Bethany Maines's Blog, page 14

Crunch Time!

Ack!  I should be baking. Or possibly cleaning my filthy office.  Or writing any of the multiple stories I’m supposed to be completing. It’s crunch time for me.  I’ve got a sci-fi novella that is due back from the editor at any second (more info to come after the holidays!), a Christmas short story that needs completing ASAP, and mystery novel that is supposed to be way more underway than it is. And my business partner at my day job is about to go on maternity leave at any moment. I could use a holiday.  Oh, wait, one has just turned up.  Now I get to add baking to the list.  So excuse me, if I just complain for a minute and then dash off to put a pie in the oven.

But in the spirit of the holidays, how about a chance to win a print copy of Shark’s Instinct?  Reviewers are calling it an “amazing mystery with loads of action.”  Click the link below to enter! 

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Goodreads Book Giveaway


Shark’s Instinct
by Bethany Maines

Giveaway ends November 30, 2017.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

 

Enter Giveaway

Incoming

The holidays are coming.  I can feel them barreling toward me with the speed of one of those fancy Japanese trains that float on magnets and go like three hundred miles an hour.  Of course, the train type doesn’t really matter.  Amtrak or coal trains will both kill you just as dead. 

Yes, death and trains. That’s the holiday metaphor I went with.  That should tell you all you need to know about how I’m feeling about this upcoming season.

I think one of the most unfair parts about being an adult is that we no longer get to enjoy the seasons like we did as children.  For adults, time compresses until you’re blinking through the seasons like you’re in an H.G. Wells time machine.  And with that as a backdrop it’s easy to go down the trail of “Why put up holiday decorations when it’s just going to be over in a minute?”

But I’m putting my foot down.  Christmas will be enjoyed.  There will be décor.  I might even décor it up pre-Thanksgiving.  Holiday rules be damned.  And I’m banning guilt.  Didn’t buy someone a present?  Well, presents aren’t obligatory.  Didn’t bring a potluck dish? How fortunate that some other mom showed off and made extra.  Decided not to do the holiday shuffle between in-laws and stay at your house in the morning?  Tough cookies, Grandma.  The stockings are still up, the munchkin will still get sugar-high, you can wait the extra hour.

You know what else I’m going to do over the holidays?  I’m going to read at least one book.  I used to enjoy doing that before I tried to have kids, see my husband periodically, and write all the words into new books.  I’m going to pick out something awesome, probably fluffy, and enjoy the crap out of it. 

That is my Holiday Manifesto.  Who’s with me?

http://bethanymaines.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AustinPowers-Henchman.mp4

Absolutely

Today I’m discussing the absolutes of art.

Absolute number 1: artists must sell.  So toward that end, please consider purchasing my latest book! It’s a five-star, “highly-satisfying, high-speed thriller” that readers are calling “hard to put down.”

Shark’s Instinct: Fresh out of prison and fresh out of luck, twenty-something Shark wants back into The Organization. But when Geier, the mob boss with a cruel sense of humor, sends Shark to the suburbs to find out who’s been skimming his take, Shark realizes he’s going to need more than his gun and an attitude to succeed. With the clock ticking, Shark accepts the help of the mysterious teenage fixer, Peregrine Hays, and embarks on a scheme that could line his pockets, land him the girl and cement his reputation with the gang—if he makes it out alive.

$2.99 on sale today! BUY NOW!

Absolute number 2:  Nothing is absolute and artists spend a lot of time thinking about that.

In our current climate of politics, disasters, and protest, I’ve been listening to what a lot of artists are feeling. And by artists I mean everyone from fellow writers and graphic designers, to fine artists and poets. I know from the outside that most people think of the creative set as a homogeneous mass of weirdos. Which, weird, I’ll grant you, but homogeneous is not, in any way, accurate.

Like any family there are fractured in-fights, cultural differences between the “cousins” of fine art and design (or poets and novelists), there are fights over pecking order and definitions and what it all really means. But most artists when pressed will say that although they have their preferences, their set rules that they use, that most of the time, there is no absolute. Don’t ever pair two serif fonts, don’t ever write a novel in the first person, don’t use Papyrus for a logo (ever, no seriously)… Unless it works, in which case, you should absolutely do that. Absolutes in art and artists are few and far behind.

Which is why I think our current political climate is striking artists particularly hard. It’s as though we’ve all been toddling along enjoying the gray areas and we’ve run smack into the thirty percent of our population that only believes in black and white. Not that they live in black and white (because no one can). But they only believe in black and white and they want everyone else to bow before the almighty absolute and give them the peace of mind of being right. Arguing with someone who refuses to see the gray is pointless. Showing art full of color to someone who doesn’t see the subtle shades of the rainbow only makes them turn away. Many of the artist’s I listen to feel despair. They feel like their art has become frivolous when they see the colors being eradicated around them, but they can’t seem to make the leap to protest art. Nine months into a presidency that does not see the value in anyone who isn’t male, straight, or white, I would like to say that all art is protest art. To create joy, beauty, and harmony, to paint with many colors instead of the ones that have been chosen for us is protest art. I encourage my artist friends to follow their passion, take action, make art, refuse to go away or step back. Use every damn crayon in the box.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. —Oscar Wilde

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. —Oscar Wilde

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity. —Oscar Wilde

Copy That

Most of my writing this month has been in the form of copywriting and, jeez, do I miss fiction. Churning out “welcome” scripting and press releases makes for a fun occasional challenge, but is no substitute for spending an afternoon putting a character in hot water (figuratively if it’s action, literally if it’s romance) and then figuring out how to get them out again (with a gun if it’s action, with a hot guy if it’s romance).

But one thing that copywriting does provide is practice in how to think about writing. When the word count is proscribed, and the client says that it should be sort of, maybe, be something about this random list of things that has been collected, suddenly it becomes very important to communicate what the over-arching message is. What is the hierarchy of information that needs to be communicated? What does the audience/reader care about? How can we determine what needs to be said and what can be left out? In copywriting, the ability to construct thoughts clearly and to analyze and think critically about a piece come to the forefront. In a novel, an author can spend a bit more time decorating the place with adjectives and allowing characters to spiel off witty bits of dialogue that may not particularly move the story forward. In copywriting, there’s usually room for only one or two adjectives and they had better be the right adjective that supports the speaker or brands character. Copywriting skills are like exercising a new set of muscles and definitely make me a stronger writer. But on the other hand, I’ll be glad to go back to fiction! For one thing, they rarely let me write about hot guys or guns in copywriting.

A New Series with Bite!

I’ve been working very hard this year on multiple projects and I’m finally beginning to be able to share some of them with you.  I’m excited to announce that October will see the release of Book 1 of my new Shark Santoyo Crime Series.  Launching a new series is incredibly difficult and one of the hardest things to garner are reviews on reputable sites like Amazon and Goodreads.  So toward that end I’m giving all of you the opportunity to become a part of my Advance Reader Team.  Sign up using the form below and you’ll be taken to the down load page to get a free digital copy of Shark’s Instinct and in a few weeks I’ll send you a reminder email to leave a review.  That’s it. No strings, just a free book.  I hope you’ll join me as I venture into this new series!

 

Shark’s Instinct: Fresh out of prison and fresh out of luck, twenty-something Shark wants back into The Organization. But when Geier, the mob boss with a cruel sense of humor, sends Shark to the suburbs to find out who’s been skimming his take, Shark realizes he’s going to need more than his gun and an attitude to succeed. With the clock ticking, Shark accepts the help of the mysterious teenage fixer, Peregrine Hays, and embarks on a scheme that could line his pockets, land him the girl and cement his reputation with the gang—if he makes it out alive.

PRE-ORDER HERE or join the Advanced Reader Team using the form below!

 



 
 

Food for Thought

By Bethany Maines
 
 
Last weekend, I participated in a local author program called Food for Thought.  Put on by the local business district in partnership with a local literary group, CreativeColloquy, the program hosts different authors each week at a farmer’s market for a minimal fee ($5).  These type of events are great ways to connect with readers, brush up on my “elevator pitch” for books, and see what’s resonating with the public.  The elevator pitch is essentially a one to two sentence synopsis of a book.  And with that many people visiting the booth, I can try out different versions and wording to see what pitch makes people look interested in a book.  For my Carrie Mae Mysteries, slightly older ladies resonate with “It’s the story of what would happen if Mary Kay ran an international espionage organization.”  But the younger women and men do better with “If James Bond was a woman.”  Even if I didn’t end up selling a good amount of books, that kind of market research is pretty invaluable.  But, of course, being out in the public is also a way to connect with the… um… unique individuals that walk among us.
 
My favorite unique person this last weekend was the gentlemen who told us a series of stories about his experiences with ghosts including some “Indians” because he had been staying at a house built on an “Indian Burial Ground.”  The problem was that as he meandered on about his experiences, the Native Americans he described

sounded straight on out of the movies, and lacked any resemblance to the actual tribes that populate the area.  Not all tribes wear “leathers” crazy face.  Our tribes used capes woven from cedar bark and a type of fabric woven from the hair of a now extinct type of dog.  <LEARN MORE HERE>  So… try being more educated before doing drugs. Also, and not for nothing, if a housing developer were to find human remains, archaeologists and police would have to be called and the local tribes would claim the bodies.  Nobody wants to build on top of human remains – they disintegrate, leaving cavities in the ground and make foundations unstable.  It’s unsound construction, OK, nut job?  And also, also, you’re scaring people away from my booth.
 
But he’s just the tiny fly in the ointment. The majority of people at such events are at minimum polite and usually excited about talking to an actual author.  And in the end, talking to such enthusiastic readers and writers are what keep me coming back to these type of events.  So if you see me out and about, stop by to say hi.  Just

don’t tell me about your ghost experience… unless it’s historically accurate. 
 
 

Nikki Lanier in the Hot Seat

In today’s blog we’re interviewing Nikki Lanier, the star of the Carrie Mae Mysteries and the upcoming Glossed Cause by Bethany Maines. The interview questions are selected questions from Marcel Proust’s Questionnaire of 35 questions intended to reveal an individuals true nature.  So read on to find out what makes Nikki Lanier tick…

Lanier, Nicole

1. On what occasion do you lie?

Most occasions? Sorry, that’s an awkward question. I have to lie to most people on a daily basis. The Carrie Mae Foundation, the non-profit charity branch of Carrie Mae Cosmetics, and my employer, has the extremely simple goal of “helping women everywhere.” But the Carrie Mae founders realized early on that helping women sometimes requires a silk glove of diplomacy and sometimes an iron fist of enforcement. Basically, the Carrie Mae Foundation is part non-profit, part black ops force. And I’m part of the iron fist, but I can’t tell anyone. My boyfriend—the CIA agent—just found though… I guess we’ll see how that turns out.

2. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

A Saturday afternoon at the beach with my friends, my boyfriend, no one shooting at me and no phone calls from my mother. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard to achieve, but it’s been difficult. My friends all work for Carrie Mae, my boyfriend works for the CIA and my mother doesn’t know when to butt out, so getting a free Saturday rarely seems to happen.

3. What is your greatest fear?

That everyone will find out that I’m just faking it. I know they say imposter syndrome is a real thing for women, but I just keep feeling like everyone else has it more together than I do. I mean, yeah, I can speak five languages, but one of those is Latin. And OK, so I can shoot pretty straight and I know how to get into AND out of a bar fight and a foreign country, but I still can’t shake the feeling that other spies have their stuff way more together. Oh, and my other greatest fear is that my father will try to steal the Mona Lisa.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I have a tiny bit of a temper and sometimes something will just set me off. Next thing you know, I’m force feeding someone their lipstick. I have to say though, having a job where I get to punch people on the regular has cut back in my occasional outbursts. Mostly. Sort of. I think.

5. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

Sigh. My hair. I think I’m finally at a place in my life where I’m OK with being a red-head, but there was a lot of my childhood that I hated it. And even now, it just seems to have a mind of its own.

6. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

My boyfriend, Z’ev Coralles. He’s got these brown eyes and this voice that just makes me melt. How am I supposed to resist him? I know I should. My boss would be a lot happier if we broke up, but… He knows how to salsa and then there’s his derriere. Don’t tell anyone, but it should probably have a few poems written about it.

7. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Val Robinson

Does being a selfish jerk count as a trait? My father and my ex-partner, Valerie Robinson, think they can just walk into my life and mess up everything. They don’t apologize; they don’t even care. They just make messes and I’m the one that has to clean up. It would have been a lot easier for me if Val had just stayed dead after I dropped her off that bridge in Thailand. But Val never does what she’s told, even when she’s being told by a bullet to the chest.

8. What is your motto?

I never had a motto until I started working for Carrie Mae—they have quite a few little sayings. Most of them come from the founder – Carrie Mae Robart, she was a tobacco heiress, who turned down her father’s money to start Carrie Mae Cosmetics in her garage. She used to cross-stitch little sayings onto pillows. Currently, my favorite is, “Sunscreen, waterproof mascara, and a silenced .38 will take you just about anywhere you want to go in life.”

Find out what adventures Nikki is up to next in Glossed Cause!

Top Carrie Mae agent Nikki Lanier’s nemesis and ex-partner Val Robinson has returned from the dead and she wants Nikki’s help.  When Val said that Phillipe Lanier—Nikki’s long-absent father—had been kidnapped, Nikki dropped everything—friends, family, boyfriend, to fly to the rescue.  But soon Nikki realizes that her father’s kidnapping may not be what it seems and she may have just tanked her life for one of his ridiculous schemes. As Nikki and Val arrive in Amsterdam, Nikki realizes that if wants to her life back, she’s going to have to not only stop an international arms dealer, but convince her boyfriend, CIA Agent Z’ev Coralles, that she’s not the bad guy and that Carrie Mae isn’t a terrorist organization. But with Philippe refusing to be rescued, and an INTERPOL agent gunning for Val and Nikki, as well as making moves on Z’ev, Nikki is starting to doubt her own abilities. Can she do it, or is it a Glossed Cause?

ORDER GLOSSED CAUSE ON AMAZON

Glossed Cause

Pre-Order on Amazon

Today I’m excited to announce that the fourth book in my Carrie Mae Mystery series—GLOSSED CAUSE—is available for pre-order! (Available August 8th!)

In the Carrie Mae Mysteries you’ll enter a world where the Carrie Mae Cosmetics Corporation has decided that helping women form their own home-based cosmetics sales businesses isn’t enough. They want to help women everywhere, and sometimes that requires more than the protection of waterproof mascara—sometimes that takes a silenced .38 and the ability to kick more than a little ass.

In Bulletproof Mascara we met the red-headed, hot-tempered Nikki Lanier and followed her through training and a first mission with partner, turned traitor, Val Robinson. And in Compact with the Devil and High-Caliber Concealer, we learned more about Nikki, her staunch team of friends, and her tempestuous relationship with the drop-dead-sexy and drop-dead dangerous boyfriend Z’ev Coralles, but in Glossed Cause we’ve come full circle. Val is back and she’s brought nothing but trouble…

GLOSSED CAUSE: Top Carrie Mae agent Nikki Lanier’s nemesis and ex-partner Val Robinson has returned from the dead and she wants Nikki’s help. When Val said that Phillipe Lanier—Nikki’s long-absent father—had been kidnapped, Nikki dropped everything—friends, family, boyfriend, to fly to the rescue. But soon Nikki realizes that her father’s kidnapping may not be what it seems and she may have just tanked her life for one of his ridiculous schemes. As Nikki and Val arrive in Amsterdam, Nikki realizes that if wants to her life back, she’s going to have to not only stop an international arms dealer, but convince her boyfriend, CIA Agent Z’ev Coralles, that she’s not the bad guy and that Carrie Mae isn’t a terrorist organization. But with Philippe refusing to be rescued, and an INTERPOL agent gunning for Val and Nikki, as well as making moves on Z’ev, Nikki is starting to doubt her own abilities. Can she do it, or is it a Glossed Cause?

Pre-Order on Amazon

Clues

Recently, I’ve been working on the sequel to my murder mystery An Unseen Current.  While thematically not that different from my other books (a young person struggles with unusual circumstances while navigating the choppy waters of family, love, and friends), mysteries bring a special level of challenge to the mix.  For one thing, people expect clues.  Oh, there’s a dead body?  Well, writer, where are the clues?  Chop, chop! Produce the clues!

However, it’s not just about clues; it’s about when to reveal those clues.  Too early and readers are bored because they already solved it.  Too late and it seems like the author is cheating and wedging information to justify who the killer is at the last second.  Then, even if the writer does pop a clue in the right place, she can’t be too precious about it.  The author can’t present it on a silver platter with a neon arrow stating: Clue Here!!  To accomplish the correct where and when of clue placement requires a stronger outline than other genres.  And that means that I must do what every writer hates doing—not writing.

Outlining and the synopsis are vital to a successful book.  But they aren’t the FUN part of writing.  The fun part is churning out scenes and spending time with the made up people who populate my brain.  Outlining requires problem solving and all the leg work of deciding back stories and motivations and the literal who, what, when, where and why of who was murdered. (It was Professor Plumb in the Library with the Candlestick, in case you were wondering.)  But mostly it leaves me thinking: Are we there yet? What about now?  Can I start writing now?

So wish me luck as I work out the kinks of how the dead body ended up behind a bar in Anacortes.

You never know what’s beneath the surface.

When Seattle native Tish Yearly finds herself fired and evicted all in one afternoon, she knows she’s in deep water. Unemployed and desperate, the 26 year old ex-actress heads for the one place she knows she’ll be welcome – the house of her cantankerous ex-CIA agent grandfather, Tobias Yearly, in the San Juan Islands. And when she discovers the strangled corpse of Tobias’s best friend, she knows she’s in over her head. Tish is thrown head-long into a mystery that pits her against a handsome but straight-laced Sheriff’s Deputy, a group of eccentric and clannish local residents, and a killer who knows the island far better than she does. Now Tish must swim against the current, depending on her nearly forgotten acting skills and her grandfather’s spy craft, to con a killer and keep them both alive.

Virtually IRL

I laughed when I read AB Plum’s recent post about unhooking from the virtual world.  It has been a long time since I didn’t enhance my RL (real life) experience with some sort of virtual interaction.  Photos on Facebook, the occasional witty comment on twitter, blogs and websites, they are all part of my life. Partially this is simply a function of my life and jobs.  As a graphic designer and a writer, social networking is part of the must do list. As a designer, it’s important that I be able to design ads for Facebook and other social media platforms and understand how the platforms function.  As a writer, it’s important that I use those platforms to reach an audience.

Which is not to say that I’m an expert.  As a designer, I get to create content and simply walk away.  The writer half of me definitely has it harder.  I have to remember to post (you wouldn’t think this was hard, but…), to come up with valuable and interesting content, and then not waste all of my writing time on marketing and social media.  On the other hand, for the last six months I’ve been swinging very much the other way.  I have not been doing a lot of marketing.  I have in fact been writing.  A lot.  A ton.  Lots of tons.  So much so that I’ve planned out my releases for 2018 and 2019. 

So, stay tuned for tons of updates later this summer.  Crime, sci-fi, a touch of fairy tales, and of course more than a little bit of romance are heading your way.  And strangely, I can’t wait to start marketing ALL of it.  If you want to get in on early give-aways (print and digital!) and announcements, join my mailing list at: bethanymaines.com/contact

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ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE STILETTO GANG 6.14.17