AND INTRODUCING…

RANDALL WILLINGHAM’S first impression of Del Shannon, maybe a dancer from one of the clubs. She was slender in tight-fitting jeans and sandals, a halter top snugged down to a flat, bare midriff. She had a small gold ring pierced into her navel and a tiny, yellow crescent moon tattooed on the outside of her left wrist. She had attitude, this girl. What threw him, though, was the hair. It was cropped short like a boy’s. A blonde sprig of it had fallen across her eyes,that day she walked off the elevator and into his office…







There’s a new girl on the thriller scene. Her name is DEL SHANNON. She’s twenty-nine years old, lean and beautiful, comfortable in boots and jeans. She prefers beer to wine. Takes her meals at the bar, more often than not. And her love-life, to date, is mostly hit-and-run.



“Check this out!” guys might say. “Where’d she come from?” women might ask.



Del works for Desert Sands Covert, an investigative firm in Tucson, Arizona, that specializes in finding and recovering missing persons. And, as a young women in a man’s world, she’s starting to develop something of a reputation for being especially good at what she does.



Her weapon of choice is the Baby Eagle—.357 semi-automatic, narrow profile, slim grip to accommodate a woman’s hand. You’ll spot it tucked into the waistband at the small of her back.



She’s impetuous—something that her boss Randall fears will one day lead to her demise. But her instincts are quick and she’s determined to survive at all costs.



Her debut thriller, Nazareth Child, takes Del into the mountainous reaches of Kentucky, and into confrontation with the infamous faith healer, Silas Rule, in search of the mother she’s never known. This fist dangerous, and emotionally ravaging journey, serves to forge Del’s metal and prepare her for a long and prosperous investigative career.



Says Publisher’s Weekly…



“Del Shannon has the makings of a solid series character.”



I’ve fallen in love with this girl. I hope you all will too.



NAZARETH CHILD, is now available on Amazon.com. Stay tuned for Adventure Two , coming in September 2012.

Ah, the Writing Life

Cricket McRae

I’m writing this from the passenger seat of a Subaru Outback, speeding down I-25. We’re heading for three seventy-degree days and two thirty-seven-degree nights in the Rocky Mountains. A bed and breakfast, lake view, hiking, reading, and probably nine holes of golf.

Before I was published, I had a fantasy about the writing life. Oh, I knew it was a job, and that you had to put in the hours and effort. I knew sometimes writing is hard – after all, I was writing. I just wasn’t published yet.

But when I became a full-time writer, things were going to be different. For one thing, I’d travel a lot. You can write anywhere, so why not do it someplace fun? Plus, one of the things I like least about travel is the actual, you know, travel. Time spent in airports and on airplanes, on shuttle buses or waiting for the train. But as a writer, that time becomes downright useful. We could spend a month in Mexico or New England and keep Colorado as a home base.

And then there was the conversion van idea. Smaller than an RV, but self-sufficient. We could wander the country, exploring back roads and meeting new people. I could write just as I am right now, in the passenger seat. Or sitting at a picnic table under California redwood trees, under an umbrella with my toes in the sand.

None of that happened, of course.

Like many other writers, most of my travel involves research, or a conference or convention. Promotion takes a lot of time and organization, so it’s not just a question of hanging out with my muse and churning out the words. And we have rental properties, which we manage ourselves, so leaving for a month at a time is out of the question.

So we go on little jaunts like this, and I write in the car. I’ll put in some time on the keyboard sitting on the veranda and looking up at the lake. In another two weeks I’m heading to Seattle to promote Wined and Died, and my guy will hold down the fort at home. I’ll write on the plane and set my alarm early to get in a few pages before my hosts awaken.

It’s a good life, and I love it. I’m not giving up on the conversion van idea though.

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For the month of August my first Home Crafting Mystery, Lye in Wait, is available as a free download for the Kindle and Nook.

Inkspot News - August 6, 2011

Monday, August 8th, at 7 PM eastern time, a panel of Midnight Ink authors will be interviewed on Giovanni Gelati's GZONE blogspot radio show. The panel will include Beth Groundwater, Alice Loweecey, Sebastian Stuart, and Lois Winston. You can listen to the broadcast live or go to the website and listen to the archived broadcast later. This should be an interesting and fun program!

My Hometown

Keith here.

(Photo credit: Palo Alto Historical Association)

I grew up in a lazy college town surrounded by orchards. Two-thirds of the country’s apricots were grown right there in “The Valley of Heart’s Delight.” We didn’t lock our doors. Teenagers would stick their thumbs out on the main drag and get rides to school. The local university was informally referred to as “The Farm.”

Do you know what? I’m still there. I live only eight houses away from my parents’ old place. Two of my kids graduated from the same high school I did and I have one about to be a sophomore and one who should show up there as a freshman in two years. But almost everything has changed in a single generation.

When I went to Palo Alto High, I was friends with the daughter of the school custodian. I’ll bet anything that no children of a school custodian live in the Palo Alto of today. Like schoolteachers, fire fighters, or police officers, they just couldn’t afford it. When my parents moved to Palo Alto, they bought their first house for $29,500. Now Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has bought a house in town for $7 million. (Thank goodness, I bought a house here long ago.)

(photo from Wikipedia--one of Facebook's former buildings)

What happened? Somehow my hometown of Palo Alto became ground zero for world technology. Orchards filled with cherries and apricots have been replaced by tilt-up buildings filled with software engineers and MBAs. The Valley of Heart’s Delight has been transmogrified into Silicon Valley. Facebook is headquartered in town as is the world’s largest technology company, Hewlett-Packard. Google’s closer to my place than either, just over the city limits in Mountain View. Venture capital firms, trendy restaurants, and startups have pushed out the hardware stores, supermarkets, and bookstores in downtown Palo Alto that catered to local residents. In addition to Mark Zuckerberg, another high tech icon, Steve Jobs, lives here. Stanford University is now known throughout the world. San Francisco has become a place where Gen Y high tech employees eat, sleep, and cavort on the weekends while spending the week commuting down 101 to Palo Alto and other Valley cities. (Does that make San Francisco a suburb?)

It’s weird. I saw an article that mentioned three cities driving the world economy – New York, Shanghai, and Palo Alto. Wow! One of those cities has 23 million, one eight million, and one 60 thousand. Palo Alto now represents the high tech world in the same way Hollywood does show business.

I left Palo Alto to go to college and stayed away for 13 years. But I couldn’t resist the siren call of my hometown. And now I love having my kids go to the same high school I did, but wish they could have what I had in those simpler times.

But if push came to shove, I would not change a thing. Here in Palo Alto I’ve had the rush of working day and night to do my bit to make an Internet software company successful. I love the drive, the excitement, the people, and the opportunity it gives to build something. The Silicon Valley city-state of Palo Alto has even provided a rich vein of ore to mine in mysteries and thrillers. Plenty of crime fiction novels are set in New York, LA, and Washington, but few here. And why not here? Silicon Valley is where board members of the world’s largest high tech company hire private eyes to spy on each other. Where CEOs buy cocaine for their employees and are sentenced to prison for backdating stock options. We have as much ambition, greed, wealth, and criminal impulses as anywhere. Take that Wall Street, Hollywood, and Capitol Hill!

And yet, in a mental archeological dig, I am still reminded of the way Palo Alto used to be. My best friend from those days (and now) lives down the block, and I run into my high school girlfriend every couple of months. Beneath a thin mask that adds only a few character lines, their faces look pretty much the same. Sometimes one of my kids brings a book home from the school library, and I’ll see the name of one of my classmates scrawled inside the cover. When I consult with my lawyer, I remember sitting in the high school bleachers with a bunch of other elementary school friends and rooting for him, the best high school halfback we’d ever seen. That old Palo Alto is a ghost town occupying the same space as the high tech icon of today. I count myself lucky to live in both.

A Little Getaway

by Kathleen Ernst

I write full time. And yes, that’s a dream come true. It also means that I’m pretty much writing, or thinking about writing, or doing something related to writing, all the time. I fall asleep reading reference books. Vacations become research trips. I’m rarely found without laptop, and never without a notebook.

It can be a little overwhelming.

I recently spent a week in Decorah, Iowa, taking a rosemaling class at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum. Rosemaling is a form of decorative painting—a folk art with old roots in Norway. In the photo below, I’m holding a rosemaled ale bowl that some immigrant tucked into a trunk in the mid-1800s before boarding a ship for the new world.

I took a rosemaling class a year ago, primarily for research. The protagonist of my historic sites mysteries, Chloe Ellefson, is Norwegian-American. Her mom is a Gold Medal rosemaler, which is really good. The plot of Old World Murder features a missing antique ale bowl.

There are different styles of rosemaling, each with its own traditions. When I worked in the museum biz I admired the rosemaled pieces in our collection, but I figured I needed to understand the art in a hands-on kind of way. I started with a class in the Telemark style, which is considered the easiest to for beginners.

I learned a couple of things in that original class. First, I love to paint! Second, rosemaling is very challenging for a word-nerd like me. The class was intense and by the end of the week, I was exhausted. But I had two beautiful pieces that I take to programs and signings.

Since I didn’t do any painting once I got home, I decided to repeat the class this year. (Wise move on my part. I am definitely still a beginner.)

It’s been a very busy year. My head is constantly bubbling with plot ideas, my calendar seems too-full of deadlines, and my writing biz to-do list could, as my husband says, choke an elephant.

All that being the case, it was wonderful to once again immerse myself in the painting. We did two projects in the course of five days. Most of my classmates didn’t worry about finishing their pieces in that space of time. I, though, knew that once home I’d never find time to mix a palette and dig in. If I wanted the pieces done, I better get them done while in Decorah.

That made for some late nights. When the studio closed on the final day, I carefully carted everything to my hotel room and set up there.

I did finish my pieces, a bowl and a box. I had a wonderful time, learned more about this marvelous old folk art, improved my technique, reconnected with friends and made some new ones. And best of all, being so focused on something different and difficult provided a much-needed mental margarita. I came home tired, but also mentally refreshed.

Although I must admit that I got some pretty good ideas for a future Chloe mystery while in Decorah, too.

How about you? What do you do to banish all things work-related from your brain?

Note: these pieces designed by my wonderful instructor, Joanne MacVey. You can learn more at kathleenernst.com, sitesandstories.wordpress.com, or Vesterheim.org.

WHEN STRANGERS TRUMP FRIENDS AND RELATIVES

Many of the authors here at Inkspot have written about the support they receive from family and friends. But what about the deep dark secret few of us are willing to discuss, let alone admit to? What do you do when you discover that close friends and relatives have either never bothered to buy your books or haven’t even bothered to read the free copies you’ve given them?

I don’t like confrontation with people I have to interact with on a fairly regular basis. I’d rather wrap myself up in my hurt feelings and slink back into my cave. But the hurt lingers for a long time.

When I was writing in the romance genre, I rationalized the lack of support by telling myself some people just can’t transcend the romance genre stigma, even though my books were far from what some people describe as “those” books. No embarrassing clinch covers with bare chested heroes and heroines with heaving bosoms. There were, however, a few sex scenes, and I know some people get really squeamish reading sex scenes.

There are no sex scenes in my mysteries, though, and I dare anyone to find objection to my covers. (See for yourselves.) 

Also, it’s not that these people don’t read. They do. Just not my books, apparently.

One close friend who lives in another state admitted she hadn’t bought my latest book because there are no bookstores near where she lives. I guess she’s never heard of Amazon although she is quite computer literate and does shop online all the time.

One relative only reads “literary” fiction. Another waited so long to buy my first book that it was out of print by the time she got around to it. And a third isn’t buying my books because her daughter is an aspiring author who hasn’t been able to sell her manuscripts. Like that’s my fault???

Then there’s my mother’s friend who told me she wasn’t buying any more of my books because she bought my first one and never got around to reading it. I bit my tongue, but what I really wanted to do was remind her of all the overpriced crap my mother had bought from her kids and grandkids throughout the years for their cub scout, girl scout, and school fundraising drives. Crap either loaded with fat and calories or that simply took up space and would never be used. Yes, thin mints and samoas are delicious, but the popcorn always arrived stale. And how many bottle openers does any one household really need? My books both entertain and they won’t make you fat.

So when I receive a fan letter or email from someone, I treasure that correspondence. I recently received a lovely note from an 81 year old man who took the time to send me a handwritten letter, telling me how much he enjoyed ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN and was looking forward to the next book in the series.

I’m contemplating adopting that gentleman. Total strangers going out of their way to tell me how much they enjoy my books when some of my own friends and family have shown how little they care? That to me is priceless.

What about the rest of you? How do you deal with friends and relatives who act the way some of mine have? And for those of you who aren't writers, do you have family members and friends who have hurt and disappointed you in some way? How have you dealt with that hurt and disappointment?

Challenges and Possibilities

So the bookstore that I've worked at for the last nine years is shutting its doors after years of missteps and missed opportunities. Folks have come in lamenting the store's demise due to the rise of ebooks. Others blame the economy. Publishers are already feeling the impact of lost sales as the literal number venues available for their hard-copy product shrinks dramatically. We are in the midst of a sea-change in how people will procure and consume literature in all forms.

As a bookseller, I'm in mourning. As an author, at first, I was fairly well freaking out that a gigantic arena to showcase books is going down in flames. However, I've come to realize that with the loss of the way we are used to doing business, per se, comes new worlds and new opportunities. I have a feeling that small, niche bookstores are going to find their place in the book biz once again. And yes, ebooks and ereaders are going to take center stage and stay there. People will still read...be it a real book, newspaper, or magazine or an electronic version of the same.

Cautious optimism. That's where I am right now. While I'm still floundering between disbelief and horror at the loss of my beloved bookstore, I'm seeing the changing landscape... and that landscape is really not all that bad. A few months ago, I had the words "Never Surrender" tattooed on my leg. It's a good reminder that we as writers can never quit. We can't ever quit sharing our ideas, challenging ourselves and our readers. Readers need us, bookstores or not. We are their escape, their diversion, their reason to smile and laugh or even cry. It's a symbiotic relationship. We need them so we can share the crazy stories racing around our heads.

As my grandmother always used to tell me, "Honey, it's going to be okay. You just remember: never surrender." Right on, Grandma. You were always on the money, and I'm counting on you once again. And if anyone can tell me why I have these huge spaces within this post, I'd love to be able to finally do this thing right.