How a Rural Colorado Sheriff’s Office Works

I'm blogging over at Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, today about how a rural Colorado Sheriff's Office works. Please read the post and leave a comment there for me about your own experiences with and impressions of your local Sheriff's Office or Police Department.

An Award Nomination for WICKED EDDIES!

I am absolutely thrilled that mystery fans who will be attending the Left Coast Crime 2013 conference next month (one of the three largest annual mystery fan conferences in North America) have selected my Wicked Eddies mystery novel as a finalist for THE ROCKY award, for the best mystery novel set in the Left Coast Crime geographic area (essentially the Mountain Time Zone and west to Hawaii)! You can read the list of award nominations HERE. I've got some heady competition with two of my favorite authors, Margaret Coel and Craig Johnson, in the running, along with a fellow Midnight Ink author, Darryl James. I'm honored to be in their company.

If YOU are attending the Left Coast Crime conference, I hope you'll read Wicked Eddies, if you haven't already, and consider voting for it to win the award. Another of my books has finaled for a mystery fan-selected award, A Real Basket Case, for the Best First Novel Agatha Award, but I have yet to make it from finalist to winner status. I'd love to be on that podium!

The America Cup International Fly Fishing Tournament

Wicked Eddies, the second book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series starring whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner, features a fly-fishing tournament. I modeled that tournament on a real fly fishing tournament called The America Cup, which is held in Vail, Colorado every fall. For the book, I replaced the loch (lake) days of the competition with downriver rafting days, held on class I-III whitewater sections of the Arkansas River near Salida, Colorado. Otherwise, the details of how the tournament was run, including wading fishing days, are the same as those in The America Cup.

I was able to include such realistic details because John Knight, the Tournament Director of The America Cup, invited me to shadow him on a competition day. Early in the morning, I observed the check-in of two-person fishing teams and volunteer controllers. These controllers measured and recorded fish catches using large PVC pipes cut in half and marked with inches and fractions of inches. John Knight was acting as a controller, too, so I tromped along muddy, brambly terrain alongside the Arkansas River with him while we shadowed a fly fishing team.

As a thank you to John for his help in researching Wicked Eddies, Midnight Ink and I gave him seven autographed copies of Wicked Eddies to use as prizes in this year's tournament. On The America Cup website, you can see photos of the award ceremony, and copies of Wicked Eddies appear in at least two of the photos. I hope those award-winning fly fishers enjoy reading Wicked Eddies, and I hope all of my blog readers do, too!

Sale! Sale! Sale!

Great news! Amazon has put the Kindle version of both books in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series starring whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner on sale from August 11 - 23 as part of its "August Big Deal" promotion. You can get Deadly Currents and Wicked Eddies for just $1.99 each. Move fast to take advantage of this special promotion, and please spread the word to all of your mystery reading friends!

Two Denver, Colorado Signings

Tomorrow, Sunday, June 24th, I will be spending the day in the Denver area, signing copies of Wicked Eddies at two locations:

10 AM – noon
in the Murder By the Book booth
South Pearl Street Farmers Market
1500 block of South Pearl Street, Denver, CO 80209

2 – 3:30 PM
Who Else Books, Broadway Book Mall
200 S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80209

I hope to see some Denver friends and readers at both events!

Signing in Monument, Colorado

Today from 5 - 8 PM, I will sign copies of Wicked Eddies, the second book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series, at the Covered Treasures Bookstore, 105 Second Street, Monument, CO 80132 during the town's monthly Art Walk. I hope to see some friendly faces there!

Kirkus Picked Wicked Eddies!

I just found out that my Wicked Eddies recent release is on the Kirkus Book Reviews "Critics Picks in Mystery & Crime" list. They bill themselves as "The World's Toughest Book Critics," so I am especially proud!

SALE! SALE! SALE!

I have big news to announce! The Kindle ebook edition of my mystery, Deadly Currents, the first book in my RM Outdoor Adventures series, went on sale June 15th at Amazon for the amazingly cheap price of $1.99. The sale only lasts two weeks, so hurry over to HERE to buy yours! I hope you'll consider picking up a copy of the second book in the series, Wicked Eddies, at the same time.

And, here's some more late-breaking news! Wicked Eddies is now available for the Nook. If you have a Nook, go HERE to buy your copy.

I'm in the News!

I've got two bits of good news to share today:

A 4-star review in The Mystery Reader for Wicked Eddies:

http://www.themysteryreader.com/cozy.html  (shows the date & # of stars)
http://www.themysteryreader.com/groundwater-wicked.html  (the review itself)

Also, I have a fundraiser signing today at the Next Page Bookstore in Frisco, Colorado. Ten percent of the store's proceeds will support the Gore Range Chapter of Colorado Trout Unlimited. Please take a look at an article about the event, me and Wicked Eddies in the Summit Daily News.

Today is the Official Release Date for Wicked Eddies!

Today is the official release date for Wicked Eddies, the second book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series. Yee-haw!

Whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner rides the waves again, this time while patrolling the upper Arkansas River in Colorado during a fly-fishing tournament. And wherever there's competition, there's the chance for tempers to flare, for cheating to occur, and even for murder! But there was also something darker going on in the life of Howie Abbott, the fisherman whose body Mandy discovered in a riverside campground with an ax in his neck!

"Once again, Groundwater, mixing mystery with outdoor adventure, comes up with an excursion that will please most comers."
-- Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2012

I hope you'll join in the excitement by purchasing your own copy of the trade paperback or ebook from your local bookseller or favorite on-line retailer!

Who Knew Fly Fishing Could Be Lethal?!

Today, Mandy Tanner, the 27-year-old whitewater river ranger sleuth in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series, is a guest on the Killer Characters blog. She'll be talking about some surprises she's facing in Wicked Eddies, the second book of the series that will be released on May 8th. One of those surprises is that fly fishing can be lethal! Please read what Mandy has to say and take a stab at answering the questions she asks.

Thank you, Kirkus Reviews!!

Whoo hoo! I'm excited. Kirkus Reviews came through for me again with another good review for one of my books. They gave away quite a bit of the plot of Wicked Eddies (release date May 8) in the body of the review, so I'm not going to quote it all here, but here's the last line:

"Once again, Groundwater, mixing mystery with outdoor adventure, comes up with an excursion that will please most comers."

-- Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2012

Wicked Eddies available for Kindle preorder!

I'm pleased to say that Wicked Eddies, the second book in my RM Outdoor Adventures series starring whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner, is available for preorder on the Kindle now. You can preorder it at Amazon HERE. As soon as I see the listing for the Nook version on the Barnes & Noble website, I'll post the link here, too.

April Appearances

I'm reading an ARC (advance reader copy) of a book that will be coming out soon from a big-name Colorado author with one of the huge New York publishers. On the backs of ARCs, publishers often list the promotion campaign planned for the book. This one had the usual stuff that we all do--blog tour; Goodreads giveaway; outreach to the author's community via website, Facebook and email newsletter contacts; media interviews; etc.

It also included a 6-city book tour.

Well, la-de-dah, I thought. Wouldn't it be nice if my publisher sent me on a 6-city book tour for the early May release of Wicked Eddies, the second book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series. Then it struck me. I'm sending myself on one--and more! I'll be back east for a week visiting Hampton/Newport News, Virginia; Bethesda, Maryland; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Then I'll have book events in Colorado Springs and Denver, Colorado, as well as in many small communities throughout the state, including Frisco, Salida, and Monument. Finally, in October, I'll be at the Bouchercon mystery fan conference in Cleveland, Ohio.

I'd love to see some of my blog readers at these events. The Appearances page of my website is always the best place to check for up-to-date information on where I'll be when, but for my blog readers, I thought I'd let you know where you can find me in April and early May. Please come and say hello if you live nearby. Here goes:

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Pikes Peak Writers Conference

Colorado Springs Marriott Hotel

5580 Tech Center Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80919

Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 5:30 – 8:30 PM

“Series Writing for the Organizationally Challenged”

Dinner Meeting of Chesapeake Bay Writers

Rivers Inn Restaurant

8106 Yacht Haven Rd, Gloucester Point, VA 23062

Friday-Sunday, April 27-29, 2012

Malice Domestic Conference

Hyatt Regency Hotel

One Bethesda Metro Center (7400 Wisconsin Ave.),

Bethesda, MD 20814

Monday, April 30, 2012, 4 – 8 PM

Festival of Mystery

Greek Orthodox Social Hall

12 Washington Ave, Oakmont, PA 15139

At both of the conferences and the festival, the bookstore is open to the public, as are the signing rooms. For instance, at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference, you can stop in the conference bookstore from 4:30 - 5:15 PM to catch me signing copies of my books there after my panel.

Goodreads Giveaway

The official release date for Wicked Eddies, book 2 in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series is one month away, on May 8th. To celebrate this countdown milestone, I'm giving away a copy on Goodreads to a lucky winner of the giveaway contest there. If you're a Goodreads member, please enter the contest and good luck to you!

Also, if you're a Goodreads member, I'm opening up my Q&A group for discussion during the month prior to the release. Ask me any question you like! And if you aren't a member of the group, feel free to join. It's public.

Lastly, here are a few things that Goodreads members can do for me:

1. Befriend me or become a fan at my author page.

2. Add Wicked Eddies to your to-read list.

3. If you've read one of my other books, please rate and/or review it on Goodreads.

4. Send a book recommendation to your Goodreads friends suggesting that they read Wicked Eddies.

And, just in case you haven't had a chance to read the blurb for Wicked Eddies at my website or Amazon's or Barnes and Nobles's or Midnight Ink's or ... here it is to whet your appetite:

Fly fishing is dangerous? River ranger Mandy Tanner had no idea until days before a huge tournament in Salida, Colorado. True, the Arkansas River can be a man-eater, but the rapids weren’t responsible for driving a hatchet into the neck of would-be competitor Howie Abbott―a secretive man who may have been cheating. While casting about for suspects, Mandy seeks clues from Abbott’s family members, including her best friend, bartender Cynthia Abbott. But when Cynthia becomes the prime suspect, Mandy realizes she’s wading into deeper, more hazardous waters than ever.

Happy Delivery of WICKED EDDIES!

I received a lovely surprise package today--my author copies of Wicked Eddies, which will be released officially on May 8th. The countdown begins!

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!

Judging a Book By Its Cover

Over at Inkspot today, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, I posted an article about my Midnight Ink book covers and how I've been able to influence their design. Cover art is very, very important in marketing a book, so I, like most authors, tend to obsess over them just a wee bit. ;-) Please read the post and let me know what you think about the topic in the comments.

Cover Art! Cover Art! Woot! Woot! Woot!

My Midnight Ink editor sent the cover art yesterday for the second book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series, Wicked Eddies. that will be released in May, 2012. I know I'm biased, but I think it's absolutely stunning. What do YOU think?

Responding to a Revision Letter

Remember when you used to get a school essay returned with the teacher's red writing and correction marks all over it, pointing out all the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and even larger mistakes you made? What really hurt and brought your grade down were those larger mistakes, such as misunderstanding what the content of the essay was supposed to be or what structure the report format was to follow.

In the fiction publishing world, the editor is the one who wields the figurative red pencil. Usually there are two--the acquisition editor, who looks for those big content and structural errors, and the copy editor, who looks for smaller errors in formatting and fact-checking. When you have a contract with a publishing house, the acquisition editor must be happy with the manuscript before he or she "accepts" it and the book is put on a publication schedule. Without acceptance, there won't be a book and the author doesn't get paid.

As a result, we authors tend to bite our nails after turning in a manuscript, waiting nervously to see what the acquisition editor will say in his or her "revision letter." The revision letter lists changes that must be made before a manuscript will be accepted. I recently received my revision letter from my acquisition editor at Midnight Ink for book two of the RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series, that I'm calling Wicked Eddies. I was greatly relieved to see that it didn't include any huge changes, like "get rid of this chapter/scene," "fix this plot hole," or "I hate this character's personality."

Phew!

Instead, I needed to whittle down the narrative in one chapter, define the distance from point A to point B in a scene setting, make it clear that one character is not asking another character the same question in two places but is asking different questions, and make a plot timeline issue clearer in the reader's mind. These were all eminently doable fixes that required work, but not a huge amount of work. So, I set my fingers to typing.

A few days ago, I sent the revised manuscript off to my acquisition editor. I'm now waiting to hear if my changes are acceptable or not. If not, I'll revise some more. If so, we have a GO! on this book, and the publication countdown begins.

Do I ever quibble with my editor about revisions? No. Not with any of my three publishers. They all have good editors on staff who work hard to meet their goal--to make your book the best it can be. If the acquisition editor says there's a problem, there's a problem. I may propose a different solution to the problem than the solution the editor suggests, but I never argue to ignore it and leave it be. This is all part of the process of being a professional author, working as a team member to produce the best possible product.