Mary Feliz's Blog, page 3

Interview with a sidekick: Belle

When you’re a cat and a blogger, you don’t want to interview the human characters in a book. Your eye is on the prize. Sneaky the library cat snagged an interview with Belle on June 11. It originally appeared at https://sneakylibrarycat.wordpress.com/

1.    What is your name and your author's name?

I’m Belle, a golden retriever, my author (so nice, so smart) is Mary Feliz.

2.    What book(s) have you appeared in? Please list them and their genre.

I’ve been in all of Mary’s books. They’re all about me. And my dog friends. And my people friends. I love my friends. And food. I love food. And walks. And rides in the car.

All the books are cozy mysteries. Those are my favorite because none of the animals get hurt. Or at least, if they get hurt, they get better. Fast.

Address to Die For (Book #1, 2016)

Scheduled to Death (Book #2, 2017)

Dead Storage (Book #3, 2017)

Disorderly Conduct (Book #4, 2018)

Cliff Hanger (Book #5, 2019)

Snowed Under (Book #6, 2020)

3.    Are you in a series? If so, please give information about it.

Yes, our books are a series. One book is just too short to tell you all you need to know about me and my friends and family.

The series begins with Address to Die For when my family moves to Silicon Valley in a big old house with lots of wonderful smells. Including one very scary one that my people take care of quickly. After that, we have lots of adventures in and around the community, meeting other dogs and their people, sniffing butts, taking names, and asking questions. Most of the people give me pats and treats, but I like almost anywhere I can go with my people.

Scheduled to Death takes place near Stanford University and a community garden, and looks at what happens to human pups who have no pack--foster kids who are too old to be in the system. It looks at academic competition, too.

 In Dead Storage, we have to rescue my friend Munchkin, a mastiff, and his person, Stephen. We also go to lots of parks and visit homeless people, who sniff out lots of clues when they are walking around, but people seldom notice them.

 In Disorderly Conduct, a scary wildfire threatens my family, but I take good care of them, snuggling up and licking their faces when they get scared. Something bad happens, but it turns out okay in the end.

Cliff Hanger is about when we all went on vacation to Monterey Bay. My kids witness a bad accident, but then they figure out that maybe it was the on-purpose kind of accident. We go for lots of runs on the beach and I chase waves and birds. There are some new friends we meet who pick strawberries. And I get skunked trying to make friends with a creature that looks like a fuzzy cat but isn’t.

 Snowed Under is a super fun adventure. My best friend Mozart (the pointy-eared dog people call German shepherds) and I go up to the High Sierra near Lake Tahoe where it snows. And boy does it snow. We spend time playing in all that white stuff, visiting the neighbors, and snuggling by the fire. There’s a Chihuahua that scares me a little, but he’s okay. Some bad people were doing some bad things, but Mozart and I sorted it out.

4. Are you based on a real animal such as your author's? If so, please give further details.

Oh boy. Oh boy. Mary Feliz tells me I’m just like a dog she used to have named Anna. Anna used to help Mary write books. Lots of books. (Tail thumps. Nose nudges)

5.    Can you share an excerpt from one of your books that features you in an important scene? If so, please include it.  

This is a selection from Snowed Under in which the people are nervous and cold. They try a lot of things to get comfortable, but in the end, I’m the one with the best solution. It’s written from the perspective of my favorite person, Maggie.

All it took was a midnight power outage to make me feel like a fragile forest creature, trembling and yearning for a cozy protected burrow. I pulled my sweatshirt sleeves down over my hands, wrapped a blanket around me for warmth, and touched Belle’s collar for comfort. She trotted with me toward the bathroom where I adjusted the tap to keep the pipes from freezing. “We’ll be okay,” I told Belle in an attempt to reassure myself. She thumped her tail on the floor.

Tess cried out from the top of the stairs, and I ran to her aid. We watched as her entire load of logs thumped and tumbled down the steps. “You okay?” I asked.

Tess nodded. “I felt the stack going and jumped away. One of those could have easily broken a toe.”

Tess was cranky from lack of sleep. She glared at me. “Just drop those logs next to the fire. We’ll use them all before morning.”

“Hot chocolate?” I asked.

“The pilot light will be out. Matches are on the shelf over the stove top.”

A few moments later, armed with two steaming mugs and a plate of cookies, I returned to the living room. Tess had finished building up the fire, which roared and crackled in the hearth.

 “Good.” She took one of the cobalt blue mugs, wrapped her palms around it and inhaled the steam. “I want to stay up for a bit and let the fire settle down. This is perfect.”

“Do we have a plan for tomorrow?” I asked. “More storm-related survival chores I know nothing about?”

“After keeping the fire going all night, we’ll sleep in as late as we can, look at the weather forecast, and take stock,” she said

“Will we be able to get your car out?”

“No chance. But if the road is clear, we can ski cross-country to the village and catch the shuttle back.”

I hadn’t cross-country skied in years, but I hoped it would be like riding a bike, something my body should remember how to do. “That’d be fun,” I said. “Especially if the wind dies.”

Tess set down her mug and slid back under her covers. I took a last sip and followed suit. Belle curled up at my feet with her tail over her nose.

Comment from Belle: See, I did all the important stuff. I always do all the important stuff.

6.    What do you like most about your role in your authors' books?

I love that I get to be in almost every scene. It’s obvious that Maggie couldn’t solve a murder without me. She’d be too scared and unprotected.

7. Are you a talking cat in your books or just a silent one like I am who just meows occasionally?

Heavens! Who would mistake me for a cat? But Maggie doesn’t need me to speak English. We’ve been friends for a long time and she gets me.

 8. What advice would you give other cat characters?

I know nothing about cats. I live with two marmalade tabbies and they mostly sleep and cause trouble as far as I can tell. But dogs? Keep a close eye on your people. You have no idea what kinds of trouble they can get into.

9. Do you have any new books coming out? Please give dates and details.

Snowed Under comes out on June 9. It’s a chilling story because it takes place in the snow. Lots of snow. Perfect to read on a really hot day.

10. Are you and/or your author on social media? If so, please list your links.

Of course. Mary has a page called Mary Feliz Books (https://p.facebook.com/MaryFelizBooks/) She shares pictures of me all the time. And some cat she has in what she calls the “real world, like this one:

 

The author’s rescued cat, Charlie, was a big help making COVID-19 masks.

Opening Lines

This blog post first appeared on Storeybook Reviews on June 10, 2020

From the opening scene of Snowed Under:

The scene was like every description of a near-death experience I’d ever heard.

I drove through the darkness toward a white light on California’s Interstate 80, east over the Donner Pass toward Lake Tahoe.

Banks of plowed snow towered above the freeway, obliterating what would have been gorgeous mountain vistas if there had been any visibility. What the newscasters had calmly predicted as “winter storm conditions” howled around us, buffeting the car and overpowering my headlights, defroster, and windshield wipers.

For miles, I’d searched for a rest area where I could unclench my hands from the steering wheel, clear ice from the windshield, and take care of more basic human needs. But snow obscured the exit signs and wind erased tire tracks as soon as they formed. My golden retriever, Belle, huffed warm wet breath in my ear. Her pal Mozart panted beside her. My friend Tess Olmos dozed in the passenger seat.

 

Crafting perfect opening lines, paragraphs, and pages for a novel is a task akin to writing a short story. I need to introduce the characters, setting, genre, and stakes in a way that grabs readers and makes them trust my ability to tell a story and keep them entertained. That’s a tall order.

Few authors are able to check all those boxes at once. For example, in Snowed Under, we don’t learn about the “inciting incident” that propels main character Maggie McDonald into her investigation until page nineteen, at the close of the second chapter. That’s later than usual in my books. I took a chance on revealing more about the new environment Maggie finds herself in—a winter landscape completely different from the Mediterranean climate of her home in Silicon Valley. Still, we know right away that the stakes are high, which I hope will help readers hang on for a bit.

The opening pages of Snowed Under are the least revised paragraphs of this novel. The scene is almost identical to the version that first unfolded in my imagination. I think that’s because it works. We find the characters in the midst of a dire situation (a life-threatening blizzard), and introduce the key players immediately. We see Maggie, her best friend Tess, and their dogs (which tell the reader it’s probably a cozy mystery).

It’s a tumultuous beginning, but the danger is outside the car. Inside the car, as with most cozies, the atmosphere is warm and comforting. My hope is that it draws readers in, signaling that they are entering a classic murder mystery format that is cozy, slightly edgy, and pure entertainment. With dogs.

What do you think as a reader? Does the opening atmosphere envelope you or leave you feeling meh? What do you like to read in the opening lines of a cozy mystery?

Interview with a Sidekick: Tess Olmos

This post initially appeared June 9, 2020 on the award-winning blog Dru's Book Musing

Hello, cozy mystery readers!

My author and main character are exhausted after their chilling adventure in the latest book, Snowed Under. I’m stepping in as the star of Dru’s Book Musings today. (Dru requested me, by name. I’m so thrilled. Most side-kicks never get interviewed.)

Dru Ann has specific questions she wants me to answer by way of an introduction, so off we go.

My full name is Theresa Maria Josephina Olmos, née Rodriquez. My ancestors were cattle ranchers in the San Francisco Bay Area long before California became a state. We owned a lot of land, which in time brought many of us in the younger generations into real estate. You can’t swing a cat around here without hitting one of my blood relatives or in-laws. There’s a plaque on the bank my great-grandfather owned in downtown Orchard View. The town hasn’t changed much in seven generations though Silicon Valley has exploded around it.

I’m forty-something. Dru would probably like me to get more specific than that, but translating book time to three-dimensional human time can be tricky for an author. It’s nearly impossible for a fictional character, even one as super-organized as I am. (Main character Maggie McDonald is a professional organizer, but I’m even more organized than she is, at least in my work life. My house and my home life are a bit of a mess.)

I’m wrapping up a career as a high-powered Silicon Valley real estate agent and helping to ease all the tasks of a sale for my too-busy clients. My mid-life career change plans have me registering soon for classes at our local community college in criminology, law enforcement, and the law. Eventually, I’ll decide whether to get a law degree or become an agent or officer. For now, it’s enough to sell my existing business, get my son off to college, and take the first step of my new journey.

Dru asked if I have a significant other. It’s a difficult question to answer because my husband, Patrick, died a short time ago (Disorderly Conduct). I’m still figuring out what the “new normal” will look like for my 18-year-old son, Teddy and me. It’s hard. I still wear my wedding ring and still feel very much committed to Patrick, even though our family life was unlike most other marriages. Don’t get me wrong. He was mine, and I was his, til death do us part—no cheating, ever. But a short time after our flower-filled dream wedding, we realized that if we wanted to stay married, we had to live apart. Weird, huh?

But let me explain. It will make sense. At least it did for us. In my work life, I’m a super-polished and efficient. I wear sharp black suits, red blouses, and shoes that a fashionista would die for. I love my job and created a thriving business – which isn’t easy for a woman to do in the bro-business culture of Silicon Valley. But when I get home, I enter an extra bedroom in our home through an outside door and shed my suit, heels, and professional life. I shower, put my hair in a ponytail, grab my Ugg boots and sweats, and open the door to the rest of the house to greet my German shepherd, Mozart, and the rest of the family. Keeping my fashion wardrobe in a room separate from dog hair, cookie dough, and spaghetti sauce keeps my clothes looking spiffy. It also marks a firm line between the two sides of my life.

My late husband, Patrick, is the opposite. His engineering lab bench looks like it was upended in an earthquake, but he could find every tool. At home, he couldn’t relax unless everything was clean, neat, and in its proper place.

He tried, but living in the turmoil a toddler and working mom create was exhausting for him. So, we compromised. I have my house, and his primary residence is a tiny concierge apartment. We’re forever popping in and out of both places, which are only a few blocks apart. It takes –er took some high-level communication, but we made it work.

With a full-time job, planning for school, and raising a teenager on my own, I’ve got little time or energy left over for hobbies. My favorite part of the house used to be our deck and the garden beyond, which Patrick used to enjoy looking after. It was like a mini-vacation to settle into one of the crimson-cushioned lounge chairs for a snack or family dinner. But I haven’t been able to face it without Patrick. I will. But not yet.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a batch of chocolate chip cookies in the oven, a cup of coffee calling my name, and a need to snuggle up on my sofa with my dog, Mozart, and the latest episode of Outlander.

I kick off my heels the minute I get home and change into my beloved sweats and Ugg boots.

Award-Winning Blogger Dru Ann Love weighs in on Snowed Under

This first appeared June 1 on www.drusbookmusings.com

Dru’s blog has won two Anthony awards and the coveted Raven bestowed by Mystery Writers of America

My Musing ~ Snowed Under by Mary Feliz

Jun 1, 2020

Snowed Under by Mary Feliz is the sixth book in the “Maggie McDonald” cozy mystery series. Publisher: Kensington Books, coming June 9, 2020.

When professional organizer Maggie McDonald finds a body in a snowdrift outside her friend’s ski cabin, she must plow through the clues to find a cold-blooded killer . . .

Lake Tahoe in February is beautiful, but Maggie can’t see a thing as she drives through a blinding blizzard with her friend Tess Olmos and their dogs, golden retriever Belle and German shepherd Mozart. Maggie has offered her professional decluttering skills to help Tess tidy up her late husband’s cabin in preparation to sell. She also plans to get in some skiing when her husband Max and their boys join them later in the week.

What she doesn’t plan on is finding a boot in a snowdrift attached to a corpse. The frozen stiff turns out to be Tess’s neighbor, Dev Bailey, who disappeared two months ago. His widow Leslie expresses grief, but Maggie can’t help but wonder if it’s a snow job. As more suspects start to pile up, things go downhill fast, and Maggie must keep her cool to solve the murder before the killer takes a powder . . .

Purchase Link

Dru’s Musing:
They say never leave home without it and that phrase holds true as yet once again, Maggie stumbles on a dead body and of course knowing Maggie, she just has to investigate.  I really do enjoy these adventures with Maggie and her friends and the author does a great job in giving us fresh new stories to read. This is a tightly woven, multi-arc story-line that encompasses all aspects of crime fiction in this well-written and executed drama. The mystery was expertly done keeping my interest high as I had to know who did what to whom. The staging with the weather as the backdrop added to the intensity of finding a motive, suspects and clues. Throughout every scene the author led me one way or the other to differing points that enhanced how well this tale was being told. As with the previous books in the series, this has a strong character base with dialogue to match.

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FTC Full Disclosure – I received an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) from the publisher.

Rabbit Holes, Runcible Spoons, and the Joys and Sorrows of Writing Fiction

The following describes a rabbit hole I bounded down this morning after the monks in my current bedtime reading had "runcible" peas for dinner. The book was the fantastically written Dissolution by C.J. Sampson, whose character is a hunched-backed detective working for Cromwell during the reign of Henry VIII.

You know and I know that runcible is a word made up by Edward Lear for the Owl and the Pussycat's dinnerware. I have a spoon with a curved handle that I was given as a baby that I always described as "runcible.” Some people now call sporks runcible spoons. My mother used to call an old bent silver utensil her runcible spoon.

Then I came across the following article that suggests the use of "runcible" was probably a good-hearted attempt by a copy editor to correct what they thought was an error. The author notes that rouncival is a variety of pea. 
http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2010/05/runcible-peas.html The monks in Sampson’s book could very well have been eating rouncival peas.

It was a morning enjoyably spent careening down a fiction rabbit hole, sparked by what I thought was an error. Now that I’m an author, I’m much more patient with mistakes in books. This change in perspective coincides with the publication of my first book in 2016. It contains at least one but probably more errors. I’ve read somewhere that the industry standard for fiction is ten errors per volume. I can’t provide a citation for that, so it might well be urban legend perpetuated by authors stung by mistakes they are unable to fix post-production. These noxious things seem to appear in publications despite efforts by authors, editors, copy editors, proof-readers, and kindly family members to scour the work for the slightest misstep.

If you’ve read my books and found errors, I’m sorry. I did my best. So did my team. We goofed. Or gremlins were at work. It was not intentional. It was not due to lack of desire for utmost quality. It was not caused by lack of effort.

My only hope? That you’ll forgive the errors and enjoy the stories despite them. And that one day you will find a mistake in a book that sends you down a rabbit hole as enjoyable as this one was for me.

My favorite version of the Owl and the Pussycat, illustrated beautifully by Jan Brett.

Above is a “spork” a combination of a spoon and a fork, often called a runcible spoon, and a baby spoon much like the one I dubbed my runcible spoon as a child.

The perfect setting for cozy murder mysteries

Small-town Maine makes the perfect setting for cozy murder mysteriesThere's no gore in this growing sub-genre of good, clean killings among quaint surroundings.

This essay originally appeared as an article in the PORTLAND PRESS HERALD on October 6, 2019 and was written by STAFF WRITER RAY ROUTHIER

How can a murder story be considered cozy?

Start by setting the tale in a quaint Maine coastal town, make the sleuth the owner of the local inn and loved by all, add a cast of small-town folks and make sure there’s no sex, profanity or explicitly gory details of the murder in question. Do all that, and you have yourself a so-called cozy mystery (also referred to simply as a cozy), one of the fastest-growing mystery fiction segments and one that seems perfectly suited to Maine.

“The best settings are places you love or want to visit or live in, with interesting people,” said Barbara Ross, a Portland author who sets her Maine Clambake mysteries in fictional Busman’s Harbor, Maine, based on Boothbay Harbor. “They are books where, at the end, order is restored. They are books that are soothing, something that takes the reader away from their everyday concerns.”

Because Maine has long been a fantasy destination for vacationers and people who like the idea of living in a small-town utopia on the coast or in the woods, more than two dozen cozy mystery series are set in the state. And about a dozen Maine authors have penned a cozy in the last decade or two.

Authors and people in the publishing industry say the cozy mystery has been around for years – as traditional mysteries that don’t have the gore, sex, corruption or self-destructive protagonist. But in the past 10 to 20 years, publishers have been aggressively branding and marketing cozy mysteries to readers who want a good puzzle to solve, in a wholesome and inviting destination, with a promise of justice being served.

The cozy mystery sub-genre probably accounts for 10 percent of all mysteries sold, from hard-boiled detective stories to thrillers, said Larissa Ackerman, communications director for Kensington Publishing Corp., which publishes more than 100 cozy authors, including a half dozen who either live in Maine or set books here. The number of mysteries being marketed as cozies has likely doubled in the last 20 years and increased by about 50 percent over the past 10 years, said John Talbot, a New York-based agent who represents about 20 cozy authors, including Ross.

Talbot says that the marketing label “cozy mystery” started to become much more abundant on books in the 1990s, when several imprints of publishing companies were launched to focus on cozies. There is a feeling in publishing that, in the last 15 years, the number of romance stories with more sex has increased, which turned some romance readers toward cozies, Talbot said.

Most importantly for cozy authors and publishers, the books sell well because cozy readers, like the readers of romance series, read constantly.

“It’s an enduring readership who reward the consistently good storytellers with great loyalty,” said Talbot.

A COZY MURDER IN MAINE

The popularity of cozy mysteries is evident in the frequency with which they’re invited to local libraries to talk with their fans. In September, author Mary Feliz gave a talk about cozies at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. Although she lives and sets her Maggie McDonald Mystery series in California, she comes to Maine often to visit family and has several friends here who write cozies. She defines a cozy mystery as a book where “someone dies but nobody gets hurt.” The characters are as important as the plot, and the story includes a strong community where people work together and support each other.

“In a noir mystery, things are grim, and after the crime is solved, they’ll still be grim going forward. The message is people are bad and bad guys will always exist,” said Feliz.

Several Maine cozy authors say they didn’t set out to write cozies, they just like traditional mysteries in the Agatha Christie style, without sex or gore or a lot of moral ambiguity. Ross says she was encouraged to write a cozy series by her agent, Talbot, who saw the market for it growing in leaps and bounds a decade ago. She and her husband had owned a bed and breakfast in Boothbay Harbor, and she thought the town and a small business owner in the town would appeal to cozy readers. So the Maine Clambake series was born. The series has eight books in it so far.

One can learn a lot about what makes a cozy just by reading the ones penned by Maine authors. First, the solver of the crime (the crime is always solved and order is always restored) is usually some local business owner who is well-connected in town. The occupations of the amateur sleuths in cozies are also home-spun and relatable, no private detectives or people who work on the seedy side of town. In fact, the towns don’t have a seedy side. Ross’s Maine Clambake Mysteries center on a woman who runs her family’s clambake business, catering weddings and parties and such. Kathy Lynn Emerson of Wilton, writing under the name Kaitlyn Dunnett, sets her Liss MacCrimmon series in the fictional Western Maine town of Moosetookalook, where she owns a Scottish gift shop.

In the Home Repair is Homicide series by Sarah Graves of Eastport, the heroine is busy fixing up an old house in a Maine seaport while not solving murders. In the Hayley Powell Food & Cocktail mystery series, set in Bar Harbor, the heroine is a single mother who writes a food column for the local paper. The series appears with the author name Lee Hollis but is actually written by brother and sister Rick Copp and Holly Simason, who grew up in Bar Harbor and now live in other parts of the country.

Linda Hall lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, but sets her Em Ridge series in Maine because it’s a coastal destination people want to read about and go to. Ridge is a boat captain who delivers boats to various ports and is constantly finding dead bodies on them, Hall said. The character lives in Portland, but Hall’s fictional Portland is more like a small Maine town.

Katherine Hall Page, a part-time Deer Isle resident, has written 25 books in her Faith Fairchild series, about a caterer who has a summer cottage on Penobscot Bay. Her titles are less cozy than some, with the word body often used. Her latest, “The Body in the Wake,” came out in May. Page said she and other cozy authors were “in the right place at the right time” in the 1990s when the success of women authors like Sue Grafton prompted publishers to find more. Most cozies are written by women and read by women, authors and others in the publishing industry say.

“I think there was a time when the term cozy was derogatory, that the books had more spilled tea than blood,” said Page. “But then publishers started saying ‘Maybe we should have more female mystery writers.’ ”

Like a lot of cozy writers, Page stays away from things that would make her books less cozy, mostly out of personal preference. She does not want to write about serial killers, for instance, and would never have a child or animal hurt in her books. But the biggest thing that makes her books different from, say, a noir mystery is that order is always restored at the end, and there is always hope for a bright future.

Adding to the warm and fuzziness of the genre, cozy titles often include puns or word play. Emerson’s latest Liss MacCrimmon book is called  “Overkilt.” Others are “X Marks the Scot” and the upcoming “A View to a Kilt.” Ross’s Maine Clambake titles include “Clammed Up,” “Boiled Over” and “Steamed Open.”

Most covers of cozies are usually filled with pastel or bright colors, and show inviting interior or exterior scenes. There is not a dead or bleeding body anywhere to be found.

At least part of the appeal of cozy mysteries is what they are not.

“I don’t like too much reality in fiction, or nasty things in my books, there’s enough of that in the real world,” said Marilyn Nulman, an avid reader of cozy mysteries from Brunswick. “I like books that have family in them, or people who act like family, and I like secrets. But I like closed endings, where the crime is solved and the damage repaired.”

5 Tools to Make Your Platform and Promotions Look Professional

 












































If you’re bored by your own book promotions, you’re doing it wrong.

I like a professional look and find design fun, but my design skills and experience are meagre. That means I’m apt to waste a lot of time doing it.

I don’t have professional training, but I cut my teeth on early desk-top design programs. In the olden days, I used various Adobe tools like PageMaker, InDesign, and Photoshop to create graphics. When I used them all the time and could buy the software outright, those programs were worth their steep price tags. In the last several years, Adobe has moved to a subscription model that prices its software out of reach of most authors, particularly those who are inexperienced designers who don’t need or want overwhelmingly powerful tools.

Luckily, lots of smaller companies leapt into the breach and offer tailored tools for writers that make it easier than ever to develop high-impact promotions to punch up your social media. But how can you make sense of them all? Trial and error is the only way that has worked for me. Other people’s recommendations are going to rely on very subjective criteria like personal budget, skills, objectives, and esthetic preferences. For what it’s worth, here are a few tools that work well for me and might be worth checking out. (Warning: None of the examples I show here are perfect design. But they are decent representations of what a novice can do quickly with online software.)

At the very least, they’ll give you some idea of what’s out there and may help you define criteria for selecting tools that will help build your author platform.

5 tools I use regularly as an author:1) Book Brush : A new favorite

Book Brush offers easy-to-use professional looking templates for still images and videos. They have a very limited free service that is, essentially, a bait and switch come-on to get you to buy their paid service. But the free program is worth trying. If it suits your needs, great. If not, their paid service is moderately priced at $8 per month.

What I like: There’s not much tinkering you can do with their templates, so it saves me time. I’m tireless when it comes to tweaking images and layouts. It also offers more 3-D options than other programs.

What I don’t like: Their very limited free service.

Here’s a Twitter post I made with Book Brush…

2) Canva : Reliable and flexible

Canva is design software nearly as flexible as professional software. Use their stock images and templates to get going quickly, or tailor your own images with your own photos or paid stock photos. The free version is robust. The paid version is just under $10 per month.

What I like: Lots of templates. Flexibility to work with outside photos. Ability to tailor images for various social media uses (Facebook and Twitter headers and posts, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)

What I don’t like: It can be a little fiddly. And there are so many options it’s easy to get overwhelmed. In other words, a time sink. If you want a 3-D image of your book, you’ll need to make it outside Canva and import it.

Here’s a promotion I made with Canva. It should have taken about 10 minutes, but I spent 30. It would have taken longer if I weren’t so familiar with the program.

3) 3D Mockups Essential

This online service takes your 2D book cover and pops it onto stock templates (jpg or png) of hardcovers, paperbacks, phones, readers, and tablets. If you’re working with Canva or another layout program that doesn’t create 3D images, this service is a must.

What I like: Free. Easy. Fast.

What I don’t like: It’s so simple, there’s nothing to dislike.

Below are two images made with Canva, demonstrating the difference a 3D image can make:

4) iStock photo Pricy, but worth investigating

We all know that we can’t just pull photos off the internet and use them in our promotions and blogs, right? Images are the creative work of artists like us. We need to respect their legal rights.

For that reason, and the fact that I distrust sites offering free images, I subscribe to iStock photo. There are other stock photo houses with smaller price tags, but I like the quality, breadth, and search function in the iStock data base. Pricing ranges from $29 per month to $99 per month or you can buy the rights to one photo at a time. Because of the steep price tag, I recommend subscribing when you have a new release and then unsubscribing after you’ve downloaded all the photos you need for your promotion, plus a few more credits to use in between releases. I think professional photos help many of my blog posts and social media posts gain more attention.

What I like: Wide range of images that help punch up my blogs and posts and spark ideas for new posts when I’m stumped. Reliable and trusted.

What I don’t like: It’s pricey, but that helps convince me that iStock actually pays photographers for their images.

Below is an Canva image I made using an iStock photo.

5) Squarespace: Modern, flexible, web templates

I have enough graphics background and experience to make design a bit of a nightmare for me. I like modern clean designs, hate out-of-balance layouts. Because my skill is limited I am frustrated by design tools that don’t make it easy for me. I looked at a wide variety of website design software, and only Squarespace had the flexible up-to-date templates that worked for me. Everything else, even easier-to-use programs, seemed old-fashioned and cluttered (to me.) My mystery series began in Silicon Valley, so I wanted a design that reflected the cutting edge — or at least avoided looking stuffy. I haven’t looked back. I designed my first website myself and updated it a few months ago with the help of the professionals at Collaborada. I continue to do most of the work myself, though I pay Collaborada to pop in now and then to optimize my SEO (search engine optimization).

What I like: Great customer service with patient advisors. A fresh look.

What I don’t like: A little more complicated than some other web design sites, which is a bit of a hurdle in the beginning. More expensive than Wix and Weebly. Lowest price is $12 per month.

If you’re reading this on my website, take a look around and click on other pages to see how flexible the template can be. (Thriller writers and horror writers use this same template with edgier images and a variety of colors.) If you’re reading this on another site, hop over to my website to check out the real thing.

 

5 tools to make your platform and promotions look professional

 























If you’re bored by your own promotions, you’re doing it wrong.

I like a professional look and find design fun, but my design skills and experience are meagre. That means I’m apt to waste a lot of time doing it.

I don’t have professional training, but I cut my teeth on early desk-top design programs. In the olden days, I used various Adobe tools like PageMaker, InDesign, and Photoshop to create graphics. When I used them all the time and could buy the software outright, those programs were worth their steep price tags. In the last several years, Adobe has moved to a subscription model that prices its software out of reach of most authors, particularly those who are inexperienced designers who don’t need or want overwhelmingly powerful tools.

Luckily, lots of smaller companies leapt into the breach and offer tailored tools for writers that make it easier than ever to develop high-impact promotions to punch up your social media. But how can you make sense of them all? Trial and error is the only way that has worked for me. Other people’s recommendations are going to rely on very subjective criteria like personal budget, skills, objectives, and esthetic preferences. For what it’s worth, here are a few tools that work well for me and might be worth checking out. (Warning: None of the examples I show here are perfect design. But they are decent representations of what a novice can do quickly with online software.)

At the very least, they’ll give you some idea of what’s out there and may help you define criteria for selecting tools that work for you.

Here are five tools I use regularly: Book Brush : A new favorite

Book Brush offers easy-to-use professional looking templates for still images and videos. They have a very limited free service that is, essentially, a bait and switch come-on to get you to buy their paid service. But the free program is worth trying. If it suits your needs, great. If not, their paid service is moderately priced at $8 per month.

What I like: There’s not much tinkering you can do with their templates, so it saves me time. I’m tireless when it comes to tweaking images and layouts. It also offers more 3-D options than other programs.

What I don’t like: Their very limited free service.

Here’s a Twitter post I made with Book Brush…

Canva : Reliable and flexible

Canva is design software nearly as flexible as professional software. Use their stock images and templates to get going quickly, or tailor your own images with your own photos or paid stock photos. The free version is robust. The paid version is just under $10 per month.

What I like: Lots of templates. Flexibility to work with outside photos. Ability to tailor images for various social media uses (Facebook and Twitter headers and posts, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)

What I don’t like: It can be a little fiddly. And there are so many options it’s easy to get overwhelmed. In other words, a time sink. If you want a 3-D image of your book, you’ll need to make it outside Canva and import it.

Here’s a promotion I made with Canva. It should have taken about 10 minutes, but I spent 30. It would have taken longer if I weren’t so familiar with the program.

3D Mockups Essential

This online service takes your 2D book cover and pops it onto stock templates (jpg or png) of hardcovers, paperbacks, phones, readers, and tablets. If you’re working with Canva or another layout program that doesn’t create 3D images, this service is a must.

What I like: Free. Easy. Fast.

What I don’t like: It’s so simple, there’s nothing to dislike.

Below are two images made with Canva, demonstrating the difference a 3D image can make:

iStock photo Pricy, but worth investigating

We all know that we can’t just pull photos off the internet and use them in our promotions and blogs, right? Images are the creative work of artists like us. We need to respect their legal rights.

For that reason, and the fact that I distrust sites offering free images, I subscribe to iStock photo. There are other stock photo houses with smaller price tags, but I like the quality, breadth, and search function in the iStock data base. Pricing ranges from $29 per month to $99 per month or you can buy the rights to one photo at a time. Because of the steep price tag, I recommend subscribing when you have a new release and then unsubscribing after you’ve downloaded all the photos you need for your promotion, plus a few more credits to use in between releases. I think professional photos help many of my blog posts and social media posts gain more attention.

What I like: Wide range of images that help punch up my blogs and posts and spark ideas for new posts when I’m stumped. Reliable and trusted.

What I don’t like: It’s pricey, but that helps convince me that iStock actually pays photographers for their images.

Below is an Canva image I made using an iStock photo.

Squarespace: Modern, flexible, web templates

I have enough graphics background and experience to make design a bit of a nightmare for me. I like modern clean designs, hate out-of-balance layouts. Because my skill is limited I am frustrated by design tools that don’t make it easy for me. I looked at a wide variety of website design software, and only Squarespace had the flexible up-to-date templates that worked for me. Everything else, even easier-to-use programs, seemed old-fashioned and cluttered (to me.) My mystery series began in Silicon Valley, so I wanted a design that reflected the cutting edge — or at least avoided looking stuffy. I haven’t looked back. I designed my first website myself and updated it a few months ago with the help of the professionals at Collaborada. I continue to do most of the work myself, though I pay Collaborada to pop in now and then to optimize my SEO (search engine optimization).

What I like: Great customer service with patient advisors. A fresh look.

What I don’t like: A little more complicated than some other web design sites, which is a bit of a hurdle in the beginning. More expensive than Wix and Weebly. Lowest price is $12 per month.

If you’re reading this on my website, take a look around and click on other pages to see how flexible the template can be. (Thriller writers and horror writers use this same template with edgier images and a variety of colors.) If you’re reading this on another site, hop over to my website to check out the real thing.

 

Sisters in Crime New England: Q&A with Mary Feliz

By Kathryn Gandek-Tighe

(This blog post originally appeared 8/8/19 on the Blog of Sisters in Crime New England at : https://sincne.clubexpress.com/conten...

What’s a California writer doing as a member of the SinC-New England chapter? New England feels like home to Mary Feliz with family and friends in Maine. On September 24, you can find her at the  Curtis Memorial Library ’s Mystery Author event in Brunswick, Maine. We’ve asked her to answer our questions about writing and her newest book,  Cliff Hanger , that was released in July.

 

Writers usually hate writing book summaries. Will you share with us your real book blurb or one you wish you could have used? 

 

Here’s the real one written by my publisher: When a hang-gliding stranger is found fatally injured in the cliffs above Monterey Bay, the investigation into his death becomes a cluttered mess. Professional organizer Maggie McDonald must sort the clues to catch a coastal killer before her family becomes a target . . .
 
Maggie has her work cut out for her helping Renée Alvarez organize her property management office. Though the condominium complex boasts a prime location on the shores of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, aging buildings and the high-maintenance tenants have Renée run ragged. But Maggie’s efforts are complicated when her sons attempt to rescue a badly injured man who crashed his ultra-light on the coastal cliffs.
 
Despite their efforts to save him, the man dies. Maggie's family members become the prime suspects in a murder investigation and the target of a lawsuit. Her instincts say something’s out of place, but solving a murder won’t be easy. Maggie still needs to manage her business, the pushy press, and unwanted interest from criminal elements. Controlling chaos is her specialty, but with this killer’s crime wave, Maggie may be left hanging . . .
 

The more succinct and perhaps more truthful one is: Mary Feliz writes about the place her heart lives. 

 

What excited you most about writing this story?

 

Sharing my joy in the flora, fauna, and settings that surround my home and that make our area completely different from any portrait of our state featured on television or in the movies.

 

Who is your favorite character and why?

 

Munchkin, the mastiff, is my favorite character. He wandered into the plot of the first book as an abandoned flea-ridden pup and refused to leave. In book three, he spots the most important clues. And though he never says anything, he makes his opinions known.

 

Is there a setting in your book that you would like to visit? 

I love Monterey Bay and its environs so much that I moved here full time. While it has its busy cities and tourist attractions, I’m mesmerized by the ocean and wetlands and the myriad of indigenous and endangered species it supports. In fact, I recently became a Certified California Naturalist. The training covers the “greatest hits” of our state’s natural world” and immersing myself in the course was the thrill of a lifetime. I’m a nature geek.

 

What meal and drink do you think would pair well with your book? 

It would be a locavore’s dream with ingredients sourced from within a five-mile radius: A crisp Coastal chardonnay, line-caught salmon, artichokes, fresh spinach salad, roasted cauliflower, and the sweetest possible Watsonville strawberries for dessert.

 

Mary Feliz writes the Maggie McDonald Mystery series featuring a California professional organizer. Her debut novel  Address to Die For  was named a Best Book of 2017 by Kirkus.  Cliff Hanger  is her fifth book. Mary lives near the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Visit her at  http://www.maryfeliz.com/ .

Favorite cross-genre beach reads

This post first appeared August 7 at https://allyshields.com/blog.html

A page-turning thriller? A transportive historical? Or an atmospheric fantasy in a frozen landscape to distract you from the heat and humidity? Defining the perfect beach read is a highly personal endeavor. Here are some of my all-time favorites that include shore locations from a variety of genres:

Adrift by Micki Browning, Thriller

This is the award-winning first-in-series volume in the Mer Cavallo mysteries featuring marine biologist–turned-divemaster Meredith Cavallo. Mer thought adjusting to a laid-back life in the Florida Keys would be a breeze. But when she rescues a floundering diver who claims to have seen a ghost, she’s caught in a storm of intrigue. News of the encounter explodes on social media, attracting a team of ghost hunters who want to capture proof that a greenish ghoul haunts Key Largo’s famed USS Spiegel Grove shipwreck. 

A terrific setting, thrilling suspense, and an investigation confidently revealed by FBI-trained former law-enforcement officer Micki Browning.

Cliff Hanger by Mary Feliz. Mystery

Professional Organizer Maggie McDonald has her work cut out for her helping Renée Alvarez organize her property management office. Though the condominium complex boasts a prime location on the shores of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, aging buildings and the high-maintenance tenants have Renée run ragged. But Maggie’s efforts are complicated when her sons attempt to rescue a badly injured man who crashed his ultra-light on the coastal cliffs. Despite their efforts to save him, the man dies. Maggie's family members become the prime suspects in a murder investigation and the target of a lawsuit. This is the fifth volume in the Maggie McDonald Mystery series the first of which, Address to Die For, was named a Best Book of 2017 by Kirkus Reviews.

 

Dance upon the Air by Nora Roberts. Paranormal Romance

The first book in the Three Sisters Island trilogy by blockbuster author Nora Roberts takes place on off the Massachusetts coast. Nell Channing, on the run from her abusive husband, takes a job as cook at the local bookstore café and takes an interest in the handsome local sheriff. Adjusting to her dramatic shift in circumstances is more than enough to keep Nell busy, but she soon uncovers an ancient island curse that only she, with the help of two others, can hope to break.

 























Pacific Coast by Kim Stanley Robinson. Science Fiction

Better known for his Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson earlier wrote his Three California trilogy about a near-future Golden State. Published in 1995, Pacific Coast concludes the three-volume story with an ecotopian vision of a pastoral community at peace, but under pressure from outside influences to evolve toward a darker future.

 























High Tide at Noon by Elisabeth Ogilvie. Mainstream Fiction

First published in 1944, this book is an old favorite, read and re-read. It’s the first of dozens of books unveiling the unique challenges and delights of island families in Maine. Joanna Bennett yearns to follow family tradition and become a lobsterman and captain her own boat. But there’s one problem. She’s a girl. Each of Ogilvie’s novels allows readers to explore the rugged island and meet more of the family and its neighbors. While today it might be described as women’s fiction or a cozy mystery, it offers the same depth of setting and characterization as the popular Louise Penny novels.

Whatever book or genre you choose, enjoy your time at the beach and between the pages of your favorite novel. May the sun shine brightly and the humidity be low!