Rae Sanders's Blog, page 2

Talk About Murder

What do sisters talk about on a rainy Saturday morning? I don’t know about others, but my sister and I really enjoy talking about murder. I mean we really enjoy it. We talk about other things, family and what’s happened during the week, but when we start on the subject of murder we become almost giddy.

For awhile it seemed as if every entry on my facebook was about someone’s recipe. There were even taking pictures of whichever dish they had made a posting it. I was almost ready to drop my facebook account. If they were only talking about murder I could have participated. Who, why, where and how. Means, motive, and opportunity draw Rae and me in more than any other ingredients.

I don’t want other family members to become concerned, either about us or that stray gene floating around our DNA. You are all as normal as anyone with our bloodlines can be. Probably.

So I’ll get back to thinking about my favorite past time and let you all get on with your lives. And cooking is good, I don’t mean to say it isn’t. I just prefer my microwave and murder to anything else.

The Open Road

The neighbors moved the other day. Last Sunday my daughter and I watched them pull away in their U-Haul. It’s not like we even knew them, we didn’t. The lived in the next complex and other than seeing their stuff sitting in the grass waiting to be loaded into the back end of the truck we weren’t aware of their existence.

As they drove past us sitting on our little deck enjoying the weather I felt a longing in my chest. A longing to be in their shoes. Almost a need to be on that open road.

I looked at my daughter and she said she felt the same. Not that the idea of packing up every last scrap is enticing, it isn’t, but getting those boxes and bags into the back of a U-Haul and setting off on an adventure is very damn enticing.

It is because we’ve moved around a lot. Not as much as military families but a lot more than most people we know. There are folks who have never ever lived anywhere but in one town. Some in one house. This boggles our collective minds.

By the time I started kindergarten I had moved four times. By the time I started third grade we had moved twice more. When I graduated from high school there were six more moves to add. And we won’t even talk about after I was older. And why did we move so much you might ask. We might ask the same thing and I could probably tell you but it would take some extensive counseling and I just don’t want to go there right now. The thing is, even after I had my kids we (or I should admit that I) kept moving and now my daughter loves it as much as I do.

We will really try to stay put until her boys graduate from high school. That’s in three more years. But we are already talking about saving moving money and where we want to go. We may not go together, but we will each find our open road and embrace the thrill of moving on.

The Active Mind of a Writer

So everyone knows that in order to write one must have a good active imagination. I mean you have to be able to people a whole story with fictional characters. Characters born of your active mind. What people don’t know is our dirty little secret. (If I tell, you have to promise to never let another soul know I said anything.) Writers can find more ways to postpone actual writing than the Colonel has nuggets.

I know because I have used every one of them this past week: check a bank balance, surf for information you may need one day, do a load of laundry, clean the kitchen, fold the load of laundry and my favorite, take a nap.

Still, I have managed to get a lot of work done. Several thousand words actually. And Rae and I are making progress on getting through our second book edit. Still a lot of wasted hours doing little or nothing. I’m getting old enough I sure don’t need to waste any time at all.

So, I should either blog more or write more. Right now I want to get back to the world of make-believe.

Later Annie

So It’s Time To Blog

This space is headed “What’s On Your Mind”. Wow. That leaves it wide open.

Had a call this morning canceling the boy’s ortho appointments today. Patty had to take the time off work so orthodontist can give HER his consult. No regard for the hours she has to miss work and the cut to her paycheck. I have taken the boys to this office for two years now for their check-ups, but I can’t sign them in to see the God powerful Orthodontist.

Yes, we have the signed letter allowing me to take the boys in for work. I do this for the MD for check-ups and to the dentists—but this is the ORTHODONTIST. The dentists will talk to me, this jerk won’t and I guess that has hurt my vanity, pride, self-importance. Not to mention Patty’s paycheck.

So everyone, be aware that in a future book I am going to kill an orthodontist!!! I want to do it slowly, painfully and with lots of blood.

So much for venting this morning.

Rae and I are almost done with our second book. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal in and of itself, but it has taken us many moons and a couple of scrapped starts to get to this place.

Have another blog brewing in the back of my mind and will be here again in a couple of days.

Annie

Murder in the First

She shot him and as she watched him hit the floor like a sloppy bag of garbage it felt good to know she was rid of bad rubbish even though she knew his kind of rubbish wasn’t recyclable and she would have to dispose of his body in a landfill which would definitely put her over the average of four pounds of waste per person per day.

One day it’s May, the next day…September

Rae and Annie in Springtime

The lyrics to The September Song* says in part “It’s a long, long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.” I’ll be damned if I haven’t reached September. It has shocked me. Springtime rushed into summer and before I was done basking in the warmth I find I have irreversibly slipped into the autumn of my life. No, I am not ready, but here it is. I can only hope December approaches slowly and I can dance a little longer in the autumn sun.

(*composed by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Maxwell Anderson)

Rae

My Trouble With Correct Commas;

You will notice I used a semi-colon here. (More on those another day, because they can also be a problem.)

I use a program which checks my word choice and punctuation. I use spell-check, but from and form are spelled correctly just not interchangeable. I also have searched the internet for educational programs on the use of commas and my sister has explained them to me countless times. I have even subscribed to motivational guides on how to express my own voice and ignore the old fashioned school of punctuation. These are good because they make you feel your writing is worthwhile, meaningful (at least to you) and, well, expressive. To top it all off, I read. All. The Time. I’m not sure I like that form of exclamation, but I see it– all the time. This inspires me at the same time it gives me cold chill in my gut because I can see my first-grade teacher, Miss Gripp, standing in from of our class clutching her bony arms over her flat chest, frowning at that bold statement. I’m old enough we learned cursive writing and basic punctuation early with a #2 pencil and double lined paper. Now it’s done with either thumbs and an emoji on a phone, or in an e-mail with odd abbreviations and more emojis.

But I digress.

I can tell you there are many, many writers out there writing away without the use of commas. Entertaining stories that I enjoy, and really that’s all that counts, right? Even if they don’t use a comma where I know damn well my sister would put one. It does bother me a little that I see where a comma should probably be, but am not really sure.

No matter what the others are doing or not doing, I want to be the rebel who writes from my heart and not worries about what a long ago teacher or even my sister would say. I want to write because I love it and not worry if I did the commas correctly. But I also feel as if I’m standing in front of the entire world showing everyone I am uneducated and a hack when I either misuse a comma or fail to use on. That’s the word I’m looking for, fail. If that comma is not there, I am a failure. (I wanted to pause between there and I, and as I understand it that’s what a comma is for. Among other things. )

The bottom line is— I have not done something I can be proud of.

Maybe, as I get older, (and I’m not sure just how much older I can get to be at this point) I won’t worry so much about the day I missed out on learning about commas, and just go for it and write.

By the way, I would really like for you to just read this without checking for comma usage.

Annie

Annie Types – Summertime and the Livin’ is Hectic

Rae and I were just talking about how hard it is for either of us to get anything done during the summer. By ‘anything’ we mean writing. We find that often there just isn’t enough time. Also, being women we give to others before we give to ourselves, but that is another blog. I am sure all of you are just as busy during the nice weather. For those of us in the Midwest this is about the only time we can get out there and enjoy the great outdoors. Hopefully all of you are enjoying summer, too, but will find the time to read a good book or two. Speaking of a good book, check out the new Liz Elder book, Fate, which should be ready to go after the first of July.

Is this the time to admit that I, Annie Irvin, am also Liz Elder? I guess so, since I just did. Fate is an entirely different book (adult content and all) from Final Sale but there are those eclectic readers who like it all.

I cannot make an idle promise to any of you that I will be writing blogs on a regular schedule, but I will try to be a little better about communicating. After all, that’s what writing is all about isn’t it? Communication.

With that in mind, here is blurb from Fate. Hope you all have a good summer, use sun screen, and read a book!

Excerpt from Fate

By Liz Elder

Stolen diamonds, a murdered federal agent, a serial rapist taunting the law by leaving his mauled murder victims in plain view, and a desperate kidnapper with nothing to lose. It’s just another day in the life of DOJ Special Agent Matt Reed and Chief of Police Geri Gable. But dealing with all that crime isn’t the riskiest business Matt and Geri came up against. Danger is a walk in the park compared to overcoming the passion that took the two of them by surprise and won’t let go—that will be the most dangerous thing they must tackle if they want to join forces and successfully play the hand Fate dealt them.

We Welcome Guest Blogger, Author Liz Elder

Hi, Rae and Annie. Liz Elder here and it’s really wonderful to take a few minutes this morning to chat. Like everyone else, I’m waiting for Maggie McCarthy and Fred Abbott’s wedding to take place in the next installment of the Bittersweet Hollow series, which I got to take a peak at over the weekend. Too bad the uninvited wedding guest showed up early and dead. Hope they can catch that killer before the big day, but so many people wanted that man permanently removed.

I’ve had an amazing last few days with my creative crew working on the cover of my new book FATE. I can’t wait to share it with all of you but you have to be aware FATE is not a cozy mystery. Geri Gable and Matt Reed are just getting started, and they inhabit a much different world than Maggie and Fred’s Bittersweet Hollow. But as Rae would say, fiddle-dee-dee, it takes all sorts, doesn’t it, Miz Elder.

Annie, Rae and I recently met up with an old friend at a high school graduation. She’s our biggest fan. Kudos to friendships. They can warm your heart and give you just enough of a boost to continue along that writing path.

Everyone take care and I’ll let you know where and when you can do the seemingly impossible and get your hands on FATE. Liz

Annie Types – On How I Type

Rae told me today that we need to blog about why or how we write.  The easy one is the how.  The how would be on a computer, very slowly and often with great difficulty.  What did the first writers do when they wanted to change something?  Re-chisel it in the rock?  How did Shakespeare, Austin, Ben Franklin manage?  Just cross out a word or several words or a whole paragraph with their quills?  For that matter, before the age of the PC how did anyone manage?  (I love spell check.  The only thing worse than my spelling is my lack of understanding punctuation.  I cannot grasp the comma.)

But, back to how do we start?  Who can say where the ideas come from?  I remember an afternoon when Rae and I were with our grandmother and we ‘wrote’ a story.  It wasn’t written down, we just each thought of a sentence.  A round robin sort of thing.  We did something about a pirate ship down in the mangos as I lay there thumbing my nose.  Maybe we should have written it down.

Anyway, when it comes to the Bittersweet Hollow stories one of us has the initial idea.  I think it’s always Rae.  She leads in the cozy mystery writing, I only follow.  You would have to read her blog to see how she thinks of these things.

Another thing Rae does very well is outline the story.  A good outline is half the battle.  You really need to know where you are going and what is going to happen and how the whole thing is going to end before you write a word.  Rae and I wrote a couple of stories before Final Sale and we didn’t outline so about halfway through we were stumped.  Not that it stopped us.  It just took us longer to finish because we had to stop and do an outline.

The outline can be done on the computer but I think we both outline on paper.  I do anyway.  I just free associate most of the time.  I have always been a list maker so I like to take a problem or situation and write several different cause-and-effect scenarios.  I guess writing is like construction.  Whether you construct a building or sew a dress or bake a cake you follow a set of steps.  And like any of the above there are setbacks and delays and obstacles to overcome.  And the reason we do it with writing books brings us to the Why and that question is for another day.