Round up

I know I seem to start every post with, "It's been a while..." but my excuse is I've been writing, so there.
Here's the round up. Just finished The Cold Kiss by John Rector and it blew me away. This book was so up my alley! A simple story simply told. It unfolds in almost real time with completely relatable characters in a completely messed up situation. I tore through it on my lunch hours and, faced with the prospect of waiting until Monday to finish, I brought it home and polished it off after I put the girls to bed. Highly recommended! And just in time. I came off three duds in a row then this breath of cold air hit me.

Next, I seem to have made my way to the finals in Jason Duke's Red Hot writing contest with my story My Asshole Brother (see link in the list to the right) I am very honored to make the cut to the final two seeing as the judging panel was a prestigious list of writers and agents whom I respect. Fingers crossed for the win. The other story selected, by Michael J. Solender is a cracker too. Tough choice Duke has on his hands.  Oh and Duke's Crimewav.com version of Phoenix Nightlife is up to pt 3. Good stuff.

I finished my final draft of the sequel to One Too Many Blows To The Head, titled Borrowed Trouble. Now it is in Jennifer's hands and she'll let me know what she thinks of my half. Her half is brilliant so I hope I can keep up. She dropped a few brilliant lines in her stuff. The book rocks (I think) and next step is figuring out what to do with it. Stay tuned.

I have to mention (honesty I keep thinking, "oh that would make a good blog post" then I get caught up at work or two kids and never get to it) but I have to say thanks to the many authors who donated books for my little sister's charity auction. All I did was put it out on Facebook and in no time I had over a dozen signed editions for the auction from Brett Battles, Kelli Stanley, Gary Phillips, Sophie Littlefield, Rebecca Cantrell, Gar Anthony Haywood, Stephen Jay Schwartz and Marcus Sakey (and me and Jennifer of course). At every stage I have been blown away by how kind and generous and giving the crime writing community has been.
Just this week I've been asking a lot of advice of some of my writer friends with much more experience than I and everyone has been so kind about giving up free advice. It does not go unnoticed, even if all I can do is buy your books but then the real winner is me again.

I am vowing to make a stronger push to get myself (and the books) out there in preparation for the sequel to come out. I've got Bouchercon coming up in October as well as the day-long Men of Mystery on Oct 30th but I am going to try harder to get in to book stores I haven't made any headway with. I need to stop being so shy because no one is going to do it for me.

I do have other things that are almost like real blog posts which I will save and try not to wait another month and a half between posts.