A Fun Fish Tales Quiz

As many of you know, I have a story in the short story anthology published by the Guppies chapter of Sisters in Crime that is titled Fish Tales The Guppy Anthology. All of the mystery stories selected for the anthology had to involve fish or water or both. It's been fun working with the other story authors on promotion events and ideas.

The latest promotion idea is a quiz that the group put together for Goodreads. Anyone who is a member of Goodreads can play and test their knowledge about the anthology--or just have fun guessing while learning some things about the stories. Here's the LINK to the book on Goodreads. Page down until you see "Quiz Question" and click on the "Take this quiz ..." prompt. Good luck and have fun!

Malice Domestic 2011 - Report One

I finally have a day without an event (just driving) in my east coast book tour, so I'm posting my impressions and photos from the 2011 Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, Maryland. Friday morning, I took the Metro from Alexandria, Virginia, where I'd spent Thursday night with friends, and arrived at the Hyatt about an hour before Malice-Go-Round. I stowed my luggage, registered, and met up with my pitching partner, Five Star author friend Michael Allan Mallory. I gave a glowing blurb to his wonderful second book with co-author Marilyn Victor, Killer Instinct. He's with me in the photo below, and was a great pitching partner.


Worn out after Malice-Go-Round, I forgot to take the camera out for the rest of the day. I heard Louise Penny's delightful interview of Janet Rudolph and Dan Stashower's of Donna Andrews, and attended the Opening Ceremony and Reception. After dinner with some fellow Five Star author pals, I listened to the Best Novel panel, then collapsed in bed after chatting with my roommate, fellow Midnight Ink author Vicki Doudera.

Saturday began with the New Authors Breakfast, then I schmoozed until my morning panel, "Shot At, Robbed, Hypothermic and More: Travails Authors Endure to Get it Right." The photo below is from that panel, which included moderator Toni L.P. Kelner, Sandi Ault, Joanna Carl, Vicki Delany, and me. I decided I wanted Joanna's research gig--chocolate! The second photo shows me at work in the signing area, courtesy of Michael Allen Mallory.



Then came lunch with the Sisters in Crime Guppies chapter, and the remaining photos are from that. What a fun time that was!

Fish Tales Guppy Anthology Nears Publication

This is the cover art for the soon-to-be-released Fish Tales, The Guppy Anthology. It's a collection of short stories written by members of the Guppies chapter of Sisters in Crime, to which I belong. The stories all have a theme related to fish or water. My "Fatal Fish Flop" story was one of twenty-two that were selected to be included in the collection, and I must say I'm pretty pleased with it. The first line is:

"The guppies killed him."

I gave myself the challenge of writing a mystery story where guppies are wrongly accused of causing the death of a murder victim, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Fish Tales will be published by Wildside Press in time for copies to be available at the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, MD April 29 - May 1. I and many of the other story authors will be at this conference to sign our short stories in the anthology. I've read them all, and I can tell you its a stellar collection, well worth diving into!

The anthology even has it's own Facebook page. Please go to, "Like" it, read the Info page, then leave a comment on the wall about what you think of it. :-)

A New Short Story Contract

I am a long-time member of the Sisters in Crime Guppies on-line chapter. While Guppies stands for "The Great Unpublished," many of us who have become published mystery authors remain in the group because of the close friendships we've made there. As such, I participated in the Guppies anthology project, submitting a short story to be judged and considered along with 39 other Guppies.

Twenty of the forty submitted short stories were selected, along with mine, and two more stories by published Guppies were added, to make a total of 22 stories. Those 22 stories were professionally edited, then we began the long process of querying publishers to publish the anthology for us. Recently the Guppies treasurer signed a contract with Wildside Press to publish the anthology sometime in the next twelve months. Needless to say, the chapter is celebrating!

The anthology, titled Fish Tales, has a theme of stories related to fish and/or bodies of water, and of course they all are mysteries. Mine, titled "Fatal Fish Flop" begins with the line, "The guppies killed him". How could I choose any other? ;-) The other stories to be featured in the anthology are listed below. I know many of these talented writers personally, and I can say that this is going to be a stellar collection!

“Thicker Than Blood” by Leslie Budewitz
“Secret of the Red Mullet” by Nancy Adams
“Accidents Happen” by Jim Jackson
“Identity Crisis” by Diane Vallere
“Sleeping with the Fish” by KB Inglee
“Feeding Frenzy” by Patricia Winton
“SASE” by Karen Pullen
“New Age Old Story” by Sarah Glenn
“Shadow of the River” by Gigi Pandian
“Turkey Hill” by Warren Bull
“Something Fishy” by Peggy Ehrhart
“Truck Contest” by Kaye George
“Amazing Grace” by Betsy Bitner
“A Murder Runs Through It” by Annette Dashofy
“Dead-Eye Gravy” by Krista Davis
“The Professor’s Books” by Gloria Alden
“Koi Palace” by Heidi Saunders
“Something Fishy This Way Comes” by Deborah Benoit
“Palace on the Lake” by Daryl Wood Gerber
“Fatal Fish Flop” by Beth Groundwater
“The Frain Legacy” by Darlene Ryan
“Critique Group” by Patricia Gulley

Congratulations to all of the Guppies writers whose short stories are included in the anthology, and I hope my blog readers will put Fish Tales on their to-read lists. I'll keep you posted on developments and let you know when the release date will be.

My Week Back East - Part One

My trip back east was a whirlwind tour with four major stops. I flew into the Newport News airport on Tuesday to spend two lovely days with my parents in Hampton, VA (Mom cooked my favorite dinner of hers--crab cakes. Yum!). On Thursday, I drove my rental car up to Arlington, VA, to dump my luggage at the home of friends. Then I picked up L.C. Hayden at the Crystal City Marriott to drive to the Columbia, MD, Library for a Women of Mystery panel. After that came the Malice Domestic conference Friday - Sunday and the Festival of Mystery on Monday. Tuesday I flew home and put my camera in my husband's hands to process my photos. We were booted out of the house twice yesterday for real estate agent showings, so it wasn't until today that he could finish the photos and I could write up my thoughts about the trip. I'll blog about the second half of the trip tomorrow.

After a two hour drive on Thursday afternoon through rush hour, and including a couple of wrong turns, L.C. Hayden and I arrived at the Columbia, MD library to meet up with the rest of our panel (Meredith Cole, Debbi Mack, Kris Neri, Joanna Campbell Slan, and Elaine Viets) and our lovely moderator, librarian and Mystery Babe, Jacquelynn Morris. We had an early dinner of sandwiches, took a short tour of the library, then settled in for our panel. The first two photos show the panel in action and the third photo shows the appreciative audience. We talked from 7 - 8:30 pm, then signed books for a half hour, then hit the road for the return trip at 9 pm. After dropping off L.C., I stumbled in to my friends' house around 10:30 pm. In hindsight, starting off the Malice Domestic weekend already tired was probably not a good idea!



































Friday morning at the Malice Domestic Conference, I checked in and said hello to the booksellers, Tom & Enid Schantz at Rue Morgue Press, Kathy Harig at Mystery Loves Company, and Don & Jenn Longmuir at Scene of the Crime Books. Then I ran the gauntlet of Malice-go-Round, pitching my books with partner Barbara Graham to 21 tables of attendees. It took awhile to recover from that experience, but I really enjoyed the You've Got Fan Mail panel in the afternoon, the Opening Ceremonies Reception, the panel of Agatha Best Novel Nominees and Parnell Hall's interview of Mary Higgins Clark before heading to my friends' house for the evening.













After sitting at Lisa Bork's table for the New Author's Breakfast Saturday morning, I served on my panel, Into the Wild: Mysteries Set in the Great Outdoors, with Suzanne Arruda, Rachel Brady, and Deborah Sharp, moderated by the delightful Caroline Craig. Barb Goffman, the Malice Domestic Program Chair, told me later that she could hear our audience laughing through the walls as we regaled them with tales of things-gone-wrong during research expeditions into the great outdoors. After that came my signing period, and I took some photos of fellow signers, shown below, after the photo of the panel. The second photo shows Rachel Brady, Dana Cameron, and Joanna Carl. The third photo shows me with my table mate, Barb Goffman. The fourth shows me with Hank Phillippi Ryan, Maggie Sefton, and Deborah Sharp. The last photo shows Alan Orloff and Stephanie Pintoff.









































































Next came the much-awaited Sisters in Crime Guppies lunch, with 33 of us crammed into tables at Sbarro in the Underground. This is such a fun group, and I love getting together with fellow Guppies at Malice every year. Quite a few photos of the lunch follow this paragraph. I'll blog about the rest of the conference and the Festival of Mystery tomorrow.