Fish or Cut Bait: A Guppy Anthology

So how can small tropical fish have an anthology?  The Guppies are a branch of Sisters in Crime, a (mostly) female group of crime writers.  Originally, the Guppies were all unpublished writers, and usually when one was published one detached from the group, but the Guppies were actually so much fun and so supportive of one another that many writers, including moi, stayed in the group long after they reached the goal of publication.
The Guppies of Sisters In Crime

 Fish Or Cut Bait is the 3rd Guppy Anthology, with stories all vetted by judges.  The stories don't have to be about fish, but mine is.

Years ago, the CIA opened their museum periodically, and one of the wonders was a robot fish.  Don't think they ever used it, but my fertile mind thought that might make a good story, and eventually I wrote "The Insurrection"  and shopped it around and it has finally found a home in Fish Or Cut Bait.

The hero of the story is Francis, the robotic fish.  Francis is a Gaftopsail Catfish.

Isn't he lovely?    The female of the species  hatches her eggs in her mouth.  Francis gets involved with the Iranian navy, sea snakes, Somali pirates and Colombian drug subs.
This story was so much fun to research and to write.    If you need a gift for someone who likes to read crime fiction, but  is perhaps not into "dark" stories, Fish or Cut Bait would make a wonderful gift.  I like to read short stories on the treadmill, because while your body is getting a workout, so is your mind.

Here is a link to Amazon. Buy Fish Or Cut Bail at Amazon 
Take Francis and his friends home with you.  You won't be disappointed. 

Agent Queries

Somali pirate. I had a dress out of the same fabric as his "headpiece" when I was in grade school. Photo may be from the BBC. Couldn't find a credit. It was on another blog that didn't credit. These pirates all have automatic weapons and cell phones.

Back to writing. I'm calmer about the whole piggy shopping scene, although the sight of all those glossy adds in today's Globe nearly got me into rant mode again. Not my zebra. Not my zoo. Just keep repeating.

I have a big list of agents to query about Promiscuous Mode, a book my writing group loved, a traditional amatuer sleuth whodunnit with lots of suspects, small town, a cat, low lifes, bass fishing. God, what more could you want?

Anyway, I need to send out some queries about this book, since the sequel is already completed. She's into high tech. He's into homicide. The Northwoods rock and roll . . . yada yada. That's my "Pitch" line. God, I wish someone would just read the freaking book. This business of queries to agents, in spite of all the good advice, is something I haven't mastered. It's like there is this giant blind spot the size of the sun.

And also I need to get back to my fabulous fish robot, Frances, and back to Lotto, the Colombian Drug Lord and his worries and tribulations. I live in a world of strange characters, and sometimes they talk to me. How weird is that? And I listen.

Lotto is a little like the Warren Beatty character in "Shampoo." Everyone wants something from him, and he's pulled in many directions.

I take some of the "props" out of the headlines, like small submarines and Somali pirates.
So, off to the drug wars and the agent battle and Indian Ocean piracy. What a fun way to spend a rainy Sunday. Take that, Baudelaire.

Cheers,

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Technology, Like Lightning, Strikes Twice

My "real" desktop with speakers, pencils, scorpion paperweight and cat mug. How cool is that?


So, this morning I'm ordering Christmas gifts from LL Bean and trying to check out with my shopping cart, but the web site keeps insisting that I send these presents to myself. I attempt to get the "chat" line up but it disappears and in desperation, I call the help line. Finally, finally, I see where I can change the shipping address, but then I have to take everything out of the gift box and put it back again.

The customer service clerk, nice and sympathetic as they all should be, understands my pain and lets slip that there have been some recent changes to the website and I am the 2nd person in a row who complained about the ship-to problem.

In a former life, I wrote scripts for testing e-commerce web site changes and Bean's had some functionality that apparently never made it to anyone's test script, and even worse, they did this right before Christmas in a year where people aren't shopping much anyhow.

I finally got the order in order, but this massive effort from one who has been ordering on the web for a donkey's age. Probably one of the first people to order anything but computer stuff. If I can't figure it out, there is muy mucho problem, but then I also tend to work rather rapidly and expect a site to be intuitive. Yikes!

We always had the Customer Service Reps test the site with the script after we had done so. The worst (and dumbest) thing is to have those who put up the site test it. They know how it works. Duh and Double Duh!

Second technology issue: This blog! You may notice it looks a bit different. A couple months ago, after I had written a particularly (to moi) amusing poem about Caribou Barbie (remember her?) I put the Digg It functionality onto the blog. Nobody dug nuthin' and worse yet, Digg slowed the loading of the page down to a hideous, patience-trying creep.

Had to get that Digg code out of there, but I had copied it into the layout, and when I tried to restore the old file, Blogger told me it was empty, so I just sh__canned the whole thing and returned to vanilla, which looked so pale and anemic that I wanted to give the blog a transfusion and a slap on the butt.

Blogger asked me to "upgrade," which I did, and behold the jazzy stuff was back, the ability to order my book, which no one has done, but hey, it's there, and my cool Burning Man photo, taken in 2004 during the Burn. Links, this 'n that, the return of the blog. Whew! But of course I had forgotten which layout I chose, so here is the new one. Looks decent. Technology go me all bollixed up twice, but I fought the good fight and overcame.

It's scary to think my techno-skills might say adios. Nonetheless, I could still concoct a better script to test web site changes that our friend in Freeport, Maine did. Fie and for shame. They have cool warm clothes, however, and nice customer service people. That's why it's called "customer service."


Gee, I wish literary agents had the concept of being nice to the customer, which is the writer, instead of the "canned letter brush-off." Some of them write your name and even the name of your novel when they reject you. Believe it or not, that helps ease the pain. And the worst pain is no reply at all. The poor (in more ways than one) writer pays $2.00 to send in the query, some chapters and a synopsis, and never hears nuthin. Once I send in a requested entire manuscript and heard nothing. No response to emails and of course the gentleman in question didn't take phone calls.


I wonder why I continue to write. I really do. But today, I just can't wait to get back to my robot fish, Francis, and figure out how he brings down a whole slew of drug runners and then meets an usual fate. Boy, was I ripping stories from the headlines with the Somali pirates. Yowza! Holy freakin' crap! Somali pirates rock.



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The Supermarket Dance: Shuffle and Back Step

Note: this post is a whine.

Our supermarket is remodelling, which means no one can find anything anywhere. They had to go "out back" to get us a bag of charcoal today, and brought a big mother of a bag that would last half the summer and now it's October. Any season when you don't have to shovel a path along the deck and brush the snow off the Weber Kettle is Barbecue Season.

Small sirloins were on sale and that sounded good to me, with asparagus from Peru where spring has sprung and acorn squash grown more locally. With a Boston lettuce salad and a big fat mushroom to top each steak. Is that yum or what?

Of course we spent twice a much time in the store as usual, backtracking and trying to find stuff. Last week a woman said, "just think of it as a scavenger hunt and have fun." Some people always have a good attitude.

I remember when Roche Brothers in Wellesley remodelled years ago. I had to change my computerized shopping list, then I changed it again when we moved. Guess what? Another change will be required. In the new new Wellesley Roche Brothers I can't find anything either, except the produce and the cheese counter. And the take home department. Man, for $12-$1400 for dinner, you would never have to cook again. For two, that is. Four or more would be a pricey business, but they do have good looking prepared food to take home.

Of course if the economy continues to go to hell in a handbasket, everyone will be soaking their own pinto beans and making soup and rice and beans and growing herbs on the window sill and pouring the bacon fat into a coffee can in the fridge to reuse.

Oh? You do that already? Me too.

It seems like the prices have risen since the store began to remodel. And I still can't find green salsa made with tomatillos. Maybe I'll make another attempt to grow tomatillos next spring. The prior effort was a disaster, but then I recall it took three tries to grow bleeding heart. The third one flourished and I even moved it and it still flourished. A reliable plant is something you can love.

So we're bringing in the houseplants that summered outside, and the geraniums I carry over from year to year and the little gew-gaws on the deck that make the outdoors kind of homey.

Annie the cat escaped today, but too late for blogging. Thisbe went out and was horrified to find a) the UPS man and b) and neighbor's dog and c) the neighbor. Clawed at the door to get in with her tail as big around as a baseball bat.

I'm deep into my robot fish story and it's humming along swimmingly. :) I just need one more long adventure for the fish to have, then a clever escape and the end. The fish has hard exciting escapes from Somali pirates, sea snakes and a curious shark. Fish can have the most exciting adventures.

Onward and upward. How about those Red Sox?

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