I’m excited that Virginia is for Mysteries: Volume II is available!
You can find it at your bookstore of choice. (Barnes & Noble is releasing the book later this month.)
I’m honored to have my story “War and Murder at Nimrod Hall” in the anthology. My story is set at historic Nimrod Hall. Over on the Virginia is for Mysteries blog, I shared how Nimrod Hall inspired me.
I hope you can join the authors on Saturday, February 27, at Libbie Mill Library for an author panel and book celebration. Thank you for all your support!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ll be at The Festival of the Written Word on November 7th, where I’ll speak on a panel with a title something like “When Romance Meets Mystery.”
The Festival of the Written Word is a celebration of the power and beauty of writing. Embrace your creativity and immerse yourself in literacy, ideas and imagination. The festival will include live readings, writing tips, panel discussions with local authors and food vendors. It’s an activity that the whole family can enjoy.
Authors scheduled to speak at this year’s event:
I hope to see you there!
Don’t forget Chesterfield County Public Library’s Murder at the Library on October 30th.
I don’t enter contests. The Sandra Brown Prize for Short Fiction was awarded for “Good Works” based on manuscripts accepted for publication that year in descant.
But this spring, when the James River Writers Best Unpublished Novel Contest call for submissions came, the timing was right. I was wrapping up a manuscript I started years ago, and the deadlines were exactly what I needed to finish it off.
James River Writers and Richmond Magazine have announced the winners in the 2015 Best Unpublished Novel Contest and Nettie’s Books was a finalist. Thank you JRW and Richmond Magazine!
One year during my Nimrod writing week, I took an afternoon off to go to Clifton Forge. There was a store there (now gone) that claimed to sell antiques, but it was the sort of place where everything was jumbled together and thick with dust. I found 3 diaries written by a middle-aged local woman, which I snapped up immediately for no reason except that I am enamored of diaries.
If you have diaries, journals, or family letters you would be willing to part with, let me know! I have a file cabinet labeled “Other People’s Lives” for just such treasures.
I hesitated before deciding to buy the scrapbook because of its size—15.5 in. x 11 in.—and poor condition, but looking at the sorts of clippings it contained, I couldn’t resist.
My first thought was to write a short story in which the same woman who wrote a diary about the weather, the garden, cooking, and playing bingo also kept a scrapbook about news of the weird and death. The fact that the earliest diary was 1965-1969 and the clippings were decades older was no impediment.
And then the story grew. The result is Nettie’s Books, set in Bath and Alleghany Counties, 1930-1935. The book begins when Nettie is thirty years old. My next goal is to get it published. I’m hopeful that winning this prize will help with that!
There’s been a lot of great news lately. I’m delighted to share that my short story “Beast and the Beauty” is in the Spring 2015 issue (Volume 16) of Clare Literary Magazine, a publication of Cardinal Stritch University.
Thank you to the Editorial Team at Clare Literary Magazine.
I have a story in the upcoming collection Virginia is for More Mysteries (Koehler Books, April 2016) titled “War and Murder at Nimrod Hall.” This is a sequel to “Death Comes to Hollywood Cemetery,” which appears in Virginia Is For Mysteries. It follows Clara as she escapes war-torn Richmond in 1862 only to encounter wounded soldiers and spies in Bath County.
You can find Virginia is for Mysteries on IndieBound, Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble.
The time has come to become a real blogger. Watch this space to read Tips For New Writers.
Tip 1. Write every day.
You may be thinking, “Impossible!” Bad attitude. It’s easier than you think if you don’t get too rigid about what you consider to be “writing.” It needn’t be a whole story, poem, or even thought. You can record hints of stories. You can do it in a notebook. In a pinch, you can simply list words that appeal to you. Do this until it becomes such a habit that a day without writing brings on a guilt attack. And you are on your way.