Who: The usual suspects (i.e. mystery readers, writers, and various Good Girls)
What: Malice and Festival of Mystery
When: April 25 – 28, 2008
Where: Washington D.C.; Annapolis, MD; Pennsylvania turnpike; Oakmont, PA.
Why: If there is a mystery event, a Good Girl will probably come.
Summary: After “stopping” quite a […]

I sometimes wonder as I’m reading a book how much of the story was drawn from the author’s life. If the story has a snarky mother-in-law, did reality inspire the author? Probably not, if those dedications and acknowledgements hold any truth. You know the ones. They go something like this, “Even though the main character […]

It’s that time again, time to talk about Cabot Cove Syndrome. If you’re not familiar with the term, Cabot Cove Syndrome refers the abnormally high body count in Jessica Fletcher’s small Maine town. It’s a topic that comes up every so often in the mystery community.
People often use the Cabot Cove phenomenon to […]

I had my first airport book signing last week, which may not sound very exciting to you but, to me, it was one of the events I was really looking forward to this spring.
I once heard someone say that they thought when they’d achieved a certain thing, let’s just call it “X,” […]

I’ve switched gears from writing to publicity for the third Mom Zone book, Getting Away is Deadly, which I know is popping up in bookstores thanks to the reports from several helpful GG readers who have reported sighting it.

One of the things I do for publicity is a blog tour with another group of […]

One hundred thirty-eight.
That’s how many named characters I have in the Mom Zone books, so far. That number doesn’t include those anonymous waitresses, store clerks, and elevator-riders who people my books, described only in a passing sentence or two.
That’s one hundred thirty-eight different names I’ve used. When I wrote the first Mom […]

Oops, it happened again. Yet another author of a “memoir” has been exposed as a teller of fiction rather than fact.
Since these instances keep popping up, I’ve begun to think that the publishing industry may not care if the memoirs are, in fact, lies as long as the disclosure of the fakery draws plenty […]

The other day, I was thinking about how I view things a bit differently now than I did, say, ten or fifteen years ago.
One thing I’ve learned is that nothing is ever written in stone. I’m a rules girl—a by-the-book kind of gal. I am a Good Girl, after all. Generally, I drive the […]

I emerged from the study yesterday and said, “I’m done!”
My son looked up from his toy, eyebrows crunched together. “I thought you were done before.”
“Oh. Right. That was a different thing. I was done with the draft.”
He gave me one of those “ookkkaayyy, Mom” looks and left it at that.
It’s crunch time […]

I ran across a book called Cinescopes: What Your Favorite Movies Reveal About You. It looked interesting, so I checked out the website. The authors claim that if you give them your top ten favorite movies, they can pinpoint your personality.
A quick browse of the website reveals the concept is a clever updating of the […]