To Go or Not To Go

Conferences. I love them. Always have a good time. Always meet great people. So what's the problem?
For one thing, I live in the sticks. Attending any con is a major operation, requiring planes, trains, and/or automobiles in great abundance. It costs me five hours' travel just to get out of Michigan by car, and flying requires a puddle-jumper ride first and last, which adds a lot to the expense (and the nail-biting, these days).
Secondly, I have two books pending but nothing to sell. Giving away postcards or bookmarks in October (Bouchercon) or November (Crime Bake) would be the best I could do, and I doubt people will keep said giveaway under their pillow for two months, waiting with bated breath until the book is available. Not when there are hundreds of authors present who have actual books to sell.
On the up side, it's all about meeting people. Talking to other authors face-to-face, discovering that we share the same frustrations and joys, gawking at editors and agents and wondering what they'd be like to work with, and just enjoying the ambiance of it all. Maybe even attending a panel. It's great.
I think I've talked myself into it. Now, which one: B'con or Crime Bake?

Zero to Sixty in One ARC

My ARC's for HER HIGHNESS' FIRST MURDER arrived yesterday afternoon, and suddenly life is teeming with things to do.
First, here's what it could mean to you. It's a Tudor mystery focusing on Princess Elizabeth during Henry's last year of life. If you'd like a copy of the ARC, make a comment on this blog ("Hi Peg I want the book" is good enough, or you can actually read something and respond.) One week from today (Friday, September 4) I'll put the names of everyone who has commented in a (University of Michigan) cap and let my hubby pick the winner.
Now what it means to me. A lot of you know already. Suddenly there are bookmarks to be printed, announcements to be made, sales sheets to be devised, website pages to be updated, and copies to be mailed. It's when this writer would most appreciate a secretary and when I realize that the only person both available and competent for the job is me.
So why am I talking to you guys? I have to get to work!

The Reason for Social Networking

Big arguments (um, discussions) on several groups I read concerning what's "best" for authors looking to sell their work: Facebook, MySpace, Crimespace, Twitter, etc.
I guess I have it wrong, because I don't necessarily join a group to sell books. Yes, I would like it if people everywhere bought my books, but I enjoy the hour I spend each morning reading comments, learning what others do and don't recommend, and writing my own admittedly idiosyncratic observations. Some sites connect me with people in the business. Others connect me with "real" contacts, usually students I taught who have moved on to other things.
I take no interest in whether or not anyone goes out to buy my book because of something I said online or the mere fact of my presence here. I just enjoy the "socialness" of this sort of networking. If it leads me somewhere, that's nice. If it doesn't, I'll just enjoy sharing joys, gripes, opinions, and pictures.

The Word

When I was in high school, they called me the walking dictionary due to several factors: I always loved words, as did my mom, and I was on the debating team. My vocabulary was always being stretched by one or more of those things, and like coins deposited in a piggy bank, I kept adding to it.
Then I taught high school for thirty years, which tended to push me in the opposite direction. I had to keep putting things into terms that tenth graders could grasp, which meant I didn't use a lot of the words I knew, didn't need a lot of the words available. Now there's the age thing, which means I can't make things come to the surface when I want them: names, where I put something, and just the right word.
It's like this. I'm writing along at warp speed, brilliance dripping from my fingertips, and I come to a spot where there is a word, a perfect word, that needs to go into place. But I can't think of it. I know it exists, I know I know it. I just can't make the locating synapses fire.
Roget is my friend at that point, of course, but sometimes I can't even come up with the synonomous equivalent. I sit fumbling through the thesaurus, repeating the phrase just before the cursor, trying to get close. Eventually I leave *** in that spot and go on, knowing it just isn't the right time. On an edit, a day or a week later, the word usually comes up easily, as if it never hid itself away in a fold of brain matter.
So I am no longer the walking dictionary. I am more like the waddling wordsmith, aware of the richness of English but unable to cash in because my piggy bank has too many holes in it.

My Stuff and Yours

I've been going through stuff, doing the spring cleaning that never happened because spring just arrived in Michigan (a nice day, three days of rain, a nice day, etc.). It brings to mind George Carlin, one of my favorite wordologists ever. He claimed that my stuff was "stuff" but your stuff is "shit," as in "Get your shit out of the way so I can put my stuff down." So true.
What other people consider keep-worthy is a mystery. We've all had the experience of spouse or roomie throwing away something we wanted and can't believe they didn't see the value of. And if you've ever had to clean out the home of a deceased elderly relative...well there's a lot of, um, stuff.
When I write, I like to imagine what "stuff" a character would consider essential. Lee Child's Jack Reacher keeps almost nothing, throwing away his clothes every few days and buying new or even used to replace them. An elderly character in one of my books has had to downsize several times as he moved from house to house to apartment and therefore has an odd assortment of stuff packed into a small space, unnecessary but somehow essential to him. Imagining what a certain female character might carry in her purse (or would she not carry a purse, like Kinsey?) reveals details that make the person real. My purse, for example, still reflects my teacher days, when I was expected to have one of everything, from Band-aids to cough drops to a list of world capitals. I really need to reconsider that stuff.
I often promise myself I won't leave a lot of stuff behind for my relatives to sort through when I die, but then again I may. It's all such good stuff.

Imagine (with Apologies to John)

What is the future of reading? Imagine what a book will look like ten, twenty, fifty years in the future. Hard to do, I know.
It may help to imagine the past: some old scribe scratching away at a scroll and muttering, "Those idiots who slice paper into sheets are wrong, wrong, WRONG! People want a book that unrolls in front of their eyes. It's more satisfying."
It doesn't help to realize that we aren't even capable of imaging what possibilities await. Remember the guy who suggested closing the U.S. Patent Office in the 1800's because everything had already been invented? Remember the first time you sat down at a computer and thought, "This is HARD!" (My first meeting with a computer was as a teacher, and some genius/nerd tried to teach us all to write our own programs in whatever code they were using in those days. I remember looking at my friends and rolling my eyes at the foreign-ness of the whole process. I would never spend MY days sedentarily sitting and trying to manipulate mysterious matters! I was right, of course, but I was wrong. Someone else writes the programs, but I spend way too much time on the mysteries!)
Consider the generations that follow us. My niece, a twenty-something, wanted to use my "'puter" every time she came to my house, starting from about age three. I soon learned that she could do things with the 'puter that I had only a dim understanding of. It was like she absorbed technology from the Cyberspace around her. As an adult, texting is second nature to her, writing things down an oddity. I think she read my book, but only because she's a good kid and it was the right thing to do.
So how do we imagine the future of reading? By keeping in mind that change is constant. By remembering that our parents and grandparents couldn't imagine how much the world would change in their lifetimes. And by recognizing that when we consider the future of reading, our statements really should not start with the word "I."

Introduction and Missing Husband Story

New to this, so be nice to me, please.

I'm a mystery author, and I've blogged on other sites, but I'm ready to try something new. I intend to recommend mysteries, talk about mysteries, and attempt to categorize mysteries. I also tend to let you know when I blog what's going on in my life, at least if it's interesting.

So, a mystery. I am a big historical fan, so I recommend Ariana Franklin's MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH. The author has the gift of making you feel the era, the gritiness, the mind-set of the people, the suspense of who among them is a killer.

And my life mystery? Well, most recent was whether my husband would ever get back to me. He was stranded in Canada when a fishing trip was extended due to fog and the airplane couldn't reach them to bring them home. They almost ran out of beer!

Odd how expected absences are a bit of a treat--time to do as I like, watch the TV shows I prefer (for hours and hours), and eat odd meals at unheard of times. But angst replaces that feeling when the return date is delayed and in fact unknown. Reminded me of Emily Dickinson's "If You Were Coming in the Fall," which ends, "But now, uncertain of the date of that that is between,/ It goads me, like the goblin bee that will not state its sting."

P.S. Don't cry for me-he is back now!