Busy, Busy, Busy

This month has been so busy, I can't believe it's almost over! Between work, my Master Gardener projects, county fair season, getting Shan ready to boot out the door for college and the fish stuff, I can barely catch my breath, let alone find enough time to write!

Totally Buzzed is coming along fine. Everything is proceeding along as scheduled. Sometimes I still find it a little hard to believe, and I am still doing mental back flips over it. I will be at the Schaumburg, Illinois Library on September 12th for "Coffee, Tea and a Smoking Gun"--a workshop sponsored by the Schaumburg Library and the Chicago Chapter of Sisters in Crime:

Spend the day with mystery authors from the Chicagoland Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The day will include writing workshops, panel discussions, book sales by Brainsnacks, author signings, a Crime Scene-solving competition, book prize giveaways, and more... Free and open to the public.

It will be a great workshop, and I will be promoting "Buzzed" even though it will not be out until 2010.

This past week found me in the pouring rain with my mom and a couple fellow Master Gardeners as we manned the "Ask Your Master Gardener" booth at our local county fair. We laughed, got very wet, laughed some more, and even talked to a few brave souls who ventured out into the monsoon to come to the fair. I think the only guy who made money that day was the man who owns the local towing service as he winched the cars out of the mud bog (a.k.a. the parking lot) onto the street!

To brag just a bit, I was stunned to find that I won not one but two "People's Choice" awards at the fair. How it works is that after the entries are judged, the fair goers "judge" the entries as well, and they vote for their favorite entry. The person with the most votes wins. How cool is that?

And finally, I'm pretty bummed about Shan leaving--we only have a few more days before she leaves for college. BTW--has anyone bought college textbooks lately? I'm going to have to take out a second mortgage just to pay for them! Whooo--Weee! What is up with that?

Did I mention that I garden too?

Meet Burt Beak-a-rack! I started working on him last March. With a little trellis netting, a lot of moss, soil, hens and chicks, five types of grasses and fennel, Burt was hatched. My mom talked me into entering him into the patio planter class at the Lake County Fair in Grayslake, Illinois. He took first in his class and Best of Show! Now that's "something to crow about!"

I actually made him for a class by that name. He's entered in the Kenosha, Wisconsin County Fair in a couple of weeks with some pretty cocky competition, so we'll see if I'm "egg-sagerating," or if he's all he's "cracked up" to be.

Okay, enough with the chicken puns! I'll stop! I'll stop!

Hey, did I mention that I am also working on a Y.A. novel? I sure hope it turns out, because the characters are leading me down some very interesting paths, but I'll save that for later.

Keep those e-mails coming, and thanks for stopping by! I'll keep you posted on how my flowers do in Kenosha and how my writing is going!

Woo Hoo! What's the "Buzz?"

Buzz Miller makes her debut in my first novel, Totally Buzzed-slated for e-book print with Echelon Press in 2010.

Totally Buzzed begins outside the fictitious town of White Bass Lake, Wisconsin, where the body of a neighbor woman turns up stashed under Buzz Miller’s mother’s house. The retired detective is roped into finding out “who dunnit” by a childhood friend, who also happens to be the local sheriff.

In order to accomplish this, Buzz, Wisconsin’s newest member of the AARP, along with her smart-mouthed Biology teacher sister Mag, “The Maggot” Miller, and Ian Connor, a plant geek from Milwaukee (who is not exactly what he seems), have only to find the murderer by following a trail of endangered plants, breaking up an international drug trafficking ring, uncovering a designer drug lab, and avoid being bumped off by the bad guys.

Simple enough, right? That is, until her mom’s wacky “Geriatric SWAT Team” friends turn the crime scene into a neighborhood barbeque, her bumbling sisters Fred and Al literally fall into the evidence, and her 160 pound Newfoundland chews up most of her initial investigation!

Welcome to White Bass Lake, Wisconsin, where the brats are on the grill, the beer is in the cooler, the corpse is under the house, and the Jell-O salads are as disturbing as they are plentiful!

Quirky characters, slapstick adventures, a flatulent Bulldog, and a bird named Kitty add sparkle to small town Midwestern life as local citizens gather at Sal’s Diner to share gossip, and the Miller sisters solve a murder.