Peg Herring's Blog

May 7 Seamus Interview Part 3- Melissa's Imaginarium- http://melissasimaginarium.blogspot.com
May 8 Writing a Mystery Series- Nancy's Notes from Florida- http://nancyjcohen.wordpress.com
May 9 How Did I Know I'd Made It?- Suspense Your Disbelief- http://www.jennymilchman.com/blog/
May 10 Choosing a Great Title- LL-Publications- http://www.ll-publications.com/blog.html
May 11 Seamus Interview Part 4- Candid Canine- http://candidcanine.blogspot.com

They'll tell you an author can't succeed without them, but at a certain point, this one sure wishes she could!

My blog tour for DEAD FOR THE MONEY starts this week, and the schedule is printed below. There are of course prizes if you're willing to visit blogs and make comments between now and June 7th (even comments on this blog will work). LL Publications provided invaluable help with the tour in the form of a publicist who contacted all the bloggers and made dates for me to visit. But somebody has to write all those posts, and wouldn't you know it, they expect the author to do it!

Different bloggers want different things, so if you visit one of the sites below, you might find interviews with Seamus about what it's like to be a cross-back or you might get my view of some aspect of writing. The killer part of it is getting all the posts to line up so that Post 1 links to Post 2, which links to Post 3 and back to Post 1. You can see how this would confuse a tiny mind like mine.

Anyway, here's the schedule. Please stop in from time to time and comment. You could win a book or a T-shirt, or get you name in Dead Detective Book #3. Besides, I love hearing from people!

May 2 Keeping It Straight-Murder Must Advertise http://murdermustadvertise.blogspot.com

May 3 Seamus Interview Part 1-The Stiletto Gang- http://thestilettogang.blogspot.com

May 4 Seamus Interview Part 2- Travels with Kaye- http://travelswithkaye.blogspot.com

May 7 Seamus Interview Part 3- Melissa's Imaginarium- http://melissasimaginarium.blogspot.com

May 8 Writing a Mystery Series- Nancy's Notes from Florida- http://nancyjcohen.wordpress.com

May 9 How Did I Know I'd Made It?- Suspense Your Disbelief- http://www.jennymilchman.com/blog/

May 10 Choosing a Great Title- LL-Publications- http://www.ll-publications.com/blog.html

May 11 Seamus Interview Part 4- Candid Canine- http://candidcanine.blogspot.com

May 15 Writers in Corners- Terry Odell- http://terryodell.blogspot.com

May 16 Seamus Interview Part 5- It's Not All Gravy- http://its-not-all-gravy.blogspot.com

May 21 Taking Stock- Criminal Minds at Work-http://criminalmindsatwork.blogs...

May 25 Paranormal-Not That There's Anything Wrong with That

Jolie DuPre- http://www.preciousmonsters.com/

June 5 What Do I Call Success?-Buried Under Books- http://www.cncbooks.com/blog/

Those who know me are probably pacing the floor right now, worried that I've fallen and I can't get up. I always post on Mondays early in the morning, usually by 7:00. So where was this post at 8:00, or 9:00?

It was waiting for the Internet to decide I'm worthy.

When the Net goes down (and we have no idea why it's been naughty these last few days), my life goes off the track. I meant to blog ("Cannot connect to the Internet"), then I planned to send cards for the loot bags at Bloody Words next month (the address is in my email, see above). I have several post to write for my upcoming blog tour. (The list of what each host wants is--you guessed it--in my email.)

So what did I do from 7:00 a.m. until now?

I cleaned my bedroom, not just the usual light dusting and tidying up, but a thorough cleaning that went right down to washing the curtains, windows, baseboards, and knick-knacks.

Now the Net is back (hooray!). My room is clean. My sinuses are tickling from all that dust I stirred up, but I guess it's worth it to have one room in the house absolutely spotless.
Maybe I should start scheduling Internet outages at regular intervals.

I had lunch with an author friend recently, and she mentioned that her editor has twice now commented on the mood of her books, which gets darker in bad times and lighter in better times. The editor has never met my friend but accurately identified times when she was dealing with personal tragedy. The books were different than those which came when life was happily humming along.

Wow. Do we know we're revealing so much of ourselves as we write?

I know from studying literature that great authors' works often grow darker as life buffets them around a bit. Twain got much more satirical after the deaths of his wife and daughter. Shakespeare wrote more tragedies as he aged.

What happens to a mystery writer when life takes a downturn? We already write about murder and mayhem, so what can get worse? Apparently, it's the mood of the writing, the sense that maybe life isn't fair after all. The mental condition of the protagonist can change, too. He or she might not expect justice, or at least not full justice.

In case you're thinking of analyzing me, you should know that I wrote for almost ten years before anyone noticed. Some things just now coming to publication were written years ago; others are being written in the present day, with all its attendant troubles. I can't see much difference, though I've had plenty of ups and downs over that time.

It must be considered that an author's mood might have an opposite effect on her writing. If life tramples us into the dirt and we long for happiness, fairness, and justice, we might simply create it where we can, in our books.

I'm just a tad compulsive when it comes to getting things done. I admit to lists everywhere and, yes, I'll admit to putting things on my lists that I've already done, just for the satisfaction of crossing them off.
I write on a schedule, Monday-Saturday, usually from 6:30 a.m. until something else demands my time, up to lunch. What I write on those mornings changes. On Mondays I do business-related stuff, but the rest of the week I work on the current novel. At odd times I catch up on non-fiction writing stuff, like a newsletter I do for a local group and blog posts for guesting on other bloggers' sites.
Afternoons are spent on the rest of life, although I've been known to continue through the day when a book is coming together. Evenings are my time to edit. While I can seldom compose at that time of day, I can reread and correct structural and grammatical mistakes.
I also have a schedule for the rest of life, which my kids make gentle fun of from time to time. I like to do all the household chores on Monday: laundry, cleaning, and other maintenance work. The rest of the week I choose my chores according to my mood and the weather. Gardening, lawn work, and maintaining outbuildings are summer work, and closet-cleaning and clerical upkeep are for days when outside isn't inviting. I have (yet another) list from which I choose what sounds doable to me on a given day.
Do I sound like an overly organized person? Maybe, but I doubt that I am. If someone says, "Let's do lunch" or "Let's drive to ______ today," I'm more than willing to toss the schedule aside. Yes, there are all those lists, but that's the purpose of writing it down: I can forget it today and pick it up again sometime in the future.

The second Dead Detective Mystery, DEAD FOR THE MONEY, comes out on Friday, and the publicist for LL-Publishing has arranged a blog tour for me beginning in May. (This in itself is cool, because I've always had to arrange my own before.) In most of the posts, I'll be letting Seamus, Dead Detective, explain his view of things. I'll keep you apprised of the schedule as it develops.

So what is it like to be dead? There are so many possible answers that the mind boggles. Some say death is the end of everything, which is so un-fun that I refuse to contemplate it. And where would I get three more novels if I accepted that idea?

I recently read a book called SPOOK, in which author Mary Roach examined the question of life after death. She spent some time on reincarnation, explaining the specifics of that belief system, but I've never been fond of reincarnation as a concept. It seems a lot like the game of Pacheesi, which used to frustrate me as a kid. You move forward and forward and forward, and then you have to start all over at the beginning?

Of course the Judeo/Muslin/Christian belief system, which stems from one root religion, teaches reward and/or punishment after death. I chose to stick with that for this series, putting my own strange twist on things and hoping that my readers know that "fiction" starts and ends with the same letters as "fun." In other words, don't try to analyze me from what I write. It's all Seamus' fault anyway. He's the one who crawled inside my head and left all these outrageous ideas.

So what's the second Dead Detective Mystery about? Seamus is asked to investigate the death of wealthy William Dunbar, who fears his beloved grandson might have pushed him off a cliff. It's a typical case for Seamus, except he's asked to take along a cross-back-in-training, Mildred. The case is more complicated than expected, and Dunbar's young granddaughter Brodie, a problem child with a penchant for practical jokes, finds danger stalking her. As things move toward a frightening conclusion on the Mackinac Bridge, Seamus works to control the over-eager Mildred, help the vulnerable Brodie, and prove that someone did kill William Dunbar, all the while hoping no one else in the family will end up DEAD FOR THE MONEY.

http://www.ll-publications.com/deadmo...

So it's almost April (with its shoures soote) and I'm looking forward to the active part of the year. All winter I focused on writing, managing to finish Book #3 of the Simon & Elizabeth series and Book #2 of the Dead Detective series. I'm at work on Book #3, but author appearances are starting to emerge. There were two in March, and from there on, the calendar starts to look like a dartboard, with towns and times scribbled all over the place.

The interesting date this month (April 27-29) is in Frankenmuth, Michigan, a new conference called the Green Pen Writers' Conference. Created by Dark Elf Designs/COM Publishing, the conference promises a wide variety of presenters who will speak on writing fiction, non-fiction, marketing, and publishing.The website description says of the 3 day program: "Conference that covers trends in the field of writing, editing, publishing and marketing. Includes sessions, classes, dinner with keynoter." info@greenpenwriters.com



I've been invited to present, and it sounds like it will be both interesting and fun.Living in Michigan is great, except that we're kind of an out-of-the-way state. I'm hoping this conference is something that continues in future years, so that Michigan authors, and people from other places as well, find a place to meet and talk about this frustrating but oh-so-wonderful pastime we call writing.

They'll tell you that awards mean nothing. No big sales surge. No extra attention from publishers and agents.

No movie deals.

Got it.

Nevertheless, when I got word yesterday that I won Best Mystery of the Year with THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY, I forgot all that and succumbed to joy. Somebody--whether several or dozens or hundreds or hordes of somebodies--thinks my book is worth reading, worth recommending, worth the term "Best".

When I wrote the first Dead Detective mystery (now deemed "Award-winning"), it was sort of unconscious. No idea where the scenario came from, no intent to write paranormal (in fact that term sometimes makes me cringe.) When I found a publisher who liked my off-the-wall idea, I was pleased. It's fun to do something different, and while I love writing the historicals, change of pace is good.

So the writing was fun. The publishing was fairly painless and very professional. The readers reacted well. It was all that a writer could hope for---and then it gets named Best Mystery of the Year. How's that for icing on the cake?

I'm thinking it would simplify life if we wore signs that clarify the present situation: things you'd like people to know but get tired of explaining. As a teacher, I used to tell my students at the beginning of the year that there would be days (about six weeks apart) when I would come to school with shorter, darker hair than I'd had the day before. I impressed upon them that they did not need to comment, and--especially--they did not need to ask one of the dumbest questions ever: "Did you do something to your hair?"

It seemed simple to me, but there were always students who didn't get it. They took it as a personal eccentricity of mine, and I'd hear them say to each other, "She doesn't like you to talk about her hair."

So I'm thinking signs might be good. Here are a few you might want.

When a family member is terminally ill, your sign could say, "Same as yesterday. Maybe worse, so don't ask."

When I'm wearing something new: "It seemed like a good idea in the store. I'm reconsidering, based on that look you just gave me."

On really bad skin days: "It's a zit. It will go away eventually."

And days like today: "I have an appointment. My hair will look better tomorrow."

Chris Redding interviews me today on her blog: http://chrisredddingauthor.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Chris!