Rachel Brady, Master Trickster

I'm up to bat at the Stiletto Gang, talking about the head games I play with myself to get stuff done. Please stop by and chime in, but only if you're a slacker. Super heroes are banned today.

Wonderful news from Left Coast Crime

Dead Lift has been nominated for a Watson, Left Coast Crime's award for the best sidekick in a mystery novel. Thanks to everyone who nominated it! Jeannie wants to buy you a round. :) I'm humbled by the company in the nominee list.

At the conference in March, I'll moderate a panel called "Detectives Without Badges." Panelists are Laurie R. King, Annette Mahon, and Lawrence Light. This should be a fantastic time!

Thinking about new writers

Yesterday I attended the monthly local meeting of Mystery Writers of America. Without fully understanding how it happened, I'm now serving as the chapter's vice president. This is an honor, but what scares me about it is knowing that I was recommended for this position because others believed I could infuse "new energy."

You know how it goes. Complain enough and somebody eventually says, "Well, if you think you can do better, we invite you to try."

MWA is a fabulous organization, but the complaints I allude to have to do with my outspoken opinion that the organization doesn't do enough to mentor its pre-published members.

So yesterday, I voiced some of my ideas to improve that. And today it occurs to me that I may be able to do something similar here at the blog.

One fortuitous side-effect of writing has been meeting other authors. What a cool bunch of people writers are. This morning I am wondering if the readers of this blog would be interested in posing a few questions to "authors at large." I could collect feedback from some of my author friends and post it here, and that would give you an opportunity for a little insight into their writing lives and their challenges in publishing.

Any interest? If so, please post your questions in the comments. I'll collect them and return with some professional feedback to share.

Rachel's Letter to Teen Me

Today at the Stiletto Gang, I've posted a letter to my teen self!

What would go in your letter?

Book Buzz: The Last Innocent Hour by Margot Abbott

Reviews are often most useful when we're talking about new books, but new books are seldom what I read. I just finished an old book (1991) that I thoroughly loved and suspect some of you will, too--The Last Innocent Hour by Margot Abbott. Set in Berlin circa the 1930s and 40s, this novel is best described as noir meets love story meets Nazis meets journey of personal growth and recovery. Kind of a Sophie's Choice with a Romeo and Juliet star-crossed lovers angle thrown in. Trust me. It's incredible.

The reason I'm so enthusiastic about sharing this one is that I had a very emotional response to it, which for me is the hallmark of excellent writing. This is the first book I've read in a long time, since longer than I can remember, actually, that sucked me in even when I was not reading it. You know this type of book. The one that you can't get back to soon enough. The one that makes you giddy because it's time (!!) to sit down and get back to the story. The one where you think you know the characters and feel like they are with you in your living room.

It's okay. You don't have to publicly admit that you do this like I do. But for me, this was that book.

Recommended for fans of historical fiction, noir, or dark romance.

Up in Flames. Dead Lift starts a fire.

My friend told me a distressing story today!

She was getting ready to fry some okra when the mailman pushed her letters through the slot in her front door. The oil was heating on the stove as she stepped away to gather the mail. One of the items was a package from Amazon with her new copy of Dead Lift.

But that isn't what got her attention. An envelope was wedged in the slot that had a Sprint rebate for $100 that she'd mailed days ago. Somehow, it had gotten smashed up in there and the mailman had missed it. This bugged her. Soon the rebate would expire.

And then she pulled Dead Lift out of its packaging, and instead of finding the hardcover she was expecting, she was holding a large print paperback. "Whoa, there! My eyes! How did this happen? Who messed up my order? Am I going to get a refund from Amazon?"

Meanwhile, grease fire!



The pan was in flames. Not as high as this picture. She went to handle it. She assures me that, at this point, she was very calm. An extinguisher was near, but first she removed the pan from the burner. Then, since it was a grease fire, she thought she would toss flour on it to put it out. The flour (from making the fried okra) was right there.

Only, not flour.

It was powered sugar.

Whoosh! More fire.

Then she started to freak out because the flames were high! She tried again to move the pan and it fell, splattered hot grease all over the floor, burned the rug.

And her hand. :(

At last, water put it out. Three hours of icing her hand contained the burn damage.

Such a scary story. I hate that it was peripherally tied to the receipt of a Dead Lift copy.

Be careful out there. Let's learn from my friend's experience.

How fast can you reject me?

This e-mail came today from my writer friend who is querying agents:

I've sent a handful of queries out into the great void. Yesterday I got a response from an agent in New York dated at 2:56pm to a query I'd emailed at 3:35pm. Which means that, due to the vagaries of the internet, my query was, technically, rejected even before I submitted it!

Ouch. And yes. This is exactly how much querying sucks.

I recall sitting down with a list of e-queries I planned to send one afternoon. Of course, I was spending inordinate amounts of time personalizing each one with small nuances to suit each particular agent. I sent one off, and before I had the next one crafted, a rejection from the first agent popped right up into my Inbox. Total time? Maybe three minutes.

I think these quickies are more palatable than Rejection by Omission, though. There were quite a few queries I sent that never received a response of any kind. So we're kind of comparing the "rip off the Band-Aid fast" rejection against the "I know you're bleeding, but I'm just going to let that gusher go forever until you give up and die" rejection scenario.

How do you take your pain? Got any good rejection stories you're willing to share?