Okay, the only secret I'm talking about here is in the title of the eighth book in my Silver Rush series, THE SECRET IN THE WALL. So please feel free to share the news! First, it has been showing up on a number of awards lists (all of which warm the cockles of my little writerly heart): Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Traditional Novel (awards will be presented on June 24, at the WWA convention in Rapid City, South Dakota) Finalist for the Foreword INDIES Award for Mystery (winners will be announced online June 15) Nominee for Left Coast Crime's Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery (attendees vote at the conference, and winners are announced at the banquet on March 18) Second, you certainly have a chance to win (and keep!) a copy of SECRET by entering a Goodreads giveaway contest (sponsored by my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press / Sourcebooks), which runs through March 25. Just go here , click on the "Enter Giveaway" button, and fil...

Right on the heels of our month exploring humor (September) is our month on FEAR (October). So hang onto your hats, turn on the lights, and muffle the screams (or not), because I've rounded up some lists of scary reads for you to indulge in (or avoid).  Let's start at the top and go all out with Daryl Chen's 20 Scariest Books of All Times over at the Reader's Digest site. The post includes covers and short summaries, so you can pick and choose how you prefer your frights. Stephen King is well represented in the previous list, and his works appear as well in Buzzfeed's 23 Books That are Actually Really, Really Scary . ADDENDUM : King also appears prominently in another Buzzfeed article: 23 Books That Actually Freaked People Out So Badly, They Had To Stop Reading. (And here's a shout-out to my local indie bookstore, Towne Center Books , for mentioning this particular list. Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay Okay, I'm officially freaked o...

Home to Thanksgiving. George Henry Durrie [Public domain] Published by Currier and Ives. Thanksgiving is upon us—the season for gratitude and overeating in the good old U.S. of A. So, while you are digesting pumpkin pie and partaking of spiced cider (or perhaps something stronger), why not curl up with a good book and nourish your mind and imagination? Here are some lists where you can find Thanksgiving-themed stories, from mysteries to children's books to romances and more…  Let's start with Murder & Mayhem , because, well, why not? They have a delicious list of seven mysteries to start off our feast .  Where would we be without a plethora of offerings from the Cozy Mystery List ? Probably starving!  Here is Mystery Fanfare with some additional tasty entrees in the mystery genre. Moving beyond mysteries, Goodreads will definitely provide you with plenty to chew on. Let's start with their " Listopia list of Listopia lists " for Thanksgiving-...

We haven't played this game in a while, so it's time to start it up again. I present a topic, ask some questions, and offer my answers. You pick one or more questions to also answer. If you only choose one, please expand. If more, please shorten. You're allowed to include one website URL or blog link of your own. Okay, here goes: Which social media sites do you visit? ( not including blogs or Yahoo groups) In the order of how often I visit them: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus, and Goodreads. Which do you find most relaxing? Hands down, that would be Pinterest. I can't resist all the pretty pictures. I wish I had more time to play there.  Which do you find most stressful? Facebook is definitely the most stressful. People are not bashful about expressing opinions there, which don't always coincide with mine. Trying to offer a differing opinion, even politely, gets me into trouble, so I don't try too often.  Lin...

You only have one opportunity to create “buzz” about your book, and you don’t want to squander it. The hope is to create enough excitement about your release so that it explodes from the gate. My gate opens—hopefully with a bang—less than three months from now, on January 28. Pre-sales As you can see by the number “14” applied to this monthly post, I’ve already been creating buzz for The Art of Falling for some time now. So much so that every now and then—when people say, “Didn’t that already come out?”—I have to remind them that the bees haven’t already fled the hive! Once you get fully invested readers to pre-order, however, you can stop worrying about that. Now that pre-orders are live and the final copyedits complete, my evolving author website devotes two pages to my novel.  The first  shows the cover, a brief synopsis, trade review praise and blurbs, and—for the first time—debuts the opening chapter. If the reader is favorably impressed, she need d...