June Shaw's Blog, page 29

Personal Research of the Wrong Kind

By Chester Campbell

Some of my colleagues have been discussing the problems of aging lately, so I might as well join the club. Actually, my situation is not so much age related except as it applies to the slowness of recovery. When my wife and I booked a week at a resort on Tampa Bay for the end of September, I looked forward to some relaxing days with a bit of writing when the spirit moved me. We planned to drive halfway from Nashville the first day, then finish up on the day of check-in.

Tra...

When You're in Pain

By June Shaw
I had planned to write a nice long blog today about writing. Because I wound up in major pain, I won’t write much. The creative well has dried.

I sat at my desk two days ago and reached over on the floor for a piece of paper holding into I wanted to use. That’s when it happened. The pull. The ache starting from my back and running down through my thigh and shin to my foot. Sciatica.

I’d pulled my sciatic nerve once when I was pregnant, and the doctor told me to lie on my opposite s...

Getting Out of Bed Is the Hardest Part

by Jackie King
Once upon a time I could jump out of bed, slip into jeans and a T-shirt and be ready to go. I could even skip makeup if I wanted. But times have changed. Getting dressed in the morning has become a complicated thing. First of all I have to sit on the side of the bed and stare into space for a few minutes. I call this ruminating.
This ruminating, or pondering or musing or reflecting, can get out of hand, especially for a writer. Every fleeting thought about the past has...

Shadow Selves

by Bill Kirton
This is another of those answers to ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ Many years ago, an anaesthetist friend said that if I ever wanted to do some research on surgical procedures and operations generally, he could arrange for me to visit an operating theatre and see how it all worked. My first thought was that I’d probably faint, be a nuisance and get in the way, but it was a great chance to do some real observing, so I said ‘yes please’. Just a few days later, I got the call...

Out of Respect

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Wyoming Cold Cases Solved

As Wyoming lies beneath a thick blanket of snow, two chilling cold case murder mysteries have allegedly been solved. An elderly married couple accused of killing four people more than thirty years ago have admitted murdering their former spouses as well as two young boys.
 
I recall hearing about the disappearances of Virginia Uden and her two young sons, Reagan and Richard, while I was driving alone in Wyoming during the early 1980s, interviewing re...

A COLOURFUL DEATH now in paperback

by Carola

My third Cornish mystery comes out in a paperback edition in the US on October 10th.
The Cornish mysteries are set in the late '60s/early '70s, in Cornwall, one of the most picturesque areas of Britain.
The coast is indented with rocky, cliff-bound coves providing harbours over the centuries for fishermen and smugglers alike. With small towns, built of local granite and roofed with local slate, and glorious scenery, Cornwall has long been a haunt of holiday-makers--and artists. Large p...

Freebie Book Promotion Followup

By Chester Campbell

It has been two weeks since my second Greg McKenzie mystery, Designed to Kill, had a three-day freebie book promotion with BookBub. The results are a mixed bag. There were 49,287 free downloads on Amazon. Bill Kirton said he didn't have such large numbers but sold 9,000 books. He's obviously in a different league from me. I've never sold 9,000 books under any circumstance.

I was disappointed with the sales of Designed to Kill, which have only numbered 35, plus six borrows,...

Re-releasing a Book

By June Shaw

Getting a book published is exciting, especially when it's your first one. Getting it published again adds more excitement, mainly when it's a new edition with additional editing and a different cover.

I've had so much fun to finally be selling one and then another and so on of books I write. It been amazing to watch the various editions of the same book. For example, Five Star published RELATIVE DANGER, first book in my series of humorous mysteries, in hardcover with one cover. Ha...

Doctor, There Is No Minor Surgery

By Jackie King
Writers share the same problems as the rest of the population, but we have the advantage of recycling our misery. We even have the audacity to call this “research.” The truth is anything we novelists experience, sooner or later turns up in our books.
I’ve been writing about the complications of aging. And believe it or not, I'm doing this in order to cheer myself up. (This sentence sounds dumb even to me, but it’s the truth.)
On September 16, I had a pacemaker implant. It...