My Holiday Gift to You!

As my gift to all of you, I've written three short stories just for the holidays. These will only be available at my website until January 15, 2013. All three can be found by clicking the SHORT STORIES tab right under the LARGE photo of me on my website www.JoannaSlan.com




1. "Searching for Baby Jesus" -- A short story featuring Grace Ann Terhune of the Southern Beauty Shop Series. When a figure disappears from her friend's creche scene, Grace Ann gets involved with surprising results. If you like it, you might want to pre-order Wave Good-Bye, the next book in that series! Release date March 5, 2013.

2. "A Christmas Treasure" -- Set in 1820, this long short story details how loving hearts turn a holiday in Yorkshire, England, into an unforgettable event. This story features Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester. If you like it, you might want to pre-order your copy of  Death of a Dowager, the second book in The Jane Eyre Chronicles.  Release date April 2, 2013.

3.   "Kiki Lowenstein and Santa's Helper" -- A surprising discovery about several decades worth of photos leads Kiki to do a good deed. Click on the tab and then on "Kiki Lowenstein and Santa's Helper." Now's the perfect time to pre-order your copy of Picture, Perfect, Corpse, the sixth book in the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series. Release date May 8, 2013.

From my house to yours, I wish you the Happiest of Holidays!

All my best,

Joanna

Mark Your Calendars! Death of a Schoolgirl Release Date and a Chat Room Book Launch

I love this cover!

I admit it: I’m a bundle of nerves. The release date for Death of a Schoolgirl is Tuesday, August 7. All you can do as an author is your best. After that, it’s up to the readers to decide whether a series will “have legs” or not. Being chosen as a Featured Alternate by Mystery Guild was an early positive nod, but…the true test is yet to come.

I wonder if all of you readers know how incredibly important you are to a book’s success? You can talk it up to your friends, post a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, to name just a few ways to support an author or book you enjoy. You can suggest it as being worthwhile for your book club. You can buy a copy and give it as a gift.

CHAT ROOM DETAILS--AND PRIZES!

Meanwhile, I’m celebrating and I’ll be giving away prizes. You can join me!  I’m holding a book launch chat in my chat room at my new website. The cool prizes include a Charlotte Bronte Coffee mug, a Lowood Lacrosse tee-shirt, and a signed copy of Death of a Schoolgirl. 

The chat will be from 7 to 9 p.m. EST on August 7 (Tuesday.) To join us, go to my website [www.JoannaSlan.com], click on the CONTACT label, scroll to the bottom of that page and click on CHATROOM. In the chat room, you’ll type in your comments at the BOTTOM of your computer screen and hit ENTER.

See you there!--

Joanna

REVIEWS

Kirkus Reviews: “Slan refashions a beloved heroine as a surprisingly canny detective. Her stylistic imitation of Charlotte Brontë is seasoned with a dash of social commentary and plenty of suspects to mull over.”

Publishers Weekly: “Fans of historical cozies will best appreciate Slan’s first in a new series featuring Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre … credibly recreates Regency London and the era of the Bow Street Runners.”

Brontë Blog:  “The novel makes an excellent holiday read, to be read at leisure if the curiosity to find out who the villain(s) is (are) allows. A light, fun take on a well-loved classic which is clearly well-loved by its author as well.”

WGCU/NPR Affiliate: “While Death of a Schoolgirl isn’t Brontë (nor is it intended to be), in actuality, it’s a charming read…smart, sexy, and delightfully fun.“

Terrie Farley Moran for Criminal Elements Blog:  “Anyone who has ever read and loved Jane Eyre will be captivated by Death of a Schoolgirl.”

Story Circle Book Reviews: “Slan has created an engaging mystery and peopled it with dear and familiar characters.”

RT Book Reviews:  “A very entertaining, believable extension of Jane Eyre. (Slan) has done an impressive job using rich historical details to transport readers back in time.”

Lesa Holstine’s Blog: “Joanna Campbell Slan succeeds in writing a compelling, fascinating mystery.”

Bookish Whimsey:  “…It is easy to sit back and enjoy this layered, well-executed historical mystery.  And fans of the original novel will appreciate the intelligence and care the author has taken to maintain the spirit of Jane.”

My seventeen-year-old niece, Katigan, came up from Florida for a long visit. I had high hopes of showing her around Washington, DC. You know, the typical touristy things like seeing the monuments, touring the Smithsonian, and so on.

But Mother Nature had other plans. The temperatures here, as in most of the nation, have set new records for heat. Today, the temp soared to 106 degrees. The air quality is so poor that they devised a new "bad-der" than bad category. Before, unbreathable air was Code Red. Now it is PURPLE. (I think it should have been BLUE for lack of oxygen, but I wasn't consulted.)

So instead of visiting sights, we've been happily crafting. We've worked on Zentangle designs, journals, and yesterday Katigan painted a lovely yellow sunflower on a canvas for my guest room. In addition, we've become devotees of the local mall. Not something I recommend, but geez, at least we got a lot of exercise walking around!

Last night we decided to see a movie. Since I couldn't take her to soak up any historical culture, I thought, "Hmmm. How about 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,' based on the book of the same name?"

Since I'm nervously awaiting the release of my first book in The Jane Eyre Chronicles--Death of a Schoolgirl--I was eager to see how another author handled mixing fact and fiction.

The answer?

THREE thumbs down.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. Possibly the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've seen some real stinkers. As one reviewer said, "It needs more hatchet," as in, someone who authorized this should have had his head cut off. Another columnist pointed out that this is SUCH an inherently bad idea that he had to see the movie.

I remember when one of the editors from the publishing house that bought this book told a bunch of us at Sleuthfest that it was coming out. There were stunned expressions all around the table. A couple of authors seriously considered poking their eyes out with forks. I mean, here we all were, pitching our best ideas, and this senior editor tells us with a straight face that his house bought...a book about Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires. I guess you'd call it "high concept." It's sort of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Abe Lincoln with a bit of the Matrix mixed in.

Or maybe you'd just call it what it was...a really, really bad idea. And certainly a waste of money for the movie-goer.

RECALCULATE

I love it when the GPS says that. RECALCULATE. My friend Irene Ziegler actually is the   voice of many GPS gizmos. She says, "The trick is not to sound condescending when you say RECALCULATE." I must have asked her to say RECALCULATE twenty times because it totally cracked me up.

Nell Booker's first work as an illustrator, ever, was to create drawings for  an edition of Jane Eyre. This is her vision of Jane writing her "autobiography."

That one word makes total sense to me. Now and again, we all need to stop and RECALCULATE.

Today I turned in Book #4 in the Southern Beauty Shop series. Another author wrote Books 1-3, under the name of “Lila Dare.” So now, I’m “Lila Dare,” at least when it comes to this series. (Although I don’t know if they’ll want a Book #5, so we’ll see or maybe we'll RECALCULATE.)

I’m awaiting the contract for Book #6 in the Kiki Lowenstein series. Once that's done, I'll step back and RECALCULATE where the series is going and whether I want to continue.

Death of a Schoolgirl will launch August 7. So far, the two reviewers who’ve seen it have been very generous in their praise. I think the concept is good. But who knows? There’s so much of this business that’s out of the author’s hands. I've already turned in Book #2, Death of a Dowager.  Now it's up to the marketplace. If it's a bust, then I'll step back and move to Plan B. I have no intention of ever quitting writing. 

Today, Sunday, is Father's Day. I plan to hop in the car very, very early with my dogs and my sister, Jane, and we'll drive 15 hours up to Vienna, VA. 

Meanwhile, I'm trying to finish Kiki Lowenstein Short Story #7. I never thought the short stories would do so well. I started them as a way to build interest between books, and gosh, don't you know they've taken on a life of their own? Forcing me to--you guessed it--RECALCULATE.

And in the midst of all this...my son decided he was not interested in becoming an engineer. So, he moved to Las Vegas to begin a career as a professional poker player. He made more money in a weekend tournament that his friend did working all summer at a gas station. I said, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with what this is teaching you."

My son said, "Mom, it's teaching me you make more money using your head."

It isn't the path I expected for him, but...if it's the path that makes him happy, then I'll gladly...RECALCULATE!

Frequently Asked Questions (aka FAQ)

Whenever I meet my readers, whenever I sign books, a few of the same questions pop up over and over. So I thought I'd tackle them here...

1. How did you get started?  I can't remember a time when I didn't write. As  kid, I stapled together pieces of paper, scribbled on them and called them "my book." In school, I won awards for my writing--and also got in trouble for it when I dared to pen an "alternate" school newspaper, called "The Wooden Nickel." The journalism teacher told the principal that I didn't know what I was doing and that I'd surely bring down a lawsuit on the heads of the administration. In retrospect, a smart and dedicated teacher would have welcomed me into the world of journalism! But she didn't.

2. Do you write every day? Yes. In fact, I can't wait to get started writing each day. I love what I do.

3. What's your schedule like? I have a "doggy alarm clock," Miss Victoria. About six a.m., she barks in short "yap-yap-yap" bursts, to let me know it's time to haul my carcass out of bed. After I feed her and Rafferty, my first task is to answer emails, since that's the way I usually communicate with my editor, agent and publicists. Most mornings, I also get in a walk after breakfast. Then I sit down at the keyboard and don't get up until noon. Or until a dog demands to be let out. I eat a quick lunch, sit down and write until about three. I have a snack or a nap or a walk (about thirty minutes), and start back to writing. Around six, it's dinner. From six to eight, I often write or do a bit of research. Sometimes I write until ten.

4. Do you stay in your pajamas? I usually change into exercise clothes because that seems to encourage me to move around more.

5. What about your weekends and holidays? With the exception of taking care of guests, I write as usual.

6. Now that you are writing multiple series, how does that impact your work? I work on whichever book is closest to deadline first, then I often put in a couple of hours on the book that's due next. Or I'll research/plot/make notes about the second series. I try to segment the time so it's a block for one and a block for the other because each series requires a slightly different voice, and of course, one is set nearly two years ago!

7. Will you continue the Kiki Lowenstein short stories? I hope to. I sure hope to. In fact, I hope to have a new one out this month: "Kiki Lowenstein and the Lilac Festival."

8. Where do these fit within the structure of the traditional (paper) books? These are intermezzo productions, designed to keep readers involved between publication dates for traditional books. So between Make, Take, Murder and Ready, Scrap, Shoot, these short stories occur: "Ink, Red, Dead"; "Kiki Lowenstein and the Secret Santa"; "Kiki Lowenstein and the White Elephant"; "Kiki Lowenstein and the Empty Heart"; "Kiki Lowenstein and the Lucky Charm"; and "Kiki Lowenstein and the Purple Passion."


9. What's going to happen with Kiki and Detweiler? If I told you, I'd have to kill you, but personally, I think they belong together. However, when you have two people in their thirties, with histories, and families, clearing the path to true love can take a while, don't you think?


10. Is something wrong with Dodie? Definitely. First of all, she's suffering from chemo fog, a result of her treatment for throat cancer. It's causing her to not think clearly. Second, she's been so busy dealing with her own problems that she's not noticed how much Kiki has grown in her role as a co-owner of the store. Third, I suspect her health problems aren't entirely cleared up.

11. Tell us about your new series. Gladly. Set in 1820, this series features Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte's classic protagonist, as an amateur sleuth, which is why we call it "The Jane Eyre Chronicles." Jane is happily married to her beloved Edward Rochester, and they have a son. A letter arrives from Adele, who is off at a girls' school in London--and it's clear that the girl is in danger. Jane races to the city to see what's happening. Once there, she learns that one of the schoolgirls has died. Jane is mistakenly identified as the school's errant German teacher. Taking advantage of the mistake, Jane poses as the teacher and continues the ruse long enough to discover who the killer is.

12. When will that be available? The release date is August 7, 2012.

Photo Shoot at Oatlands

Author photos are always tough. You want to look your best, but not so good that you are unrecognizable. You want to seem authoritative, but approachable. Friendly but not giddy.

The bluebells reminded me of the ones I saw in England. Lovely, vibrant, fragile.

When my good friend and ace photographer Robin Templeton suggested we do a photo shoot, I was thrilled. I flew into the metro-DC area a couple of days before Malice Domestic and Festival of Mystery, so she and I could spend the day at Oatlands, a wheat plantation near Leesburg, Virginia. The gently rolling hills of Virginia are especially breath-taking in the spring. Beyond these farmlands, the Shenandoah mountains rise like sentinels.

To capture the mood of my upcoming series, The Jane Eyre Chronicles, I tried to dress in a manner reminiscent of all things "Jane," but I didn't want to look "costume-y." Robin had done careful research; the Oatlands was built in the early 19th century, the same period in which my new book, Death of a Schoolgirl, is set.

For most of the day, we trooped up and down in the gardens, observing and admiring. Since we're both visual people, our conversation was peppered with "What about this angle?" and "How about including this in the foreground?" Honestly, we had a blast!

I love the photos! In the weeks leading up to the release of Death of a Schoolgirl, I plan to post the pictures one at a time on Pinterest.

Do you have any suggestions for ways I can use these fabulous pictures? Do you think Robin is a genius? I sure do!

The Juggling Act

This past couple of months I've been feeling overwhelmed. Unlike many of my illustrious blog sisters, I'm not accustomed to writing several series at once. There's this sensation of juggling--and the balls are moving faster than my hands.

Last night I finished writing my second book in my new Jane Eyre series--DEATH OF A DOWAGER LADY. In the midst of working on it, I needed to stop and write 50 pages of another series I've committed to doing.

I took the Zentangle training partially because I wanted to learn more and partially to have a neat skill to offer when I visit libraries and groups. Little did I know it would be so incredibly popular that I'm having trouble keeping up with the requests to teach classes.

To relax between projects, I stop and tangle a bit. The project above is a sampler. First I dabbed watercolor paint on a plastic template in the shape of a grid. When I had the colors I wanted, I sprinkled rock salt over the paint. Salt lifts the paint in splotches, making the most beautiful texture. The next day when it was dry, I rubbed all the salt off. Last of all, I tangled in each of the squares.

I've been putting all my tangles and bookcovers up on Pinterest. Go to www.Pinterest.com/JoannaSlan to view them. I love Pinterest!

See you all at Malice and Festival of Mystery this weekend and next Monday!

An Experiment and an Invitation

I've had a busy week. On Thursday, I finished my rewrite of Death of a Schoolgirl: The Jane Eyre Chronicles, and sent it to my editor at Berkley.

It's a big baby at 98,264 words. The release date is August, 2012. The editor's corrections should come to me on Monday (tomorrow) and I plan to have them back to her within the week. I think the cover is absolutely out of this world! I've been working on the second book in the series Death of a Dowager Lady by doing my research reading at night. That book is due in March.

On Friday, the galleys for Ready, Scrap, Shoot arrived.

They are due to Midnight Ink in January. I'm a third of the way through reading those. I'm dedicating that book to a bookclub that meets at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Fenton, Missouri. Those ladies are really excited about the dedication--and we plan to have a big book launch at that store when the book is out in May, 2012.

On Saturday, I got a wild and crazy idea: what if I wrote a Kiki Lowenstein short story every month for a year and made it available to my readers for 99 cents on Kindle? I noodled around a story idea with my sister, Jane. Saturday night, I created a cover for Kiki Lowenstein and the Secret Santa. I hope to have it available on Kindle later this week.

Today (Sunday) we loaded onto Kindle the new Ink, Red, Dead: A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery that features two novellas, one a Kiki Lowenstein mystery and the other the progressive story that my blog sisters and I wrote. It should be available for sale within the next 48 hours. I priced it at 99 cents. I plan to keep the 99 cent price point for everything I offer on Kindle for a while.

I'm curious to see how this works. Here's my hunch: Readers who love my characters will want to have a monthly "fix." I know that I love tuning into my favorite TV shows. And basically, we're in the entertainment business, right?

Will it work? Or will I drop dead trying? We'll see!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

On December 22 from 9 p.m EST to Midnight EST, I'm hosting an online Holiday Party on my Facebook page http://www.Facebook.com/JoannaCampbellSlan   There will be fabulous handmade prizes, signed books given away, and the chance to chat with your favorite authors including Diane Orgain (The Maternal Instincts Mysteries); Betty Hechtman (you know her! and she's giving away a crocheted scarf!); and Monica Ferris. More to come...

Will it work? I dunno. Here's hoping.

Sharpening My Axe

Once upon a time, two woodcutters challenged each other to a contest. The woodsman who could cut the most wood during daylight hours would win. On the appointed day, when the sun rose, the men started chopping. Throughout the day, one man chopped steadily. The other man took frequent breaks. When the sun went down, it became clear that the man who had worked steadily had lost. "How can this be?" he said to his opponent. "I worked without ceasing. You stopped so often!"

The winning woodsman smiled. "When I stopped, I sharpened my axe."

**

I've been digging in on my Jane Eyre re-writes like a crazy woman. All in all, it's been going well, but reworking a 100,000-word historical novel is no small task. I reached my saturation point last Thursday. Suddenly I couldn't get any traction. I spent the day working and reworking a single section and still didn't like what I had. I started to feel overwhelmed.

Isn't this cover gorgeous? Love it!

Months ago, I had scheduled a presentation at Murder on the Beach, a lovely independent mystery bookseller in Delray Beach, Florida. The date that once seemed so far away was now imminent.

My sister Jane called me with a proposal: She'd drive me to Delray Beach, if I'd agree to come with her on over to Cape Coral. She had tickets to see Kip Winger, the composer and singer, who was performing in Cape Coral.

"I've booked a hotel room. You'll have peace and quiet.  A change of scenery will do you good. You can sit in the room and do nothing but write. I'll bring you food," she said.

I went back and forth about her idea, but finally, I decided to go with Jane. For one thing, I was too tired to drive safely down and back to Delray Beach!

Admittedly, I felt a bit nervous. I kept thinking, "Maybe I should just stay home and write." However, on the way to Delray, Jane and I worked through a particularly sticky plot point. She then helped me think through another change I wanted to make. We even brainstormed Book #2 in The Jane Eyre Chronicles. My sister is an excellent sounding board!

Saturday morning I woke up very early and got to work. Jane started reading this newest iteration of The Jane Eyre Chronicles. When I took a break, my sister hugged me and said, "You are a wonderful writer! I love what I'm reading!" For the rest of the day, I sat there on the hotel bed and wrote while facing a beautiful view. True to her word, Jane brought me coffee and food. I reworked 40 pages. I mean I flew through my material! That night we rocked out to Kip Winger. Today (Sunday) we got up early and drove home. Since arriving at my house, I've been working for hours, and another chapter has shaped up nicely.

Best of all, I feel reinvigorated.

Before I left I was banging my head against the wall. Sometimes we keep trying harder when we need to stop, re-consider, and work smarter. Sometimes we just need to sharpen our axe!

How about you? Do you ever forget to sharpen your axe?

More about Titles: Introducing DEATH OF A SCHOOLGIRL

This week the committee met at Berkley to discuss cover ideas and titles for my newest series featuring Jane Eyre and her husband Edward Rochester as amateur sleuths.  My new editor Shannon Vazquez Jamieson was kind enough to ask for my input. I brainstormed a few titles and book cover ideas.

In the end, the title that everyone loved was...Death of a Schoolgirl: The Jane Eyre Chronicles. Or maybe The Jane Eyre Chronicles: Death of a Schoolgirl. The order is yet to be determined, but either way, the series will be "The Jane Eyre Chronicles." I'm thrilled! My agent Paige Wheeler of Folio Literary Management was also pleased.

All the books will be a variation of "Death of a..." As a reader, I love titles that have some sort of cohesion. As an author, the subtitle with its lead-in also helps me focus on the upcoming narratives. In fact, my sister Jane (!) and I sat around last night talking plot points for the second book in the Jane Eyre series. Jane's a keen reader. Her insight really helped me think through my characters, their motivation, and the themes that I plan to use as the underpinnings of Book #2. Jane helped me go past the obvious and add real depth to my characters by making their motivations more complex. We got some great work done--and had fun, too!

As for cover images, I sent Shannon photos of the famous "Nursemaid's Tunnel" in London. When I began my Jane Eyre book, I didn't know this tunnel existed. While researching the neighborhoods around The Regent's Park, the tunnel turned up.  And yes, the tunnel figures into the mystery. See, that's one of the coolest parts of writing. There's a serendipity at work that you can't predict. I mean, who knew?

Here's another shocker: While we lived in England, David and I were invited to dinner at a private home near the area that I'm writing about. So when I looked up floor plans for houses circa 1850, I quickly recognized they were similar to the house we'd visited. That made visualizing the action much easier.

I mention those happy coincidences in part because many would-be writers think they need to know everything before they sit down to write. WRONG. The unexpected discoveries along the way make writing fun! I have three sparkling characters who just "showed up" when I was at work on the book. One wasn't even invited.

Here's my question: Remembering that my books will be set in the 1850s, whom should I kill off? In other words, help me fill in the blanks: Death of a____________.

If It's Father's Day, It Must be New Haven

Stephanie Barron's Most Recent Release

Special Guest Post by Stephanie Barron

 
I write about Jane Austen in a series of detective novels rooted in the English author’s life and work; the most recent was Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, and next up, this August, is the eleventh tome in the series—Jane and the Canterbury Tale. Joanna Slan is about to publish her OWN Jane novel—this one about Jane Eyre—so she asked me to slip out of my blog and into this one, in a gesture of mutual Janeness, rather like Sir Cadogan galloping from portrait to portrait in Hogwarts Castle.

I was happy to oblige.

I’m on a hiatus from writing, at the moment, because it’s summer and the weeds in the garden are screaming for a laying on of hands. I’m also on hiatus because it’s the summer before my elder son’s junior year of high school, and that means the first in a long series of College Trips we’ll be taking over the next eighteen months. This circles back to hobbies (really!) because we wouldn’t have thought of looking at schools this week, if my younger son hadn’t been pursuing his passion—fencing—at a camp Back East. At thirteen, Steve’s still a bit young to trundle his fencing bag alone through Newark Airport, so we’re all flying along to get him there safely. While he cuts with his saber we’ll be trolling up and down the mid-Atlantic with his big brother. College-hunting is a hobby of sorts for Sam at the moment; a dress-up party for who he might be, staged on the grounds of every kind of academe. Stroll among the buildings, eye the kids who live there, and imagine himself in their shoes.

If it’s Father’s Day, it must be New Haven.

My husband last saw Yale when he graduated thirty years ago. The city has changed. So has the campus. We hear they aren’t letting people in as easily now. Sam is prepared to look elsewhere, prepared for rejection at some point in the future. But it’s not a bad way to spend Father’s Day, after all—Mark showing his first-born where he took his philosophy classes, where he studied and lived, where he fell in love and where he broke his heart. Sam carries his dad’s copies of Kant and Schopenhauer around as casual reading, because he likes the notes Mark put in the margins of the yellowing paperbacks. He’s always surprised at what his father chose to underline. The things he emphasized. The workings of his twenty year-old brain.

Books, in this case, aren’t just a portal to the minds of Kant and Schopenhauer, but a window on his father’s younger self, somebody Sam would have liked to have known. Somebody he wishes he could be. That’s one of the gifts good books bring--a sort of cultural baggage in each dog-eared page or scrawl of the pen. It’s a kind of sharing we’ll find less and less, as publishing moves inexorably to the electronic.

I own a Kindle. I’m not a cave-dweller clutching the crumbling pages of my dwindling library while Armageddon rages unchecked above. But I know this will be one of my hobbies as the years advance: the care and cultivation of books. Real books.

And those who love them.

Stephanie Barron

***
  GIVEAWAY OFFER



Stephanie has graciously offered to give away one copy of  Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron to one lucky commenter. Tell us--How are you celebrating Father's Day? We'll choose a commenter at random to receive this book.

Stuff I Learned at Malice--Announcing The Jane Eyre Chronicles--and a CONTEST!

Busy weekend up here in the DC area with Malice Domestic over, but the drive up to Festival of Mystery starts at crack o'dawn tomorrow. Malice always feels like a huge house-party, a get-together with 498 of your dearest friends. There are lots of hugs and chances to catch up with people you email or follow on Facebook, but only see once a year.

This Malice was particularly exciting for me because my agent had just announced my new series--The Jane Eyre Chronicles, which features Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth. I'll be writing these for Berkley. I met my new editor, Shannon Jamieson Vazquez. We had a lovely discussion about the books, and I can already tell Shannon will be a tremendous asset to my career. She's both thoughtful and insightful. My agent, Paige Wheeler, continues to astound me with her laser-sharp mind. She's just brilliant! What a dream team.

Here's what I learned this year at Malice:

1. Berkley hosts a great dinner for their authors. (I always wondered if it was as cool as I imagined. It was.)
2. Walking on grated sidewalks in high heels is not fun.
3.  If the Metro train you're in breaks down, they'll make all of you get out. The conductor will check to see that the cars are empty, and you'll have to wait for a new train.
4. Bethesda is a northern suburb of DC. Really, it's right next to DC. The NIH (National Institute of Health) is in Bethesda, and it has a huge campus.
5. Margaret Maron writes hilarious doggerel.
6. Nancy Pickard is always gracious and sweet. But not that nice. She loves killing Kansans. (Okay, the not nice part is a joke, people!)
7. Elaine Viets does amazing research. (Her PUMPED FOR MURDER came out in time for Malice. You can win a copy. Keep reading.)
8. Hank Phillippi Ryan once said Kryptonite when she meant Krypton and has never lived it down.
9. Dorothy Cannell's mother-in-law was a real piece of work. (That's putting it nicely.)

10. Sue Grafton has been knitting since she was in high school. She doesn't like to count, although she will, or use patterns, although she can do that, too. She was making a sweater for her granddaughter.

CONTEST--

You can win an autographed copy of PUMPED FOR MURDER. Just share with us...what did you learn this week?

Books I Read and Re-Read and a Contest

For the most part, I do not re-read books. I read 'em, and move on. I know that sounds pretty careless or thoughtless or even shallow. But every book is an adventure, and as Mae West once said, "Between two evils, I always pick the one I've never tried before."

Besides, there are so many wonderful books and so little time to read them! And as life goes on, what appealed to me at one time doesn't necessarily mean squat now.

All that aside, there are a few books I re-read. Here's my list:

1. Jane Eyre -- This book saved my life. Literally. I was growing up in a dysfunctional home with abusive parents, and I truly thought, "Is there any way out?" Since the subtitle of Jane Eyre is "An Autobiography," I took it as fact. I was very young when I read it! What I learned was that a plain woman could find great love and could have a career. My favorite line is "Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?" I think it speaks to all of us who have ever felt overlooked.

2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn--See above. The story helped me survive. It taught me that I was not alone. It gave me hope at a time when I didn't know if living was worth the effort. I know that sounds overly dramatic, but it's true. When you are young, you don't know anything but your family situation. These books promised me there was a different life that could be mine if I could make it to adulthood.

3. Anything by Pat Conroy. Mr. Conroy writes in such a manner that I despair of ever calling myself an author. His command of words, his vocabulary, his gift for description all send chills of envy through me. Someday I hope to meet him, and when I do, I want to ask if he has trained himself to think in such a rich manner, or if he writes a first draft and then goes back and enriches his work. His Prince of Tides inspired me to name Kiki LOWENSTEIN after the therapist who saved his life.

4. Bouncing Back: I've Survived Everything...and I Mean Everything...and You Can, Too! by Joan Rivers. She survived her husband's suicide, her daughter's estrangement, her bad investments, her career tanking, and she lived to tell the tail. Having been a motivational speaker for fifteen years, I can truthfully say I've read many of the best motivational books of our times, and met many of their authors. But none of them is as honest or compelling as Joan's story. Even today when I'm handed a disappointment, I think back to this book and her good advice. It's that compelling.


CONTEST

Maybe your spirits need a boost or you need to bounce back. Let me help you. Comment on this post and I'll choose one lucky person to win a copy of Bouncing Back.