New Web Site

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New Covers, New Books

The third Local Foods mystery, Farmed and Dangerous, made it to Amazon. Don't you love it?

It's available for pre-order, too! And speaking of covers, my second Lauren Rousseau mystery has a cover, too.

You can win a copy in a Goodreads giveaway from now to October first by signing up here: 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Bluffing is Murder

by Tace Baker

Giveaway ends October 01, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Barking Rain Press also has a free preview and a 35% off coupon available. The book will release November 11.

And don't forget book one, Speaking of Murder, is half off from the publisher in September - just use the coupon code BRP3YEAR at checkout.

On Self-Publishing

I went on a new adventure last week. It occurred to me that two of my short stories that were published in the last ten years included some dark back story for two of the main characters in Speaking of Murder.

My story "Reduction in Force" describes revenge after corporate layoff and was published in Thin Ice, an anthology of mystery and crime fiction, by Level Best Books, 2010. The main character is Lauren Rousseau's sister, Jackie, who is an important secondary character in Speaking of Murder.

"Obake for Lance" was a short story about murderous revenge published in Riptide, an anthology of mystery and crime fiction, by Level Best Books, 2004. This story describes a dark incident in the past of Lauren's best friend, Elise, who plays a pivotal role in Speaking of Murder.

The rights to both stories reverted to me a year after publication. People who read Speaking of Murder have asked me when the next Lauren Rousseau book is coming out. It won't be out anytime soon, despite being mostly written, because I need to keep writing and promoting the Local Foods mysteries around the demands of my day job and daily life.

But it occurred to me that these two stories are directly related to Lauren and might satisfy some of the hunger of readers. So I read my writing colleague Kaye George's booklet The Road to Self-Publishing and cleaned up the formatting.

With the help of Kaye's booklet, I figured out how to publish the stories for most formats through Smashwords and for Kindle through Amazon. And while it requires some careful attention (that is, don't start doing it at night if you're a morning person), it really isn't that hard.

Through the unfailingly helpful Guppies I found a cover artist, Stanzalone Design, who uses open-source stock photographs and adds the lettering, which makes her covers very affordable, so I commissioned a cover for each. Which I love!

I also realized that Obake was the wrong word to use in that story. The real name of the triangular rice-dough pastry filled with sweet bean paste is Yatsuhashi, so the newly published story is called "Yatsuhashi for Lance."  It's up on Amazon and is already #25 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > Asia > Japan and #77 in Books > Travel > Asia > Japan > General. Cool! (We won't worry about the fact that it isn't nonfiction...) It should be up for Nook, Kobo, and Apple formats before the end of January. 


I also liked the cover for "Reduction in Force" since it takes places in a software company and tea plays a critical role in the revenge. It's up on Amazon, too. 

This exercise gave me confidence in the world of self publishing, even though I have "non-me" publishers for all my books so far. I can track sales and let people who ask know that there is more of my writing out there they can read. For a mere ninety-nine cents! I'm not expecting to get rich on a couple of short stories but I like having them available. And you never know...

Have you self published anything? Do you order short stories for your ereader?  If you don't have an ereader and a story isn't available in paper, would you buy it and read it on your PC?

Helping Authors

Now that Speaking of Murder is out, I'm thinking a lot about how readers can help authors. I know others have covered this, but here's my list of suggestions.

• Ask your library to purchase the book. That way it reaches many readers for a long time.

• If you read the book and liked it, write a short review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and assign it a handful of stars. That will let prospective buyers know it's a book worth reading.
• If you're in a book club, suggest they read the book. I'd be happy to come and talk if you're within driving distance, or could visit via Skype if you're not.
• If you travel in twitterdom, Facebook, or other social media, first follow me or click Like on my two Author pages, then post a quick note about the book and what you liked about it. Our overlapping circles can ripple outwards into the world, and your circles certainly include some people mine don't.
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If you have mystery-loving friends, consider buying copies of the book to give as holiday or birthday presents. One very cool friend of mine just told me he ordered TEN copies from our local independent bookstore to give to family members as Christmas presents. That was a great piece of news for a writer! Supporting independent bookstores is also a great practice (you can order a discounted signed copy of the book from the New England Mobile Book Fair if you haven't already purchased it).

• And above all, talk it up. Word of mouth is a great marketing tool. If you'd like me to send you some bookmarks to send out, just ask. I have a few thousand. 

Of course these ideas apply to how readers can support all authors, not just me!

Do you have other ideas on how to support an author? As a reader, which of these suggestions are you likely to implement? Authors, what has worked for you?

Two Years of Blogging

I'm a little late with this. I somehow missed the two-year anniversary of this blog, which was August 7. I got a little closer last year with One Year in the Blogosphere. 

My goal when I started was one post per week. I pretty much stuck to it: 106 posts over two years. I let up a bit on frequency this summer. Hmm, think moving and getting two books out had anything to do with it? Plus I've been blogging every few weeks over at the Sisters in Crime New England group blog, Pen, Ink, and Crimes, which sometimes uses up all my available blogging energy.

A post I wrote about doing research on the Crane Estate in Ipswich has gotten a lot of steady traffic. But besides that, the top three posts have to do with finding the space to write: Retreating to Write, my report on Wellspring House, and Gathering to Write, about a four-writer retreat I was part of in June. I guess most of my readers here are writers (or would-be writers longing for retreat). Total comments for the two years is 519. Average of 5 per post? Seems high, but then those count my replies to all you kindly (and MUCH appreciated) readers who leave a comment.

One interesting stat: the first year more readers viewed the blog on Firefox than on Internet Explorer. That flipped this year, with a new fourteen percent on Chrome (what I use exclusively). More people continue to use Windows than Mac, although one percent read it on an iPhone. Other mobile devices are still under one percent. 

At the end of last year's anniversary post, I noted that I would "continue blogging on topics relating to Speaking of Murder (book One), Murder on the Beach (book Two), and, of course, writing and publishing." At the time I didn't have a publisher for Speaking of Murder, and now it's coming out in print (under a pen name) from a reputable small press, Barking Rain, in less than a month. See Tace Baker's web site for details, or preorder it!

And the Local Foods Mysteries series wasn't even a gleam in Kensington Publishing's eye at the time. Now it's a three-book contract signed, sealed, and delivered, and I'm about to send the completed and many-times-revised manuscript of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die off to the editor this Friday! Watch for that release next June

That's a big change in a year's time.  I wonder what will happen in the next year. Despite several articles that foretell "Blogging is dead," I plan to continue for at least one more year. 

I thank each and every one of you for being a faithful or even occasional reader, and I'll randomly pick one commenter from today's post and send him or her a signed copy of Speaking of Murder, so be sure to leave a valid email address if you think I don't know how to find you otherwise.

Finally, do you think blogging is worth it? Do you read blogs regularly? Still write posts alone or with others, or has Facebook taken over that role? What do you think is next on the horizon?

Speaking of Murder!

My alter-ego, Tace Baker, has a book coming out! 

The pre-order page for  Speaking of Murder  by Tace Baker on Amazon is now live. You can also sign up for a free preview of the first four chapters on www.TaceBaker.com. 

This is very, very exciting news. I started writing this book in the winter of 2009. I finished the first draft a year later, and then took a year to polish it. I started trying to find an agent in winter of 2011 with no luck. 

Those of you following this blog know that we had a couple of close calls with small presses before Barking Rain Press decided to take a chance with Tace. We've been through a full editing pass and this morning the editor, Betty Dobson, and I received the page proofs (as a PDF) from the publisher, Sheri Gormley. Whee! We have a cover, ISBNs, and more. It's finally real.

 I've set up a book launch party and invited all my 936 Facebook friends both near and far as well as a dozen more local friends. Come on down to the Book Rack in Newburyport on September 27 at 7 pm and help us celebrate. 

The Quaker book catalog has agreed to list Speaking of Murder, and my new local bookstore in Amesbury, Bertram and Oliver's, will stock it, too. I'm even arranging to have an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana stock it, since it features a linguist and I hold a PhD from IU in linguistics. I'll be out there two weeks after the book comes out to help market it.

Now it's back to final polishing on A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die, and then I need to get started on the detailed synopsis for Till Dirt Do Us Part, all mixed in with promotional activities and a full-time job. Who needs sleep?!

Forensic Linguistics - What?

I picked up my New Yorker magazine this week and browsed the table of contents. Whoa! An article from the "Department of Linguistics" titled "Words on Trial." Really? (Note: you might have to be a subscriber to read the whole article.)

How cool is that? Solving crimes with linguistics. But wait, that's what my alter-ego's first mystery revolves around! Tace Baker's Speaking of Murder will be out from Barking Rain Press on September 18. It features a Quaker linguistics professor who...well, let's just quote her web site: 

"The murder of a talented student at a small New England college thrusts linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau into the search for the killer. Lauren is a determined Quaker with an ear for accents. Her investigation exposes small town intrigues, academic blackmail and a clandestine drug cartel that now has its sights set on her."

So I drilled deeper into the article. I knew this from prior research, but it was cool to be reminded of how linguists can solve crimes by analyzing consistent patterns in text messages, voice mail message, or written notes. 

For example, Professor Robert Leonard matched certain elements in the emails of an accused murderer with the text scrawled on the wall at the murder scene. Things like using "U" for "you," which is commonly seen in text messages but not in emails, and misplaced apostrophes in words like "doesnt'" and "cant'." (Oh, be still for a moment, you Pet Peevers, you...) This case had no physical evidence, and the accused was condemned to three life terms in prison based on the forensic linguistic evidence.

I encourage you to read the entire well-researched and well-written article. It's given me more than one idea for Book Three in Tace Baker's Speaking of Mystery series. In Speaking of Murder, Lauren Rousseau uses spoken accents, both domestic and foreign, to identify and eliminate suspects. But she's fully capable of doing text analysis or of determining, as Leonard did, that the suspect used contractions only in negative statement ("I can't") but not in positive ones ("I am"), evidence that resulted in conviction. 

Have you read mysteries solved by a linguist or investigator with linguistic prowess? Or heard of crimes with language-related evidence?

Publication!

I am very pleased to announce that Trestle Press has accepted Speaking of Murder for publication.

After three years of writing the story of Linguistics Professor Lauren Rousseau, I've succeeded in getting my book into the eager hands of the reading public. Who said persistence doesn't pay off?

The book will be out in a couple of weeks as an e-book in several formats, then will be released in print about two months later. I'm thrilled! This gorgeous cover is thanks to Elizabeth Thomsen for the photograph of Ipswich's Choate Bridge and fellow writer Polly Iyer for the design. Thank you, talented professionals.

Stay tuned for details. And many thanks, Trestle Press. Readers, stop by and see what else they have to offer.