Mike Befeler's Blog, page 70

After a Writers Conference

Two weeks after attending the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference, I’m almost caught up. I still have a lot of new action items from the conference, but I’ve taken care of the “A” items on my to do list. This included sending partial or full manuscripts to two agents and two editors. Next will be new promotional ideas to implement and finally some research items to check out.

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference

I had the pleasure of attending the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in Denver last weekend. It’s always energizing to meet with other writers, agents and editors, attend workshops and schmooze. This is the eleventh year I’ve attended. That first year I only knew one other person. Now, I look forward to catching up on so many good friends and making new ones. On the badge is a ribbon for people attending for the first time. These are the most important people at the conference because they are taking the plunge to go to a writers conference. This conference has a balance of topics for newbies up through best-selling authors. Each year I take gobs of notes and come back with an action item list that takes me weeks to complete. This year I had a chance to officially pitch to one editor and informally to another editor and two agents for the first book in a new series. Author Cindi Myers gave an excellent presentation on Staying in the Game. She stated we need to accept failure as part of the business. She described being orphaned by publishers twice and having to part ways with two agents. After fifty books publishing, she is still dealing with rejection, as do all of us. It comes with writing. So I’m back in there pitching, writing new manuscripts and promoting what’s already published. It’s a never ending task but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.

Writing Blogs

I wonder how many people actually enjoy writing blogs.  For me, it’s not the top of my interest list. It reminds me too much of writing essays in high school and college freshman English classes. On the other hand, I love writing fiction. That’s why I became a mystery writer. The neat thing is I can make up stuff. Sure, I have to make sure it’s plausible, but I can let my imagination go wild with all kinds of quirky characters, strange events and unique locations. Maybe for future blog entries I should just make things up.

Latest e-book

I recently uploaded the third book in my Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery Series, Senior Moments Are Murder, to the various e-book sources. The first two books in my series have been up for a while since my publisher had no restrictions on e-book distribution for those. For Senior Moments Are Murder and my upcoming Cruising in Your Eighties Is Murder, my publisher has a one-year moratorium before I can publish in e-book format. That year has passed for Senior Moments Are Murder. Having done it twice before, the e-book publishing process is straight forward. I follow the instructions on the Kindle, Nook and Smashwords sites. The whole process including three up loads and reviewing the loaded manuscripts took me less than three hours. The hardest part of the process is deciding on pricing. I’ve priced all my e-books at $3.99. With Smashwords you can select what e-book sources to distribute to. I distribute to all except Kindle and Nook since I do that directly myself. My books are available as hard cover, large print, audio book and e-book editions. However readers chose to read my book is fine with me.

Young@heart

Since I write mystery novels about older people, I always enjoy successes of the aging population. There’s a terrific singing group called Young@heart, based in Massachusetts that performs around the country. My wife and I had an opportunity to take in a show last Sunday night, and what a show it was. Image about twenty-five people in their seventies up to ninety, singing and dancing for a two hour show. They were terrific, full of energy, outstanding voices and an inspiration for all. It’s particularly amazing to me since I can’t even carry a tune. It was a message to all of us to follow our dreams, no matter our age. And they set an example of active, contributing seniors.

ARCs

This week I received the Advance Reading Copies (ARCs) for the fourth book in my Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery series, Cruising in Your Eighties Is Murder. The book takes place on an Alaskan cruise, and Paul gets into all kinds of trouble. My publisher sends ARCs to major reviewers, and I have additional copies to send to local reviewers and other contacts. It’s always exciting to have a book in hand, although I’ll be going through one more editing pass. It never ceases to amaze me—after all the times it has been edited including my dozen edit passes, my wife (who is an excellent reader), the development editor and copy editor at my publisher—there are still corrections to be made. So my wife and I are reading it again and I’ll be sending my final set of edits back to the publisher. The book will be published December 19, 2012. Then I can await an email from a reader who will say, “Did you notice the error on page . . .”

Olympics

I enjoy watching the Summer Olympics every four years. In addition to the volleyball, swimming and track events, I had an opportunity to see some sports I wasn’t familiar with. The one that intrigued me the most was team handball. It was fast-paced and had the best elements of soccer and basketball. What I don’t like about soccer is that scoring happens so infrequently. With team handball there’s lots of scoring. What I dislike about basketball is the last two minutes of a game takes forever with all the fouling and time outs. Team handball keeps the pace going all the time.
Last week we visited two of our grandkids and I put together an “Olympics” for my five-year-old grandson The events included: standing long jump, races in the back yard, a race of pushing a block with your nose, balloon volleyball, a climb to the top of a slide, a hula hoop high jump and a rubber ball shot put. After every event he wanted to know if he had won a gold medal.
Now I’m back to writing and have Olympics withdrawal. Only four more years to wait.

Police Role Playing Revisited

Yesterday I had an opportunity to help as a role-player for the training of two new police officers. Once again, I got to play the bad guy and ended up being cuffed although I tried to talk my way out of it. The new officers go through many weeks of class training, but it’s the “hands on” exercises that really help solidify what they’ve learned. They can study all day, but when a suspect with blood on his hand tries to say he’s only a refrigerator repairman while a woman is screaming in the bathroom, that’s when they have to take action. The trainers critiqued what they did. The new officers will remember the mistakes they made and not repeat them. And as a by-product, I learned a heck of a lot as well

Vacation

I’m back from a Hawaiian vacation with our kids and grandkids. I grew up in Hawaii, so it’s always good to get back. What made it special this time was, after two years of planning, we were able to get all the kids and grandkids together at the same time. This is a rare event with our family spread out over the country. Although my wife and I are “retired” and have the flexibility to schedule travel when we want, my kids have their work schedules and grandkid school to deal with. I don’t know when we’ll get everyone together next, but I relish the time we had together. As a writer, I took this time off because my priority was being with our family. Now that we’re back home, I’m back on my morning writing schedule and afternoon critique group work. It always takes a few days to catch up, but it was well worth it. Here are a few pictures from our trip. 
Waimea Falls: 
Kailua Beach:
Blow Hole:

Disney Aulani:

Research

Living in a college community comes in handy when doing research for a mystery novel. Last week I needed to read some articles in the New Yorker from 1944 and 1945 so I went to the Norlin Library at the University of Colorado. After finding what I sought, I walked around the campus, which was not crowded given the summer session. I took several photos of the Varsity Lake.


Then I headed home with my research completed. The three articles I found provide an interesting perspective on the mystery genre from the mid 1940s. Stay tuned.