National Library Week

Today I'd like to join readers, authors, and librarians nationwide in celebrating National Library Week, a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation’s libraries and librarians and to promote library use. Also, today is National Bookmobile Day! To find out more about what's happening for National Library week, I suggest you go to the American Library Association page about it or the @Your Library announcement, which includes a Twitter contest.

Contact your own local library to find out how they're celebrating the week. As for my library, the Summit County Library, they've organized quite a few events for this special week. Check out this Summit Daily News article about all of the events, including three today!

I'm a member of the Friends of the Summit County Library, and I'll be volunteering to help at bookfairs and the library information booth at the summer food market. Find out if your library has a volunteer organization that you can join! It's a great way to meet fellow bibliophiles and support your local library at the same time.

Also, if you need to downsize (as I did recently for my move to Breckenridge) and have to give up some of your book collection, donate it to your local library. If they can't use the books in their collection, it's likely that their volunteer organization will sell the books during a fundraiser to raise funds for the library. Hopefully some of those funds will be used to buy books for the library's collection, including those all-important children's books that help instill a love of reading in the next generation.

An Intriguing Interview!

B.R. Stateham asked me some thought-provoking questions in an interview he just posted to his blog, In The Dark Mind of B.R. Stateham. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

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.

Lamenting the Closing of Another Independent Bookstore

Today I am blogging at Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, about the closing of one of my favorite independent bookstores, Weber's Books & Drawings, which is the only bookstore in my hometown of Breckenridge, Colorado. Please read it and leave a comment about your favorite local bookstore and/or how you feel about the recent trend of bookstore closings.

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!

Celebrating the Delivery of a Manuscript

Hallelujah! I can back away from the keyboard that I've been bent over for months. On Sunday, April 1st, I delivered the manuscript for Cataract Canyon, the third book of my RM Outdoor Adventures series, to my acquisition editor at Midnight Ink. Yes, April 1st was the due date, and I was working on edits and prose polishing right up to minutes before I hit the Send button.

I'm proud of the book, and I feel that it unravels an interesting and intense mystery that stresses my characters. However, every time I read a chapter, I found something to improve or change, even though each of the chapters has gone through multiple edits.

And frankly, I'm going to continue to edit the manuscript after I turned it in. My critique group has yet to give me feedback on the last two chapters, and I'll incorporate their suggestions in the manuscript. After it rests for a couple of weeks, I'll read through it again, and I'm sure I'll find things to change. I'll fold these changes in with those that I will make as a result of my editor's feedback. In the meantime, I'm on pins & needles, hoping that she likes it and doesn't have too many changes for me. I'm sure she'll have some, though.


I just hope her feedback doesn't take the form of the above photo. Wish me luck, please!

Today's Author Guest: Jeffrey Marks

As promised yesterday, Jeffrey Marks is my guest today, talking about where to find the latest in mystery titles and releases. To read his bio and see his photo, please page down to yesterday's post. Above is the cover art for his extremely useful publication, Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel. It is the first and only how-to book on marketing and maximizing sales of genre novels, and I use my copy all the time.

From the early chapters of setting up a website and writing copy about your book to niche marketing, this book contains information necessary to navigate the quickly changing environment of bookselling. The fourth edition has a brand new chapter on social networking and how it can be used to sell more copies of your title. While specifically written for the mystery genre, the steps given can be applied to any genre. If you're an author and don't have a copy, get yours now! Here's Jeffrey's guest post:

Finding Information on Mysteries

I'm back again, celebrating the release of the 4^th edition of Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel. Beth and I are having a bit of fun today, and instead of talking about marketing your own book, I’m going to talk to you about where to find the latest in mystery titles and releases.

My goal when I’m looking is not to find a group of authors who are promoting their own books, but to find sites that are mainly interested in listing new titles for me to read. In this manner, I can find the latest releases of my favorite authors, and occasionally I can find a new author to read. I’m always looking to read a book and these sites help make it easier for me to find them.

There are places that just list new titles for you. One of those places is The Blood-Stained Bookshelf, which lists by month new titles. It’s a great place to see the newest books and what’s soon to be released. The bookshelf is a wonder, if you know what you’re looking for. I can easily find titles by authors I’m familiar with, but it doesn’t help me to find a “new to me” author. Plus there aren’t many reviews to guide me in deciding if I want to read the latest or not.

Many of the people I know who attend conferences use the Edgars’ site to locate books by category. Again, this doesn’t tell you anything about the books themselves. It just lists books by the major publishers in the current calendar year. It’s not a review site. It was developed for authors to see if their book has been received, but I’ve found it to be a very handy site for looking up new titles.

I Love a Mystery Newsletter is another place to find new books. They do a great job of printing in depth reviews of recently released books and series. I tend to go to them if I’m unsure about a new title or series by an author. The reviewers are professional and share what I need to know without giving away spoilers.

Goodreads is another fun place to check out new mysteries. You can record books you’ve read or are reading and rate them both via a star-system and in reviews. I’ve found that most of the real book discussions take place in the groups, so look around for groups related to mysteries and many of them will discuss recent releases. There’s some self-promotion by authors, but it doesn’t drown out the collegial feel of the groups.

Another site that deals in books is Shelfari. This site lists the bestsellers lists in fiction and non-fiction, popular series, and recommended books. The site was acquired by Amazon in 2008, and it has some of the feel of that book-selling site. One of the features is a virtual bookshelf that allows others to see your books and vice versa, similar to Goodreads.

Library Thing is another similar site. I especially like the LT Newsletter that appears monthly. It has a number of suggestions on new authors and interviews with those authors.

Finally, there’s always the good old Amazon recommends. I usually look at the “coming soon” selections under that and check out the interesting titles.

Of course, in one blog, I can’t mention every site that I search looking for new books. I’d love to hear from others about where they find titles to read.

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