Kassandra Lamb's Blog, page 38
April 3, 2017
Honolulu Havoc: The Pros and Cons of a Conference in Paradise
Left Coast Crime 2017 convened in Hawaii. The allure is almost too obvious to mention. There’s—well—the setting, the elaborate Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki. Warm weather, sunsets on the beach, Diamond Head in the distance.
Beach in front of hotel.
For many attendees the conference was a great excuse to escape a March roaring in like a lion. Almost every participant I talked to had extended his/her stay. Sisters in Crime Guppy President, Jim Jackson, and his wife, Jan Rubens, planned a m...
March 27, 2017
A Peek Behind the Curtain: How We Come Up with Book Covers
by Kirsten Weiss
While cover design is certainly not the most stressful part of the book publishing process, it has its quirks. A good cover doesn’t tell the story, but it does need to do three things:
Grab the reader’s attention and make them curious about the story
Thumbnail size on Amazon
Tell the reader what type of story they’re buying – funny mystery, spooky suspense, lighthearted romance. This information needs to be easy to identify when the reader is looking at a thumbnail sized ima...March 20, 2017
Spring Flowers: More Than Just a Pretty Face
by Kassandra Lamb (on behalf of the gang)
This post is part of a Spring Fling Blog Hop sponsored by our sister author, Kirsten Weiss. Below is a list of more fun and interesting posts about Spring!
We at misterio decided to do a group post about our favorite spring flowers and what they mean to us. This ended up evoking some interesting insights, emotions, and memories.
We’ll start with the newest member of our misterio press family, Gilian Baker.
My favorite flower is the daffodil. When I...
March 13, 2017
Taking Risks and Reaching Out
by Kassandra Lamb
(photo by Andreas Praefcke, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia) Commons)
Shannon Esposito and I are doing our happy dance again, because we have a new member in our misterio press group.
But I must say that we approached the idea of inviting this new author with some trepidation. Not because we didn’t think she would be great (we did), but because it had been awhile since we’d brought in someone new.
Our little group had gotten quite cozy and comfy with each other. Did we really want t...
March 6, 2017
Inner Beauty vs. the Ugliest of Emotions
by Kassandra Lamb
This post is part of the 2017 Beauty of a Woman Blogfest, sponsored by the wonderful August McLaughlin. Please go to her site to see the other great posts in this wonderful event—some are funny, some are serious, all are entertaining and informative.
Physical beauty has little to do with attractiveness for me. I’m much more focused on inner beauty. And inner beauty is emotional (and is reflected in the person’s body language). Is the person warm and kind and seems comfortab...
February 28, 2017
3 Reasons Why a Sleuth Can Never Take a Vacation
by Kathy (K.B.) Owen
Ah, the chance to get away from it all. Our sleuth (amateur or otherwise) is more than ready to leave the bustle behind and relax, dig her toes in the sand, perhaps sip a cool beverage beside the water. Not a care in the world.
Nope. Not gonna happen. The mystery writer is there to ruthlessly yank that illusion away. Bwahaha.
Why so heartless? Because vacationing is the perfect occasion for mayhem and murder. Here are three reasons why:
State of mind.
No one wants to dea...
February 20, 2017
Where The Research Takes Us: How To Kill Your Characters
Kass here to tell you about today’s guest blogger, cozy mystery writer Gilian Baker, who is about to release her debut novel, Blogging Is Murder (which I review below).
She will entertain us with a fun little post on how to kill one’s characters (I swear, the FBI is going to come knocking any day now).
First, let’s get to know Gilian a bit…
Gilian Baker is a former writing and literature professor who finally threw in the towel and decided to just show ‘em how it’s done. She has gone on to f...
February 17, 2017
8 Tips for Short and Sweet Descriptions in Fiction
by Kassandra Lamb
For the writers among our subscribers, I’m over at The Write Stuff today, talking about some of the best ways to make descriptions of settings and characters as efficient as possible. I’ve included some interesting info I learned as a psychologist and college professor, about how people process input through their senses.
8 Tips for Short and Sweet Descriptions in Fiction
A few deft strokes often will suffice.
While editing the book I’m releasing tomorrow, and especially whi...
February 13, 2017
Love Mellowed
by Kassandra Lamb
Love, like cheese and wine, tends to get better with age, in a mellow kind of way. Oh yes, it can go in the direction of moldy or potentially turn into vinegar, but more often than not, it mellows into a very deep friendship.
My favorite model for understanding love (if one can ever understand love) comes from a psychologist named Robert Sternberg. He put a whole new twist on the concept of a love triangle.
First he distilled love down into three components: passion, intima...
February 6, 2017
February, the Runt of Months
by Kassandra Lamb
Contemplating this month of February that we’ve just entered got me thinking about being the shortest or smallest in a group—a team, a classroom, a family, etc.
We humans are fairly obsessed with size, as if that’s some indicator of power and, in turn, worth. Small equals powerless equals unworthy.
Photo by Torsten Bolten CC-BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia Commons
Big equals better. Bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger you-know-whats…
Look at football players. Definitely bigger is better,...
