Something Is Going To Happen: Facing Reality (by Bev Vincent)

 Something Is Going To Happen: Facing Reality (by Bev Vincent)

Guest Post: Writer’s Haven or Hell? by Kris Lackey

Please welcome author Kris Lackey to the blog today. Coming this summer is Ten-Acre Rock. This is the fourth book in the Bill Maytubby and Hannah Bond Mystery series.

 

 

 

Writer’s Haven or Hell? by Kris Lackey

 

 

     Promotions come to me from writers’ retreats.  You’ve seen the places—rustic cabins on coastal islands in Maine, rustic cabins in the Georgia pines, rustic cabins perched on Montana scree. Many of them have no electricity.  They all promise the same things—isolation and silence.  For a week, a month, or—horrors!—months.  They all send a bolt of terror down my spine. 

     Some of my writer friends seek out these hermit cells and thrive there, writing like a house (sorry, cabin) afire.  I am happy for them.  But how anyone can write in silence and isolation is beyond the powers of my imagination.  It’s lonely.  It’s boring.  I swear, I would bust out of that cabin before lunch the first day, walk to the nearest road, and hitchhike to a café or diner so I could get some work done. 

     Give me the coffee shop’s hushed convos, the old C&W ballads on speakers turned low, the hiss of the steam wand. And throw in a half dozen college-town baristas—Russian language students, math theory majors, painters, gym rats. They can answer more questions than Google.  “What is this called?” I ask the painter as I point to the edge of my palm.  “That’s the blade of your hand.  I learned that in figure drawing.”  I knew that once but could never have recalled it in a million years. 

     Also, because I am old and often write about younger characters, I have to ask how they describe lowering a car window nowadays (they “put it down”) and what to call the meat you put in a hot dog (“hot dog”—never the “weiner” or “weenie” of my youth, for obvious reasons).  They still know the Three Stooges!

     Before COVID I wrote three of my four Maytubby-Bond crime novels, published by Blackstone, in two Norman, Oklahoma, coffee shops, mostly the Gray Owl.  Working in two daily shifts of seventy-five minutes, awash in human white-noise, I finished each in two years.

     Good to know I’m not alone.  Richard Russo, whose novels I love, writes in New England diners.  My friend and fellow Oklahoma City novelist, the Edgar-winner Lou Berney, writes in coffee shops.   

     Then COVID shut down the coffee shops. 

     I took to walking long distances every day, coming home to a silent study—the dread retreat cabin--to work on the fourth novel.  YouTube offered a trove of ambient coffee house sounds, which I launched each afternoon at five.  My favorites were from Japan and Holland:  I could not understand what people were saying.  All the better.  The clinking of spoons and clattering of saucers still cast their calming spell.  (There is one startling moment in the Dutch shop when someone—a barista I guess—says, “Roger, you have a cappuccino.”)

     And for the first time I drank some alcohol—vodka and tonic—as I wrote during my ante-pandemic happy hour. My editor and early readers of the fourth novel, Ten-Acre Rock, have not found anything awry. Nevertheless, I’m back to writing on caffeine solamente.  

    So, from my perch at the Gray Owl, here’s to my friends who write to the sounds of bustle and gab, steam-wands and Hank Williams!   

 

Kris Lackey ©2023

Kris Lackey is the author of the Chickasaw Nation Mysteries, featuring tribal policeman Bill Maytubby and deputy sheriff Hannah Bond.  The fourth in the series, Ten-Acre Rock, appears July 7, 2023.  Kris lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

CrimeReads: THE STATE OF THE CRIME NOVEL: A ROUNDTABLE WITH THE EDGAR NOMINEES

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Guest Post: Time Between Books by E.J. Copperman

It has been quite awhile since Mr. E. J. Copperman was last here, but please welcome him back to the blog today. He has been very busy the last couple of years. We may share the worry gene, but he has been far more productive.

 

Time Between Books by E.J. Copperman

I’m waiting at the station

I can choose my destination

I’m a free soul

I’ve got no chains

But it’s a long time between trains

--Susan Werner, “Time Between Trains”

The only thing that’s worse than writing is not writing.

There was a time, not many years ago, when I was writing four mystery series at the same time. People would marvel at that and ask how I could possibly keep it up, but I honestly enjoyed it because it kept my mind occupied and if I ran into a wall on one book I almost certainly had another to think about and clear my brain.

Because the publishing business is, you know, a business, I now have one series. Witness to the Persecution is the third in the Jersey Girl Mystery series from Severn Books, and if it’s not in your bookstore or your library now it will be shortly. The fourth in the series is in the editing process as we speak, and after that… we’ll see.

Now in the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone – absolutely everyone – has experienced some sort of disruption in their life. Some are tragic and impossible to shake off. Others, the lucky ones like me, have had some degree of inconvenience and not a tremendous amount more.

But what I have found in this insane time is that I need to be writing.

When the pandemic sent everyone home to lock the door and not come out, I occupied my mind by writing – count ‘em – five novels. Not all at once. I filled my agent’s inbox with two possible series “pilots,” two standalones (unusual for me) and one that could go either way. Don’t be rushing to a bookseller in pursuit of those; they have not be purchased by publishers. Yet.

Oh yeah, and a middle grade novel too.

After a while adding more inventory to the pile just seemed excessive. I didn’t have any can’t-miss ideas that I couldn’t wait to sink my synapses into, and there was the matter of the aforementioned Jersey Girl Legal Book #4, which I made sure to get to the editor a mere two months early because what else did I have to do?

I might not be the greatest writer in the world, but I’m fast.

After that last one was sent in, and with no contract in place (again, yet) for a Book #5, I had nothing to write. And my family knows that when that’s the case, you tiptoe around me. I don’t get mean but I’m anxious and testy. I don’t like being around me when I’m not writing so you can imagine what it’s like for other people.

Time between books isn’t great for me. I worry about politics, about aging (something I’ve been doing at an alarming rate), about family members and about the baseball season. Don’t get me started. I’m a first-class worrier. And when there’s no story to occupy me my mind will, as Paul McCartney once put it, “go wandering.” It doesn’t often go to nice places. My life is actually pretty good, all things considered, but go tell that to my mind.

As of this writing I can’t update that situation, but I have every confidence in my agent and he has plenty of books to peddle, so I think something will happen soon. And I’m not quite as desperate to get something going as I was in the darkest days (like a month ago).

I have this new idea, see, and it’s not ready to write yet but I’m working on it. 

E. J. Copperman ©2022 

E.J. Copperman is the author of the Jersey Girl Legal Mystery series, with the latest book WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION arriving any minute (officially April 5 but who really knows). The books follow Sandy Moss from her “safe” job as an assistant county prosecutor in New Jersey to Los Angeles, where she thinks she’s going to be working on less stressful things like divorces. But somehow she keeps having to defend accused murderers in court… www.ejcopperman.com

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Some Of Us Never Stopped

 

The Rap Sheet: Bouchercon’s Fallback Plans

 The Rap Sheet: Bouchercon’s Fallback Plans

The Rap Sheet: Bullet Points: Casting a Wide ’Net Edition for 8/6/2021

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In Reference To Murder: Mystery Melange for 8/5/2021

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Mystery Fanfare: NEW ORLEANS BOUCHERCON NEWS!

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Lesa's Book Critiques: JOHN MCMAHON, GUEST AUTHOR

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Dallas Library Reopening

Got the official form letter from the DPL stating they plan to reopen in early May. Unlike staff that told us it was May 4rth, the letter does not specify a date. The letter includes the warning that they are going back to the pre plague criteria criteria and that I am in violation of the "no more than 100 items checked out" policy. While staff told us that were phasing this in and we had time, the letter says I am suspended immediately until I bring my account back into "good standing."

As of today, my account continues to work. They have also not checked in books that they have had for ten days now. 

Their letter also has several typos. 😆😆

The Rap Sheet: Lefty Winners Are Right Here

 The Rap Sheet: Lefty Winners Are Right Here

Vaccine Update: 52 Hours

 We felt better when we got up this morning so we decided to go about things like it was a normal day and not stay in bed all day like we did yesterday. That was a bit of a mistake. 

As the day wore on, we felt more and more fatigued and somewhat achy. Scott also developed off and on chills though that seems to have stopped this evening. His right arm still bothers him a bit, but he seems to be powering through it and it is not impacting his video game performance levels tonight. 

All in all, if this is the worst of it, we have done very well.