BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

You no doubt recognize my post title today as a popular saying when life throws you a curve and your best-laid plans need a drastic revision. Along with a popular joke that represents the pain and frustration that accompanies the discovery of the glitch that drives you back there. The joke is this: “If you want to see God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

My now-rejected plans are the result of good news, which is  ironic to say the least. And the good news is that I came close to having the book I entered in Amazon’s Kindle Scout program accepted for publication.

For any of you not familiar with Kindle Scout, Amazon started it a few months ago and, like many Amazon programs, it’s free to authors. All a writer must do is submit a never-before-published novel in one of three genres: Romance, Mystery or Science Fiction. Details can be found by Googling Kindle Scout. Submit your entire novel, along with a brief summary, a very short Blurb, and your Bio, your picture and your book cover image. That information goes on the site and readers, who are the Scouts looking for books they’d like to see published, have thirty days in which to nominate their favorites.

When my thirty days were up, Amazon notified me that my submission was being considered for publication, which would make me eligible for a $1500 advance. I was on Cloud Nine. That was Day One. On Day Two another message arrived, saying in effect, “Sorry, your book is not being considered after all.”

But I wasn’t ready to give up. The novel I entered was the first of a proposed mystery series and Book Two was already written. All I had to do was submit it. And if their judges liked it as much as my first one, they might consider one or both.

Well, not quite. Here’s where my plan fell apart. Book Two needed a lot of work. I’d originally written both books a long time ago and, when they didn’t sell, I put them away and forgot about them. Luckily, I have a pen-pal who’s a lawyer and she spotted all the things I didn’t know about the law when I wrote the second book and that I’d got wrong.

Therefore, instead of spending a few days to prepare and send my submission, I’m faced with a few weeks of work to rewrite and get my facts straight. Would I have spent all those hours researching facts about Titanic while writing COLD APRIL if I were willing to permit mistakes in this mystery novel?

Every writer needs a lawyer (or other professional) to call on at times like this, and I’m grateful my friend came through for me. As I’ve said before, writers with friends are the luckiest people in the world.” (Or maybe Barbra Streisand said that.)

New Years Resolution

Happy New Year.

If you’re like me, or many of my writer friends, New Year’s Day makes you think of New Year’s Resolutions. Do you make some every year? I do. That is, I make the same one - only one, mind you - every year. It’s to write a new book. Naturally, the book is different every time, but the resolution is the same.

Some years ago, I belonged to a critique group which required its members to write down between one and five New Year’s Resolutions, tell no one what they were, and seal them in an envelope. The envelopes were kept by the woman who hosted the meetings. Then, at our first critique meeting of the new year, she’d pull out the envelopes, hand them to the writers whose names were on the outside, and ask us to read what we’d written inside. Usually, we had forgotten what we wrote, especially since an entire year had gone by since writing it. So the reading provoked a lot of gasping or laughter. Plus a few sad sighs.

I soon learned that some resolutions, most of them, actually, were more wishful thinking than genuine resolutions. A resolution should be a Goal, not a fantasy. For instance, how can you resolve to sell a book to a publisher? You have no control over what any publisher will do. That’s a dream, a wish or a fantasy. Especially if the mythical sale involves a major book publisher and you add that your book becomes a New York Times Best Seller or wins the Pulitzer Prize.

No. You can’t control what others do. However, you could write that you intend to query a certain number of publishers or agents. Plus, in these days of self-publishing, you can have a goal of putting a particular book that you’ve written up for sale on Amazon and maybe a reader or two will buy a copy.

Depending on where you are in your writing career, you can make other goals into resolutions. For instance, if you haven’t finished your first novel yet, that could be your resolution. When that’s done, you might make resolutions such as, “Hire an editor to improve my book,” or “Hire a proofreader to go over my manuscript.” Or “Hire a cover artist to design my book cover.” Those are all within your power.

So my one and only resolution for 2015 is going to be “Finish writing A DEATH IN PHOENIX and send it to a Beta Reader to get some feedback.” I think I can do that.

BRITISH VERSUS AMERICAN SPELLING

It’s all English, thank goodness. According to what I read recently, when we split from the British in the 17th century, there was talk of changing our official language to German. Nevertheless, what remains of our attempts to modernize it, has still left us with differences which I, for one, find charming.

I may not write “colour” for “color,” or “honour” for “honor,” since I agree the Norman conquerors should never have left those useless “u”s behind, but I don‘t have any trouble understanding when I encounter them in U.K. published books. However, I’m half English, so perhaps that explains my willingness to accept their spelling and even use some British versions myself.

For instance, I’ve always spelled “theater” as “theatre,” and prefer “grey” to “gray,” but “colonize” instead of “colonise.”

My grandfather, John Ashworth, emigrated to the U.S. in the late 19th century on board the New York. As I remarked in the blurb on the back of my Titanic novel, COLD APRIL, that ship was the one which almost collided with Titanic leaving Southhampton on April 10, 1912. My father’s sister, Eva, married another Englishman, James Shallcross, so I used that name for my COLD APRIL female character.

Therefore, my father was Richard Ashworth and I was Phyllis Ashworth (usually just “Phyll”) at school. In fact, my father having passed on by that time, I used the author name “Phyll Ashworth,” on my very first novel, the 400-page mainstream tome CHOICES.

Many years ago, on my first visit to England, I met one of my father’s cousins who still lived there. Plus, due to a lovely English couple who moved here for several years while the husband worked at United Air Lines with my husband, we have British friends. Corresponding with them, plus reading all those British mysteries growing up, and watching British sitcoms every Saturday night, established my habit of mixing spellings with abandon. And I shall go on doing so in spite of my computer putting squiggly red lines under them.

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I’m off for a two-week Christmas vacation. Happy Holidays to you.

THE ITALIAN JOB

Some of you may remember when this book was originally published in the spring of 2013. I chose a small press, named 5Prince, and they were very nice and efficient. However, my ideas for promotion were different from theirs, so we parted amiably and I got my rights back.

This version has a different cover - although also of Venice - because the cover design belongs to the artist, but the text inside is exactly the same. My current publisher is the one who has done most of my books, and the price is the same as those, $2.99 for the e-book. As you know, I recently offered it free for five days; but if you didn’t get a copy then, here’s your chance.

The novel sat in my computer for a long time before the spring of 2013, while I rethought it and rewrote it, and I finally decided it was time to put it out in the world. There’s also a trade paperback version, and I’m happy to say I sold several copies at the recent Arts & Crafts Fair in the community where I live.

The story is based on the trip to Italy that my husband and I took several years ago. At that time we had a neighbor who was a travel agent and - at a neighborhood get-together - she and I discussed such a trip. I told her we’d been on a couple of tours of Europe that involved a large bus (excuse me, “motor coach,”) and I didn’t want to do that again. She suggested a small tour, only ten people and a guide, using a van, not a bus. To make a long story short, she arranged it for us, my husband added a few more cities to the “Rome, Florence, and Venice” itinerary and off we went.

The van, the tour guide and those cities all appear in my novel. Even the gondola ride, although my husband shared it with me, not the man the book’s heroine met ten days before. Several other things actually happened and found their way into the story. For instance, we did go into the Rome church that has Christ’s manger. And I said it looked like a soup tureen, and we  laughed so hard we made a hasty exit.

When forming a plot for my characters, I often ask myself “what if?” so there was no divorcee with a teen-age daughter on our real tour, and therefore no accusation of molestation. But we did go to Lake Como (and maybe we passed George Clooney’s villa when we crossed the lake) and saw Bennett’s supermarket. Wow! Just Wow!

So, although fiction outweighs the facts in my novel, I hope you enjoy the scenery so much you want to go there yourself, and that the ending satisfies your romantic longings.  Happy reading.

FREE BOOK and ANTHONY AWARD WINNERS

The Anthony Awards - named for Anthony Boucher, who was a mystery writer, editor and reviewer - were held in mid-November at the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Long Beach, CA. Organized differently from other programs, its members make nominations and final voting is held at the actual event. Details are too long to repeat, but the nominations and winners are:

BEST NOVEL
SUSPECT - Robert Crais - Putnam
A COLD AND LONELY PLACE - Sara J. Henry - Crown
THE WRONG GIRL - Hank Phillipi Ryan - Forge
THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS - Julia Spencer-Fleming - Minotaur

Winner: ORDINARY GRACE - William Kent Kruger - Atria

BEST FIRST NOVEL
GHOSTMAN - Roger Hobbs - Alfred A. Knopf
RAGE AGAINST THE DYING - Becky Masterman - Minotaur
RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA - Kimberly McCreight - HarperCollins
THE HARD BOUNCE - Todd Robinson - Tyrus

Winner: YESTERDAY’S ECHO - Matt Coyle - Oceanview

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
THE BIG REAP - Chris F. Holm - Angry Robot
PURGATORY KEY - Darrell James - Midnight Ink
JOYLAND - Stephen King - Hard case Crime
THE WICKED GIRLS - Alex Marwood - Penguin

Winner: AS SHE LEFT IT - Catriona Mcpherson - Midnight Ink

BEST SHORT STORY
DEAD END - Craig Fautus Buck - Untreed Reads
ANNIE AND THE GRATEFUL DEAD - Denise Dietz - Amazon Digital
INCIDENT ON THE 405 - Travis Richardson - Macmillan
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF HOUSEPLANTS - Art Taylor - Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Winner: THE CAXTON PRIVATE LENDING LIBRARY & BOOK DEPOSITORY John Connolly - Bibliomysteries - Mysterious Bookshop

BEST CRITICAL OR NONFICTION WORK
MASTERMIND: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes - Maria Konnikova - Viking Adult
THE SECRET RESCUE - Cate Lineberry - Little, Brown
ALL THE WILD CHILDREN - Josh Stallings - Snubnose Press
TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES - Sarah Weinman, Editor - Penguin

Winner: THE HOUR OF PERIL - Daniel Stashower - Minotaur

BEST CHILDREN’S OR YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
ESCAPE THEORY - Margaux Froley - Soho Teen
ESCAPE FROM MR. LEMONCELLO’S LIBRARY - Chris Grabenstein -
Random House Children’s Books
DANCER, DAUGHTER, TRAITOR, SPY - Elizabeth Kiern - Soho Teen
THE CODE BUSTER’S CLUB - Penny Warner - Egmont, USA

Winner: THE TESTING - Joelie Charbonneau - Houghton Mifflin

BEST TV EPISODE TELEPLAY
BREAKING BAD - “Felina” by Vince Gilligan
THE FALL - “Dark Descent” by Allan Cubit
THE FOLLOWING - Pilot by Kevin Williamson
JUSTIFIED - “Hole in the Wall” by Graham Yost

Winner: THE BLACKLIST - Pilot by Jon Bokenkamp

BEST AUDIO BOOK
HOUR OF THE RAT - Lisa Brackmann - Audible
MAN IN THE EMPTY SUIT - Sean Ferrell - AudioGO
CRESCENDO - Deborah J. Ledford - IOF Productions
DEATH AND THE LIT CHICK - G. M. Matliet - Dreamscape Media

Winner: THE CUCKOO’S CALLING - Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) - Hachette Audio
(Note: Except for the above, publishers of the books which were nominated for Best Audio weren’t shown)

As for gender, there’s 17 women, 19 men, and 3 used “Chris” or initials.

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Thanks for sticking around. My book, THE ITALIAN JOB, will be free on Amazon for five days, November 27 through December 1st. Grab an early Christmas present and have a great Thanksgiving.

VENICE and SAN FRANCISCO

I want to talk about two books this week. One is a new e-book on Amazon, but was published last year by a different small publisher and already has two book reviews. The other has been out two months but has no reviews yet. So I’m putting my request right up front. I’ll send you a free e-book of either one (or both) for honest reviews. They’re both romance novels. Descriptions can be seen on Amazon’s book pages.

THE ITALIAN JOB

Published in 2013 by a small press, it’s about 65,000 words and costs $2.99. It’s written in first person, which is something I seldom do, but seemed right for this story. Just as the title seemed right because the heroine’s job is to write a magazine article about a specific tour of three Italian cities. I loved writing the book because I could relive our trip to Italy. However, except for the background, the scenes of Rome, Florence, and Venice, my experience was nothing like the experience of my book’s heroine. I’m long married and didn’t meet my husband in Italy or on a flight to Rome. I also didn’t meet a divorcee who tried to steal him from the heroine.

THE WEDDING GUEST

This novella is about 28,000 words and costs $1.99. I wrote it for the Kindle World series, FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FIASCO, begun by best-selling author Lucy Kevin (who writes as Bella Andre for her other books). The premise of this World intrigued me since it was to be a “sweet” romance, relatively short, and was to be set in San Francisco, a city I lived in for 25 years. And where I really met my husband. San Francisco is considered very cosmopolitan, and visitors often compare it to European cities. Although I invented the eccentric, identical-twin aunts of the book’s hero, some readers have told me the ladies really exist.

Again, if I send you a free copy of one of these books, will you write and post an honest review? Thanks so much.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Last Sunday marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was there. Well, not exactly. The wall began to come down in November, 1989, and my husband and I were in Berlin five months later, in May of 1990. The city was jammed, due to a VIP meeting to discuss the reuniting of East and West Germany, and there were no hotel rooms available.

People put their names on a list for rooms in private homes, and, while we waited to learn if a room might be available for us, we decided to take a tour of the city. We asked for a taxi driver who spoke English and were rewarded with the services of a young man who drove us everywhere we wanted to go on both sides.

He told his own story of the night the wall began to crumble. His girlfriend was an opera singer, and, every night after his night’s work and her performance, they’d join friends at a café. On that night, a friend rushed in, shouting, “The wall is open. East Germans are rushing through and the guards aren’t stopping them.” Our driver and his friends hurried to the wall to see for themselves, leading to the pictures we’ve all seen of hundreds climbing on the wall, and others taking hammers to knock it down. The taxi driver’s girlfriend and her opera friends celebrated by singing a song about freedom from an opera they’d performed.

The driver took us through East Berlin where we saw the great difference between the cities, such as bullet holes in building walls and rubble in the streets, left over from World War II, now more than forty years in the past. We ended our tour near the Brandenburg Gate where dozens of people lined the street, sitting at tables where they sold pieces of the wall. We bought one.

Of course, we had no idea we’d see all that when we made our travel plans for a trip to Germany a year or more before. We wanted to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau, and, since it’s only given once every ten years and people come from all over the world to see it, early reservations are necessary. That, too, was a memorable experience.

As you may know, when the plague, called the Black Death, struck Europe, thousands of people died. Oberammergau, like other small villages, walled themselves in and refused to let strangers enter. However, one young man managed it and brought the plague with him. After several people died, the village elders held a prayer meeting, vowing that, if they were spared, they would hold a Passion Play every ten years throughout eternity. That was in 1633 and they were and they have. All the villagers take part and many open their homes to travelers. It’s held every day from May through October, and a roof over the audience keeps out rain.

That’s not the only passion play anymore. Almost every country holds one, and many cities in the U.S. do too. Eureka Springs, Arkansas, holds a famous one every year. We came close to seeing that one in 1965 while returning from Texas to Chicago after our niece’s wedding.

Thanks for your interest in my little history story. Next week I hope to have more writing and publishing news. Meanwhile, if you’ve seen a Passion Play or the Berlin Wall, add a comment.