Summit County Senior Winter Games

Earlier this week I participated in the Summit County Senior Winter Games, an annual affair that attracts seniors not only from the Colorado high country, but from all over the US. The friendly competition began with a spaghetti dinner at the Summit County Senior Center on Sunday evening, where we registered for events and picked up our racing bibs. We also bid on silent auction items, and the proceeds benefited needy seniors in the county.

Also, there were door prizes galore from generous sponsors. I won a performance tune from Keystone Sports on my skis, which was very timely, since I've been hitting rocks on the slopes all season so far, due to lower snowpack levels. After carbo- and wine-loading, we all went home to psych ourselves up for the ice-skating events at Keystone Lake (which I didn't participate in) and the alpine skiing events at Keystone Resort on Monday.

I competed in the Giant Slalom (that was also a Nastar event), the Rally Race (where we try to match a time set by a games official), and the goofy Obstacle Race. Below is a photo of me in my race bib, free-skiing between events.


Tuesday was a full morning and early afternoon of nordic events at the Frisco Nordic Center. I competed in the short, 1 kilometer snowshow race there. Then at 3:00 that afternoon, we reconvened for more food and wine and the long, long award ceremonies. Why so long? For every event, competitors were divided by sex and 5-year age groups (A=50-54, B=55-59, etc.), and gold, silver, and bronze medals were awarded for each group.

I won a bronze medal in the alpine Obstacle Course Race and a silver medal in the Short Snowshoe Race and a silver Nastar medal in the Giant Slalom Race. Below is a photo of me with my "bling." The Senior Winter Games were a great way to get us "seniors" (50+) outside and moving and were a lot of fun to boot!

Today's Mystery Author Guest: James Conway

As promised yesterday, fellow mystery author James Conway is visiting my blog today. To read his bio and see his photo, please page down to yesterday's post.

Above is the cover photo for his first novel, Dead and Not So Buried, which was released yesterday. In the book, Hollywood is rocked after the remains of one of the most idolized movie stars of the 60’s are stolen. The thief chooses Gideon Kincaid to deliver the ransom, forcing the ex-cop to unravel a master plan that includes extortion, blackmail and murder. While trying to stay one step ahead of his nemesis, Gideon is led on a harrowing roller coaster ride through sun-and-sin drenched Hollywood.

But Gideon’s not alone. There’s the tough as nails cop assigned to the case. Unfortunately, she’s Gideon’s ex-wife and hates him. And there’s the beautiful starlet who Gideon has to protect. Any red-blooded detective would want to sleep with her; unfortunately for Gideon, he already has. And it didn’t go so well. In fact, she’s terrified of him. And there’s his assistant, the adorable Hillary. She wants to be a PI like her boss. She’s also got a huge crush on him. And that never works out. In fact, it could kill her.

This sure sounds like a fun read to me! Below are James's answers to my interview questions. Please leave a comment for James, and if you have a question of your own for him, ask it!

Who or what inspired you to start writing and when did you start?

Reading inspired me to start writing. I never remember not reading. To be honest, I’m also including comic books in the reading category but from grammar school on I always had a book in my lap. I loved Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Jack London, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. So one day in eighth grade I decided to try my hand at writing. I wrote a six-page short story about a kid who could fly. I’m sure it wasn’t very good, but God bless my mother. She told me it was great and encouraged me to continue writing.

And I did. Stubbornly. I didn’t sell my first short story until I was twenty-three.

I also loved watching TV as a kid. I guess that makes sense since I’ve spent so much of my life writing, producing and directing TV shows. There was this one show I watched as a kid in the early 60’s. Burke’s Law, starring Gene Barry. Gene played Amos Burke, a handsome, charismatic, filthy rich homicide detective. Each episode was filled with big name guest stars that were all suspects in the murder of the week. It was produced by Aaron Spelling.

Well, thirty years later, while I was working for Aaron Spelling, I developed a new Burke’s Law TV series, starring Gene Barry! He now had a son and they solved the crimes together. We ran for two seasons.

Talk about childhood fantasies coming to life.

What tools and process do you use to “get to know” your characters before and while you’re writing the books?

I always start with the protagonist. What fascinates me about this person? Why do I care about this person? What is wrong that needs to be fixed?

Next I write the protagonist’s biography. I try to include relatable incidents growing up that we can hopefully connect with and as well as seminal incidents that made the protagonist what he/she is when we find them.

The biography is just for me. To see what surprises happen when I flesh out the character. Bits of it will end up in the book, of course. But that’s just a bonus. The biography is a great way for me to better understand the character.

Once I have a handle on my protagonist I rinse and repeat with the rest of the main characters.

How do you construct your plots? Do you outline or do you write “by the seat of your pants”?

I like outlines. I need to know where I’m going. So I start with a beat sheet. I just write down all the logical steps I want my story to take. I let that marinate for a bit, decide what works and doesn’t work, then start a more detailed outline.

I try not to put in every single detail, I want to be able to still discover as I write. But I need to know my character arcs, major plot twists and turns, and of course, the end.

And after all that, I’m often surprised what happens when I start actually writing and the characters start taking things in a completely different direction.

In the age-old question of character versus plot, which one do you think is most important in a murder mystery and which one do you emphasize in your writing? Why?

For me, a great murder mystery is filled with fascinating characters and unpredictable twists and turns. So while I think both character and plot are important, I have to admit that once I know who my characters are I spend a lot of time on the plot.

I want to put a unique spin on the story. I want the reader to be surprised, baffled and ultimately satisfied with the puzzle. And that takes a lot of work.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a writer and what inspires you and keeps you motivated?

My biggest challenge has been rejection. I’ve had a very successful career in Hollywood but my life long dream was to write novels. I wrote my first one ten years ago. There was a lot of interest, but ultimately, it didn’t sell.

That broke my heart.

I was very busy then writing and directing TV shows, so it took me a few years to sit down and write another book.

Again, close but no cigar.

That rejection didn’t hurt as much. In fact, it made me mad. And determined. Damn it, I will get published!

I started another book right away and that one, Dead and Not So Buried, was published February 15th.

What is a typical workday for you and how many hours a day (or week) do you devote to writing?

I write every morning. Starting at about 8:30. I write for two or three hours, then work out, have lunch, run errands (maybe sneak out to hit a few golf balls). Then late afternoon I review what I’ve written and tinker for an hour or so. But my major creative writing is done in the morning.

I rarely write on the weekend, but I often reread and make notes for the coming week.

What advice do you have to offer to an aspiring author?

Study the genre you want to write. I mean, really study. Outline the books you love. Learn how the author structured the book. Pay attention to the character arcs. Ask yourself what it is you love about the book.

Then, cliché warning… Write. Every day.

Now here’s a zinger. Tell us something about yourself that you have not revealed in another interview yet. Something as simple as your favorite TV show or food will do.

Remember earlier I told you I watched a lot of TV as a kid? Well, I still do. My DVR is the hardest working appliance in the house. Favorite shows at the moment: Downton Abbey, The Good Wife, Fringe, Crown of Thrones and Shameless.

What are you working on now and what are your future writing plans?

I’m writing a new book. They say to write what you know, and what I know best is Hollywood. So the new book is another Hollywood thriller.

This one is about a movie star, an action hero, who made the mistake of getting old. By old I mean fifty-two. Young in this day and age everywhere but Hollywood.

So he is willing to do anything to get his name back up in lights. And that’s when he makes the biggest mistake of his life.

The book is entitled Falling Star, and I hope to publish it early next year.

I’m also planning the second Gideon Kincaid novel. Breaking the Gravesnatcher case has made Gideon a Hollywood celebrity, and now the question becomes: Will Success Spoil Gideon Kincaid?

Is there anything else you would like to tell my blog readers?

I’d love you all to check out my website. You’ll learn a lot about Dead and Not So Buried, and if you check the Hollywood page, you’ll be treated to bit of my Hollywood history.

I love to talk about books and Hollywood, so if there are any book clubs out there please get in touch with me (my email address is on the website).


Thanks, James! Now, who has a comment or question for him?

Tomorrow's Guest: James L. Conway

Tomorrow, fellow mystery author James Conway will be a guest on my blog. James has worked extensively as a writer, producer and director. His credits include such TV favorites as MacGyver, Star Trek: Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise, Charmed, Supernatural and Smallville. James also served six years as Executive Vice President of Spelling Television where he worked on over twenty TV series including such hits as 90210, Melrose Place and 7th Heaven. Dead and Not So Buried, which is being released today, is Conway’s first novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters.

In his guest post tomorrow, James answers my interview questions. I'm sure you'll be intrigued by his answers. Then, feel free to let James know what you think of the interview or his book or to ask him a questions in the comments.

Researching the Health of the Colorado River

For those who have been following my blog and/or my Facebook posts, you know that I am writing the third book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series that will be titled Cataract Canyon. Unlike the first two books in the series, Deadly Currents and Wicked Eddies, that are set on the upper Arkansas River in Colorado, Cataract Canyon takes place on the Colorado River in Utah.

Environmentalists and entities that own water rights for Colorado River water have been concerned for many years about the health of the river and whether it can continue to sustain all those who divert water from its flow. In fact, American Rivers (a river conservation organization I support) named it one of America's Most Endangered Rivers in 2010.

Colorado College in Colorado Springs has sponsored a State of the Rockies Project for the last nine years that seeks to increase public understanding of vital issues affecting the Rocky Mountains. This year's focus is the Colorado River basin. One study supported by the project was a trip by two recent graduates, Will Stauffer-Norris and Zak Podmore, who paddled and hiked for 110 days from the "Source to the Sea" of river, making observations on the health of the river along the way. Their starting point was the origin of the Green River (one of the two main tributaries to the Colorado River that merge just above Cataract Canyon) in Wyoming's Wind River Range. Their ending point at the end of January was the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, where the completely drained and exhausted river trickles to the sea across a salty, mud-flat delta.

You can read more about Will Stauffer-Norris's and Zak Podmore's epic expedition at their Source to Sea blog and watch their YouTube videos there. They paddled their kayaks through the exciting whitewater of Cataract Canyon (which I rafted last fall) and the Grand Canyon, as well as through more placid canyons and dammed reservoirs. I hope their expedition, and the focus of the State of the Rockies Project on the Colorado River this academic year, will raise awareness of the enormous pressures that are being placed on this river. And hopefully, we can work together to ease the strain and keep it healthy!

Editing a Galley Proof

Last weekend I posted photos from my vacation in Mazatlan, Mexico, and I said that while I was there I also did some writing work: editing the galley proof for my upcoming May release, Wicked Eddies, which will be the second book in the RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series starring whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner.

What is a galley proof? It is the final layout document of a book, with everything positioned exactly on each page, that will be sent to the printer. The proof is sent to the author before it goes to the printer, so the author has one last chance to scour the book for errors and eliminate them. So, I went to work pouring over every page and scrubbing them clean. By the time I finished, I had created a six-page file of about 140 change requests.

What kinds of change requests? Most were small one word or one punctuation mark changes. For instance, in dialogue, I leave contractions with "had" and "would" as contractions, but in narrative, I prefer to spell them out, especially when it's a little unclear whether "she'd" means "she had" or "she would." I found some of those contractions in narrative and changed them. Also, in dialogue, I allow characters to leave out the "of" in phrases such as "all the boats", because we all do that naturally. However, in narrative, I want the "of" to be there, so it would read "all of the boats."

There were such changes as a comma that should have been a period or vice versa, a word that should have been plural and was missing an "s", changing "extra" to "additional" because there were already two other "extra" words in the paragraph, and so on. And, on re-reading, I decided that some of my sentences were too long, and I split them up into two.

One of the larger changes included writing a Dedication, which had been left blank in the galley proof. Another was making sure that real-life organizations were listed by their correct name, such as "Pueblo County Coroner’s Office" versus "Pueblo coroner’s office." And I had mistakenly called the "Chaffee County Sheriff's Office" a department instead of an office a few times.

A couple of times, I rewrote sentences, mainly to put the phrases in cause-effect order or time-sequence order. However, I was very careful to make sure that any rewrites wouldn't change the pagination of the galley proof, that they were about the same length as the original text. Inserting or removing a paragraph is a big no-no at this stage, because that could have a trickle-down effect that would cause multiple pages to be completely re-done.

Lastly, during the same vacation, I was reviewing an ARC of Dr. D.P. Lyle's upcoming release, More Forensics and Fiction, Crime Writers' Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered. In that book, he explains that water in the lungs is not definitive evidence of drowning in and of itself if a victim's body is left submerged more than twelve hours. This is because the lungs passively fill with water as the air seeps out. Instead, debris or organisms from the body of water in which the victim is found must also be found in the victim's lungs to say death was caused by drowning. So, I made a small change in dialogue about my drowning victim's autopsy to address this. Thank you, D.P. Lyle!

Even though my editor and I have both done a thorough review of the galley proof, I'm sure some small errors or typos will remain, much like the river debris in my victim's lungs, to show that yes, we are human and we make mistakes. I sure tried my best, though, to make Wicked Eddies as perfect as I possibly could. Now, the matter is out of my hands. It will be up to the readers to let me know how well I did!

Today's Author Guest: Cindy Keen Reynders

As promised yesterday, fellow mystery author Cindy Keen Reynders is visiting my blog today. To read her bio and see her photo, please page down to yesterday's post.

Above is the cover photo for her most recent book, A Killer Slice, the third installment in the Saucy Lucy series. Below is Cindy's post about persevering in her publishing career. Please leave a comment for Cindy to let her know what you think, and feel free to ask her any questions you want about the post, her books, or her life as a writer.

Courage and Believing in Yourself

My first two books, The Saucy Lucy Murders, and Paws-itively Guilty, published by Medallion Press, gave me the courage to call myself a novelist. However, it felt like the forward momentum in my writing career came to a grinding halt when Medallion passed on the third installment. Such is the world of publishing. Still, this is a disappointment that is never for any writer easy to accept.

As time went on, many fans of the books contacted me, wondering if they would see more of the sleuthing sisters, Lexie and Lucy. Since I had already written the third book in the Saucy Lucy Mystery series, A Killer Slice, I decided, after much research, to contract with Amazon’s CreateSpace to publish the title on my own. This is a decision I have not regretted. To see the joy on people’s faces as they receive yet one more book of this fun series makes it all worthwhile. And my local independent book seller here in Cheyenne, Wyoming, City News Book Store, has been more than supportive in helping me keep all three of the books available for readers.

Back in August, after I had forged my way into the land of the Indie publishing world, Blaze McRob, co-owner of Angelic Knight Press, contacted me. He wondered if I had a publisher, and what manuscripts I might currently have available.

A few years previously, I had finished a novel titled, The Seven-Year Witch, and I sent it to Blaze’s staff to see if they would be interested. To my delight, they loved the book, and within days I signed with them to publish it. This was a lovely surprise that came on the heels of my decision to walk alone in the publishing world for a while. Angelic Knight Press is producing some pretty great books these days, and I’m honored to be a team member and to have them support my writing career.

The Seven-Year Witch will be out in the next month or so, and I’m getting pretty excited. My editor, Stacey Turner, sent a sneak peak of the cover art, created by artist Rebecca Treadway. It is oh so lovely, with a depiction of my witch in a sexy dress and high heels. I can hardly wait to see the finished artwork, and actually hold the book in my hands. Rebecca produced such tantalizing cover art that my husband, who is not into leisure reading because he reads so much at work, took one look at my saucy, golden-haired witch and announced, “I’m going to read this one, honey.” That’s quite a compliment from the man who hasn’t even cracked the cover of my other books!

A little background: I wrote The Seven-Year Witch during a frustrating point in my life, just as I did with my Saucy Lucy books. When I'm down about something, I want to laugh like the dickens. So I spent about eight months, butt planted in my office chair every morning from 4:00–7:00 a.m., snickering and giggling as Miranda Rose, novice witch of the Wysteria, Oregon, Hedge Haven clan came to life. I enjoyed the characters so much that I believe I channeled good vibes onto the written page.

While the Saucy Lucy series has amateur sleuths, sisters Lexie and Lucy, solving murders in the small, fictional Wyoming town of Moose Creek Junction, The Seven-Year Witch is completely different. This is a fun story about a young novice witch, Miranda Rose, who has been assigned by the Supreme Witch's Council to track down the wizard who is holding the legendary Philosopher's Stone. Once the task is completed, Miranda will be eligible to be promoted to high witch—a lifelong dream. Her parents and her six sisters are highly accomplished, and she desperately wishes to join their ranks.

With the deadline to find the stone fast approaching, Miranda travels back in time to the year 1877, and finds the tower where the wizard is holding the stone. He refuses to relinquish the gem and zaps her out the window. She lands in an abandoned field not too far from Merry Olde London, shaken to the bone and covered in soot.

On his way home from a tavern late that evening, Sir Maxwell Chadwick, the Duke of Pellamshire, sees a fiery ball of light streak across the midnight sky. Curious when it lands near the road, he pulls over his carriage and climbs out to investigate. He never expects to find a bedraggled woman in the field, much less a beautiful witch desperately in need of his seductive charms. Needless to say, sparks fly!

The interesting thing I’ve learned about all of this is that as authors, we must believe in ourselves and our work. I’ve also learned that books may not always sell at exactly the time we want them to sell. Meanwhile, we’ve got to be ready to pitch and promote them to publishers whenever the opportunity arises. Never believe a book is dead, even though publishers might not be biting when you’re marketing it. All it takes is the right one to see it at the right time, and it may finally get the opportunity to move off your jump drive and onto the page.

Always keep in mind the famous phrase, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”
For more information about when The Seven-Year Witch will be available for purchase, you can go to Angelic Knight Press’s website.


Thanks, Cindy, for sharing your publishing journey! Does anyone have a story to share about your own travails and triumphs in publishing or do you have a question for Cindy? Fire away!

Tomorrow's Guest: Cindy Keen Reynders

Tomorrow, fellow mystery author Cindy Keen Reynders will be a guest on my blog. Cindy was born in Portland, Oregon and has lived all over the United States and also in Japan. She currently lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming with her husband Rich whose family has lived in the state for generations.

Over the years, Cindy has won or placed in various writing contests. She has also written for and edited numerous newsletters. Additionally, she sold several non-fiction magazine articles to True West and Wild West. She has published three mystery novels, The Saucy Lucy Murders in 2007, Paws-itively Guilty in 2008 and A Killer Slice in 2011. Her fourth novel, The Seven-Year Witch, is due out next month.

In her guest post tomorrow, Cindy talks about how she persevered through ups and downs in her publishing career and brings a message of hope to writers who may currently be in a down period. I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. Then, feel free to let Cindy know what you think of her post or her books or to ask her a questions in the comments.