I just figured out a HUGE family secret. Something my mom didn't know. Something I don't think my dad knew.

Something that explains EVERYTHING about why my grandmother was the way she was.

I'll post more on Monday.

I need a place that a character could store incriminating items. I want a locker of some sort that he could visit fairly regularly. It can't be at h his home, or his gym. A bus station seems odd. He is a medical student - do they get lockers? Any ideas appreciated.

It's hard to imagine any going lower than this:

A popular Vancouver, Washington teacher was killed in a hit and run, and an 18 year old was arrested and charged. Then someone organized a car wash fundraiser right across the street from the victim's church. They made a nice chunk of change, which they said would go to the victim's family.

Except for the organizer had a little different idea in mind: she used it to bail out the suspect.

Now she will face a judge next week. The suspect? Even though he was bailed out, he managed to land back in jail after violating the terms of his parole.

This sounds too weird to be true, but the UPI reports "Four people were arrested in Peru in an investigation into the killing of people for their body fat, which was perhaps sent to Europe to be used in cosmetics."

I've been putting on my traditional winter fat layer. It might be worth their while to fly up here...

Read more here.

Normally I would say paying an agent to look at your work is a very bad idea. But not in this case. During the first two weeks of December, Irene Goodman, who represents some top authors, is auctioning off on ebay half-page critiques of partial manuscripts consisting of fifty pages and a synopsis.

There will be a link on her web site, http://www.irenegoodman.com, directly to the eBay page. The top twenty-five bidders will be contacted and asked to send their work ASAP, so be sure your fifty pages and synopsis are ready to go as soon as you get the word. She will give the best critiques she can and they will be done by her personally (not farmed out). All critiques will be conducted in the second half of December as soon as the auction is over. If she finds anything she loves, she may wish to follow up with an offer of representation. All proceeds will go to either the Foundation Fighting Blindness or the Deafness Research Foundation, two causes that are important to her because they affect her son. Ebay will have a mechanism set up so that all money will go directly to the foundations, not to Irene.

On the company’s Web site, it says Irene is particularly interested in “historical fiction with a hook, female-driven thrillers, and popular or narrative non-fiction.”

Artistis and authors such as Dave Eggers have redesigned covers for Nabokov's back-listed works to mark the publication of his final posthumous novel, "The Original of Laura."

Click here to look at the Wall Street Journal slide show - especially the cover for The Enchanter, which I can't find to post here, but which is gorgeous.

Rebecca Skloot wrote an article for Publishers Weekly that begins:
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“A month ago, I’d have thought the idea of organizing my own book tour with the help of my brain-damaged father was nuts. My father, Floyd Skloot, has written several books about the neurologic damage he suffered from a virus in the ’80s—it affected his memory, his abstract reasoning, and his ability to think about multiple things at once. Exactly the abilities a person needs to envision and organize a book tour. And I’m no better. Somewhere between writing a book, taking a teaching job, freelancing, and becoming my own publicist, things got a bit out of control. My office floor is piled with papers, my inbox has thousands of unanswered e-mails, and I scramble to keep up.

“My publisher has been hugely supportive of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, so I figured my tour was a given. I fantasized about driving cross country with the boyfriend, our dogs, and a herd of our closest friends in a big tour bus with bright colored cells painted all over it (yes, cells, the things in your body).”
===========
And then she writes about how she set up her own tour with the help of Facebook and Twitter. She probably got more book folks to think about her book than if her publisher had put her on tour. And her fantasies were really more the stuff of fantasy. I mean, when was the last time you heard of anyone sending someone on tour on a specially painted bus? [Full disclosure: Well, I can think of one Sarah Palin. Her tour features a bus adorned with large images of her face. It’s going to 'real America,’ ie, Noblesville, Ind., Roanoke, Va., Washington, Pa., military bases at Fort Bragg and Fort Hood, and the Villages, a GOP-friendly retirement community outside Orlando. ]

So next time someone tells you “no” think of how you can turn it inside out and make it better than a yes would have ever been.

Full disclosure: I used to work with Rebecca’s mother a long time ago, and know Floyd a little bit. I connected with Rebecca [just once] when I saw her byline in the New York Times Magazine (how many Skloots can there be?).

You can read her whole article here.

One British author who is also a reviewer is speaking out about what she sees as the increasing violence against women in mysteries and thrillers. She says that an increasing number of books feature male villains hurting women. “"Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or buried alive,” she said.

“Natasha Cooper, former chair of the Crime Writers' Association, agreed with Mann. "There is a general feeling that women writers are less important than male writers and what can save and propel them on to the bestseller list is if they produce at least one novel with very graphic violence in it to establish their credibility and prove they are not girly," she said.”

Full disclosure: I know a female writer who has enjoyed incredible success due in no small part to graphic, over-the-top violence. I'm thankful that the adult mysteries I'm writing with Lis Wiehl are pubbed by Thomas Nelson, where graphic depictions of violence are not part of the publisher's DNA.

You can read the article about the reviewer by clicking here.

Her husband's ordeal:

The famous painting of Marat she used as inspiration:

NPR had a moving story about a woman who dealt first hand with the craziness of our so-called health care “system” when her husband got kidney cancer.

“Fred was being transferred to a new hospital and Regina needed records of Fred's many tests and treatments from the old hospital. "I had gone down to medical records," Holliday says, "and they said, 'That'll be 73 cents a page and a 21-day wait.' I said, 'My husband is upstairs with Stage IV kidney cancer in your hospital and you're telling me I have to wait 21 days? Everything's on the computer. All you got to do is print it out and you're going to make me wait 21 days?' And they're like, 'Yeah, that's just the way it is.' I was floored."”

You can read, see, and hear more about this story here.

A new study shows that researchers can successfully test three years olds and predict which ones would grow up to commit criminal acts as adults.

So what’s to stop scientists in the future from testing kids and dealing with the bad ones in advance? Maybe shipping them off to an island? Reprogramming them? Even locking them up in advance?

It reminds me of that movie Minority Report, where you can be charged with the crimes you haven’t committed yet.

You can read the article by clicking here.

About the book
What would you do if you discovered you had a half-sister you never knew existed?

In The Secret of Joy, 28-year-old New Yorker Rebecca Strand is shocked when her dying father confesses a devastating secret: he had affair when Rebecca was a toddler—and a baby he turned his back on at birth. Now, his wish is that the daughter he abandoned, Joy Joyhawk, read the unsent letters he wrote to her every year on her birthday. Determined to fulfill her father’s wish, Rebecca drives to a small town in Maine—against the advice of her lawyer boyfriend who’s sure Joy will be a “disappointing, trashy opportunist” and demand half her father’s fortune. But when hopeful Rebecca knocks on her half-sister’s door, Joy—a separated mother who conducts weekend singles tours out of her orange mini-bus—wants nothing to do with Rebecca or the letters her father wrote to her. Determined to forge some kind of relationship with Joy, Rebecca sticks around, finding unexpected support from Joy’s best clients—the Divorced Ladies Club of Wiscasset—and a sexy carpenter named Theo . . . .

About the author
Melissa Senate lives on the coast of Maine with her son and their menagerie of pets. She’s the author of eight novels (seven women’s fiction and one young adult) with two on the way. Visit her website (http://www.melissasenate.com) for more information and she’d love if you became her friend Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MelissaSenate) and followed her on Twitter (http://twitter.com/melissasenate).

I asked, Melissa answered
A: What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? Bonus question: have you ever used it in a book?
M: When I was nine years old, I lived in a borough of New York City on a busy street. Right across the street was a school yard with a huge handball wall that was all the rage for kids. But: I wasn’t allowed to cross the street without asking an adult to walk across with me. So, my little friend Jackie and I asked a man in a suit with a briefcase to cross us, and he said: “I’ll take you across the street if you show me where I can find a bathroom.” That was our cue to run, but instead, we took him to the basement of my apartment building. LIKE IDIOTS. (Well, nine-year-old idiots.) We watched as he opened his briefcase and took out a big needle and something that looked like rope (at the time, we didn’t realize this was about drugs). We stared at each other for a split second and bolted. From that day on, I was allowed to cross the street by myself.

For the bonus q: I write chick lit/women’s fiction, so that particular bit has not found a way into my fiction, but I’ve found that what I do work into my novels is the impact of the emotion I’ve felt. That fear—and the fear for my friend—has manifested itself in interesting ways when describing all kinds of fear in my books.

A: Mystery writers often give their characters an unreasoning fear - and then make them face it. Do you have any phobias, like fear of spiders or enclosed spaces?
M: I lived in New York City apartments for such a long time that I didn’t realize I would be afraid to live in a house with doors and windows that opened on the ground floor. It’s taken me five years of living in a small town in Maine to stop worrying that someone will come through the windows.

A: Do you have a favorite mystery book, author, or movie?
MS: I love all kinds of mysteries, from cozies to hardboiled. I do have a special fondness for Janet Evanovich.

A. At its heart, every story is a mystery. It asks why someone acts the way they did - or maybe what will happen next. What question does your book ask?
M: The Secret of Joy asks: If a half-sibling you never met, never knew about, came knocking on your door one day, how would you feel? P.S. This very question was inspired by an email I received out of the blue that said: I think you might be my half-sister . . .

A, Is there a mystery in life that you are still trying to figure
M: Motherhood. No annotating required.

No, not me! I'm not brave enough to ever do this.

But Lynn Viehl is. In April, she posted online her actual royalty statement for Twilight Fall, which was in the top 20 on the New York Times mass market bestseller list. She promised she would post and discuss the next royalty statement. And now she has.

Click here to see it and read her thoughts. Fascinating! And very rare.

Well, who doesn’t? Because it involves money, which is possibly more interesting than sex.Click here to find out how the money does - and doesn’t - get paid.

Because it costs them a significant amount of money to publish a book - click here for some examples.

This weekend, Teen's padded computer laptop cover fell off her bed and into a corner. No problem, right? Except her bed is like this:

There is no way to get into that far corner, and the bed weighs hundreds of pounds. So I said, let's unwind a coat hanger and see if we can snag it.

One coat hanger wasn't long enough, so I hooked two together. It was hard going, so she held the flashlight and I fished around, scraping the coat hanger against the wall.

And eventually, it came into contact with one of these:

Boom! Flash of light! Most of the house went dark.

But:
- I didn't die. I didn't even get shocked.
- For a long while, it looked like we had fried the wires, but the third time was the charm on trying the circuit breaker, and we got everything back.
- And I even managed to snag her computer cover!

About the books

Black is for Beginnings is a companion book to the BLUE IS FOR NIGHTMARES series.

Prophetic nightmares. Near-brushes with death. Killers pursuing her and her friends. Stacey Brown knows that being a hereditary witch isn’t all it's cracked up to be. BLACK continues the harrowing adventures of Stacey and Jacob in the wake of Jacob's brush with death. Ever since he lost his memory, Jacob hasn't been able to remember Stacey - his own soul mate. He leaves Massachusetts, returning to his childhood home in Colorado, hoping to jog his memory. What he remembers is Kira, his ex-girlfriend. As Jacob works to piece together his past, will there be room for Stacey in his future?

Laurie says, “When my editor approached me with the idea of writing a graphic novel, I was very intrigued because it gave me the opportunity to not only try something new, but to really picture the book as a movie.  I have a background in screenwriting and wrote BLACK IS FOR BEGINNINGS in screenplay format, adding in ideas for illustrations and sidebars. It was an absolute thrill to write – to have the opportunity to work with an illustrator, and to see my work come to life in this way.  BLACK IS FOR BEGINNINGS does not take the place of a regular prose novel in the series. It is a companion piece, complimenting the entire series as a whole.”

Deadly Little Lies is the sequel to Deadly LIttle Secret, (the first book in the TOUCH series). It starts up a few months after Ben’s departure at the end of the first book. Camelia’s spent those months researching everything she can find on psychometry (the ability to sense things through touch).

Ben returns to school, but he remains aloof, and Camelia can't get close enough to share her secret with him. Camelia makes the painful decision to let him go and move on. Adam, the hot new guy at Knead, seems good for her in ways Ben wasn't. But when Camelia and Adam start dating, a surprising love triangle results. A chilling sequence of events uncovers secrets from Ben’s past – and Adam's. Someone is lying, and it's up to Camelia to figure out who – before it's too late.

What the critics are saying
"The half-million readers of Laurie Faria Stolarz’s paranormal mystery series will be happy with this shift to graphic style, offering as it does the pleasure of putting faces on characters, its visualized eeriness and vibrant displays of emotion...The graphic style allows Stolarz to distill the story while simultaneously dropping hints about Stacey and Jacob’s supernatural talents, luring new readers to the series." - Kirkus Reviews

"Taking Stolarz’s Blue Is for Nightmares series into the graphic-novel realm is a bold idea, and it pays off in this morbidly entertaining and surprisingly romantic page-turner." - Booklist

About the author
Laurie Faria Stolarz is the author of several popular young adult novels, including Deadly Little Secret, Deadly Little Lies, Project 17, Bleed, and the bestselling BLUE IS FOR NIGHTMARES series, which has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. Stolarz's titles have been part of the Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers list, the Top Ten Teen Pick list, and YALSA's Popular Paperback list, all through the American Library Association. Born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, Stolarz attended Merrimack College and received an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College in Boston. For more information, visit Laurie's website at www.lauriestolarz.com.

I asked, Laurie answered
A. What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you?  Bonus question:  have you used it, in any way, in a book?
L. When I was doing the research for PROJECT17, I went to the abandoned mental institution on which the book is based.  Growing up, the former mental hospital was rumored to be haunted (there are actually unmarked graves on the premises).  Once I really started delving into the research, visiting the place took on a whole new meaning (knowledge really IS power).  I was so horrified that I couldn’t sleep at night.  So, yes, I have used this fear to write a book.


A. Mystery writers often give their characters an unreasoning fear - and then make them face it.  Do you have any phobias, like fear of spiders or enclosed spaces? 
L. I’m the biggest wuss ever, even though I write this scary stuff, too.  You name it – bugs, critters, haunted houses, dark places, basements, attics, creaking noises at night, horror flicks, abandoned places, the list goes on and on.  I use all of this in my writing.


A. Do you have a favorite mystery book, author, or movie?  
L. I love Stephen King and Robert Cormier.  I also love The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Our Secret History by Donna Tartt.  As for movies, I love the Scream trilogy, though I have to watch most of it with a pillow over my eyes.  I also like I Know What You Did Last Summer (but again with the pillow).  I’m not into the mega-horror stuff that’s out now.  If I watched any of that, I’m not even joking when I say I wouldn’t be sleeping for days.


A. At its heart, every story is a mystery.  It asks why someone acts the way they did - or maybe what will happen next.  What question does your book ask?
L. What happens when you fall in love with someone who could possibly kill another, including you?


A. Is there a mystery in life that you are still trying to figure out?
L. I think there are so many mysteries in one’s life.  Unraveling those mysteries and getting to the answers – and finding new mysteries along the way – is what we’re meant to do I believe.

From the first paragraph of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue. "I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier”

"rugged splashes"???

and can you even start to imagine smelling that? What does "everything small town American" smell like? How about "Last Frontier"?

So much for appealing to the senses.

Someone had fun imaging what might have happened if an overzealous copyeditor had gotten hold of Shakespeare.

The result begins:
"To be, or not to be: {COMMENT: Weak, confusing opening. Is something missing here? The thought seems unfinished.} that is the question: {COMMENT: Indirect. Why not get right to your main point?} Should I exist?"

To read more of this piece, click here. I just forwarded it to two of my copyeditors.

Got an editorial letter yesterday for a book that ended up having to be written in hurry. A big chunk of the letter was devoted to praising a certain character. Let's call him Tom Smith. Tom Smith was so intriguing, such a great foil to the other characters, a truly masterful creation.

My first thought was: "Who in the hell is Tom Smith?"

His name had been four or five different names, and was only changed to Tom Smith in the last few harried days.

Click here for the scoop.