Seven Suspenseful Sentence Sunday - Week Four

Earlier in the evening, I had admired this green-roofed boathouse with its little cupola, the big sloping upper story dormer windows, and the neat white doors of the boat bays. Now, in the light from Tom’s lantern, we confronted the dark cavernous space with the fetid smell of lake. 
The light revealed two big compartments with a pontoon boat floating in one, and an old speedboat moored in the second. The water, made restless by the storm, lapped and sloshed below us, causing something to creak. The lantern beam flitted over a wall plastered with oars, a fishing net, a snorkeling mask, and yellow life preservers.
 “Daddy, this place is scary and there’s no place to sit,” said Shelly when Tom put her down.
Amen to that.

From Promiscuous Mode

Don’t forget to read all the other excerpts of suspenseful sentences.  Hie your browser to: Suspense Sunday Seven Sentence Authors 
 
If you're looking for a good Kindle read with technology, suspense and a touch of romance, try the Shadow Warriors by Judith Copek.

Writing is Rewriting. And Rewriting Again. Yet Again. Arrrghhh!

Writing is weird.  In my novels I write a scene, and go over it the next day.  Fix.  Fix.  Then I go over the scene once more and take it to my writing group.  Bring home.  Fix.  Fix.

Onward.  First draft is finally done, a big achievement.  Listen, there is a reason why first drafts are called, "the shitty first draft."  After a suitable interval, time to tackle the scenes again.

Print the novel, and get out the red pen.  Yikes!  How did this scene already get four rewrites?  It well, it sucks.  Once again, with feeling.
More printing, more red pencils.  Cut them useless words!  Slice!  Dice!  Now we're cookin'.

One would think that everything would be perfect, and one would be wrong.  Where is le mot juste?  Le paragraph juste,  even the scene juste?

Hey, it must be perfect now.  Back to the writing group who hasn't heard it for lo, these many months.

Oh, no!  Back to the drawing board. 

Arrrghhh!  Writing is rewriting. 

Grapeshot

If you're looking for a Kindle novel that must have been rewritten 20 times, here's the link.  Cheap introductory price.  Lots of words for the money.   

The Shadow Warriors on Kindle

Here is a map of the island where the book is (mostly) set.  Learn about an interesting place you probably never heard of.

Seven Suspenseful Sentence Sunday - Week Three

Proposed Cover of World of Mirrors

  This excerpt is from World of Mirrors, which will be published on the Kindle sometime in 2011.

 I stood still, listening, but the only noise was the insects calling and the blood rushing around in my head.  My mouth felt like dry cotton, and I couldn't swallow. Using the shadows of the tall bushes lining the parking lot as cover, I crept toward the disrobing statue, shovel in one hand, paving stone clutched in the other.  My feet crunched on the gravel, but the insect chorus in the bushes covered the sound.  Moisture made the air heavy, and although the night was cool, I had started to sweat.  With each step the paver felt heavier.

About World of Mirrors:

Zara Gray, a high tech consultant has just done something incredibly stupid. She has allowed herself be blackmailed into going to East Germany to help retrieve stolen state-of-the art software. Her partner in this misadventure is T.K. Drummond, a failed spy and Zara’s ex-lover. Now Zara, who barely speaks “survival German,” must navigate a landscape of sociopaths and unrehabilitated Stasi instead of the plummy assignment she has been promised.

 World of Mirrors is set in East Germany on the Baltic coast in the summer of 1990, after the Berlin Wall came down but before the two Germanys were united, during the Year of Miracles. Crumbling old resorts and a classic sailboat serve as backdrops as an international cast of miscreants vies for the digital jewels in this dark but comic adventure with strong elements of romantic suspense. As treacheries mount, Zara and T.K. must rely on a North Vietnamese “guest laborer” to sail them to safety as they play a nautical game of cat and mouse through the shipping lanes of the fog-shrouded Baltic.

 Zara is a strong female character who has taken this assignment in a moment of weakness. Not only does she have technical chops, she is the moral center of the novel and the character responsible for getting herself and T.K. out of a terrible jam.

Some scenes from World of Mirrors use lively Berlin as the settting.

Don’t forget to read all the other excerpts from our Suspenseful Sentences group of writers.  Hie your browser to: Suspense Sunday Seven Sentence Authors

If you're looking for a good Kindle read with technology, suspense and a touch of romance, try The Shadow Warriors by Judith Copek.

The Number 1 Naked Ladies of the Evening Detective Agency

A week or so ago,  on Facebook, I mentioned how much we had enjoyed viewing the DVD of The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which had been shown some time back on HBO.  The show was actually suitable for my young granddaughter who loved it, in other words, no sex or violence and no bad language.  I  do diligent research to find something suitable (and interesting) for three generations to watch.  My Facebook post garnered a few comments, all mild.

Imagine my surprise, consternation, yea, horror today when I was Googling "Grapeshot" and found my post or some reference to it on two sex video web sites.  I didn't click on the sites because I wouldn't  give them the satisfaction of a click, and I don't want to run a scan on my computer to see what ick they left behind, but this is definitely weird and I assume software agents are out there roaming through Facebook picking up the letters "DVD" and perhaps "LADIES" and adding them to, well, to porn sites.

This is both aggravating and funny, because the DVD is about as far from a sex video as you can get, and Jill Scott is a wonderful actress who portrays the character so well, but "sexy" is not an apt description of her or the series or actually, any other character on it.

Should I complain to Facebook? I haven't decided

 One can almost imagine a raging customer who had expected naked girls and whatever to go screaming back to the website with  his disappointment.   So maybe I get the last laugh?  Nonetheless, it's galling.

Grrrrr.   

Edgar Nominees for Fiction

Exciting news today with MWA's Edgar nominees.  Two of my favorite authors are nominees: Laura Lippman and Steve Hamilton, also Harlan Coban, no three of my favorite authors, a veritable embarras de richesses.  What?  No female names in the best first novel group?  I know the committees work endless hours reading and pondering to come up with the best slate of books. Women, who are more inclined to write "cozies," have a hard row to hoe. 

What is hugely exciting is the  nomination of  "A Good Safe Place" by Judith Green for Best Short Story in Thin Ice.  Level Best Books are the greatest!  They publish an anthology of short stories by (mostly) New England authors every year.  Last year I was fortunate enough to be included in Quarry with my story, "Bad Trip."

Congratulations to all the nominees for their achievement.  Mega congratulations to Level Best Books and Judith Green.  Love live Crime Fiction! 


BEST NOVEL

Caught by Harlan Coben (Penguin Group USA - Dutton)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
Faithful Place by Tana French (Penguin Group USA - Viking)
The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books)
I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva (Tom Doherty Associates – Forge Books)
The Poacher’s Son by Paul Doiron (Minotaur Books)
The Serialist: A Novel by David Gordon (Simon & Schuster)
Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
Snow Angels by James Thompson (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard (Random House - Bantam)
The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn (Henry Holt)
Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski (Minotaur Books)
Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis (Random House Trade Paperbacks)
Ten Little Herrings by L.C. Tyler (Felony & Mayhem Press)

BEST SHORT STORY

"The Scent of Lilacs" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Doug Allyn (Dell Magazines)
"The Plot" – First Thrills by Jeffery Deaver (Tom Doherty – Forge Books)
"A Good Safe Place” – Thin Ice by Judith Green (Level Best Books)
"Monsieur Alice is Absent" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
by Stephen Ross (Dell Magazines)
"The Creative Writing Murders" – Dark End of the Street by Edmund White (Bloomsbury)

Seven Suspenseful Sentence Sunday - Week Two!

             I don't remember the explosion, only impressions.

            The air, a solid presence, a hot rushing wind, the odor of sulfur, like the doors to hell had been blown open.

            How did I come to be lying in the grass?  Sharp pain in my ears, as if they had been ravaged by a dentist's drill.

            Where was I?  Confused by my witlessness, I struggled to my knees. Pieces of leaf and grass stuck to my hands--and glass, bits of glass gleamed like raindrops, all over the lawn, everywhere.

           

These seven sentences  are from The Shadow Warriors.  Emma, the narrator has gone out late at night to investigate a break-in at a computer institute, only to have the building blow up.

Late in 2010, my novel of Information Warfare and software agents, The Shadow Warriors, was released to the Kindle.  Only $2.99 until end of February!

 Here is the blurb on the back cover of the trade paperback.

Emma Lee Davis must delve deep into the past to find a weapon to end the Infowar that threatens to de-stabilize a computer-dependent global economy.  Project manager of a  tiny firm of cyber-sleuths, Emma scrambles to make the connections between a body washing up on a beach in Singapore, and the technical derring-do at a German university.

She tracks a desperate hacker planning a unique software auction, a determined entrepreneur who will stop at nothing to acquire  ‘bleeding edge’ software and tumbles onto a new generation of terrorists with their own agenda. 

Emma and her colleagues are sucked into a vortex of lies, spies, and betrayals and ultimately into the sleaze and paranoia of Berlin in the months before the wall comes down. Not quite glamorous, sometimes nerdy, always nosy, irreverent and intuitive, Emma becomes the reluctant sleuth. She narrates the story as she scrambles to manage a software project and her complicated love life, while puzzling over the paradox, “if our mission is to stop computer crime, why are we abetting it?”

  The Shadow Warriors Kindle  

For more information about cyber-warfare see: Cyberwar

Don’t forget to read all the other excerpts of suspenseful sentences.  Hie your browser to:

Suspense Sunday Seven Sentence Authors

Cold Comfort Food

Stirring the cooked noodles into the dish

The snow remains a heavy white blanket, yea a veritable thick down duvet over our little neighborhood.  The hungry birds cling to the suet and gather on and below the farm porch to eat the scattered seed.  Squirrel comes to, and the menage a trois of doves.  A flock of greedy blue jays arrived yesterday.  Eats!

The cats are eating what they always eat, and huddling with us in the bedroom at night.   Thisbe was particularly affectionate yesterday, and Rulon allowed me to  (partially) groom the lumps on his lower flanks.  We declared catnip on the house, and the bird watching was fine, indeed.

The humans feasted on Yakisoba  with Pork and Cabbage, a fine Asian dish.  I found the fresh Chinese egg noodles at Roche Brothers, nine ounces instead of the required 10-12.  More of that later.  I love taste recipes with some meat and lots of healthful veggies.  The dish called for plenty of fresh ginger, cabbage and carrot.  We had a salad of lettuce and oranges, and well,   it was all soooo healthy and soooo good that we ate more than half, which was to feed us tonight.

This morning I got out the recipes, and found a 2009 Bon Appetit recipes for Shrimp and Green Onion Pancakes.  I can make half  recipe and we can have a little Asian smorgasbord while we watch the playoff games.  I am for the Bears and the Patriots,  and should they meet, it will be Patriots all the way.  The New York Jets have been trash talking all week, but we are above such shenanigans.

Here is the recipe for the Yakisoba. Yakisoba with Pork and Cabbage

Photos are below.  This was easy to make and I staged everything so that when it came time to cook,  the prep. was routine.   The pork cooked up so tender and yea, toothsome.

Sauteing the cabbage and carrot after ginger and pork have been browned

Finished Production, served with a salad of iceberg and fresh orange slices



The pancakes look simple enough and should compliment the Yakisoba.  Here is a link to the Bon Appetit recipe.
Shrimp and Green Onion Pancakes

Cat on Desk

The Good Life.

Thisbe on desk in the middle of everything

Another White Meal

There was supposed to be broccoli, but cauliflower was on sale, so I bought that.  Chicken breast, pasta, and cauliflower.  White, white, white. Good, too.  The photo is an image of our "lunch" leftovers. The roasted cauliflower was awesome. 

Tonight we had black bean chili with yellow corn bread. The real McCoy with no (yecch) sugar and no flour.  Stone ground corn meal.  Cooked in a hot cast iron skillet.  You can't get any more authentic than that.  We ate carrot sticks, dill pickles, and cherry tomatoes in lieu of a salad.

Unlike last night's, this meal was colorful.  The chili was hot, but not so fiery that the box of Kleenex was on the table. The recipe is from Southern Living.  I found some small, reduced for quick sale strip steaks and used those.  The recipe is easy to follow and is very flavorful, even toothsome.  Chili without meat is not chili, it's spicy beans. 

Here is a link to the recipe:  Southern Living Chili con Carne

Chili is perfect for a blizzardy day like today.  Fortunately, the electricity came back on and I wasn't cooking in dim light.  Notice the Christmas cloth is still on the table, the last remnant (except the wreath) of the holiday. 

One cat (Thisbe) is purring loudly on my desk and the Orange Outrage (Rulon) is sitting on Significant Other's Chest.  A house with cozy cats is a warm, furry place. 

Cell Phone Operetta and a remix of Macbeth staring Mama Grizzlies

I get lots of odd ideas which I seldom act on. Probably for the best.   For the last congressional election, for example, I was working on a "remix" of the Macbeth  witches speech featuring Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle from Nevada and the sorta-kinda witchy woman from Delaware. OMG, I have forgotten their names already.  Yes, Christine O'Donnell.    Instead of Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd, I had Thrice the wounded moose has called. 
That sort of thing.  


Round about the  tea pot go;
In the poisond' rhetoric throw.

Would it have gone viral for my 15 minutes of fame?  Macbeth?  Viral?  Ha. ha.  My remix would have been beaucoup work and I was trying to finish my book.  Priorities, damn it, priorities.


So, another idea popped into my head today, for a cell-phone opera.  Two women, a soprano and a contralto yakking on their phones all day, while their husbands/boyfriends try to reach them.   The bass and the baritone.  No tenors need apply.    The scenes would be in an SUV and in a supermarket, a locker room at a health club, trying on shoes at DSW, and of course there would be cause for a lot of drama.  Stuck in traffic, no baby bok choy today, running late, the dry cleaners ruined my blouse. A typical day in the life of a suburban mom.  Imagine  the soulful arias,  the grand gestures, and the collective children could be the chorus.  Solos, duets, sturm und drang.

Sometimes I wonder what I've been smoking, and then I realize nothing.  Just the clean, exurban air.   
We fed the cows to fortify them for the upcoming storm, and I fed the birds as well.  The cats have enjoyed 3-D entertainment with the birds on the deck, not three feet away.   The little sparrow that hangs around all the time was eating suet yesterday.  Omnivorous.  As are we. 

We're eating chicken cutlets in a sauce of lemon juice and capers.  Tomorrow, the snow storm menu is chili with sirloin and black beans.  I bought stone ground corn meal for the corn bread.  And fresh buttermilk.  My grandma always called "regular" milk "sweet milk," to distinguish it from buttermilk.  In New England, buttermilk is underappreciated.  Low-cal and tart, wonderful for baking and pancakes and  waffles. Drink more buttermilk.  Eat more possum.  Whatever. 

Me and an organ grinder in Berlin, summer, a few years back. 

The falling barometer must be making me weird.

Suspenseful Seven Sentence Sunday

Maxine had told her to escape and that meant that Maxine must have some insight into the situation with the kids and El Tigre, but if Maxine was wrong . . . 

When the door opened, she almost knocked the woman down to get into the john where she locked the door and put her drink on the counter. She pulled the plastic bag with hand sanitizer, alcohol rubs, and mouthwash out of her handbag, along with matches from the bar. Oh God, she was dying of nerves, and her hands shook so badly she could barely strike the matches, but she doused the paper towels with the mouthwash and the sanitizer and lit the alcohol rub. Everything flamed up like the 4^th of July. Once she had the paper towels on fire, she lit the contents of her cocktail glass, and then the wastebasket.  She kept feeding and fanning the flames until the smoke alarm went off, emitting a shrill sound they must hear on Mars.

These seven sentences  are from my just completed (first draft) novel whose working title is In Flight.

Late in December, my novel of Information Warfare and software agents, The Shadow Warriors, was released to the Kindle.  Such a deal at $2.99.   Here is the blurb on the back cover of the trade paperback.

Emma Lee Davis must delve deep into the past to find a weapon to end the Infowar that threatens to de-stabilize a computer-dependent global economy.  Project manager of a  tiny firm of cyber-sleuths, Emma scrambles to make the connections between a body washing up on a beach in Singapore, and the technical derring-do at a German university.

She tracks a desperate hacker planning a unique software auction, a determined entrepreneur who will stop at nothing to acquire  ‘bleeding edge’ software and  tumbles onto a new generation of terrorists with their own agenda. 

Emma and her colleagues are sucked into a vortex of lies, spies, and betrayals and ultimately into the sleaze and paranoia of Berlin in the months before the wall comes down. Not quite glamorous, sometimes nerdy, always nosy, irreverent and intuitive, Emma becomes the reluctant sleuth. She narrates the story as she scrambles to manage a software project and her complicated love life, while puzzling over the paradox, “if our mission is to stop computer crime, why are we abetting it?”

  The Shadow Warriors Kindle  

Don't forget to read the reviews which are incorporated into the Trade Paperback version.  I love my Kindle.  Right now I'm reading Joseph Finder's Paranoia on it.

A recent photo of the author at the Pompidou Centre in Paris

The Wandering Mind

Have you ever noticed that some activities free your mind to wander and ponder and go thither and yon?  For me these activities are listening to classical music (especially chamber music) in a concert hall and working out in my aerobics class.  One activity is basically passive (the concert) and the other involves some jumping around, but the effect on me is the same.  The only constant is music; because of course we do aerobics and lift weights to music. 

In my aerobics class I always get good ideas for my writing, and sometimes even a solution to a thorny problem will pop right into my head while we’re “scooping” or doing the “grape vine.” 

When I debugged computer programs, taking a shower frequently moistened the mind as well as the body.  Taking a walk is good, too.  One of the best things about Nantucket was being carless all week.  We even stopped renting bikes and just walked everywhere except when we caught the beach bus.  Walking is done in human time. 

Writing has to take a hiatus when the holidays are here and the house is full of guests, and now my tasks are done and it’s back to the manuscript again.  A few ideas have percolated up during the break.  A writer is ALWAYS writing even if she is driving along a country road or watching the birds pecking for seed in the snow.  Or peeling carrots.  Or . . . Or . . . Or . . . Writing is like breathing.  Even when you’re  on autopilot. Especially when you're on autopilot.

The cats have had two days of excellent bird watching.  Thisbe flattens herself against the living room rug when the juncos and doves eat on the deck.  I see that we still have the pretty little song (?) sparrow that was here last winter.  Or is he a marsh sparrow?  They all look alike, and by the time I drag out the bird book and find “sparrows,” he is gone. 

We also have a handsome flicker and a trio (ménage a trois) of doves who were also around last winter.  I have cracked corn for the wild turkeys but haven’t seen any.  At Glue Factory Pond (quaint name, yes?) there are no birds this winter.  The white geese vanished, and now the ducks and even the seagulls are gone, as are even the Canadian geese and they never leave. 

Winter has us in its grip, but the mind is not housebound and ranges far and wide.  I hope you are snug and warm and even a bit plump for the cold months ahead.

Grapeshot

The Shadow Warriors, now on Kindle

My novel of information warfare and software agents run amok is finally available on Kindle.  And  people have actually been buying it!  At $2.99, what's not to like?.   So I am psyched and sending out the link, once more with feeling. 

  The Shadow Warriors Kindle Version  


Must confess I haven't written anything for weeks.    The holidays, don't cha know?  When the guests leave and I have my financial software totals for 2010 and a plan for the Kindle PR blitz, then it's time to write again.  


Lots of plans for  2011.    Such Stuff As Dreams, my 1928 California novel, re-write of Festival Madness, editing of In Flight, and putting out on the Kindle and into the e-book world, World of Mirrors, the book of East Germany set during The Year of Miracles, also known as The Time of the Turn.  Love it!  


Busy year ahead.  


Grapeshot