What's Right to Write?

In one of my very nicely worded rejection letters, after reviewing my first three chapters of TOTALLY BUZZED, one agent asked why I interjected a "cute" scene right after a knock-down-drag-out bloody mess. She said,"You don't write cute. You don't write nice. Why is this in the book?

I was not sure how to answer her then, but I think I have it now. When I was working on the characters of my book, I wanted them to be like the families I grew up with. Close-knit, not perfect, lots of love and humor-what I knew as normal-which turned out to be not-so-normal at all. After over two decades of observing  the "not so nice" end of the spectrum, I wanted to write about people I knew-people who exist in my realm of reality.

Even if the crime is not-nice, and the scene is ravaged and riddled with bullet holes and dead bodies, my nice characters stumble into a world not of their own. That, however does not change who they are and how they would handle it.

I think that if my characters grew up in the gutter, fought their way on the mean streets to survive to adulthood, and were currently slogging through the clutter and stench of a garbage-strewn back alley in Chicago, interviewing crack whores and drug addicts to investigate the murder and dismemberment of a junkie with ties to the Russian Mafia, Buzz and Fred would not have been playing "Rock, Scissors, Paper" in the opening moments of TOTALLY BUZZED to see who had to go under Mom's house to find the old lamp.

We still do the old "RSP" among my family, friends and co-workers when no one wants to perform a certain task. Sometimes we waste more time than the task would have taken to perform, but eventually we get to it after much laughter and teasing-which in the end makes the task funny and challenging rather than a drudge. What's wrong with that?

I'm not saying that the woman was wrong, but I wanted my readers to get a 3-D picture of White Bass Lake, the Miller sisters, their friends and family, so when Mag gets hung up in the barbed wire fence and 80-year-old Mary Cromwell pole dances on a parking meter in a go-go dress and orthopedic shoes, no one is really surprised.

So whether a character is in a "cute" situation or an ugly predicament, just make sure the continuity flows throughout. Make sure your characters remain true to form-that they react as they would and not as someone else would. A retired detective takes in the corpse of their neighbor with dread and disgust, and her sister, who owns a pet store promptly panics and loses her lunch in Mom's petunias.

So what's right to write? Uh, beats the heck out of me!

Coffee, Tea and a Smoking Gun

What a day! I just returned from a great day at the Schaumburg (Illinois)Library, and the Coffee, Tea and a Smoking Gun workshop. Sponsored by the Chicagoland Sisters in Crime, it was wonderfully organized and beautifully executed (pardon the pun).

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I was greeted right away by Annie Chernow and Sue Gibberman, and they made me feel right at home. Thanks guys-you have no idea how good that felt!

I met up with the wonderful J.D. Webb (Shepherd's Pie, Her Name Is Mommy, and Moon Over Chicago), and the equally wonderful Jenny Spallone (Deadly Choices, Fatal Reaction). It was good to catch up with them, and they both gave killer seminars today. Great job, my friends!

I also met the lovely Sherill Bodine(Talk of the Town and A Black Tie Affair-out n January, 2010), the truly fantastic Jamie Freveletti (I also won a copy of her book, Running From the Devil-which my husband is reading as I write), and the incredible Luisa Buehler (her sixth book, The Innkeeper: an Unregistered Death).

Lisa is also published by Echelon Press; boy am I in some great company! Jamie, Lisa and I spoke at length about the future of publishing and how Ebooks will definitely play a big role in how the public will read in the future. If it is possible, I am even more excited about Totally Buzzed than I was before!

I attended a great seminar on marketing, where Morgan Mandel (Killer Career, Girl of my Dreams, and Two Wrongs) shared a million and one ideas on how to get the word out and keep it there, and I could not write fast enough to keep up with her. Thank you Morgan, you have no idea how much you helped me out.

Thanks to everyone involved today-Sisters in Crime, the Schaumburg Township District Library, Annie, Amy, Sue and all who attended this event for making my debut author experience a memorable one!

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.