Peg Herring's Blog, page 10

Not a New Book--Just a New Look!

From time to time, authors pick up on readers' opinions, either directly ("I hate that cover!") or indirectly ("That sounds too scary for me.") I learned from listening that readers didn't consider one of my books because the cover looked dark and the title seemed harsh.
Hence, a new title and a new cover:


The old title was GO HOME AND DIE, and the old cover looked a little like a thriller, with two figures silhouetted against a city skyline. At the time I thought it was okay, but when I looked at the book honestly, it's more girl meets boy, grows up a little, and solves a murder along the way.
If you haven't tried it, here's the link so you can download a sample and see if HER EX-GI P.I. doesn't bring back some '60s memories for you.


Here's what you might want to know about Peg and her work:

Writes: Mysteries, mostly. There's suspense and death but no graphic violence, sex, or language.

Unique Qualities: In each book/series, the characters have an interesting view of the world. Though single, small-town females who just opened a small business is all the rage for protagonists, but I don't find that interesting unless something more about their character makes me want to get to know them. So yes, I have written books about small-town women, but the stories explore their character, their relationships, and their personalities along with a puzzling mystery.

Recognition: Authors these days love to tell how they're Amazon Bestsellers and such. I've received those kinds of benchmarks and more, but my favorite thing is when a reader contacts me to say, "I loved that book!"

Current projects: I've been updating my books online, making the links better and refining the wording. It should be done every couple of years, since technology keeps changing, but it's an exhaustive process! Now I'm on to something new--just not sure what that will be yet.

Cutesy facts about me that readers will love:
Hmmm. There's the 22-year-old cat, of course. She's very lovable except at 3:00 a.m. when she wants to lick my hair.






We live in northern Lower Michigan, which is kind of dull and cool in April, but just wait! →→→→→→→→→→→










I have the love of my life (well, the last 47 years of it), banging around downstairs as I write this. Here he is buried in granddaughter/granddog.


 And of course I love books, not all at the same level, but still. Here are my personal categories.
 

KIDNAP.org is a caper novel with a unique cast of charact...

KIDNAP.org is a caper novel with a unique cast of characters. It starts when Robin, who's having a very bad day, gets a call from her eccentric neighbor asking for help. It seems he accidentally kidnapped someone--but in a really good cause!Here’s a pre-order link to the book if you’re curious: https://www.amazon.com/KIDNAP-org-Peg...


Here's what you might want to know about Peg and her work:

Writes: Mysteries, mostly. There's suspense and death but no graphic violence, sex, or language.

Unique Qualities: In each book/series, the characters have an interesting view of the world. Though single, small-town females who just opened a business is all the rage for protagonists, but I don't find that interesting unless something about their character makes me want to get to know them. So yes, I have some books about small-town women, but the stories explore their character, their relationships, and their personalities along with a puzzling mystery.

Recognition: Authors these days love to tell how they're Amazon Bestsellers and such. I've received those kinds of benchmarks and more, but my favorite thing is when a reader contacts me to say, "I loved that book!"

Current projects: I'm at work on something new that's a little hard to categorize. It's a caper novel (my editor says) that throws together some unique, wonderful characters. If I ever get through the edits, it will be out in the first half of 2017. Maggie is also at work on Sleuth Sisters #5, slated for about the same time. (That should be fun...)

Cutesy facts about me that readers will love:
Hmmm. There's the 22-year-old cat, of course. She's very lovable except at 3:00 a.m. when she wants to lick my hair.


 



There's my home state, Michigan, which is  lovable as far as looking at nature goes--sometimes. →→→→→→→→→→→










I have the love of my life (well, the last 47 years of it), banging around downstairs as I write this. Here he is buried in granddaughter/granddog.


 And of course I love books, not all at the same level, but still. Here are my personal categories.
 

This Week's ContestTo celebrate 45 Days to Release, we're...

This Week's ContestTo celebrate 45 Days to Release, we're having a contest for a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate. In the comments section below OR on my Peg's News Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/Pegs-News-10..., give your response to this question:

If you could make ONE famous living person shut up and listen to you for half an hour, who would it be and what ONE or TWO WORD topic would you choose to talk about? (Example: Mickey Mouse: that voice!) Those who answer will be placed in a drawing for a $50 Amazon gift certificate. Those who share this message will be entered twice. And here’s a pre-order link to the book if you’re curious: https://www.amazon.com/KIDNAP-org-Peg...  


This is the upcoming book, which is a bit of a departure for me. Instead of straight mystery, KIDNAP.org is a caper novel with a unique cast of characters. It starts when Robin, who's having a very bad day, gets a call from her eccentric neighbor asking for help. It seems he accidentally kidnapped someone--but in a really good cause!


Here's what you might want to know about Peg and her work:

Writes: Mysteries, mostly. There's suspense and death but no graphic violence, sex, or language.

Unique Qualities: In each book/series, the characters have an interesting view of the world. Though single, small-town females who just opened a business is all the rage for protagonists, but I don't find that interesting unless something about their character makes me want to get to know them. So yes, I have some books about small-town women, but the stories explore their character, their relationships, and their personalities along with a puzzling mystery.

Recognition: Authors these days love to tell how they're Amazon Bestsellers and such. I've received those kinds of benchmarks and more, but my favorite thing is when a reader contacts me to say, "I loved that book!"

Current projects: I'm at work on something new that's a little hard to categorize. It's a caper novel (my editor says) that throws together some unique, wonderful characters. If I ever get through the edits, it will be out in the first half of 2017. Maggie is also at work on Sleuth Sisters #5, slated for about the same time. (That should be fun...)

Cutesy facts about me that readers will love:
Hmmm. There's the 22-year-old cat, of course. She's very lovable except at 3:00 a.m. when she wants to lick my hair.


 



There's my home state, Michigan, which is  lovable as far as looking at nature goes--sometimes. →→→→→→→→→→→










I have the love of my life (well, the last 47 years of it), banging around downstairs as I write this. Here he is buried in granddaughter/granddog.


 And of course I love books, not all at the same level, but still. Here are my personal categories.
 

You've Found the Website of Author Peg Herring! This...

You've Found the Website of Author Peg Herring!

This is the upcoming book, which is a bit of a departure for me. Instead of straight mystery, KIDNAP.org is a caper novel with a unique cast of characters. It starts when Robin, who's having a very bad day, gets a call from her eccentric neighbor asking for help. It seems he accidentally kidnapped someone--but in a really good cause!


Here's what you might want to know about Peg and her work:

Writes: Mysteries, mostly. There's suspense and death but no graphic violence, sex, or language.

Unique Qualities: In each book/series, the characters have an interesting view of the world. Though single, small-town females who just opened a business is all the rage for protagonists, but I don't find that interesting unless something about their character makes me want to get to know them. So yes, I have some books about small-town women, but the stories explore their character, their relationships, and their personalities along with a puzzling mystery.

Recognition: Authors these days love to tell how they're Amazon Bestsellers and such. I've received those kinds of benchmarks and more, but my favorite thing is when a reader contacts me to say, "I loved that book!"

Current projects: I'm at work on something new that's a little hard to categorize. It's a caper novel (my editor says) that throws together some unique, wonderful characters. If I ever get through the edits, it will be out in the first half of 2017. Maggie is also at work on Sleuth Sisters #5, slated for about the same time. (That should be fun...)

Cutesy facts about me that readers will love:
Hmmm. There's the 22-year-old cat, of course. She's very lovable except at 3:00 a.m. when she wants to lick my hair.


 



There's my home state, Michigan, which is  lovable as far as looking at nature goes--sometimes. →→→→→→→→→→→










I have the love of my life (well, the last 47 years of it), banging around downstairs as I write this. Here he is buried in granddaughter/granddog.


 And of course I love books, not all at the same level, but still. Here are my personal categories.
 

You've Found the Website of Author Peg Herring! Here...

You've Found the Website of Author Peg Herring!


Here is information you might want to know about her and her work (updated regularly):

Writes: Mysteries, mostly. There's suspense and death but no graphic violence, sex, or language.

Unique Qualities: In each book/series, the characters have an interesting view of the world. I know small-town women who are divorced and just opened a business is all the rage, but I don't find that interesting unless something about their character makes me want to get to know them. So yes, I have some books about small-town women, but the stories explore their relationships and personalities.

Recognition: Authors these days love to tell how they're Amazon Bestsellers and such. I've received those kinds of notices and more, but my favorite thing is when a reader contacts me to say, "I loved that book!"

Current projects: I'm at work on something new that's a little hard to categorize. It's a caper novel (my editor says) that throws together some unique, wonderful characters. If I ever get through the edits, it will be out in the first half of 2017. Maggie is also at work on Sleuth Sisters #5, slated for about the same time. (That should be fun...)

Cutesy facts about me that readers will love:
Hmmm. There's the 22-year-old cat, of course. She's very lovable except at 3:00 a.m. when she wants to lick my hair.


 



There's my home state, Michigan, which is  lovable as far as looking at nature goes--sometimes. →→→→→→→→→→→












I have the love of my life (well, the last 47 years of it), banging around downstairs as I write this.










 And of course I love books, not all at the same level, but still. Here are my personal categories.
 

My Winter Walks

I should get outside for a while.

Oh, but I have to put on all those clothes!

Okay. I'm dressed in a coverall and boots with two hats and enormous mittens that open up so I can use my fingers. I can barely move, but I'm ready.

Oh, but I have to get into my snowshoes!

Okay. Got the snowshoes on and tightened up the toe strap, the arch strap, the heel strap and whatever that fourth one is for.

Oh, but how do I get down the porch steps in these things?

Okay. Went down the ramp--easy-peasy. Off I go, walking a little like a duck with a hernia.

Oh, but when I leave the first wood and come out into the field, that wind bites!

Okay. Back in the woods again. Quiet, peaceful. (Well, except for me panting with exertion.) Here's where I'm likely to see animals, often deer and always squirrels. My path circles the woods, crossing a small, seasonal stream on a log bridge that's a bit of a challenge on snowshoes. Trees overhead squeak as they're forced together by the wind.

I love this place, and I'm going to walk it every single day all winter.

Oh, but I have to cross that windy, cold field again to get home. Then I have to peel off all these clothes and hang them up to dry. Is it worth all this effort?

Okay. I'll admit that it is.

Comparisons That Should Work but Don't

We all know that comparisons spice up speech and writing. There are similes, which use "like" or "as." Tennessee Ernie Ford had a million of them. One of my favorites is "She's as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

And there are metaphors, like "Love is a battlefield."
Well done, comparisons imprint on the reader's mind. Really good ones make me pause to appreciate the creativity involved.
But there are also badly-done comparisons. Some are just tired: He was as dead as a door nail. Others are new  but not necessarily effective: She looked like my cousin Maxine when she's hung over.
I have a program that shows me where I've used trite sayings in a manuscript. Sometimes I keep them, like if a character is the type of person who talks that way. Other times I take them out, wondering how they slipped in in the first place.

Here are some deliberately bad comparisons, just for giggles.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
The toddlers looked at each other as if they had just been told their mutual funds had taken a complete nosedive.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
She was a couch potato in the gravy boat of life, flopping dejectedly on the sofa.
It will take a big tractor to plow the fertile fields of his mind.

(Here's another simile about love:
Love is like an onion
You taste it with delight
Then you begin to wonder
Whatever made you bite...........) PHILIPPA COURT

P.S. Later this week (Friday/Saturday) I'll put THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY up for free on Kindle. After all, it's the season of giving!

Free Books and All That

I'm kind of bad at selling things (which is odd because my dad was a used car salesman. He wasn't the stereotypical one, though, and worked hard to find the best car for the money for each customer.)
Anyway, even with years of watching people sell things to other people, I can't make myself tell readers that my books are amazing and will change their lives. Nor can I follow the advice of one writer I met who said, "When people come up to your table at a signing, shove the book at them so they have to take it into their hands. They'll be embarrassed to put it down, so they'll buy it."
Really? I'd be embarrassed to be that pushy.

So here's the deal. It's the holiday season and people are looking for gifts. If you know a mystery reader, you might consider giving one of my books. I've listed below the first in each series, and I'm giving the Kindle versions away over the next month on Amazon. I won't hide my motive: if a person reads one book, this author hopes it will lead to buying the next and the next.

You win. I win. I like it that way.

First Sleuth Sisters Mystery (four so far, another on the way) is free TODAY/TOMORROW on Amazon. (Nov. 28-29) It's called, oddly enough, THE SLEUTH SISTERS. (Written as Maggie Pill).
Link to Amazon

The first Dead Detective Mystery (4 total) is THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY. Link to Amazon

The first Loser Mystery (3 total) is KILLING SILENCE  Link to Amazon.

The first Simon & Elizabeth Mystery is HER HIGHNESS' FIRST MURDER. Link to Amazon

All my books are available in print and e-book. Most are available in audio. Of course I have stand-alone mysteries too. You can find out more about them here on my site, at Amazon, or you can ask any bookstore to order them for you through their regular distributor.
 

Those People in Your Past

I was the kind of kid who didn't question much about my schooling. If somebody said "This is the way things are going to be," I went along with it. It had to do with the times, of course. Teachers were kings and queens in their classrooms, and they made rules that suited their tastes. Lately, I've been thinking about a teacher I had who wasn't exactly the ideal educator.

I was in upper elementary school, and up to that point, I'd been appreciated by all my teachers. I didn't make trouble, I did my work to the best of my ability, and I smiled when they told jokes, because I was always paying attention.

At the beginning of the school year, this woman called me and another girl to her desk to tell us she saw that we'd gotten all A's so far in school, but we shouldn't expect that to happen now. According to her, no one deserved all A's. My classmate and I were dismayed, but as I said, kids accepted the teacher's word as law back then. I told my parents, who didn't like it much, but they didn't argue. I got all B's first marking period, though my work was done on time and correct . Second marking period, I got all A's. I guess she'd made her point, though I'm still not sure what it was.

Okay, so she had an educational philosophy that was odd. She was known as a "fun" teacher by many because she included music in the classroom, told interesting stories, and joked a lot, laughing loudly at her own humor.

But then I think back to specific incidents.

I was a nail biter back then. One day she stopped in the middle of whatever she was teaching to direct the whole class' attention at me. "Are you hungry?"

"No," I replied.

"Then get those hands out of your mouth."

Another time I was sitting on one foot. I did that a lot, because desks back then were designed for right-handed people and I had to twist around to fit. Again stopped her teaching to ask, "Are you trying to lay an egg?"

"No."

"Then sit in that chair like a normal person."

There was the time when she came bustling onto the playground to remove me from a game of "Pom, Pom, Pull-away," a slightly rough pastime that mostly boys played. She told me (and the assembled players) that I wasn't lady-like and made me join a game of "Drop the Handkerchief" with some girls.

And the time a boy who had a crush on me wrote a note to ask if I'd sit with him at lunch. I said yes, and as we started down the stairs (Yes, I'm so old my school had them), he took hold of my hand.

Standing at the bottom, she bellowed up like an angry bull. "Peggy! Let go of his hand right NOW!"

Me? What about him?

I have to admit that schools and teachers in those days saw themselves as arbiters of morality and decorum. The teacher was trying to mold us (me) into what she thought of as good citizens. I suppose as a farm girl who was a bit of a tomboy, I presented a challenge to her to make me "feminine".

But I wonder, too. If I was a good student who had never before had a minute's trouble with a teacher, why was I suddenly someone who should be embarrassed and criticized in front of my peers? A word after class about nail-biting and boys' games and sitting properly would have been just as effective. I wonder how other kids she chose to "fix" fared with her over the years. If it was bad for an A student with parents who were well-respected in the community, what was it like for those who couldn't meet her standards, or students whose parents wouldn't step in, no matter how badly she treated the kid?

To this day when I hear her name, I don't remember one thing she taught me. I feel only anger and resentment for the teacher who picked on a kid who'd never done anything to her, who used her position as a weapon, just because she could.

Being Precise

This is a re-post from 2011. Just not up to being clever right now.
I know that language changes over time. It has to. I know that clinging to the old ways is futile and might make me seem cantankerous or even silly. But it was my job, for three decades, to guard the language, to see that people under my care used it clearly rather than sloppily, thinking about what they wanted to convey as well as what other people might make of it. So I'm going to list some things that seem to me worth keeping in our language.PLEASE KEEP distinctions between similar words. People who are aware of the differences listed here are disappearing, yet there is good reason for keeping their separate meanings.                 nauseated/nauseous-People become nauseated when they encounter something that is nauseous.                might/may-I might call and ask you if I may take you out to dinner.                farther/further-He went farther than anyone else to further grammatical awareness.                fewer than/less than- She ate fewer M&M's than he did but drank less soda.                bust/burst-The police burst through the door to bust the drug dealers.PLEASE USE the correct word or word form. If we think as we speak (gasp) we might recall the things we were taught. Yes, grammar rules change, but it's hard to have a sensible system when usage is sloppy. I say keep the simple rules and do away with the goofy ones. The examples below result from not thinking about what is being said.                Say, "Drive slowly" not "drive slow". The verb should be modified by an adverb that       tells how the driving is to be done.  We can add that things should taste "really good" as well, since adjectives are modified by adverbs just as verbs are.                Write "I'm supposed to" instead of "I'm suppose to". Since we've lost the sense of the word "suppose" in this phrase, which was originally something like "it is supposed (expected) that I will do this" we have begun to lose the form it should take too.                Write "I would have" instead of "I would of". It's easy to explain, difficult to fix. People hear of" not "have", so they spell the word they hear, despite the fact that it makes no sense. (Perhaps we shouldn't worry. It will become "woulda", anyway.)I do not contend that being precise will save your soul, make you healthier, or turn the economy around. I just like it a lot (TWO words) when people speak and write precisely.