Sunday, October 25, 2009

Halloween - a special holiday for mystery fans!



For a crafter there's nothing like having a crafts store within a mile of your home. (My husband says the same thing about Radio Shack, which is even closer.)
Jazzy Crafts in Castro Valley hosted a party for me on Sunday, to celebrate the release of the fourth Miniature Mystery, Mourning in Miniature.

The make-and-take was a mini Halloween bag, stuffed with one piece of candy! The Jazzy Crafts logo is on one side, a Halloween sticker on the other. Embroidery thread pushed through the marked holes makes handles. Famous supermodel Nina B. is holding up a sample. And I'm also including a template/printie that you can use to make your own mini Halloween trick or treat bag.



I'm not responsible for any tricks or other damage caused by the miniature nature of the treat!
Another handy thing about my neighborhood: next to the crafts store is an ice cream parlor. Guess where the party ended up?
What special items does your hobby offer for Halloween?

Speaking of which …
You may have read the tragic story of a man who'd been leaning over his balcony for 5 days before someone realized he'd been shot and was really dead. Passersby thought it was a Halloween decoration.
Now, next April, when you read my fifth release, "Monster in Miniature," you'll see that same scenario, BUT I swear, I submitted the manuscript on March 21 (the computer doesn't lie), so, no, I didn't take advantage of the real life incident. I'm wondering if it worked the other way.
Have you had experiences of art imitating life, or vice versa?

4 comments:

Linda O. Johnston said...

How eerie, Camille! I haven't had anything of that magnitude happen. At the time I wrote DOUBLE DOG DARE, though, there were no companies still in business that were cloning pets, but by the time it was published cloning was again being done, this time including dogs and not just cats.

Betty Hechtman said...

It must feel strange to see something you wrote about really happen.

Julie said...

Yes I have, and it was weird. I based a book on the blacklist of the 1950's and its effect on a fictional blacklisted writer. It was all entirely fictional, but before the book was released, the news broke that the movie Broken Arrow had been produced under circumstances very similar to a fictional movie in my book. The editorial department got all tensed up, and I ended up signing a statement that my book was in no way based on the Broken Arrow story, in order to make them happy.
This despite the fact that, 1: the book was written and submitted a year before the Broken Arrow news broke, and 2: the content of the news is not covered by copyright. The expression, for example the story in the NY Times or the Podunk Tribune, is copyright, but the events are not, therefore you may incorporate them into your writing, as long as you don't plagiarize the Podunk paper, etc. (I'm a lawyer, and do some copyright work.) It's a little weird to be in the middle of, isn't it?

Cryptoman said...

Well, I hope I don't need to call on your professional services, Julie!

Cloning pets -- talk about eerie, Linda!

It is strange, Betty.

I'm writing from beautiful Monterey, by the way, thus I'm more silent than usual on here!

Camille (NOT Cryptoman!)