Since November is the month when we give thanks for being lucky enough to live in our great country—and since I figure I’ve given enough tax dollars to the government to say thanks for the next fifty years—I thought I’d list all those things that we, as writers, should be thankful for every day. Ergonomic chairs. Pretty self-explanatory. Agents. The first line of defense in any writer’s arsenal against rejection. It’s not that you don’t get rejections, it’s just that she gets them first. Yes, they still sting but having someone who believes in you makes it all a little better. Writing buddies. Knowing I can call them, day or night and bitch about my uncooperative muse makes me breathe easier. Call waiting. Don’t recognize the number? Ignore. Recognize the number as your mother-in-law’s? See response to first question. Cattle prods. For those days when the kids demand to know why they don’t have any clean underwear and what exactly you did all day if you didn’t do wash. Tazers. For the husband on vacation (or retirement) who walks into your office as you’re furiously typing away, leans on the door and says, “So, what are you doing?” And the…

Over the course of the last few weeks we’ve discussed many different things, and hopefully they’ve been as entertaining for you as they have been for me, but what’s on my mind this week might be a tad depressing. At the beginning of a new month my yahoo groups discuss what they read the previous month, and what new books they’re anticipating during the current month. It’s one of my favorite times to see what books I might have missed out on, and what books I might not be aware are coming.For October I only read four books. To me that’s a tad depressing. I know I can read more than that. Why didn’t I? The only thing I know for sure about that is that you don’t know because you’re not me, and weren’t there for my various moods, real life moments, and perhaps poor book choices. Do four books when I can read perhaps as many as 10 in a month constitute a slump?Of course I want you to say no…four books is great you’re not in a slump. I only read three books, so you did one better than me, but realistically that’s not going to happen,…

George DuranOriginally uploaded by freshfiction I went to the Texas Book Festival last weekend and as always it was fun to be in the company of books…yes, with the accompanying authors and readers! If you ever get a chance to go to a book festival, no matter how big or small, you owe it to your self as a reader to go at least once! That is the reason I used last year to drag along my husband. He only reads current events and a very occasional an adventure fiction novel, but I said that qualified as a reader and he needed to go. This year, I didn’t need to prod or twist his arm, he made room in his calendar and in fact, he even scrutinized the schedule and marked the ones he planned on attending. I was amazed! Gwen and I divided up the non-adventure reminders: Gwen picked the Young Adult tracks and of course George Duran, I got the rest! And so we were off to listen to authors talk about their books. I’m not sure if there was a theme this year for picking books and authors, but I got the impression it was war. From…

I spent the first half of my life in the same house. My grandfather built it with his own two hands back in 1929, and when he died, my mother inherited it, and lived there until she died. It was my home through childhood and most of my teen years, until I headed out, to seek my fortune in the world. Since then I’ve lived in…oh…roughly twelve more houses and a few apartments in a couple of different countries, cities, and states. I renovated my first home eight years ago; since then, I’ve owned and renovated seven more. Eight houses in eight years isn’t too bad of a track-record. Especially since most of them were renovated around our ears as we tried to go about our business as usual in the midst of paint and drywall mud and dust and men with their shirts off flexing their muscles as they drove nails and soldered pipes. And it’s just really hard to keep going about business as usual when there are shirtless men driving nails and soldering pipes in the next room, isn’t there? Anyway, it’s that background that caused Berkley Prime Crime to offer me a chance to create a…

What goes into writing a good mystery? While it’s critical to have a compelling plot filled with twists and turns, I’ve always believed that the book’s heroine – and the development of her “real life” – was at least as important. When I started writing the Reigning Cats & Dogs mystery series, I wanted the focus to be my protagonist, Jessica Popper. Jessie is a veterinarian with a mobile services unit, essentially a clinic on wheels. I chose to make her practice mobile instead of based in a regular office because she needed an excuse to go out into the community every day, talking to suspects and ferreting out clues. But since I love to incorporate humor in all my books, I wanted her to be sassy, independent, and strong-headed, as well as someone who was battling a few demons. The main one is her conflict over commitment, which provides the ups and downs she experiences with her boyfriend Nick. (I tried to model their relationship after the sparkling repartee in those wonderful old Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy flicks – or one of my favorite movies of all times, It Happened One Night.) The Reigning Cats & Dogs series was already…

I’m known for writing ‘grit lit’—Southern women’s fiction. My books are recognized not only by their Southern setting and characters, but also by their emotional intensity. So when I proposed the idea for THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET to my agent, she was a little leery at first—especially after I told her that I planned to make this into a long-running series.In this book I’ve blended my favorite elements of ‘grit-lit’ but threw in my passion for old houses, the City of Charleston, an historical mystery, and ghosts. The main characters are multi-layered with a lot of emotional baggage (ala Karen White books), but their dialogue is lighter, and snarkier, than my readers are probably used to. And, yes, my protagonist, Melanie Middleton, sees dead people. So, how did I sell this idea as a marketable proposal to not only myself but to my agent and editor? After all, isn’t the publishing industry married to the ‘tried and true’ despite their insistence that they want something ‘fresh and new’? I made a deal with the devil (figuratively, of course). I promised my editor that I could still do a ‘grit lit’ novel every year—if I could just be allowed to…

I grew up an only child, and I really liked it. (Smile) Except for the fact that I love to play board games and cards, and I didn’t always have a playmate. But I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of siblings. That’s why there are four Caruthers sisters and one brother in my new book “The Demon King and I.” I wanted to write about that interaction between siblings. I have first hand experience after watching my own children, but I also did some research by hanging around and learning to understand how my friends interact with their brothers and sisters. Take my friend Shannon’s comment about how one of her brother’s dresses. We were Christmas shopping a few years ago and she talked about how she bought him some decent clothes so he would wear something besides a t-shirt and jeans. It was her subtle way of telling him to grow up. I didn’t realize it, until just this moment but that sort of ended up in The Demon King and I. (Please, don’t tell her.) I watched as another friend interacted with her two sisters. That dynamic was very interesting because the middle sister, my friend, has…

Her footsteps go where no other woman has walked before. Through a doorway our heroine treads into a fracture in the universe, and empty space becomes a walkway to her destination. Stonehenge is the beginning of her journey; a renowned world is the end. And everything else between is…nothing? Science is an ingredient I really wanted to add to The Sea’s Embrace, but only as much as I could get away with in a romance novel. I managed to throw in enough to make it work, excluding a short prologue divulging the secret behind the mysterious floating orbs lighting the way. (You’ll have to read the story to find out about them.) The true science comes with time travel. I’ve always been fascinated with the Bermuda Triangle. Ever wonder why things go missing there? Did you know there’s a similar phenomenon off the coast of Japan? Some scientists believe these two locations are connected beneath the earth by a black and white hole. Though it hasn’t been proven, and has caused a bit of controversy within the scientific community, most gurus would love to believe in this fantastic theory. Think time travel. Not in a sense you can travel back…

I think that sometime in the last week or so Oprah Winfrey was peeking at my list of topics I had written for this blog. One of my ideas was about e-readers. Now she’s made Amazon’s Kindle one of her favorite new things. Am I surprised? A little but only because it means she has now limited herself to purchasing books from Amazon, so I would have thought she’d like the Sony e-reader instead.I have a Kindle and have had it for about seven months now. Yes, the downside is if I want an electronic book I have to order it from Amazon, but that doesn’t bother me. It also doesn’t have the backlight feature that many people like, but I’m typically in bed and asleep well before my husband, so the lack of a backlight doesn’t bother me. I had seriously considered the Sony e-reader and well as another e-reader that many of my friends prefer, the E-Bookwise. However, the Sony wasn’t compatible with my MAC, so that eliminated that. Then I decided to get smart and compare the book prices between the E-Bookwise and the Kindle. That comparison helped to cinch my decision. I would be able to…