Cheri Baker's Blog, page 2

Finding My Groove

Good morning! I’m getting a late start today, but I’ve got my thumpy musicon and I’m easing into my groove with this blog post. I had an excellent writing day yesterday, and I even managed to squeeze in an Artist’s Dateover the lunch hour.

A View to Die For stands at 30,153 words this morning, which puts me at about the halfway mark. I’ve got a dead body (of course), a pair of scrappy young police officers on the case, and an entire island full of new personalities.

Starting a new series can ...

My Writing Challenge Begins

Good morning! The sun is shining today, and the city is cool and bright. It’s jacket weather, but a fleece will do if you hurry. We walked through the market and picked up our morning coffee. The vendors were setting up their tables, the brick arcade was mostly empty, and the season of fresh flowers is coming to an end. Half the bouquets are dried blossoms now. I’ve always found those ugly, but to each their own.

Yesterday I started my fall writing challenge, and I crossed the finish line at 5:...

My 2021 Writing Challenge

Back in 2019, I wrote a series of blog posts for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo takes place every November, and during that month thousands of writers from all over the world take up the challenge of writing a novel in a month. Via the “rules” of NaNoWriMo, you win the challenge if you write 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days.

October is sometimes called Preptober because many writers spend the month preparing a for NaNoWriMo. Writing those 1,667 words per day can be easier if you have ...

How the Kindle Won Me Over

I bought my first Kindle earlier this year, up until that point I was pretty sure that I didn’t want one. And I still prefer paper books to digital ones, all things being equal. Yet despite my stated preferences, I buy more ebooks than I do paper books. Here are the reasons why:

I travel a lot (when we’re not in a pandemic), and paper books are bulky.Ebooks are often more affordable than physical books.Library holds usually arrive faster when I order the digital version.I live in a small spa...

Summer Writing Update

Wow! It’s the last day of August already. Summer is slipping through my fingers, and it’s time for my quarterly writing update. These posts help keep me focused, and for anyone who’s curious, they offer a sneak peek at what I’m working on and what’s coming next.

What I���m Writing

I’m currently hard at work on three writing projects, and I expect them to keep me busy well into fall.

Hostile Takeover (Emerald City Spies Part III)

A View to Die For (Butterfly Island Mysteries #1)

The Queen o...

Authors, Please Don't Do This

I need to talk about author newsletters for a second. Why? Because I love getting email from authors but lately I’ve been unsubscribing from newsletters left and right, all due to an easily avoidable mistake.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of duplicate email from authors. I’ll receive the same email message twice. Sometimes it happens weeks apart, and once it happened twice in the same day! I dug into this little mystery, and what’s happening is that newsletter services like Mailchimp are rolli...

My New Release: The Case of the Fond Farewell

Good morning, blog buddies.

I have a new book out today! The Case of the Fond Farewell is sixth Ellie Tappet mystery.

When I started writing Ellie’s story I had a notion of where it started and where would end. Fond Farewell was intended to be the final installment. But as I wrote, I felt hesitant. Was I ready to say goodbye?

Admittedly, I have a chip on my shoulder about long series. As a reader, I get cranky when a character arcs are dragged out for no good reason. Good stories deserve good en...

Roadtripping to the Stanley Hotel

Sometimes a setting can grip our imagination so strongly a story grows out of it like a plant from the soil. Perhaps that’s what happened when Stephen King visited the historic Stanley Hotel back in the seventies. He stayed there one night, had nightmares (rumor has it), and wrote The Shining based on a single night within those walls.

I love travel because I love setting. I collect details like I used to collect rocks as a child; my pockets bulge at the end of the day. Edinburgh’s slick black p...

On Being an Author Without Social Media

Good afternoon, internet travelers.

Today’s post is a quick note to acknowledge that I’ve left Twitter and I don’t plan to return. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, thanks! It’s been a pleasure to be connected to so many great people. As an alternative way of staying in touch, I encourage you to sign up for my newsletteror add my blog to your RSSreader of choice.

I hope I can disengage from social media without giving the wrong impression. Readers: you’re important to me, and I want to b...

Back to Life

Greetings from wild and windy Seattle! We’re back from our road trip and in our familiar digs. When we left town I was so dang sick of staring at the same walls, and out the same window, waiting for the pandemic to end. But my time away has given me fresh eyes and a new perspective. My tiny condo no longer feels like a prison cell. Our couch fits to my back like a comfy catcher’s mitt, worn in all the right places. I’m appreciating all that I have at home, from my ergonomic desk chair and clicky...