Down the Rabbit Hole...

It has been a very long time since I've posted anything here, and I wanted to take a few moments to offer up my excuses. But, as everyone knows, excuses are just that, excuses. But here's my reason for neglecting this space for so very long -

I've been writing - working madly on a new mystery, and since it's been awhile since I had any novel length new books out there, I decided to make that a priority. So, that said, this will be a short posting. Some of you have written books, so you know the mind-numbingness of it, the way it takes over your life utterly. 

If you read the top of this blog, you will know that I'm an introvert, and we can utterly cocoon ourselves into our lives when we're working on something, and that's not necessarily a good thing. 

I was hoping to get NIGHT WATCH, this latest thriller/mystery completely written,  edited and ready to go by next week when I head off to Bouchercon. I'm not sure that's going to happen. Ugh! 

So, if you've been wondering where I've been, this is where. Thanks for your patience, love and support. 

Head on over to my facebook site. We've been having some interesting discussions over there.

GOODREADS? AMAZON?

A favorite social media site of mine is Goodreads. I enjoy it not as a place to promote my own books and stories, but as a reader. I am a reader on Goodreads. It’s where I track my own reading. My reviews there are basically for my own benefit and rarely include more than a sentence or two. It helps me keep track of what books I have read and what books are still on my TBR pile. 

The most valuable place there for me are the book recommendations.  Based on my reading habits, I get lists of books that are ‘similar’  to what I enjoy. I’ve been introduced to a number of new authors that way. 

I also participate in a few 'book clubs.’ I love chatting about books. The members there don't even know I'm a writer  or if they do, I never promote there.  It has been my one 'safe' place where I didn't feel I had to promote every second. On Goodreads I'm a reader first, writer second. 

I’m not a visual person, so Pinterest pretty much bores me. Facebook is good, but sort of functions for me as a website. Goodreads is the place I feel I can ‘hang out with my peeps.’

Therefore I’m not altogether cheered that Amazon has purchased this massive site. If Amazon has all my preference info now - along with the names of the 50+ books I've read,  will I be inundated with ads? Probably. It’ll become one more site where I’m bombarded with marketing and feel I have to promote my own stuff or drown. 

I got off Shelfari for that very reason. 

Here are a few more links about the acquisition of Goodreads: 

http://paperoverboard.blogspot.ca/2013/03/goodreads-joins-amazon-family-please.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-simple-reason-why-goodreads-is-so-valuable-to-amazon/274548/

The problem with short stories...

I love short stories. I love both reading them and writing them. Up until recently - up until the advent of the eReader really - short fiction was in short supply (pardon the pun). Well yes, there have always been good stories in a few genre magazines like Ellery Queens and Alfred Hitchcock, (which I love, by the way) but by and large, mainstream short fiction has been difficult to find. 

This wasn’t always the case. Back when I was a teenager I remember devouring my mother’s McCalls, Redbook or Good Housekeeping. Those magazines were loaded with short fiction. During the summer it was a bonanza. The summer editions were thick with stories, five or six in each issue, a whole marathon of short fiction to curl up with on lazy warm afternoons.

And then for some reason they decided that no one wanted to read stories anymore (whoever ‘they’ are). And as quick as that short fiction went out of fashion. (I don’t know why. No one asked me!) We are coming on three or four decades with a dearth of magazine fiction. 

Until now. With the invention of the eReader those of us who love short fiction can buy and read short stories to our heart’s content often for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

And so, I present my newest short story, A Small Season of Magic. I'm calling it a novella because technically it's longer than a short story, but maybe not as long as a novella. It probably falls into some new category that no one has defined yet. (Novelette?) But that’s the beauty of this new world of publishing. The old size rules just don’t have to fit any more. Stories can be any length. The eReader doesn’t care. 

A Small Season of Magic represents a bit of a departure for me in terms of genre. It’s not a mystery, yet it contains mystery. It’s about school friends and bullying and brokenness and yet it’s not. It’s about life and death and love. It's about romance and compassion. It’s exceedingly sad, yet hopeful at the same time  And like its name suggests, it’s about magic.

Here are the links for download:
Kindle U.S.  Kindle Canada,  Kindle UK,  Kobo,  Smashwords

I hope you enjoy it.
The problem with short stories?  There just aren't enough of them.