Essaying Around the Blogosphere

I've been fortunate enough to be a guest at some wicked awesome blogs lately to help celebrate TINE's release. In case you didn't catch them, here are the posts (I'll update it as new essays appear):

• Where I Write at Sheila Webster Boneham
• I Was a Bouchercon Virgin at Crimespree Magazine
• Top Five Places to Visit in a Cozy Town at A Prairie Girl Reads
• On Farming and Birthing at Jungle Red Writers
• A Writer's Dream Vacation at Fish Nets Anthology
• Grates and Tunnels and Turtlenecks, Oh My! at Fish Nets Anthology
• CSA Murder and Intrigue at Seasonal Savory
• Growing Garlic at Escape with Dollycas Into a Good Book
• My Life as a Farmer at Patricia Stoltey's blog
• Inspiration from a Traveler at the Guppies Anthologies blog
• The Mystery of Reviews at Mysteristas
• The Common Ground Fair at Maine Crime Writers
• My history with Poe at Poe's Deadly Daughters (look for the June 7 post)
• My favorite food and other interview questions at Beth Groundwater's blog
• Cam's Marinated Asparagus at Killer Crafts and Craft Killers
• Preston, Norwegian Forest Cat at Mochas, Mysteries, and More
• Cam's Herbed-Spring Garlic Quiche at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen
• A Day in the Life of Farmer Cam Flaherty at Dru's Book Musings
• How to Find Early Reviewers at Write Here, Write Now
• What I Wish I Had Known at Killer Characters

And then there are my regular posts over at our Wicked Cozy Authors blog, plus my contributions to the Wicked Wednesday discussions:

• Renewal
• The Value of One
• Setting as Character: Location, Location
• Freedom
• On Secret Lives
• How I Spent my Book Birthday
• On Writing Full Time
• My Feline Friends
• Who is Edith Maxwell?

Deborah Crombie Marathon

I am thrilled to report that I have finished reading through Deb Crombie's entire series, except for The Sound of Broken Glass, which released last week.

I hope you'll do the same. I had read one or two of her books in the past. But with a long series - and this one started in 1996 with A Share in Death - it's really worth it to read it start to finish. You see how the characters develop over time, you experience how the author deals with loss and love and deepening relationships. Most of all, you totally fall in love with Scotland Yard officers Gemma James and Duncan Kinkaid, and with London through Crombie's eyes.

While Crombie lives in Texas, she has said that she always felt like she should have been British. She travels to England and other parts of Great Britain every year and has lived there in the past. When you read her writing, she certainly sounds British. She gets the dialect, both in dialog and in how observations about life are expressed. She makes you feel like you are walking the streets of Notting Hill or shopping at the Columbia Road flower market. Here she is on her recent US book tour with an actual Brit, her fellow blogger Rhys Bowen, whose Molly Murphy series I love and want to enact a marathon on, too!

Crombie is one of the regular bloggers over at Jungle Red Writers where I drop in first thing every morning and often leave a comment. I was really excited recently to hear that my randomly selected comment made me the winner of a copy of  The Sound of Broken Glass. I can't wait to get it, except that I know after I finish reading it, I'll have a year or more to wait for the next one. As a writer myself, I know how long it takes to finish writing an entire book, and how hard it is. But as a reader, and a fast reader, I'm appalled at how quickly I can finish reading a work that took so long to produce!

I did a couple of series marathons before, with Julia Spencer-Fleming (also a Jungle Reds blogger) and Louise Penny, but now I'm reduced to eagerly waiting for their next book.

And right now, as before, I'm in withdrawal. Sure, I have other books to read, and am greatly enjoying Toni L. P. Kelner's Blast from the Past, with Wicked Eddies by Beth Groundwater and One Hot Murder by Lorraine Bartlett queued up behind. But what I really want is The Sound of Breaking Glass!

What series have you read start to finish? Do you think a series marathon is a good idea, or would you rather read the books as they come out, one per year (or so)? Which stand alone novel did you wish would become a series?

Box of Books

I came home Friday to the most fabulous sight: a box of books. MY books!


It was an amazing feeling to hold the book in my hands, to leaf through it, to read the wonderful blurbs on the back cover. I started writing this book almost four years ago. This is a dream come true.

Here's one of the blurbs: "Debut author Tace Baker combines convincing, diverse characters, a vividly described setting, and a plot that picks up speed until it reaches a surprisingly intense confrontation. Who knew linguistics professors led such interesting lives?" -Sheila Connolly, New York Times bestselling author of the Orchard Mystery series and the Museum Mystery series.

Thanks, Sheila! 

Both of my parents have passed away, my mother just last April. But I dedicated the book to them. I wrote, 

This book is for my late parents, Allan Maxwell, Jr. and Marilyn Muller. They always told me I could be anything I wanted to be. And now I'm an author, exactly what I want to be.

I have a couple of launch parties scheduled, as well as a dozen guest blog posts, so I'll probably be pretty scarce around here this fall. I hope you'll drop by some of the blogs, though. Watch my facebook pages for news. And if you wanted to pick up the book, Barking Rain Press is selling it for half off during September.

Guest Blog Schedule:
Dru's Book Musings - September 19
Mysteristas - September 20
Jungle Red Writers - September 26
Chris Redding, Author - September 27
Lisa's Book Critiques - September 28-29
Auntie Em Writes - September 30
Schooled in Mystery - October 2
Poe's Deadly Daughters - October 6
Kristi Belcamino - October 10
Novel Adventurers - October 12
Writers Who Kill - October 13
Buried Under Books - October 16
Examiner.com - October 17
Marilyn's Musings - October 18
Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews - October 22
Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers - November 2
Cindy Carroll - November 7
Mystery Lovers' Kitchen - November 24

One Page a Day

I'm participating in a six-week writing challenge. On Jungle Red Writers, Jan Brogan challenged readers to write one page every day before checking personal email. Sounds simple, right? It's just one page.

Many writers, me included, have found the Internet to be a big black hole of distraction. There's that blog to read. That Facebook to catch up on. That Twitter feed to update. The email Inbox containing daily digests from three different Yahoo groups. All of which can be about writing: the craft, publishing, upcoming events, pitfalls, celebrations. We also hear that many publishers do little to promote 'mid-list' books, so these activities are crucial for getting name recognition and building a following, even before publication.

But when does that leave time to actually write? It's hard to carve out the time, especially when you hold down a day job, like I do. I often write only on my non-work Fridays. My most productive period, however, was when I participated in another challenge in February. That one, the Guppies Chocolate Challenge, was to write as many words as you could in the month of February. The winner was to be sent chocolate by all the other participants. Well, I didn't win the challenge, but I did win by writing 28,000 words and finishing the first draft of Speaking of Murder.

How did I write an average of 1000 words a day? I squeezed it in around the edges. I wrote after work. I wrote before work. I wrote every weekend day. I wrote in the passenger seat on a trip to New Jersey. And it worked.

One important component, though, was concentration. And you really can't focus on following your characters around and writing down what they do if you're always taking little side trips into cyberspace and answering email, reading what Sisters in Crime is up to, responding to a fellow Guppy's recent success or a question from Crime Scene Writers group, doing a little research on blood splatter.

So the practice of this page-a-day thing BEFORE INTERNET TIME is already working. In two days I have produced four pages, on a brand-new book, the next in the series. Stay tuned! It's easier than it seems.