A Blog for Readers and Writers of Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction
Have you all heard of this? Amazon has a policy where customers can return an e-book, even after reading it, for a full refund. Readers, no fools they, are beginning to use Amazon as a lending library, at great cost to authors. Don’t like this? Neither do I! Well, there’s a petition you can sign.
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I finally got to travel last week, and I loaded my kindle with plenty of reading material. Four in one week is not my personal best, that is reserved for the vacation where I read a book a day, ran out of books, and had to find a bookstore in a panic before the flight home. Obviously before kindles. I read a mystery novel (times 2), a memoir, and a sliver of vampire fiction by Octavia Butler, who never disappoints in the “taking a trope and turning it inside out, on its head, and sideways” department.
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Although many living things communicate with each other (my dog certainly feels a burning need to let me know the mail has arrived the very moment it does), humans, at least on this planet, are the only ones who have language. And novels. And stories. And Instagram.
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As writers (at least as writers in the U.S.), we are expected to give away a portion of our product. We give away signed books, ebooks, short stories, novellas, etc.
And I don’t even want to put in writing what someone asked me to give away today. Let’s just say the request that landed in my inbox made me think long and hard about the value of a FREE THING.
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None of us live in the present, not unless we’re meditating, and even then it’s really hard. Mostly we live in the past. Sometimes in the future. Memories are fuzzy, mutable, and, depending on who you ask, highly inaccurate accounts of our past. Therefore, it’s safe to say we live in lala land most of the time.
Well, okay, I do. I admit it.
So, I asked the Miss Demeanors about their earliest memories.
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When I was sixteen, I almost drowned. It wasn’t a terribly traumatic experience, but it birthed a great deal of creativity.
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As the world continues to implode, I had to postpone my travel plans. Yet again. But nothing can keep me from my vacation reading.
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These holiday seasons seem just as much about food and sitting down with family and friends as they are about gifts or any religious significance.
As I looked at my bounty of treats that included a metric ton of Christmas chocolate and even an authentic Jamaican Rum Cake baked by a friend from her grandmother’s recipe, my thoughts turned, as they are wont, to murder weapons. Specifically, poison.
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