It’s about time to let you know what’s going on in Donis World, Dear Reader, considering the fact that I haven’t updated my blog in about a month. I blame the holidays. That makes me feel much less guilt ridden than blaming myself.

After a lovely but busy Christmas, Birthday, and New Years, my sister and niece from Joplin, MO, visited us here in sunny AZ all last week. Carol (sister) and Abby (niece) probably wish they’d stayed in AZ, or left a little earlier, one. They arrived home on Sunday at 11:30 pm, after an hour’s drive from Springfield to Joplin in 20 degree weather, to find that a pipe had burst at my sister’s house and flooded the entire downstairs and basement. Abby lives in an apartment in the “basement”, and her ceiling had fallen in. My brother-in-law is in Taiwan for several weeks. so they had had a friend staying at the house while they were here, but she had left that morning. So apparently the pipe burst that very day after about noon. So much for the relaxing vacation. Carol called me after she got home and assessed the damage, but I didn’t hear from her yesterday. I’m guessing she’s busy.

I swore to myself that I’d spend all of my unalloted time for the rest of January writing on the new book. (As yet untitled. I was thinking of calling it Haints, until I discovered that Nash Black already has a book of the same title.) I keep working on the same 100 pages – changing my mind, unsure how to get where I want to go. But by God, I’m going to plow through even if it doesn’t make sense. I can think of several very popular authors who don’t care if they make sense. Perhaps lack of sense will be what puts it over the top to become a best seller.

My friend Hannah Dennison, author of the Vicky Hill mystery series, who is also currently suffering from a similar writerly brain disorder, pointed out to me that Mercury is currently retrograde in Capricorn. That explains it to my satisfaction. I’ll think of some other reason that I’ve had trouble since long before Mercury went retrograde.

Speaking of Hannah, she has a new book out called Expose’, and will be the guest blogger this coming Sunday on Type M 4 Murder. Her books are too funny, and this one, set in the exciting world of English snail racing, is no exception.

I must go try and figure out what to do next with poor Shaw Tucker, who is being followed by a mysterious … what? A haint?

I’ll keep you posted.

Have you ever had one of those months? I won’t enumerate the many ways things have gone wrong over the past couple of weeks, but there is one SNAFU that I particularly regret. Several weeks ago, I asked Kris Neri if she’d be interested in doing an entry for the Type M 4 Murder blog on December 6, which was my upcoming date to host a guest blogger. Kris and her husband are the owners of The Well Red Coyote, a landmark independent bookstore in Arizona’s most beautiful town, Sedona. She is also the author of several acclaimed novels and short stories, and teaches writing online for the UCLA Extension School. Kris has a new book out, High Crimes on the Magical Plane, featuring fake psychic Samantha Brennan and genuine Celtic Goddess/FBI agent Annabelle Haggerty. Aside from the fact that nobody could resist a book with that premise, I thought that when one considers the flood of paranormal novels and movies of late, Kris’s timing in writing a paranormal mystery is impeccable.

So, lucky me, Kris agreed to do an entry on her new book as well as enlighten us on the technique of writing a book that is both an engaging tale of the paranormal and an effective mystery. She sent me a wonderful article in plenty of time, and I eagerly sat down to post it at the crack of midnight on Dec 6.

Long, ugly story short – one of my regular blogmates had mixed up the dates and had preempted me with a guest blog of his own. No prob. I’ll post on his date, Dec. 13. On Dec. 12, since I was going to be away until late the next day, I programed the entry to come up right after midnight, as I have done many times before. But did it? NO. I had not set the entry for 12:30 a.m., but for 2:30 p.m.

Kris has forgiven me, which shows she’s a better man than I, for had I been in her shoes I wouldn’t have been inclined to be so gracious. But I cannot deprive you Dear Readers of the leisure to read Kris’s article, and so with great pleasure I repost the entire entry on this site. Read, enjoy, and learn.

The Mystery of the Paranormal
By Kris Neri

What if you could have anything in the world you wanted — except the one thing that you wanted most?
That question sparked the creation of one of the protagonists of my new paranormal mystery, High Crimes on the Magical Plane (Red Coyote Press). Combining the supernatural with a mystery is great fun, but it also comes with great challenges. The characters need to work effectively in both realms. Their powers and otherworldly abilities must seem vast enough to be believable within the paranormal framework. And yet they need the same flaws and blind spots as other characters to allow for the growth arcs that readers want. It’s a tough juggling act to create a character that is simultaneously powerful, yet lacking.
Within the world I’ve created, which plays out on the streets of Los Angeles, Special Agent Annabelle Haggerty of the FBI is also a genuine Celtic goddess. While her ancestors have returned to their mythical homeland of Tir na n’Og, their decedents continue to live among us, hiding their true natures. Generations of intermarrying with mortals has diluted Annabelle’s powers, but she has plenty of magical skills left to give herself most anything she wants — yet a burdensome sense of responsibility blinds her to the life she could be living. Too determined to reject the notoriously bad behavior the gods have always engaged in, this resolute goddess keeps her nose so firmly pressed the grindstone, she’s worn it to a nub.
One of the great advantages of injecting the paranormal into your writing is that you get to address the big philosophical questions in life, such as fate and why we are here, and whether we should welcome into our lives the people we want, or those we need.
Annabelle has little choice about the latter when plump fake psychic and scam ancient deity, Samantha Brennan, crashes into her case. Despite her dubious professional choices and highly eccentric wardrobe, Samantha embodies everything Annabelle’s family believes she should be. While Annabelle is cautious and responsible to a fault, Samantha is joyous, lusty and daring. Only a universe with a twisted sense of humor would put those two together.
When movie star Molly Claire is kidnapped and made the centerpiece of an inexplicable gangland siege that brings the City of Angels to its knees, these polar opposites are forced to work together, a relationship made harder by the fact that each of those women lives the life the other secretly covets.
The most enjoyable part of writing a supernatural mystery is choosing the creatures that will populate it. I wanted to draw on beings that were wacky and new. First I recruited Angus, Annabelle’s ancestor, the ancient Celtic god of youth and love and laughter. In Celtic mythology it’s said that anyone who has heard Angus playing his sweet harp is unable to resist him. In my modern world, he becomes a lounge performer, not to mention Samantha’s love slave.
But I didn’t stop there. I brought in banshees to patrol Griffith Park in Los Angeles, leprechauns that go undercover in schoolyards to spy for Annabelle, as well as flower fairies and dolphins. And I can’t forget the shape-shifter/FBI agent who isn’t from some distant realm, but whose ability to transform himself is the result of some nasty toxins in the air. (Watch what you breathe!)
Ultimately, though, a mystery, even when it contains elements from other genres, needs to hold together as a mystery. It must have sufficient plot twists, strong suspects, rising stakes and some plausible red herrings. Most importantly, we need to feel the outcome of the struggle could go either way, that the villain could outwit our sleuths and evade justice. With a supernatural being, it becomes that much harder.
But that’s where character flaws and blind spots come in. Annabelle misinterprets her psychic visions, and in her effort to behave more like an ordinary mortal, she overrides her own judgments. We’re left to think that if she and her family of deities are no match for the Demon of Darkness that Annabelle believes is masterminding L.A.’s own Armageddon, a poor little fake like Samantha will have no chance at all.
It’s a fight to the finish. Along the way, each woman learns something from the one she considers the last person who could teach her anything. Even when you’re a goddess, it seems life holds some wicked surprises.
###
Kris Neri’s web address is http://krisneri.com
The Well Read Coyote website address is http://wellredcoyote.com

Man, I hate going to the doctor. Now that Don is all better, I decided that it would probably be a good idea to get myself checked out, at least basically, since I haven’t even thought of a check-up for myself in the past two years. So, I went on the 7th and had to listen to a big long lecture about preventive tests, and got a scrip for beaucoup blood tests. Went yesterday morning and got pierced, then Don and I did a little Christmas shopping. Or Christmas wandering around trying to decide how to handle the holidays this year. Nothing accomplished on that front. Here it is, December 9, and I haven’t bought a single present for anyone.

The reason for this tirade is that I’m making excuses for why did didn’t post an entry about my trip to Tempe Public Library to see Louise Penny over a week ago. But better late than never, not to mention onward and upward.

I did in fact have the extreme pleasure of seeing the wonderful Louise Penny at TPL on December 2. If you don’t know Louise’s work (and if you are a regular mystery reader, I can’t imagine that you don’t), please go forth and familiarize yourself tout suite. Louise’s series is set in Quebec, Canada, and features one of the most appealing protagonists going, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the Montreal Surete. (Aside : I don’t know how to do diacritical marks on this machine, so please excuse me.) Three of her four Gamache novels take place in the mystical and mythical village of Three Pines, a place so idyllic that I am filled with longing to go there. Her first book, Still Life, won the Anthony and the Berry for Best First Novel, as well as the British Dagger Award, and the Canadian Ellis Award.

I’ve read them all, including her latest, The Brutal Telling, and loved them all, so I went to see her, like I’ve gone to see many many authors.

Now, I’ve been very impressed by how a number of authors handle themselves at events, but I must say that Louise blew me away. She is a true human being in the best sense. If I had never read one of her books, after listening to her, I would have given myself whiplash in my rush to buy them all. I’ve done many events myself, and do not consider myself an amateur at the game. However, I learned quite a bit from Ms. Penny on how to make a crowd love you.

Allow me to share :The moment she walked in the door, she went around the room, big smile on her face, shaking hands with and speaking to every attendee.

When she shook my hand, I said, “I’m Donis Casey…” intending to introduce myself since we have mutual acquaintances, but lo and behold, she knew my name! “Oh!” she exclaimed, “Let me give you a hug!” Her pleasure appeared so genuine that I would now take a bullet for her.

When she spoke, her joy in her craft and love of her characters and setting washed over the audience. To tell the truth, when she was finished, I felt a desperate desire to regain that feeling, which is easy to lose in the everyday struggle of life. I vowed to rediscover the pleasure of storytelling, and to remember why I chose to become a writer in the first place.

However appealing and lovable a person Louise is, the bottom line is that she writes great books, full of heart and warmth, and true human frailty as well as strength, ugliness as well as beauty.

If you want to be a successful author, you have to write wonderful books. It’s quite a bonus to be a wonderful person as well.

If you participate in or read authors’ chat rooms or web sites, you will occasionally see the term BSP used. This is shorthand for “Blatant Self Promotion”. Which Yours Truly would NEVER do.

Okay, that’s a lie. When you’re a novelist, (Unless you’re J.K. Rowling or Steven King and your publisher promotes the heck out of you even though when you’re that famous, you don’t need for them to do it because you’re also rich as Croesus, not like all us midlist authors who are barely getting by. But I’m not bitter.) you can’t afford to behave in your normal sweetly retiring manner and exercise your natural modesty. No, you have to learn to toot your own horn as well, and hopefully, as inoffensively as you can. The best of all worlds is if someone toots it for you, and you can plaster their words of praise all over everything you put your hand to.

I post excerpts of my reviews on my book pages (see links to the right) among other places – the best ones, of course, though I’ve been lucky not to have many iffy ones. But a couple of days ago I was privileged to find some lovely words of praise for my blogging. This was posted on the chat room for members of Women Writing the West, of which I am one, by a writer I very much admire by the name of Irene Bennett Brown. Irene is the author of several wonderful historical novels adult and juvenile, the latest of which is titled The Bargain, by Riveredge Books. Her web address is www.irenebennett brown.com.

Here’s what Irene had to say:

I love this comment by Donis Casey about our efforts to get details
right in our writings. (I took this from the Type M For Murder blog
and hope that’s permissible.) She says: “Nothing is harder than
trying to get every little detail right. You can’t get it all
perfectly correct, but if you can just make the reader buy…now,
that’s a skill!”

Amen to that! And if you’re reading this Donis, I want to add that
Saturday is my favorite day of the week, specifically because I get
to read your Saturday posts on Type M For Murder and Fatal Foodies.
You never fail to educate me, make me smile, and send me to my own
writing with a high heart.

Thanks, Irene. Your comments are very much appreciated.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been attempting to utilize my newfound photo uploading skills and put a couple of my latest pics on the front page of this blog. But things, they never go as planned. Seems that whenever I uploaded my new photos, they were enormously huge, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix them so they’ll fit.

So – instead, I posted them in the Gallery (link above). Last week, I spent quite a lot of time with my friend, mentor, and fellow Okie, Carolyn Hart. I wrote more about it last Saturday over on Type M 4 Murder. She was in the Phoenix area promoting her latest book, Merry, Merry Ghost. At least I have a small image of her new book cover, so I will post that here. But please feel free to check out the photos at your leisure.

In other news, I’m plugging along on my latest installment of the Alafair Tucker mysteries. I have a wonderful idea for the book, but I must say that the past couple of days haven’t been very productive. I’m up to about 25,000 words – that’s around 73 pages. As anyone who has ever tried to write a book knows, some days, you get the bear, and some days, the bear gets you.

And now, I beg you to excuse me, Dear Reader, as I attempt to go bear hunting.

Look what I learned to do, Dear Readers! I can now add pictures to my blog! I’ve been able to add pics to the Gallery (see above right) and to my Type M 4 Murder and Fatal Foodie blogs since their inception, but the skills necessary to add pictures to this WordPress blog has until a few days ago eluded me. I am not particularly intimidated by the cyber world, but I am uninterested enough that I don’t persevere like I ought when I want to learn how to do something new. In any event, I discovered how to add pictures quite by accident, and it isn’t that hard. So I guess it’s true that God watches over the ignorant.

The PP Webcon was yesterday, and I must say that I was quite pleased with how it turned out. There was enough to see and do that one could have stayed busy and involved online all day long. As I mentioned in my last post, I drove in to Scottsdale early in the morning and participated in an hour-long panel on adding suspense to one’s writing, along with Libby Hellmann, Fred Ramsay, and Betty Webb. Viewers could watch the panel live and type in questions while it was going on, and so they did! According to Rob Rosenwald, our publisher and filmer for the day, we had 50 or so live viewers, and several questions. It was tremendous fun, and I learned a thing or two myself. There were several live panels and presentations, several interviews with the famous, many really interesting book trailers and on-demand film clips, and audio panels and presentations. If you aren’t technologically ‘ept’, there were also lots of text panels on every writing subject you can imagine.

Those of us who paid the $25 fee to participate live also received a cyber goodie bag full of downloadable freebies, including dozens of original short stories by authors very well known and not so much, as well as a $20 gift certificate to Poisoned Pen Bookstore. The chat room was open all day, and there was no telling who you might run into. I was able to exchange a few words with Nevada Barr. We talked a bit about her new book, 13 1/2. Seems she’s also into vampire books.

I didn’t do it, but live participants could also sign up for agent and editor appointments, just like any other mystery conference.

The chat room is closed, the agents and famous authors are gone, but much of the conference was archived, so if you want to check out Peter May’s fabulous (and hilarious) clips about going to China to research his books, or watch an interview with Laurie R. King, or if you are just dying to find out if I’m really as twangy as I make myself out to be, go to the PPWebcon website and see for yourself
.

(Click on pic to make bigger. I’ll get better at this with practise.)

Last Monday, Oct. 12, Don reported back to the hospital for the umteenth time, and had his internal stint removed.  He now has no artificial tubes at all, and Zippy the Teenaged Urologist said everything looks very good.  Hallelujah, hallelujah! I think it’s as over as it’s going to be.   It’s been almost exactly a year since his first hospitalization, and he was ill for months before that.  He’s now in better shape than he has been for years.  Of course, I’ve been ground down to my basic chemical elements. However, all is well, at least for the time being, so onward and upward and  I have every confidence that 2010 will herald the beginning of a whole new wonderful world.

Coming up one week from tomorrow, I’ll be participating in the world’s first virtual mystery and crime convention, the Poisoned Pen Webcon. The Webcon offers the benefits of a major mystery convention, from the comfort of your home computer! I’ve contributed to two text panels which will be available that day – Ideas, featuring Rebecca Cantrell, J.M. Hayes, Peter May, Rachel Brady, and Yours Truly, and History/Mystery, with Clea Simon, Jane Copsey, Vicki Delany, Roger Hudson, Sarah Wisseman, and Self. I’ll also be reporting for duty in person at eight-blinking-thirty in the morning in order to be filmed live (as live as I can be at 8:30 a.m.), discussing Suspense with Libby Hellmann, Frederick Ramsay, and Betty Webb.

If you’ve been wanting to attend a mystery conference for fans and writers, but just couldn’t afford the time or money to travel this year, here’s your chance. I’ve copied the links and info below. Check it out, and I hope to ‘see’ you there.
 
PP Webcon
Saturday, October 24, 2009

The world’s first major virtual mystery and crime convention  bringing authors and readers together online   from all over the world
 
The convention you can attend from the comfort of your own home.

• Live interactive events bringing authors and others together in real time
• Author Panels and Debates in Video, Audio and Text
• Author Presentations – authors discuss their writing in Video, Audio and Text
• Coffee Shop – a live chat room where visitors can mingle and chat with each other or with visiting authors
• Recorded “on-demand” video and audio presentions, and articles.
• Book Trailers
• Author Interviews – Barbara Peters’ in-depth interviews with over 80 top mystery and crime writers
• Goodie Bag with book voucher,  free E-books, and privileged interactive access to live events for all registrants

 
Register Now!
Register now to be part of this revolutionary experience. 100% of all profits go to the public library system.

Our Price: $25.00

I spent last weekend working at a charity garage sale for P.E.O., which is a philanthropic organization providing educational grants, loans, and scholarships for women. It made me realize that I am not in peak physical condition, since I apparently don’t even have the strength to stand upright for several hours at a time without exhausting myself. Even so, I enjoyed it, more or less. We were fortunate that the sale was held during the first relatively cool weekend we’ve had here in the Phoenix area since last spring. If it had been held the weekend before, we would have all died of heat stroke. As it was, the temp reached the low 90s. But the workers and the buyers were all Arizonans and thus already desiccated and leathery, so we thought the weather was swell.

I spent the previous couple of weeks going through my house in order to find things to contribute to the sale. I was really proud of myself for being able to part with as much as I did. I even got rid of some furniture, and now have at least a yard or two of wall in my house that doesn’t have something covering it or leaning on it. I was also able to clear out quite a bit of the left-over inventory from my late Scottish gift shop, which I’ve had packed away in the library cabinets since the store closed over ten years ago.

It’s not that I’m a pack rat. No, I’m not. Really. It’s just … well, out of sight, out of mind. I’ve had other things to do. I’ve been distracted. And the dog ate my homework. I think ‘stuff’ just multiplies all on its own without your having to do anything, especially if you’ve lived in the same place for 25 years.

I did discover that I’m quite sentimental about objects, though, which actually surprised me somewhat. What possible good can come of saving an item that you enjoyed when you were twelve, especially when it’s so used and beaten up that it’s hardly recognizable? I admit I find it very difficult to part with something that was given to me by someone I love. I agonized for a while before parting with a stuffed elephant my husband gave me, even though it has been sitting on a chair gathering dust for years. Out it went, eventually, and lo and behold, I have my chair back!

A gift is one thing, but a handmade item is something else. A thing that someone created with her own hands has a kind of magic to it. There is an essence of the maker woven into the object itself, a bit of her soul imbued into it. I can’t possibly get rid of the little picture of vegetables that my sister embroidered for me, or the crocheted rainbow wall hanging that the other sister made. I even have a cigar box that youngest sister glued macaroni all over and spray-painted gold when she was in second grade. I have kept several dresses that my mother made for me in the 1960s and ’70s. I couldn’t get into them with a shoehorn. Or a building crane. My mother is gone, now, but her craft and skill reaches across the decades and speaks to me as if she were still here.

I have the same soul-magic feeling about any craft or work of art. A piece of the creator is in it, and ought to be respected and admired for that, if nothing else. Even food that is cooked from scratch out of the goodness of someone’s heart is better for your health and well-being.

Don update : he had his double root-canal last week. It went well, but he’s had more discomfort from the dental work than he had from all the operations, surgeries, and procedures of the past year. How ironic. He’s going back in tomorrow to be fitted with crowns.

Life must be getting back to normal, because I’ve returned to my old pattern of saying yes to everything anyone asks me to do and then driving myself insane trying to get it all done. I offer as evidence the fact that it’s been three weeks since I posted a new entry on this very blog. I am constantly chiding friends and relatives (mostly the female ones. You know who you are.) for overextending themselves and not particularly enjoying it, to boot. And yet I’m as bad about it as anyone. Part of the problem is that you don’t want to disappoint. And then, this one little project won’t take much time, and neither will this one, and this one, and this one, and there’s no end to it.

Well, damn it, Donis, just say no, and strike a blow for women everywhere. And if I ever manage to do it, I’ll be sure and let you know, Dear Reader.

I did have lunch with my editor a couple of weeks ago. As I mentioned earlier, she wants me to slow my series down and not be in such a rush to bring Alafair and her family into more modern times. So, I have begun a new book that begins in November of 1915, only two months after the events in The Sky Took Him. This new book, as yet untitled, is different from the previous four in that the central character, barring Alafair herself, is Shaw, her husband, rather than one of the kids. I’ve been looking forward to doing an autumn book. This one will have hunting, quilting, hog-butchering, and Thanksgiving. Oh, and Muscogee Creek Indians, haints, and of course, murder.

Husband update – I removed the bandage from Don’s last back-piercing a week ago, and he immediately took a long, hot, shower! A few days ago, early in the morning, I was sitting at the computer when Don walked through, fully dressed, and it dawned on me with a jolt that he is now fully self-sufficient again. When he first came home after the Big Hospitalization in January, he could hardly stand up by himself, much less get dressed. I pretty much did everything for him. As he got better and better over the months, one task after another dropped off of my nursing duties, until finally all that has been left for the past few weeks was that he couldn’t wash his own back, change his own dressings, or wash his hair. When that last bandage came off, and he was able to shower again, the last of the tasks dropped away. We’ll be going to see Zippy the Urologist tomorrow to find out the status of the internal tube Don still has left. I’m betting that he’ll say we should wait another month before he removes it, just to be safe.

And lest you think God is going to let us get away with no annoyances this month, Don went to the dentist yesterday and discovered that he needs a root canal, and maybe two. That’s scheduled for Monday.

A couple of events of interest have happened since my last entry. September has started, which historically has been my ‘beginning anew’ month. Several momentous life events have happened to me during this period around Labor Day, both good and horrible. I always – well, let us not say ‘dread’ this time of year, but ‘anticipate warily’. Part of this feeling of new beginning comes from my having been involved in education for most of my life. Student or teacher, your year starts in September.

Thus far, nothing untoward has occurred, though I am starting over in a couple of arenas. First of all, the book I’ve been working on for the past two years, All Men Fear Me, is currently on hold. I went into the reasons in my Aug. 29 blog entry at Type M 4 Murder (click on the link above if you’re interested), so I’ll just briefly say that my editor thought I’m moving ahead with my Alafair Tucker series too quickly, and she wondered if I would be willing to retreat backwards in time a little bit. Apparently the world in 1917 is becoming too modern and the family is changing too much. She and I will be meeting on Sept. 9 to discuss the direction of the series. I can, of course, do whatever I want with it, but my editor is pretty savvy about these things, and I tend to listen closely to her suggestions. In fact, I’ve already started working on a new book.

The second item of interest for me is that I took Don back to Good Old Banner Desert Hospital at an ungodly early hour this morning, and he had his second nephrostomy tube removed. For the first time since January 7, he is without external drainage equipment. The procedure took about 30 minutes, once he was wheeled into the OR. He had no anesthesia, so he just got dressed and walked out afterwards, then we drove to TJ Eggington’s and ate French toast. He still has an internal stint on the right side. We keep getting conflicting tales about how and when that’ll come out, but the general consensus seems to be that something will happen within the next three months that will result in its removal. At this point, we just go wherever they point us and do whatever they say to do. He has a big bandage over the now-empty back piercing. They didn’t sew it up or glue it shut or staple it or anything. Apparently it’s supposed to drain a bit. When they removed the left tube, it closed itself up within a week. I anticipate the same on the right. Don’s first action after bandage removal is to stand in the shower for the first time in eight months.

I expect a spike in the water bill for September.