with her two small children on a desolate homestead.

She might have pulled it off, but Velma learned she had tuberculosis in 1915 and spent most of the rest of her short life in and out of the sanitarium in Denver while her children were shuffled back and forth among orphanages and various family members willing to take them in.

In historical terms, it was all there, a primer of American history in the story of a single family: the great Mississippi River and the steamboats, the California gold rush (and a later gold rush in the Black Hills) the Civil War, the westward expansion, the Indian wars, World War I, the Roaring 1920s, the Great Depression and World War II. Somewhere along the line, members of the extended Jones family were always part of it.

I set out to tell the story. Six years after I began reassembling the stories in the original box, with the help of sisters, cousins and aunts all over the western U.S., Sun Going Down was published by Touchstone Books.

The first novel began in 1849 and ended at the beginning of the Great Depression, in 1933. The second, Come Again No More, is set entirely during the Depression years and researching it was less difficult, because I heard much of it directly from my parents. They lost their farm in Nebraska during the 1930s and joined the great migration to the West Coast, moving to a small Oregon mill town where my father, a former boxer, had a job in the mill. After six months, he decided he couldn’t stand the rain and dragged the family back to Nebraska.

Like Sun Going Down, Come Again No More is an attempt to get at the general truth of our common history through the particular history of a single family. It is one thing to read the history of the 1930s or to review the painful statistics of a time when a third of the American work-force was unemployed. Those statistics come home, however, only when you find a way to bring alive the impact of hard times on ordinary folk.

There is an odd process a writer goes through when turning family history into fiction. The real characters fade and are replaced by the fictional characters who become as real, in the imagination, as living friends and relatives. Thus Squier Jones for me will always be Eli Paint, his fictional counterpart, and Eb Jones is Ezra Paint, Eli’s brother.

The character Emaline in both books is, of course, my mother. With her hot-tempered, quick-fisted husband Jake McCloskey (my father, the first Jack Todd) she is alive to me as both fiction and memory. In Come Again No More, I attempted to tell their story, the awkward marriage of the rather prim young woman who loved Chekhov and Balzac to a character so rough, he would drive a steel bolt with his bare fist.

As Come Again No More ventures into the world, I’m completing the third novel in the series, The Rain Came Down, set almost entirely during World War II and based, in part, on the letters of my mother’s younger brother Jimmy Wilson, a gunner on the battleship Tennessee from Pearl Harbor to Japan. The contents of another box, in other words.

A lesson for writers everywhere: beware the boxes you open. You may find yourself, years later, still entranced by the old stories, the characters who stare out at you from the black-and-white photographs, the hasty letters dated 1887 or 1910 or 1944. More novels, waiting to be born.



Jack Todd is the author of Sun Going Down and Come Again No More

Guest Blogger: ROSE MELIKAN

Rose Melikan is kicking off a trilogy of guest posts from some authors of historical fiction. Enjoy!

I’m an academic in my “day job”, and writing scholarly non-fiction has influenced my Mary Finch novels a great deal. Structurally, I approach fiction in the same way as academic writing. I follow plans and outlines, and I work out calendars so that I can plot out the action on a day-by-day basis. As a story develops I often feel more like I am discovering and recording what actually happened rather than creating it, so I come to an understanding of the story in the same way that I come to an understanding of an actual historical development. Now, I’m sure that one reason I feel this way is that, so far, my fiction has been set in the same period as my academic work. I’m fictionalizing material that I’m already quite familiar with in the non-fiction context.

I also do the same kind of research for fiction and non-fiction, although I use that research in a different way. Non-fiction and fiction have the same basic objective – to convince the reader of an argument. The non-fiction argument is the thesis, and the fiction argument is the theme. The difference is that the non-fiction thesis is obvious whereas hopefully the theme in a work of fiction is not – you work it out as you go along. That’s the pleasure of reading a story – you wonder what is going to happen and why, but if you were wondering what an academic article was about as you were reading it, you’d probably give up. So, academic research is more focused and more obvious. The academic tries to make his argument irrefutable by setting out his sources in charts, tables, footnotes. Research for fiction is more wide-ranging and subtle. The author tries to captivate the reader and carry him along – encouraging rather than lecturing, so that the reader is won over without realizing it.

I think that the best kind of research in fiction, therefore, often goes unnoticed. It is embedded in throwaway comments, or background descriptions, or summaries that “effortlessly” set the scene. I find that I do a lot of research in order to feel comfortable not saying something, or to say something very simple – even something that, in retrospect, I could have said without doing the research, simply by making an educated guess. It can feel like a waste of time, but I like to think that some of my confidence is transferred to the reader. As a reader, I think I can sense when an author’s knowledge of the world he’s created is so extensive that he isn’t telling me everything he knows. He’s describing one room in a house, but if I asked him, he could tell me about all the other rooms. If I feel that an author is writing right up to the edge of his knowledge, I become suspicious, and once that happens, the illusion of the story is lost. Among modern novelists of historical fiction, I think that Patrick O’Brian is a master in this respect.

Another reason for doing more research than I think is strictly necessary, of course, is that sometimes my educated guess would have been wrong! There is nothing more irritating than finding a mistake after it has been incorporated in the story, particularly (as always seems the case) when it turns out to be something fairly straightforward that I really ought to have checked… It may seem odd to be worried about accuracy in the context of a work of fiction, but it’s essential that where the world of the novel intersects with real people or actual events, it doesn’t ignore what is known about those people and events. Of course, historical fiction can “get away” with inaccuracies or vagaries that authors of contemporary fiction cannot. The average reader today would find it difficult to estimate the time of a journey from London to Cambridge in 1800, or whether someone in Boston, Massachusetts would have had an accent significantly different from his relatives in Boston, Lincolnshire – but such details wouldn’t pose such a problem in a novel actually written in 1800. In one sense, the more ancient the setting, the less likely readers are to spot errors. On the other hand, the writers of contemporary fiction are much less likely to make these kinds of errors in the first place. More importantly, because they can presume a general familiarity on the part of their readers, contemporary novelists have fewer decisions to make about the level of accuracy necessary to establish and maintain their fictional worlds.

As you will have guessed by now, I’m rather a pedant where historical accuracy is concerned – it must be the academic in me. My editor once told me not to let the truth get in the way of a good story, but I’m afraid that I can’t knowingly falsify the historical record. I would much rather amend the plot (and hopefully come up with something better and more accurate). I also try to weave my story as closely as possible into real events, or events that might have happened, given the state of our knowledge. Most of the time these events are essential to the narrative, such as the timing of the Woolwich mutiny in The Counterfeit Guest, but sometimes I’m afraid that they simply reflect a fascination with detail, such as the departure time for the Ipswich to London mail coach in The Blackstone Key. Nothing really turned on it, but I wanted to get it right. Of course, sometimes I have to give in. I couldn’t discover the Parisian theatre schedules for the autumn of 1797, so my characters in The Mistaken Wife actually attend a play that was performed in the autumn of 1796. The London play in the same story, however, is accurate for the day and theatre mentioned. And I certainly can’t claim to be perfect. Fortunately, I have a wonderful copyeditor, who questions everything, and definitely keeps me on my toes.

For more info: Rose Melikan

Guest Blogger: LISA BLACK

SERIAL KILLERS AT OPPOSITE ENDS OF SPECTRUM

Television tells us that serial killers come in one consistent profile—white men between 25 and 40, quiet, loner types with a grudge against their mother. Reality tells us that nothing in life is ever that consistent.

Google “Cleveland, Ohio” and “serial killer” and the hit list will come up with exactly two, separated by over seventy years: Anthony Sowell, who killed eleven women and buried them beneath his home, and the still-unknown Torso Killer. Anthony Sowell was caught in 2009. The Torso Killer murdered at least twelve people, possibly twice that, mostly between 1935 and 1938, adding a new layer of grief to a city besieged by the Depression. However, Cleveland’s serial killers operated at polar extremes of both time and method.

Eliot Ness, the city’s new safety director, could do nothing. Cleaning up organized crime was one thing, but trying to find a foe with no such businesslike motive to his work turned out to be quite another. The Torso Killer was America’s first apparent serial killer before the term existed. He was America’s version of Jack the Ripper--bizarre, bloody and prolific.

Anthony Sowell, on the other hand, is your ‘classic’ serial killer, one who followed all the modern-day rules for staying under the radar: Be polite to your neighbors. If you get caught, serve your time quietly and move on. Pick victims who can disappear without furor, poor women with addiction problems.

The Torso Killer broke all these rules. He killed men and women alike. He castrated, mutilated, dismembered. Sometimes he wrapped the pieces in clothing or newspaper for some unlucky witness to find. Far from keeping a low profile, he displayed his work with dramatic abandon.

The police didn’t know what to make of him. They rounded up the usual suspects—crazy men and various ‘perverts,’ looking for the obvious when cops today would know to look for someone more like Anthony Sowell—someone quiet, unnoticed. It didn’t help that homeless men were riding the rails more than ever, criss-crossing the country and functioning without the trail of dental records, fingerprints and missing person information databases that exist today.

The victims of these killers were brought to the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, where I used to work as a forensic scientist in the trace evidence lab, so I’ve tried to cite both these past and present methods of serial murder. In Trail of Blood CSI Theresa MacLean must apply modern-day science not only to the Torso killings but to a new series of murders in order to keep history from repeating itself.



Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue, and now works as a certified latent print analyst and CSI for a police department in Florida. Her books have been published to critical acclaim in seven languages.

Lisa's latest book is TRAIL OF BLOOD. Visit her on her website at www.lisa-black.com. Or stop by the Glades Road Branch Library on Thursday, Oct. 7 at 2:00 PM to meet Lisa in person!

For the college bound...Part 1

There are lots of books out there to help prepare you for going away to college, and my daughter Ariel and I have read most of them! Ariel is an incoming freshman and a reader, so was happy to help with this project. Here are our picks for the best of the best, the books you should not miss.

Harlan Cohen heads the list with two terrific books, one geared towards students, the other towards parents - but feel free to switch with each other when you're done!

The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College by Harlan Cohen: Published in 2009, it's still new enough to cover all the stuff that matters to today's incoming freshman, from the title's what do you say to a naked roommate and other trials of dorm life to STDs to should you be Facebook friends with your parents? It's funny, easy to jump around or read in order, plus Cohen includes lots of real life stories from college students about every situation you can think of - actually, lots more than I ever would have thought of.

Cohen's newest book is The Happiest Kid on Campus: A Parent's Guide to the Very Best College Experience (for You and Your Child). In this book he speaks more to the parents, but Ariel enjoyed reading it as well. There is some overlap with the aforementioned Naked Roommate, but if you can, get both. I figure I will send the Naked Roommate off to college with Ariel so she can have it as a reference as things come up, and keep the Happiest Kid home with me. Unless she takes it with her! This book deals with things like how to stay connected with your child and how much is too much, visiting, safety issues and concerns, and even teaches tech-challenged parents about Twitter and texting. Tons of great ideas and information from parents and students who have been there and done that.

Note: that's Harlan Cohen, NOT Harlan Coben, the thriller writer. Check out his websites, too: Help Me, Harlan and The Naked Roommate Online

An Open Letter to the Publishing Industry

RE: Large Print Books

I am here to vent about an ongoing problem in libraries; the inability to get large print versions of popular books. If a book becomes popular after the initial print run, the large print goes out of print and libraries, AKA library patrons, AKA taxpayers, are screwed.

For instance, my library currently has 193 reserves on the large print version of Sarah's Key by Tatiana DeRosnay. We own 6 large print copies and are currently filling reserves that were placed last February. We would gladly buy more, but it is out of print. Amazon.com has 2 used copies for sale at $280 each!

I had spoken to someone at Random House a few years ago about this when we had a similar problem with one of their books (I forgot which, sorry) and was told they were looking into some sort of print on demand for large print books. Apparently it never came to pass.

There has been some progress made in large print publishing. Many of the larger publishing houses are now producing their own large print books which come out at the same time as the regular print. The rest are farmed out to large print publishers like Thorndike or Wheeler, they of the ugly covers and publishing dates a year after the regular print books hit the shelves.

Hey, publishers, you are missing the boat here! In case you've all been taking your meetings under a rock, the population in the United States is aging. Does the fact that the fastest growing age group on Facebook is now 65+ mean nothing to you? Baby boomers are aging and you can bet more and more of them are going to need large print books.

In these days of economic downturn and sluggish sales across the board, why aren't publishers leaping at the chance to sell more books? If my library needs another 30+ copies of Sarah's Key, I'd bet there are other libraries that do as well - most of which cannot and will not purchase used, $280 copies.

Is there some sort of explanation that I'm missing? I'd love to hear from publishers about this.