Book Fairs and Vendor Events and Spring Fairs, Oh My!

~ lanamfox ~ 2 Comments

I have signed up for four book selling events this spring, and I’m looking for more. I absolutely love doing these events. I haven’t branched out to the outdoor ones yet, but I’m sure I will eventually.

I like meeting people. I like talking about my books. Even though I’m an introvert, when I’m talking about books, whether mine or someone else’s, I lose my shyness and enjoy every minute of it. I’ve found that most people love talking to authors. It seems strange to me, because I am an author, that most people I meet at these events have never met one before.

I’ll never forget my first fan girl moment. I drove seventy miles to meet Mary Higgens Clark. She was one of my favorite authors. I stood in this long line that ran around the inside of the bookstore and out the door, for an hour, waiting for my chance to meet her and get her to sign my book. What a thrill!

My first impression of Mary was that she was tiny and very charming. My only regret was I didn’t have a camera with me that day. That was back before cell phones, and you had to carry your camera with you. I remember being so jealous because the girl behind me in line did have her camera and Mary was gracious enough to agree to a picture with her.

My next fan girl moment was with Tony Hillerman. I wasn’t a huge fan back then, but my best friend was and we waited in line for a long time to get his autograph. He was delightful, and my friend was practically swooning when we left. I have since read some of his books and know why my friend was such a fan.

I’ve also had some very disappointing meetings with authors. One big name (really big name!) author I met was not personable. He acted like he didn’t want to be there. The bookstore had set up a question-and-answer time with him, and he was curt and acted like it was beneath hm to answer our questions. Was he just shy like so many authors are? I don’t know, but he could’ve been nicer. He went on to sell millions of books and if I mentioned his name, you would recognize it immediately, but he didn’t make a good impression on me. I guess his books are so good, and they really are, that people overlooked the fact that he really wasn’t a nice person.

Another author I met whose books I loved turned me off because she was so unapproachable. It was at a mystery conference, and she had a posse around her to keep her safe (I guess) from her rabid fans. I was so disappointed because I really loved her books. She later came out and said some scathing remarks about people who thought differently than she did, and I quit reading her books. Did she miss me dashing to the bookstore to put down my money for her book when it first came out? No, not at all, but even though I loved her stories I didn’t like her at all.

Most of my experiences with my book signings have been positive, but I don’t think anyone gets by without someone who wants to pick your book apart. One woman came to see me at an event just to tell me that she was angry at the way I’d ended the last book. She was very loud and her face was red as she shook her finger at me. And I had one woman get hold of me online to tell me that she thought there was a misspelled word in one of my books. She said she always noticed misspelled words and was sure I would want to know that she found one in my book. My first thought was, only one? 😊

But those encounters are few and far between, thankfully, or I would probably never step outside my house again! Most people I meet are wonderful. They are so excited to meet you that it’s very humbling. I’ve had several people tell me they’ve never met a real author before, and I’m thinking, I’m a real author? LOL

My philosophy for book signings or giving talks in front of a room full of people is, fake it till you make it. I put on my smiling face and do my best to be pleasant to everyone. I was even nice to the lady who screamed at me because the book didn’t end the way she thought it should. Do I sweat a little at each event? You bet I do! But the positives far outweigh the negatives.

My goal for each event is to make one new reader or one new friend. I’m doing my best to grow my readership. One of the hardest things for me is cold calling on bookstores. I really hate to do that. If you have a way that makes that part easier, please let me know. My challenge for this year is to get at least one more bookstore to carry my books.

First things first

~ donaleeMoulton ~ 7 Comments

by donalee Moulton

My newest book is a first for me in two ways:

  • Cardinal is a paranormal mystery set in Nova Scotia — part of the Paranormal Canadiana Collection. It builds around the story of Catherine McIntosh, a little girl who died on April 23, 1889, one month short of her ninth birthday. Many believe Catherine is still with us today, and if you visit her grave in Pictou County, as I did, you will see the tumble of wonderful gifts people have left in her memory. Catherine introduced me to another world, and her story is the heartbeat of the book, my first paranormal mystery.
  • Private Detective E.M. Montogomery also makes her first book-length appearance in Cardinal.  (Can you guess what E.M. stands for?) The Halifax-based investigator has previously appeared in eight short stories, which have been published in anthologies and magazines across Canada and the U.S. When I was thinking about a main character to interact with Catherine and find a missing flesh-and-blood woman, Em emerged as the frontrunner. Below she meets her client for the first time – and learns this case will not be business as usual.

Day One

Saturday, April 25th

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Gord Gillis is 62. He’s a retired firefighter. He looks like a 62-year-old firefighter, I think. Now admittedly, I have no idea what a 62-year-old firefighter should look like. Except he should look like Gord Gillis.

cover of Cardinal by donalee Moulton

It’s a circular argument, and it’s giving me a headache. This is the stage in the client interview where the private detective, that would be me, leans back, nods, makes soothing sounds, and shakes their head in sympathy. I learned this technique when I was a cop with the Halifax Regional Police, and it has served me well as sole owner and employee of Bold Pursuit, although, at the moment, there is no boldness or pursuing required. Just a lot of nodding.

Gord needs to get his fear out before he can move on to dealing with that fear. Which is why I am sitting at a table in the Easy Street Diner sipping a now-cold decaf coffee. And nodding. It’s time to move on. I lean forward and give Gord’s hand, the one hugging his mug for dear life, a sympathetic pat.

“Nell sounds wonderful,” I say.

“Ms. Montgomery, you have to believe me. She would never leave me.” Gord says this emphatically. A hint of spittle makes its way to the corner of his lips. A hint of uncertainty travels with it.

I give Gord’s hand another gentle pat. I tell him to call me Em, like we are old friends enjoying an early morning chat. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Tell me everything you know. Even the tiniest detail can be helpful.”

Gord has a lot of details, and in the end, very little information to help me locate his missing wife. Nell went to Pictou, about a two-hour drive from Halifax, on Monday. She’s trying to find a brother she didn’t know existed until her mother died a few months ago. The deal was Nell would visit the newspaper office, the library, and the genealogy centre. She also intended to talk to the locals to see if any of them knew anything about her brother. She was also going to have lunch with a former colleague from the RCMP.

“It was a long shot, but Nell felt she had to go.” Gord picks at his napkin, turns and looks out the window. “She said he was family. You don’t turn your back on family.”

“Someone did,” I point out softly.

Gord brings his eyes and his attention back to the table. “Nell’s mother died in January. MAID. She had stomach cancer and opted for an assisted death. That gave her time to get her affairs in order.”

I wait. Unburdening takes time. I also learned this when I was a cop. It’s Interrogation 101. Gord plucks at his napkin. He is reminding himself he is not sharing family secrets; he is helping to find his missing wife. “Nell’s father got a girl pregnant when they were both sixteen. We’re not sure what happened to the baby. All we know is the baby was a boy, and he was born in the spring of 1955.”

Gord returns to plucking the napkin, or what is left of it. “It sounds so silly when I say it out loud, but we thought that might be enough to find him. Pictou is small, like 3,000 people small. And Nell had to try.”

It’s clear I’m heading to Pictou, and I’d like to get under way as quickly as possible. Gord will have to be nudged. I reach over and take the napkin away from him. I wad it in a ball and toss it on my plate. “What makes you think Nell is missing?”

Gord reaches for what is left of his napkin. He looks down at the shredded paper. Finally, he looks up at me. “The ghost.”

Self-Discipline at 5 in the Morning

~ Margaret Lucke ~ 3 Comments

By Margaret Lucke

How do you define self-discipline? To me, it’s the quality that enables you to force yourself to do something you know is good for you when you’d rather do something else.

It’s focusing on business rather than pleasure.

It’s favoring long-term goals (lose five pounds, meet the deadline) over short-term benefits (eat the chocolate, spend the gorgeous afternoon taking a walk).

It’s getting up way too early in the morning, when any normal person would still be tucked up comfortably in bed.

But not everyone agrees with me.

Quite a few years ago, as an aspiring mystery novelist, I attended the late, great Cabrillo Suspense Writers Conference, a wonderful event held annually for a decade at a rustic lodge in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One day I had a conversation over coffee with a fellow writer. At that time he had published two well-received mystery novels, but he was still working long hours at his day job at a local college. Finding time to write was a challenge for me, and I asked him how he managed to do that while dealing all of the other demands in his life.

“It’s simple,” he explained. “Every morning, seven days a week, I get up at 5 o’clock and sit down at his desk to write.”

Seriously? There’s a 5 o’clock in the morning? I thought 5 o’clock automatically meant late afternoon.

I am not a morning person. I’m fine with being awake when it’s dark outside, but only if I’ve approached it from the other end, the gradual fading of daylight into night. But wake up while it’s still dark? Impossible. Until daylight touches my bedroom window, my eyes refuse to open and my brain is on strike. I can’t find the floor at 5 a.m. unless I fall out of bed. There’s no way I can write a coherent sentence.

But I have a high regard for writers, and I’ve known several, who regularly rise before dawn to produce pages. Good pages too, not the gibberish I’d come up with.

I said as much to my coffee companion: “You know, I really admire your self-discipline.”

His response surprised me. “Oh, that’s not self-discipline.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “You just said you make yourself get up every morning when you want to be sleeping and force yourself to sit and write.”

“That’s right.”

“How is that not self-discipline? It sounds like the perfect example to me.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “It’s not self-discipline because I don’t enjoy it.”

What? To me, if he didn’t enjoy it, then his peculiar (to me) habit fit the definition even more. Obviously we had different takes on what self-discipline means. I prodded, but I couldn’t get him to explain his concept any further.

Self-discipline or not, whatever he was doing worked. He went on to considerable success and acclaim as a mystery writer, with almost three dozen novels to his credit and several awards on his shelf. My track record, on the other hand, is considerably shorter.

Maybe I should try setting my alarm clock just a little bit earlier.

Writer… or Robot?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 9 Comments

by Janis Patterson

Computers can be wonderful things. You can change or cut lines or paragraphs, move copy around, pretty much do whatever you want to do and yet end up with a clean copy with no tiresome retyping of entire manuscripts. It is a tool without compare, but it is only as good (word-wise) as the person using it.


Or it used to be. Now there is a new plague – or savior, depending on one’s viewpoint – in the machine and people are very divided about it. Just to be very clear, I am on the anti- side.


This new creature is available in many places and formats and names, and all fall under the general umbrella of ‘assisted writing programs’ – in other words, AI programs that can do a lot of the work of writing (like putting the words down) for you in a sort of simulacrum of your writing voice and style.
Doesn’t anyone see the horror of this? These programs not only check spelling (which is good) and grammar (which is all too often not so good) but they actually do varying amounts of the writing, with mechanical ease turning out copy that is more like pre-digested word salad instead of genuine writing.


I see the difference as similar to ordering a house kit (as you used to be able to) with all the lumber pre-cut and numbered, ready to put together according to the directions like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, and then calling yourself an architect. You’re allowed to do the pretty bits – trim and paint and such, but the actual building is created miles away by a machine. Translate this to writing and you become a technician rather than a writer.


I don’t see why someone who calls themselves a writer or who hopes to become a writer using such a Frankenstein thing. Not only do they have to pay for it, and learn the probably Byzantine command structure, but they get a product that is at best only partially theirs. Instead of all this, why don’t they just learn the rules, learn the craft and learn to really write? It will serve them better longer than a computer program.


There’s a commercial on tv right now for one of these things, and one line strikes me as being particularly egregious – something about if you’re a copywriter and need a dynamite line… Having been a copywriter in one of my many wordsmith incarnations this makes me furious and appalled. In my opinion if you have to have a machine/program/whatever these things are do a great chunk of the writing for you, you aren’t any kind of a writer!


Are some people so desperate to put the word ‘writer’ or ‘author’ after their name that they will cheat with programs like these? I guess so. I personally believe if you can’t do it by yourself you shouldn’t be doing it at all.


Writers should write – not be a technician to a writing program.

Moving + Writing = Behind

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

I am just about moved into our new-to-us home. One more week and I’ll have everything moved and will be settled into the smaller house. Downsizing is not easy! After 47 years, 4 kids, 12 grandkids, 2 great grandkids, I have boxes of photos that I’ve been going through. getting rid of duplicates and bad images from the days when you took the film in to be printed.

I have more furniture than this house can hold, but at the same time, I need to purchase furniture to fit in smaller spaces.

And don’t get me started downsizing from a walk-in closet to a 7 ft long closet in a 1952 older house. I see some remodeling going on in the bedroom down the road. Right now we are concentrating on making the kitchen and dining area larger.

  • Many of the things I’m doing to move relate to my writing.
  • Watching for duplicate words or words that aren’t strong enough.
  • making better word choices that fit the scene or the character even if the word had worked well before.
  • Shortening sentences to be more concise and not take up so much space in the story.
  • And expanding on the mystery and subplots to show the development of my characters and explore more reasons for the murder.

While I’m making the 4-hour drive back and forth from the old place to the new, I’ve summoned up several scenes and reasons for the actions of my characters in the work in progress.

But the words aren’t popping up on the computer screen because when I do finally have time to sit down at the computer, I have emails and promotions to tend to before my brain gives out.

In the last couple of days, I’ve thought about moving my deadline for this book out, but then it feels like I’m copping out. Instead, I’ll spend the rest of the month pushing to finish the book and know it will be published a bit later than I’d planned, but I managed to write it within my deadline.

That is the hardest part of writing for me. Not lambasting myself when I miss a deadline. When I put it out to the universe that something will happen or be finished, I don’t make excuses. I push and make it happen. It is my greatest strength as a writer. Self-discipline.

I can’t remember if I mentioned that Book 8 in the Spotted Pony Casino is now available in print and ebook.

When the past knocks on their door, the future they planned begins to unravel.

On the brink of their wedding, Dela Alvaro and Heath Seaver’s plans shatter when a ten-year-old boy appears, claiming to be Heath’s son. The truth is even darker: the boy’s mother—the woman Heath thought died years ago at Pine Ridge—was an FBI informant hidden under a new identity, left to raise his child alone before dying of addiction.

As Heath wrestles with awe for the son he never knew and fury at the FBI’s deception, the past turns deadly. When the agent who lied to him is found murdered in Pendleton, the FBI shows up on Dela’s doorstep, bringing danger straight to their home.

With their future on the line, Dela and Heath must confront a web of secrets before it destroys the family they’re just beginning to build.

Universal book link: https://books2read.com/u/3LzAxJ

Buy direct from the author: ebook – https://www.patyjager.net/product/full-house-ebook/

Autographed print book – https://www.patyjager.net/product/full-house/

You can also now purchase Merry Merry Merry Murder in audiobook format.

Where comfort and cheer meet scandalous secrets—A holiday mystery set in a small town.

Audiobook website – https://www.patyjager.net/product/merry-merry-merry-murder-audiobook/

In my next post, I’ll be talking about my 20th anniversary as a published author.