Margo Monroe is back in her first ever short-format adventure. The entity that is trying to contact Margo and Ernie seems to prefer electronic means. Some of the tenants in the old building that the spirits call home are not thrilled to see the ghost hunters. Margo and Ernie are puzzled by their resistance until they discover the link between a decades-old crime and a local bigwig’s underhanded plan to remake their beloved hometown.

Get it here for just 99 cents on Amazon for Kindle. (Sorry Nook readers.)

My long-awaited mini-biography of Mozart, which was scheduled for release last summer, is in publishing limbo. The publisher seems to have fallen into the same black hole into which socks disappear. I am not a happy camper, as I'm sure you can imagine. Unfortunately, I am under a contractual obligation to the aforementioned publisher. So please keep your collective fingers crossed that my lawyer will be willing to dispense legal advice for free. (Note to Walt: no more lawyer jokes, I promise!)

That's the bad news.

The good news is that a new Margo Monroe mystery will be coming to a Kindle near you very soon! This one, tentatively titled "Ghost in the Machine", is a bit of a departure from recent Margo stories. Too long to be a short story but too short to be a whole book by itself, it's technically a novella. But don't worry, it has all the fun-filled, action-packed ghostly adventure you've comes to expect from Margo and Ernie.

In the meantime, check out this excellent article on why novellas are the future of publishing. 

Getting creeped out

Sorry for the prolonged absence from the blog, it was unintentional. I was supposed to go on a promising paranormal investigation and planned on coming back with a great story, but it didn’t happen. A friend recently inherited a substantial spread of land way out in the middle of nowhere. Plenty of paranormal activity has been reported there over the years and we were going to take our equipment and check it out. Alas, my friend got kicked by a horse! So we’ve had to postpone.

In the meantime, I’m hard at work on my next book in the Ghost Hunting with Margo series. I figure it makes sense for a book about ghost hunting to be published around Halloween, so that’s the plan. You heard it here first! Obviously I can’t tell you anything about the plot, but I can tell you the tentative title will be “The Science Professor’s Ghost”. A couple of readers have written to me to say they would like to hear more of the ghosts and their stories, and I’m happy to oblige.

An interesting thing happened while I was working on the draft: going back over some sections that I’d written earlier, I actually got kind of creeped out. I wrote it, I know what happens--but I still got goose bumps! I consider this a good sign. One of the hazards of being a ghost fiction writer is that you get rather jaded. When, by necessity, you have to spend a lot of time in dark, scary places trying to talk to ghosts, stuff just doesn’t phase you anymore. I’m curious to know if this happens to other writers. If you’re a paranormal writer--or even if you’re not--has something you wrote yourself ever given you the creeps? Please let me know.

My Stephen King moment

I recently had an bizarre experience. A couple of weeks ago, I met one of my characters in real life. I call this my Stephen King moment. In his book On Writing, King writes about the accident when he was hit by a car. He goes on to describe the maniac that had been driving the car. He writes, “...it occurs to me that I have nearly been killed by a character right out of one of my own novels.”

A friend organizes events for a living and a couple of weeks ago I was helping her, checking people in to an art festival, when tall blond guy came up and shook my hand. His name is Mark. I’d exchanged emails with him but this was the first time we’d met in person, and it dawned on me later that he could be my character Sandy come to life. In my book, Sandy is the go-to guy for my team of ghost hunters. He’s resourceful, perennially good-natured and a bit of a mystery, his only problem being a morbid fear of the paranormal. I don’t know if Mark shares Sandy’s fear of ghosts, but he’s as laid-back and charming a person as you could hope to meet, with a cheerful smile and an unassuming demeanor. He’s also handsome, in a blond surfer-dude sort of way.

Sandy was one of my first characters. I created him years ago, before I even had a story. So to meet someone that looks and acts pretty much just as I’d imagined him was a little bit surreal, to say the least. I didn’t share this revelation with my new acquaintance for fear he’d take it the wrong way, but I imagine the opportunity for an author to spy on one’s own characters doesn’t present itself every day. So if he noticed me lurking about he didn’t seem to take offense. I wouldn’t want my real-life Sandy to think I’m some kind of stalker. But meeting him was enlightening, a lot of fun, and--happily--rather a more pleasant experience than Stephen King’s.

My book release party!

A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I had a wonderful party to celebrate the release of my book, The Haunted House Symphony. It was a wonderful evening and I’m thankful that I have so many wonderful and supportive friends. 

The one writing tool every writer needs

I recently gave a copy of my book to my aunt, a sweet and very kind lady who’s getting on in years. She expressed astonishment that I actually sat down and took the time to write a whole book. It’s true that writing can be quite a chore. Writing requires discipline and dedication, and you have to be able to force yourself to sit down and just write, even when you don’t feel like it. But we have it so easy today compared to our literary predecessors.

Imagine the dedication, the drudgery, the sheer effort that once upon a time went into writing a book. Imagine a time when there were no computers or even typewriters. Does it not boggle your mind to think that some, possibly most, of the greatest works of literature--the books that we regard as classics--were written by hand? Let’s pick at random a well-known work, David Copperfield. According to Wikipedia it was first published in 1850. My copy, the Modern Library paperback edition printed in 2000, is 821 pages long. I can’t even begin to fathom the time and effort that went into writing this book, and it was but one of many! Dickens didn’t have a Mac, typewriters hadn’t been invented yet. Even the lowly ballpoint pen didn’t come along for almost another century. He probably didn’t even have a fountain pen--at that time, most pens were the kind that you had to dip into ink. The sheer amount of work that went into just about any writing effort is staggering. How did they handle corrections and additions? And not only did you have to write your draft by hand, but you had to write the whole thing out again, neatly and without corrections, for the fair copy that you submitted for publication.

Now think about all the fabulous tools we have at our disposal. One phenomenal application that no serious writer should be without is Scrivener, from a company called Literature and Latte. Once for Mac only, it’s been recently released for Windows. If I had to pick just one piece of software to keep, it would be Scrivener without a question.

It’s hard to summarize what Scrivener is exactly. I guess you would call it a productivity tool for writing. I use Scrivener to jot down my ideas for a story without text or dialog. Everything that happens gets its own synopsis on a separate virtual index card. Then I look at the story in Scrivener’s nifty corkboard mode and arrange everything into chapters, reworking or adding to the plot as necessary. Once I have the details down, then it’s just a matter of fleshing out each idea with plot and dialog. Because everything is compartmentalized, revisions, even major re-writes are manageable. I can’t imagine trying to write a full-length novel without it, but it works just as well for anything where you need help organizing your ideas. It comes with project templates for short stories, novels, essays, proposals, even poetry and lyrics. Scrivener also has script-writing features, if you’re so inclined.

There is a special folder for research, into which you can import all kinds of bits and bobs-- web pages, drawings, notes, basically anything that you might refer to later. I keep my list of story ideas, cast of characters and location notes in this folder so that everything’s right there in one spot.There’s a bit of a learning curve, mainly because there’s nothing else out there quite like it. But they have an excellent tutorial and plenty of resources on their website.

Scrivener is not intended to be a full-fledged desktop publishing or even word processing tool. Having said that, it does have some rather robust formatting capabilities. When your draft is finished, Scrivener can compile it into several different formats. And it will even compile directly to ePub, probably your best option if you’re going the Kindle-only route.

You can’t beat the price. The full version is only $45. Scrivener has way too many other cool features for me to talk about, so here’s a link to their website: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php.

In print at last

I'm excited to announce that my book, The Haunted House Symphony is now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in paperback, and for the Kindle and Nook!

Haunted House Symphony now available on Smashwords

It’s taken me a long time to get here, but I’m thrilled to announce that The Haunted House Symphony is now available on Smashwords. The printed version will follow soon.