Kindle link

Here's a link to the Kindle page for AN UNINVITED GHOST.

AN UNINVITED GHOST on Kindle!

This time, for sure: AN UNINVITED GHOST, the second Haunted Guesthouse mystery, is now available for pre-order for your Kindle! Just go to http://www.amazon.com/An-Uninvited-Ghost-ebook/dp/B004GXC7YE and pre-order for the Kindle price of $6.99 (the physical book will be priced at $7.99 suggested retail)!

And I am promised that the Kindle version WILL be available on or close to the publication date of April 5--really, this time! (Keep your fingers crossed!)

Jeff Cohen alert

Somebody named Jeff Cohen is extolling the virtues of a very bad movie called THE MAN WITH BOGART'S FACE at Crimespree Cinema. Seriously. THE MAN WITH BOGART'S FACE? Did this guy SEE that movie?

Whodunnit?

I'm writing the third Haunted Guesthouse mystery right now. It's currently titled OLD HAUNTS, and I need a little guidance.

Who do YOU think did it?

November 1 Update

Just to keep you up to date:

Book #2 in the Haunted Guesthouse Mystery series, AN UNINVITED GHOST, has made it through the editing process on its way to publishing April 5, 2011. Will get you the final cover as soon as I see it. Suffice it to say the cat has remained. No further comment.

Book #3, currently called OLD HAUNTS, is almost halfway through that critical first draft. Alison is up to her neck in problems, of course, and the ghosts aren't ALWAYS doing their best to help. Suffice it to say there are a number of visits and reminders of past flings, spouses and near-spouses, and it gets a little tangled. There's also this murder to solve and a missing person to find. Like Meryl Streep said, It's Complicated.

For you Jeff Cohen fans: My pal's latest Aaron Tucker story, THE GUN ALSO RISES, will be published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine's January/February double issue, which will be available next week (Nov. 9) if not before. As always, it blends family business with finding out who did what to whom in a lethal way, and of course, Aaron is as funny as ever. This story is something of a prequel to the Aaron novel series, set in 1999 with our favorite freelance reporter trying to find out why a baseball player died moments after his team won the championship, and who framed his six-year-old son for an offense even more heinous than murder--bringing a water pistol to his first-grade class. Take a look!

Check It Out!

I'm the guest blogger at Mystery Fanfare, on the true meaning of Halloween. Leave a comment--let me know what you think!

Arts and/or Crafts

There's an ongoing "discussion" on the DorothyL listserv that asks the question: Is writing an art or a craft? And I think there's only one definitive answer:

I don't care.

Writing is my job. It's what I do for money, for pleasure, for recognition, for entertainment. It is the only thing I know how to do really well, or at least better than most of the people who aren't doing it. And if I take a moment while I'm writing to ponder whether or not what I'm creating is a work of art... I'm dead in the water.

There is craft to all art. Sure, Michelangelo could be inspired to create a statue of David out of a block of marble, but the fact is, if he weren't a magnificent craftsman, it would have come out looking like a block of marble, maybe with arms. By the same token, Bob Vila spent years on "This Old House" working with power tools, hand tools, nails, screws, hammers, saws and blueprints to make some old dump look amazing (and by the way, Bob, if you're reading here and have nothing to do, I have a house in New Jersey that could use your help and yes, it's officially old). He could have all the craft in the world at his disposal, but without the vision to create something beautiful, what he'd have would have been an old house with a coat of beige paint on it.

The fact is, it doesn't matter whether writing is an art or a craft. It has to be both, or it will be neither. But if the writer spends his/her time fretting over the level of art he/she is creating, the book/story will be bad/bad.

Writers write. That's what we do. We start with an idea (creating something from nothing--something pretty much no one else can do) and develop it into an emotional, intellectual, tightly crafted document that the reader gets to decide is either a superior form of entertainment, or dreck.

Is it art? I have neither the time nor the inclination to care.