DFW Tea Book Club | Friends, Dinner and Signing Hopping

Friday nights are always better with friends and good stories. This week was no different, since I had the chance to catch up with some good friends I hadn't seen since the beginning of 2009. We started our night at the Cheesecake Factory, a favorite of ours because who doesn't love cheese and cake? After we thoroughly stuffed our gullets with deliciousness, I headed over to Borders for Scott Sigler's signing of his new book CONTAGIOUS. The moment I walked into the store I knew I was in for a great night. He read for over 20 minutes, enthralling the over 100 people with his wonderful storytelling. He ended up selling out of CONTAGIOUS and promised if the crowd was the largest on this leg of the tour, everyone present would be mentioned, by name, in his next book. I thought that was pretty sweet, so you better believe Guinevere Reyes was the first to sign her name! I couldn't get a book, but I did get a few pictures of Scott reading.

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Over at the other big Friday night book signing, was the Oprah fitness guru Bob Greene at Barnes & Noble Lincoln Park. Even though Oprah has topped 200 pounds, Greene is still a voice to reckon with in the fitness biz. But apparently not as much as before or simply because it was a Friday night. Anyway, we arrived early expecting crowds and little seating. We were right about the seating -- none because he had to abbreviate his schedule and wasn't planning on talking, just signing his book, THE BEST LIFE DIET and leaving. But because there were only about 25 people waiting he took the time to do a bit of talking about his ideas, book and fitness plans. The crowd grew! He was very articulate and emphasized that people have to make life changes -- big ones -- to keep fit and weight off. So true I'm afraid. Again, he was a great speaker and seems to have a good plan for better fitness. Oh, and if you bought his book you got a cool free green bag. Some of us are suckers for free shopping bags you know!

Then we met up again -- the two halves of the book club -- went over the two authors and signings and took our Cheesecake Factory dessert to-go boxes and went home. Did I mention we bought books because after all what do readers do when they are in a bookstore? Answer: BUY BOOKS, you can never have enough!

Up tonight is the kick off social gathering for FenCon -- the local Science Fiction and Fantasy literary conference in September. Time to meet more friends!

Sara Reyes
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Debra Webb | Tales Your Grandmother Told

When I was a kid my grandmother always told me not to go too deeply into the woods or the boogeyman would get me. The boogeyman, she insisted, lived in the deepest, darkest area of the woods and he loved snacking on kids who got lost in those woods. Though I had certainly never seen a boogeyman in the woods or any place else, my grandmother had lived a lot longer than me and I wasn’t taking any chances. So, each time I ventured into the woods (which was most everyday in the summer—usually with my younger brother in tow), I would stop at a certain point and turn back. I wasn’t risking running into the boogeyman. As a kid, those types of warnings scared me to death but actually kept me from getting into trouble.

Then there were the other tales, the ones about certain people or particular houses. Every community has them. Some folks believe there’s some truth to the old stories, others insist they’re just stories that maybe evolved from gossip or flat out lies. The villages along Maine’s southern coast are no different. There are tales related to unsolved murders and folks who went missing never to be seen again. Like the tales from my childhood, some are supernatural in their foundation.

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Whatever the tales and wherever you grew up, chances are you heard your share. In my new release, FIND ME, Sarah Newton is a total nonbeliever in anything but the facts. Because of her own painful history, the truth is very important to her. Sarah operates on fact and she trusts no one but herself—a lesson she learned the hard way. As an investigative journalist for Truth Magazine, Sarah is in her element when on assignment. She travels to places where high profile homicides and abductions have occurred and those heinous crimes are swaddled in the area’s folklore and quirky traditions. As she tells Kale Conner, the guy charged with keeping her inline and out of trouble, she isn’t there to make friends or even to make nice. She’s after the truth and she’ll step on toes and piss people off to find it. She has no preconceived notions about the folks in the community. As far as Sarah is concerned they’re all suspects.

For research purposes, my family and I moved to the southern coast of Maine and immersed ourselves in that world while I wrote the book. I found the place and the people immensely interesting and extraordinarily charming and caring. The centuries of history and folklore were mesmerizing. And the architecture of the glorious old houses—I was in heaven.

Hopefully, your childhood wasn’t as terrifying as Sarah Newton’s, but I’d love to hear the tales you heard as a kid. Did the boogeyman live in your woods?

Debra is giving away THREE signed copies of FIND ME to readers who tell their most unusual child hood stories either below in the comments or Click Here

Debra Webb
Visit www.debrawebb.com

Joey W. Hill | Singing and Dancing, Angels and Mermaids…

I’m sitting here listening to the soundtrack to Mamma Mia and thinking about why I love the movie so much. Yes, I could say it’s nowhere near as stunning as the Broadway production, and many of the casting choices had more to do with box office draw than singing ability. (I never thought an Irish boy could sing as badly as Pierce Brosnan – and I love Pierce!) And some of the scenes are more than a little silly. But you know what? I like it anyway. Heck, I love it. It’s a wonderful story of young love, while celebrating and acknowledging the gains/losses of getting older (and no, not talking about pounds – lol). It recaptures the excitement of having a wedding, and the setting is drop dead gorgeous. Throw in music and dancing and, my gosh, you have the ultimate feel-good chick flick.

While my recent release, A WITCH’S BEAUTY, is not quite so light hearted, it reflects my core belief that a story is most worth reading if, after an amazing array of daunting obstacles, love wins out. Mina is a sea witch whose life has sucked in so many ways most of us would have just quit. She has no reason to do otherwise – she is shunned by the mermaid world, and most angels believe she should be dead. But because she’s had so little to live for, she’s made surviving her reason for being. She’s too damn stubborn to fold. As the mermaid Anna said about her in A Mermaid’s Kiss (first book in series, but books can stand alone), Mina has had to fight so hard and “she is the type of person who won’t give up what she’s worked so hard to earn…she has a formidable contrary nature.”

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David is an angel who really shouldn’t be an angel. He’s human-born, he’s too young (only 30), but he has extraordinary depth of character and a wicked way with a pair of daggers. He actively seeks the responsibility of being Mina’s keeper when his Commander, the angel Jonah, determines she needs protection from the Dark Ones who want her dead. Oh, and he kind of wants an angel close to her in case she decides to choose a side for her power…and chooses evil. If she does that, David is charged to become her executioner, not her protector. But David has faith in her, and between Dark One attacks and the battleground of their own hearts, the two of them will be drawn together by the dark loneliness they both carry.

This book does have singing, and since the singing is all on the pages of a book, David has a beautiful voice (laughter). Being human born, he has a penchant for crooning Rolling Stones’ songs as lullabies, which Mina finds oddly enchanting. There are gorgeous settings of course, because with a mermaid and an angel, I wasn’t limited. They explore a shipwreck graveyard, go on a moonlit flight despite Mina’s fear of heights, and even end up in a Nevada ghost town (Mina shifted to human form of course).

No dancing, though. Have to leave that for the next in the series. However, let me offer a consolation. Make a comment on this blog, and we’ll choose a winner from them sometime after 12noon EST Friday, 1/16 to receive a signed copy of A Witch’s Beauty! Thanks for letting me blather a bit. You can read excerpts from all my books on my website, www.storywitch.com. I also have a newsletter with monthly contests, early sneek peek excerpts from upcoming releases or free short stories featuring characters from my books. Just send me an email through my guestbook link and I’ll get you on the list. May you have a wonderful 2009, with many great reads!

Joey W. Hill

Comment below or sign up here to be entered in Joey's special one day only blog contest!

J.T. Ellison | Fictionalizing Reality

Twisted as I am, my imagination usually guides my stories. I dream up horrific endings by villainous creations (who end up giving me nightmares,) and terrorize my adopted hometown of Nashville with crazed killers. But up to now, every story I’ve written has been pure, straight out of my head, fiction.

I made an exception for JUDAS KISS. The fictional murder of my victim, Corinne Wolff, was based on a real case.

In 2006, I saw an article from a North Carolina newspaper about a young pregnant mother named Michelle Young who was found murdered by her sister. Her death was unspeakably violent, and her child had been alone in the house for days with her mother’s corpse. The media reported a number of salient details, including the bloody footprints the child had left through the house. I watched the case, hoping there would be a resolution. Unfortunately, Michelle Young’s murder still isn’t solved. Her husband is the prime suspect.

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Her story became the opening of JUDAS KISS.

The crime stories that seem to capture our interest as a society are the ones that take place where we feel the safest, which is inside our own homes. That’s where the majority of homicides take place. And we all know how much the media loves a good suburban murder, especially in my fictional Nashville. In the novel, there’s a sense of the fantastic surrounding this case, an “it could have happened to me” mentality couple with the media frenzy – satellite trucks parks on quiet streets, reporters camped on the lawns, every moment chronicled. It doesn’t happen that way in the Section 8 housing. The drug and vendetta killings don’t make the news very much. So in a sense, I’m capitalizing on what does capture our attention.

But JUDAS KISS wasn’t the easiest book to write. Any time an author is faced with a child at a crime scene, a tightrope appears from your laptop, and gets thinner every moment you spend looking at it. It’s a difficult balancing act. Bad things do happen to children. Bad things do happen to animals. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of reading about either. Reality can stay out of my fiction, thank you very much.

So when I wrote the opening of JUDAS KISS, I didn’t give it much thought, simply because I wasn’t killing Corinne Wolff’s child. I was in safe territory. But one of my independent readers was very unhappy with the opening. She was terribly upset with me for leaving Hayden Wolff alone with her mother’s dead body. “If the husband did it, there’s no way he would leave the child alone like that. No one would. You’re going to alienate mothers all across the country.” I was struck by that statement, obviously. That’s not the goal behind these stories.

So I sent my reader the links to the real case. In the book, I’d actually toned down some of the “real” parts because they were so dreadful. My reader came back with a new eye – she understood now. She was horrified by the real case, understood what I was doing. She realized that I never set out to shock or offend with this story. I only wanted to give the real victim, Michelle Young, some closure. Her story affected me in ways I couldn’t imagine. I’ve found that reality can sometimes throw me for a loop.

We mystery writers are a strange lot. We write about murder and mayhem all day. We walk a fine line between victims and victimizing. I try very, very hard to make sure the violence in my books is never gratuitous. I always strive to make sure that my victims have a reason, a place, a purpose. They aren’t just dead bodies stacking up like cordwood to move the story along. That’s just not why I wanted to write crime fiction. I wanted to find ways to give some justice to those who didn’t have anyone to fight for them, to right the wrongs, and penalize the guilty. In my books, the bad guys get caught, and they are punished. Justice is served. The white hats win. That’s why I got into crime fiction.

But it doesn’t stop me from wishing I could do something for the Michelle Young’s of the world.

J.T. ELLISON is the author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series, including ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, 14, JUDAS KISS and the forthcoming EDGE OF BLACK. She was recently named “Best Mystery/Thriller Writer of 2008” by the Nashville Scene. She is a former White House staffer who moved to Nashville and began research on a passion: forensics and crime. Ellison worked extensively with the Metro Nashville Police, the FBI and various other law enforcement organizations to research her novels. She is the Friday columnist at the Anthony Award nominated blog Murderati and a founding member of Killer Year. She lives in Nashville with her husband and a poorly trained cat. Please visit jtellison.com for more information.

Gerry Bartlett | Forget those resolutions! How about a revolution?

Gerry Bartlett here, author of the REAL VAMPIRES series from Berkley. Like my vampire Glory St. Clair, I have an antique business. Too bad it was on the historic Strand in Galveston. Hurricane Ike swooped in and dumped eight feet of water in the shop. Of course, as a writer, I love books and had to watch a mini-bulldozer shove hundreds of my precious volumes to the curb. Sigh. Can you blame me if I’m more than ready to kiss 2008 good-bye?

Enough of looking back. Time to look ahead. To a new year. And I vowed a long time ago to never start another year with resolutions. They last just long enough to give me a serious case of the guilts. You know those resolutions. One: Lose weight. Yeah, right. I stick to that diet just until temptation crosses my path. Writer, know thyself. And when a chocolate chip cookie calls my name? Gerry answers.

Second same old, same old: Get organized. Sure. Just as soon as I find that box of color coordinated folders I bought in 1998. Oh, and the label maker. Love the label maker. But I lost the directions in 2002. Yup, I’m an organizational nightmare.

So forget the resolutions. It’s on to the revolution. I’m revolting against all the “shoulds.” Gerry “should” get up and go to that 6:30 (in the morning?) boot camp exercise class at the Y. Gerry “should” write for eight hours a day—not go out to lunch or hit the mall for that third pair of boots. Gerry “should” eat sensibly—eat the sacks of salad instead of letting them go mushy and brown and then tossing them. Gerry “should” break up the dust bunny orgy going on under her couch.

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You get the picture. Some of those “shoulds” are more important than others. But there’s no need to torture yourself. I do need to exercise. But that 6 p.m. circuit training is a heck of a workout and one I might actually get to. If it’s a matter of my livelihood (that writing thing), maybe it’s time to examine my priorities. Lucky dust bunnies, you’re off the hook. Party on. The bottom line is that 2009 has got to be better for me and for you. Are there areas in your life that need your attention? Take care of yourself first. Sometimes we forget that we’ve got to be our own number one priority or we can’t be there for the others who might need us.

Gee, now I’m sounding serious, not like the funny girl who gets vampire Glory St. Clair into trouble in REAL VAMPIRES DON’T DIET. Not to worry. If you need a chuckle to take your mind off the winter blues, there are plenty of them with Glory and her friends. That was one book Hurricane Ike couldn’t soak with salt water. It wasn’t in print yet.

Have a safe and prosperous new year and, if you want to start off 2009 with a new book, leave me a comment below or click here for a chance to win a Barnes and Noble gift card.

Gerry Bartlett

Hope Tarr | The One Who Got Away...

We all have one, which is to say a “The One.” You know what or rather who I mean. The O-N-E. Maybe he was your first love or your first big love. Maybe he was both. Maybe you broke up with him--but I’m betting my next book advance he broke up with you. Maybe you never really had him in the first place...but again, I’m betting you did. At least long enough for a part of him to sink into your psyche and your soul. Like that tattoo you rethink years later, you can obliterate the image but not the experience. That shiny white scar is yours--for keeps.

Only by definition The One Who Got Away isn't a keeper, or at least he hasn’t been so far. And yet who among us hasn't been moved by those real-life stories of high school sweethearts who find each other on ClassMates.com or reunion night after years, decades apart and fall in love all over again, even marry, in mid- and sometimes late life?

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In EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE…, my latest Harlequin Blaze release, former FBI Special Agent Cole Whittaker and microbiologist Alexandra--Alex--Kendall meet again after five painful years apart. Like so many real life reunions, theirs is completely unexpected, the circumstances far from ideal. Alex is about to marry another man, the man who's hired Cole as a bodyguard to escort her on her upcoming overseas business trip to Belize. Crazy in love with her, Cole still can't envision his life having room in it for more than The Job. And yet they have a chance, a slim one, to get it right this time: four days of 24/7, up close-and-personal togetherness in steamy Belize.

What about you? Do you have a One Who Got Away? I'll be checking in throughout the day, and I'd love to hear your story...especially if He didn't stay away forever.

Hope
Hope Tarr is the award-winning author of a dozen (or so) contemporary and historical romance fiction novels, including Every Breath You Take… To enter her monthly and special contests or to check out her blog, visit her online at www.hopetarr.com.

Win a signed copy of STROKES OF MIDNIGHT by commenting below or if you're shy, go to Hope's Blog Contest. THREE WINNERS

Sandi Shilhanek | Discovering a New Author

In several of my yahoo groups the conversation tends to run to discovering a new to you author. As you can imagine being dedicated readers someone in the group has usually read whichever author is being discussed, and being the eclectic readers that we are can we all agree on one good book? Of course not! That then leads to the person whose just discovered an author having to get not only one backlist book, but all of them!

Do you have an author that you can remember having to glom? I know that I was late to the party on several very popular authors. One that comes to mind is unfortunately no longer writing, but when she wrote I had to head off to the closest store and get everything she had written. Now I envy the person who is just discovering Lavyrle Spencer because she has a finite backlist!

I remember when I discovered Sandra Brown. I was on vacation, and figured that vacation money wasn’t like real money, and I could take a chance on an author I hadn’t read. I bought Mirror Image and was hooked on this author. Even all those years ago she had an extensive backlist, and I have made a serious effort to find it, and read it. Of course I’m not caught up, but I know that my TBR pile holds books I will be enjoying when I decide I need my Sandra Brown fix.

Now…how do you feel about backlists? Do you have to own everyone the author you’ve just discovered has to offer? Do you read the blurbs and only pick the ones that totally appeal? Do you even (imagine me shuddering as I typed this) ignore the backlist and just move on to the current work by a new favorite author.

Sandi
DFW Tea Readers
Readers 'n 'ritas...
celebrating literary obsessions