Karin Kaufman's Blog, page 3

Eight Christmas Mysteries for a Snowy Day

Any time is the perfect time to read a mystery, but there’s something about reading in winter—with a cup of tea, curled up by the fire—that is especially delicious. (And if the mystery you’re reading features bitter, snowy weather, so much the better.) If you’re looking for a good Christmas/winter mystery, I’ve compiled a list […]

I just love Halloween church signs

 

Audiobooks and a New Mystery

Where has the time gone? Just yesterday it was spring, and now, in a couple of days, it will be autumn. My pre-New Year’s resolution is to keep up with my website’s blog, posting here at least twice a month, hopefully more.

But I haven’t been goofing off all spring and summer. I wrote a new Anna Denning mystery, The Sacrifice, which will be available on Amazon on September 26 and Kobo and Barnes & Noble soon after. Once again Anna faces sinister goings-on in Elk Park, Colorado, and this time the story revolves around Halloween. I had a lot of fun writing this one.

I’ve also been working with Becky Doughty of BraveHeart Audiobooks to produce audiobook versions of the first two Anna Denning mysteries, The Witch Tree and Sparrow House (a cozy but spooky ghost story that would be perfect for Halloween, by the way). Becky did a fantastic job on the narration.

Happy autumn, everyone. Enjoy the crisp, cool air and soak in the changing colors. It’s a great time of year!

Finally. Shut up.

I love cemeteries. I walk my dogs in a local cemetery and solve plot problems while I walk. And occasionally I come across a charming headstone such as the one pictured above.

Look closely at the words above Rosetta’s name: “Finally. Shut up.”

I like headstone humor, but this is a little strange even for me. And probably because I play a lot with words in my head—with the various meanings a single word can take on—I can’t quite make out what Rosetta (or is it T. Jay?) is trying to say here.

Is “Finally / Shut up” a message from Rosetta to T. Jay? Note that Rosetta hasn’t been buried yet. Is she glad she’s had peace and quiet in the years since T. Jay left?

Or is this a message from T. Jay? A last parting shot? Or maybe a loving jab? “Finally. For me, at least, you have shut up.”

Or what about this creepy possibility: Is this message for when Rosetta is one day interred—that is, finally shut up underground?

All Souls on Sale

From now until New Year’s Day, All Souls: A Gatehouse Thriller, is on sale for 99 cents at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Merry Christmas, everybody!

After watching her sister die at the hands of a vicious killer, Jane Piper received an invitation. She answered it.

At twenty-eight she became an assassin, a hunter for Gatehouse, the secret organization that stands between life as we know it and the most ruthless killers the world has ever seen.

 They’re called Sacks. And they’re changing . . .

Now, two years later, these killers are slaughtering innocents as never before, carving a path of terror from New Mexico to Montana. Most disturbing of all, they’re cooperating with one another for the first time. They have a mission.

Staying alive means knowing who is on your side . . .

In a desperate race to uncover that mission, Jane must battle those whose sole purpose is to stop her from discovering the truth. Targeted for elimination by an unknown figure, and facing betrayal at the hands of those whose loyalty she never doubted, Jane begins to question her most deeply held beliefs.

What she discovers will change her life forever.

The New Storytelling World

These are exciting times for storytellers. Ebooks and interactive ebooks, Netflix original series and content aired exclusively online. New opportunities, new ways to tell stories, are opening up all the time. Last May, another first in storytelling was launched: Haunting Melissa, an app-only movie written by mystery and thriller author Andrew Klavan and developed exclusively for the iPhone and iPad.

Essentially a traditional ghost story delivered in an untradional way, Haunting Melissa is about a teenage girl who is convinced she is being haunted by her dead mother. The movie is delivered sporadically to your Apple device in episodes ranging from 1 minute to 20 minutes long.

Part of the fun, and tension, is that after downloading the app, the viewer never knows when a new episode will be delivered—until he receives a notification to download it. And because it’s an app and not a traditional movie, the viewer sees and hears new things when he watches the episodes for a second time.

The app was created by Hooked Digital Media and Neal Edelstein, producer of The Ring and Mulholland Drive. “Haunting Melissa,” says Edelstein, “is a ghost story created to be consumed in a dark corner with headphones on and iPhone or iPad in hand.”

Good times, fun times. And not a gatekeeper in sight.

Two Podcasts No Indie Writer Should Miss

The Self Publishing Podcast (SPP)

Hosted by authors Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt, and David Wright (I’d link to David’s website here, but it seems to have temporarily disappeared from the Internet), this podcast is currently on its sixty-ninth episode. Most often a discussion of writing and the self-publishing business among the three hosts, SPP sometimes features guests—and great ones at that: C.J. Lyons, Joanna Penn, Edward W. Robertson, and Kobo’s Mark Lefebvre, among others.

The podcast’s salty language might make you cringe now and then, but if you can get past that, this show is not only helpful but downright inspirational. And funny. I mean spew-your-drink funny. I don’t know how three guys who didn’t know one another prior to 2011 (2008 for Sean and Dave) manage such chemistry, but they do, and I look forward to watching their podcasts on YouTube like I look forward to watching my favorite shows on TV.

Johnny, Sean, and Dave also do the Better Off Undead (BOU) podcast. It’s less informational than SPP—intentionally so—but every bit as much fun. (The “What’s Up Dave’s Butt” segments are brilliant. If Dave doesn’t assemble his assorted rants in ebook form, he’s missing a golden opportunity.)

You can watch SPP live, listen to episodes on the SPP website, subscribe to it through iTunes, or watch it on YouTube. Check out Sean and Dave’s coauthored books at Collective Inkwell, and find out about Johnny and Sean’s coauthored works at Realm and Sands. You can also follow them on Twitter: @JohnnyBTruant, @SeanPlatt, and @TheDavidWWright (Dave tweets when SPP and BOU are about to go live).

The Creative Penn (TCP)

Author and speaker Joanna Penn, who writes thrillers under the name J.F. Penn, began podcasting on writing, digital publishing, and book marketing as a way to gather information as she traveled her own journey to self-publication, and in the process, she has given the indie world one of the most valuable resources on the Internet.

In her podcasts, which generally run from 35 to 50 minutes, she interviews some of the most knowledgeable authors and book marketers around. Past guests have included C.J. Lyons, Jane Friedman, James Scott Bell, L.J. Sellers, Jeff Goins, and Jim Kukral of the Author Marketing Club.

When I first discovered TCP a little over a year ago, I was so hooked on its combination of practical information and optimism that I went back and listened to, or watched on YouTube, almost all the show’s previous episodes—about ninety podcasts in all. It’s that good.

If you’re a fan of thrillers, you should also give Joanna’s new video podcast, Killer Thriller TV, a watch. In each episode, Joanna interviews a bestselling thriller author. J.D. Rhoades, Timothy Hallinan, and Katia Lief have been among her guests.

You can subscribe to TCP through iTunes and watch some episodes on YouTube on The Creative Penn channel. Check out Joanna’s thrillers at her fiction website. For her speaking schedule and information for indie authors, go to The Creative Penn. You can also follow her on Twitter: @thecreativepenn.

Is there a writing podcast you never miss? I’d love to hear about it. Spread the word.

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You keep using that word. I do not think it means . . .

I’ve finally done something I’ve been wanting to do for months: merge my blog with my website. Moving from Blogger to WordPress has allowed that, as has using the Headway framework to build my theme. If the last part of the preceding sentence makes no sense to you, then you’ll recognize this still from a well-known computer-frustration animation:

Until a month ago, I had no idea what a framework was. Turns out it’s the bones on which to hang the design elements of your blog or website. Probably the most popular “easy” framework is Thesis—or at least it was until Thesis 2.0 came out last fall. The new Thesis is not getting rave reviews from everyday users (though website designers like it).

I saw a video tutorial for Thesis 2 on YouTube and ran screaming. First to Genesis, an “easy” framework that is still far too complicated, and then to Headway, a framework for “beginners.” Or so Headway says. This is what I say:

After many hours of watching tutorials and trying things out, I must admit I like Headway, and it does seem to be easier than both Thesis and Genesis, but hey, you techies, unless the word “beginner” translates to “someone who has spent a minimum of ten hours in study,” it’s not for beginners. Real beginners have to look up the word “framework.” Real beginners don’t know what a plugin is—and if they do, they don’t know how to get the plugin plugged in.

Geeks and techies give us wonderful things like frameworks. But I’m convinced that every geek business should employ at least one person who does not breath air from the geek bubble, an “outsider” who sees the word “beginner” and thinks it means what Webster’s says it means, and whose mission is to make customers, not fellow geeks, want to do the happy Snoopy dance.

Now if I can just figure out WordPress and post this blog post properly. Blogger was so much easier.

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All Souls: Free Ebook

My thriller, All Souls, is now available on Amazon.com, under the pen name K.T. Kaufman. This is the first novel in my Gathehouse Thriller series. Currently, the book is free for Amazon Prime members and $3.99 for everyone else, but I will send a free ebook to the first ten readers who agree to post a short review on Amazon.

To claim your free ebook, just email me by clicking on the "Email Karin" button to the right, contact me via Facebook message (the Facebook link is on the right), or add your name and email address to the comments section below this post.

The first ten people to respond will receive a free gift copy. You must have a Kindle or a Kindle app on your computer or other device to read this ebook.

Palming the Magazine

Steve McQueen showing proper trigger discipline with his Colt Government 1911 in The Getaway

At some point or another in my life, I’ve had the opportunity to shoot rifles, pump-action shotguns, revolvers, and pistols—all of which came in handy when I wrote my soon-to-be-out thriller, All Souls (due June 2013).

My experiences with these weapons, and with talking to experts like my father, who knows just about everything there is to know about guns, kept me (I hope) from making embarrassing errors in my book. Not just silly errors like calling a magazine a "clip," but more obscure errors—at least obscure to us non-experts.

As I wrote my book, questions I hadn’t considered while plotting it kept coming up. How many shells can a pump-action shotgun hold? What caliber cartridge (never say "bullet" unless you’re talking about the projectile at the tip of a cartridge) should my characters, male and female, use? Which is better for concealed carry, a shoulder holster or a belt holster? If a character uses a belt holster, does she carry inside or outside the belt?

In one scene, my protagonist, Jane Piper, needs to rapidly switch magazines in her pistol. There’s a lull in the battle, but she knows the threat can and probably will return at any second. Wisely, while firing she counted down her shots, so she’s aware that there is one cartridge left in her mag (meaning the gun’s slide has not locked open, which it does when you’re out of ammo). Time to change mags.

So what does she do next? I knew she would drop the magazine by depressing the release, but how would she slip in a new mag? With her fingers? And where would the second mag come from, her pocket?

It turns out that the fastest and most accurate way to insert a new magazine is to extend your arm so your gun is in front of you at chest level. Then, as you release the mag, you (1) cant the gun so you can see or feel for the mag well, (2) take hold of the new mag, (3) palm it in (push it in with the palm of your hand), and (4) rack the gun’s slide.

You keep the magazine in a pouch on your belt, not in your pocket. The extra mags should be aligned properly so you don’t have to realign them before palming them in, and you always take hold of a mag in the correct way, with your index finger pressed along its front. My heroine has practiced this move so many times that she does it by feel—not by looking at the well—which allows her to keep her eyes on the threat.

Obviously I don’t describe every step of this process—that would stop the action and bore the reader—but I need to know what the process is so I don’t make an error. For instance, sometimes my heroine carries a Seecamp, a tiny pistol with a European-style magazine release (at the bottom rear of the grip, so you can’t depress it with your trigger finger or thumb). When she does, the process of changing magazines is slower, and she’d probably have to take her eyes off what’s going on for a second or two.

If you don’t have access to guns and firing ranges, or experts who can answer your questions, there are many helpful resources on the Internet. Youtube, a goldmine, has some great videos, covering everything from the basics to more advanced information. For instance, maybe you want your hero to turn his pistol sideways as he’s shooting, like they do on TV. First, I beg you, don’t. Second, watch this video on proper gun grips. There’s more to gripping a pistol than you think.

If you need to refresh your memory on a particular gun you’ve tested, or if you don’t have access to a gun but still want to use it in your book, do a Youtube search for it. Many videos feature specific guns, like the Ruger Security-Six .357, a super-reliable revolver with a great feel, and the classic Remington 870, a pump-action shotgun used in my thriller.

Of course, nothing beats hands-on experience, so the best thing you can do as an author, if you write scenes involving guns, is visit your local shooting range (every state has them) and try out your weapon of choice.

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