tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67558748884237036002024-02-21T01:08:44.412-05:00Rogue Women WritersKick-Ass Thriller Writers. With Lives.Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.comBlogger658125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-83103754912817836772021-03-10T13:02:00.004-05:002021-03-10T13:02:43.497-05:00<p>Our blog has moved!</p><p>Our new home is: https://roguewomenwriters.com/</p><p>The new RSS feed is https://roguewomenwriters.com/feed</p><p> Please join us at our new location. Thank you!<br /></p><p>Lisa Black, Karna Small Bodman, Chris Goff, KJ Howe, Gayle Lynds, Jenny Milchman and Carla Neggers <br /></p>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-22327423598766690532021-03-09T08:00:00.004-05:002021-03-10T13:08:30.680-05:00ZJ CZUPOR'S MYSTERY MINUTE <p> <i><span style="color: #cc0000;">By <a href="https://zoltanjames.com/" target="_blank">Z. J. Czupor</a></span></i></p><p><b>A Thumb Print and What Came of It</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRYXc3KUdXRIllzBrZcjXYTFwg9B9IZTpQirwEhTGgIYG-RE2rgbRdMcATG0I6E6B8rJnpm9I380jR7LtfbIR1THaTcWH5x9yNtKodG2Iz6Wf2KrbGqajmpq_RkTf1ka8jYkxEPKlBfLm8/s199/image001.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="199" data-original-width="133" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRYXc3KUdXRIllzBrZcjXYTFwg9B9IZTpQirwEhTGgIYG-RE2rgbRdMcATG0I6E6B8rJnpm9I380jR7LtfbIR1THaTcWH5x9yNtKodG2Iz6Wf2KrbGqajmpq_RkTf1ka8jYkxEPKlBfLm8/w134-h200/image001.png" width="134" /></a></div>In America, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, (Mark Twain, 1835-1910), was the first to introduce fingerprinting into fiction. In his memoir, <i>Life on the Mississippi</i>, he wrote a chapter entitled, “A Thumb Print and What Came of it.” (James R. Osgood & Co.,1883).<p></p><p>Twain claims to have gotten the idea from an old French prison keeper who told him "there was one thing about a person which never changed from cradle to grave—the lines on the ball of the thumb—and they were never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two human beings." From that notion grew <i>Pudd’nhead Wilson</i>, a mystery based upon identification of fingerprints.</p><p>Picture Dawson’s Landing, a fictional Missouri frontier town on the banks of the Mississippi River, in the first half of the 19th century. This is the setting for Twain’s satiric crime story, <i>Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins</i>, which was first serialized in <i>The Century Magazine</i> (1893-1894) and then published as the novel <i>The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson</i> by Charles L. Webster & Company (1894). </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY_egyWzG_lgl1k1Fdh6sd2iArQNXsVF6b1IgO8SegrNKgVh2-ZwTNpb4m9Q28ycJa1JxAexdWp-dj6eFDPZrVtMEo_hyp2Uqx4GBI9HDtfTT9oVCmHuJHzfl-XNgrgVM65FteiOVi12lL/s548/1883-Mark-Twain.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="548" data-original-width="361" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY_egyWzG_lgl1k1Fdh6sd2iArQNXsVF6b1IgO8SegrNKgVh2-ZwTNpb4m9Q28ycJa1JxAexdWp-dj6eFDPZrVtMEo_hyp2Uqx4GBI9HDtfTT9oVCmHuJHzfl-XNgrgVM65FteiOVi12lL/w198-h299/1883-Mark-Twain.jpg" width="198" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: "Lucida Bright",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mark Twain in New York City in 1883, the year
he wrote "The Thumb Print." "Courtesy of the Center for Mark
Twain Studies, Elmira College, Elmira, New York."</span></i></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The story revolves around two boys: Valet de Chambre (or Chambers) who was born into slavery (with 1/32 black ancestry) and Tom Driscoll who was born white. The boys look similar and are switched in their cribs by a young slave girl who fears for the safety of her light-skinned child. She switches her son with that of her master's. Each grows into the other’s social role. </p><p>David Wilson, an unsuccessful lawyer, moves to town and makes a clever remark which is misunderstood. That causes locals to brand him a “pudd’nhead” or nitwit. When a murder occurs, Wilson solves the mystery in a courtroom scene where he uses fingerprints left on a knife to announce the real murderer.</p><p>Writing in <i>Courthouse News Service</i>, (Oct. 28, 2009), Adam Klasfeld said, "Twain turned out to be as prophetic a forensic analyst as he was a social critic. Fingerprinting was a fringe idea at the time this novel was published, vaguely known about but rarely practiced in criminal justice until the turn of the century." </p><p></p>In 1892, British scientist Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) published <i>Finger Prints</i>, his treatise on classifying a person's digital marks. The treatise was published nine years <i>after</i> Twain's short story,<i> A Thumb Print.</i><p></p><p>That same year, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, detective Juan Vucetich solved a murder using thumbprints found at the crime scene. This is considered to be the first homicide solved by fingerprint evidence.</p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjep_YF1unw8vox50G-57jf3gA3GhKc_7w3lPubZswwQksuk_FntmpEOqAVt-HPz579vcsKJmQmcIpbX6ssJmPgVufuRtQLEN4tGuEeJOvBenf4f7MJgSoZQSGcpUG6ZULI-rawpAj-S_4-/s345/Galton%2527s+fingerprints.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="345" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjep_YF1unw8vox50G-57jf3gA3GhKc_7w3lPubZswwQksuk_FntmpEOqAVt-HPz579vcsKJmQmcIpbX6ssJmPgVufuRtQLEN4tGuEeJOvBenf4f7MJgSoZQSGcpUG6ZULI-rawpAj-S_4-/w200-h189/Galton%2527s+fingerprints.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: "Lucida Bright",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sir Francis Galton displayed his own
fingerprints on his title page, </span></i><span style="font-family: "Lucida Bright",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finger Prints<i>
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1892).</i></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>In June 1902, Scotland Yard, a metonym for London's Metropolitan Police headquarters, solved its first burglary case based on fingerprints when the accused left an impression of his left thumb on a newly painted windowsill. </p><p>Later in October of 1902, France's landmark Scheffer case was the first to identify, arrest, and convict a murderer based upon fingerprint evidence. Alphonse Bertillon identified the thief and murderer, Henri Leon Scheffer, when his prints were found on a fractured glass showcase after a theft in a dentist's apartment where the dentist's employee was found dead. Scheffer had previously been arrested and his fingerprints were already on file. </p><p>Bertillon (1853-1914) was Paris' chief of criminal identification and subsequently developed anthropometry, or the Bertillon system, which measured twelve characteristics of the body. It helped to determine if arrested suspects had been involved in previous crimes. </p><p>In 1903, the state of New York developed the American Classification System of fingerprinting all criminals and the science of fingerprinting spread nationwide. The following year, the U.S. Government recorded fingerprints of inmates at Leavenworth, KS federal prison which marked the beginning of the government's fingerprint collection.</p><p>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's (1859-1930) short story, <i>The Norwood Builder </i>(<i>The Strand Magazine</i>, 1903), features his celebrated sleuth Sherlock Holmes in which the discovery of a bloody fingerprint helps him expose the real criminal and free his client. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjorTL8uqZTKB_92iL3SgPGmonDSFuz8YoalpwD6wGQ9Zpts1dZAWVumL9sfLj3DmLm4wrwluzCPlOSFi3z7mouLqJerHMs3u423SKdBdw6qdZudaP02iV-G_fiLHVMWjRvxs0noweZeeSb/s1446/Puddenhead+Wilson+Book.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1446" data-original-width="930" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjorTL8uqZTKB_92iL3SgPGmonDSFuz8YoalpwD6wGQ9Zpts1dZAWVumL9sfLj3DmLm4wrwluzCPlOSFi3z7mouLqJerHMs3u423SKdBdw6qdZudaP02iV-G_fiLHVMWjRvxs0noweZeeSb/w190-h296/Puddenhead+Wilson+Book.jpg" width="190" /></a></div><p></p><p>The British writer R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943) wrote a series of medical-legal detective novels featuring Dr. John Thorndyke, which set the stage for the forensic science detective novel. His first Thorndyke novel, <i>The Red Thumb Mark</i> (Collingwood, 1907), involves a forged bloody fingerprint left on a piece of paper together with a parcel of diamonds inside a safe box. Dr. Thorndyke investigates and defends the accused whose fingerprint matches that on the paper, but after the diamonds had been stolen. </p><p>In his investigation, Dr. Thorndyke compares his client's thumb print with his aunt's Thumbograph, which was a popular form of autograph book sold in England in the early 1900s. People often captured fingerprints of relatives, friends, and others they admired, and used the exercise as an after-dinner amusement. A person would ink a finger and print it on the right side of the Thumbograph and autograph the left with a date. The Thumbograph also appears and disappears from a locked library in the 1938 mystery novel, <i>The Crooked Hinge</i> by John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) published by Hamish Hamilton, UK and Harper, US. </p><p>Freeman shaped other stories around forged fingerprints in <i>"The Old Lag" </i>(1912), <i>"The Cat's Eye</i> (1923), <i>Mr. Pottermack's Oversight </i>(1930), and <i>When Rogues Fall Out</i> (1932)—an appropriate title for this edition, I might add.</p><p>British science journalist Laura Spinney writing in <i>Nature </i>(March 17, 2010) says, "Even fingerprinting's harshest critics concede that the technique is probably more accurate than identification methods based on hair, blood type, ear prints or anything else except DNA. Granted, no one has ever tested its underlying premise, which is that every print on every finger is unique. But no one seriously doubts it, either. The ridges and furrows on any given fingertip develop in the womb, shaped by such a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors that not even identical twins share prints. Barring damage, moreover, the pattern is fixed for life. And thanks to the skin's natural oiliness, it will leave an impression on almost any surface the fingertip touches."</p><p>Editor Louise Harnby writes an excellent <a href="\\Mac\Home\DataFile\3 - Writing\Mystery Minute Complete Files\MM Rogue Roundup\Fingerprint forensics for beginner crime-fiction writers - Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader (louiseharnbyproofreader.com)" target="_blank">blog</a>, “Fingerprint forensics for beginner crime-fiction writers,” in which she offers tips to help writers get the science right in fiction, as well as a list of valuable resources. Another excellent resource is <i>The Fingerprint Sourcebook</i>, published by the U.S. Department of Justice which can be read free <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/225320.pdf" target="_blank">online</a>, and <i>Fingerprints: The Origin of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science</i>, by Colin Bevan (Hyperion, 2001). </p><p>AUTHOR'S NOTES:</p><p>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Long before Twain was born, a treatise was written in China (about 200 B.C.) on the potential for using fingerprints as a means of identification and used as evidence in a burglary investigation during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.). In the age of Babylon (about 4,000 years ago) fingerprints were used to sign written contracts and records have shown that officials took fingerprints of people who had been arrested. Unfortunately, this knowledge was lost to folklore and during Twain's lifetime, no system existed for the forensic use of fingerprints. </p><p>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Since 1924, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has managed a database which today contains an estimated 70 million fingerprints and more than 1.5 million non-criminal fingerprint records. Its Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System examines more than 85,000 inquiries per year and can respond in about 27 minutes. </p><p>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The scientific study of fingerprinting is called dermatoglyphics, a term invented in the 1920s and founded by Harold Cummins, M.D. (1894-1976).</p>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-77510113585651246502021-03-05T08:00:00.011-05:002021-03-05T08:00:00.246-05:00HOORAY, IT’S THE PANDEMIC! (Just kidding.)<p><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>by <a href="www.gaylelynds.com " target="_blank">Gayle Lynds </a></i></span></p><p>Well, not entirely kidding. There were (surprisingly) some really good things. This month marks a full year of quarantining for many of us who didn’t have to leave home to work. We are grateful, John and I, to have been able to stay here. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQU2nU3yLfB37pELaPIeNWuzWF9SPMNInRjw2C_LUQbIqmUdpNc_23ugvSVIoNUGI8ZWFDIO2KAj55Iajx5upteHGVlKfIdQ96TDdy8u2JEl6jFALAOqHWP9KfMm_voI2Q3-UD6gFKuBtR/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQU2nU3yLfB37pELaPIeNWuzWF9SPMNInRjw2C_LUQbIqmUdpNc_23ugvSVIoNUGI8ZWFDIO2KAj55Iajx5upteHGVlKfIdQ96TDdy8u2JEl6jFALAOqHWP9KfMm_voI2Q3-UD6gFKuBtR/" width="230" /></a></div>Remember last March as the pandemic was just starting to hit? How does one deal with such a dangerous and unpredictable time? Sometimes it felt as if the ground under our feet was quicksand. Under stress, most of us fall back on habits of a lifetime while integrating what one must from the present. So we coped, and we hoped.<p></p><p>Here’s the story of my side of our little family, and a pandemic gift we stumbled on that has brought all of us closer, even though some of us live thousands of miles apart....</p><p>My daughter figured out public schools in Brooklyn were going to close, so she, her husband, and my grandson escaped with a packed car and two frisky kitties and moved in with us near the beginning of March. We’re fortunate to live in a forest with lots of outdoor options, and our house has two floors, one of which easily absorbed a second family. Thankfully, the kitchen is large, too.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkRwJcpbuJrxUOAiGI-gtVUpYN8G_9MF_S6R-nDIqN2AFioCvAtLyU1wmJtoosjlyEL5Gsjvjh3hq8AW1B_lWNheMi_dSPvxX8GYyzehEivUHfp6rB0QvGaw-cajTlO-KwYOZiG3WXUsdY/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1493" data-original-width="1914" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkRwJcpbuJrxUOAiGI-gtVUpYN8G_9MF_S6R-nDIqN2AFioCvAtLyU1wmJtoosjlyEL5Gsjvjh3hq8AW1B_lWNheMi_dSPvxX8GYyzehEivUHfp6rB0QvGaw-cajTlO-KwYOZiG3WXUsdY/" width="308" /></a></div>There were downsides of course. While everyone else in the place continued to work their jobs virtually, I became my 9-year-old grandson’s #1 helper with school and homework. I’d been using computers for three decades, which gave me some confidence I’d be able to figure out how to do remote learning. Right.<p></p><p>We bought a Chromebook and dove in. He’d never had his own computer, is highly active, and smarter than me. As for myself, I couldn’t remember fractions or algebra (yes, he was doing rudimentary algebra!), and I found I wasn’t as patient as I wanted to be. The “classroom” system of learning baffled both of us, then made us crazy, which means it probably made the teachers even crazier. </p><p>But there were moments of fun when we discovered we had simultaneous reactions — throwing up our hands together in despair, walking away when it just got too hard, but then shouting hooray every time we figured something out. We’d look at each other and find ourselves smiling. He became adept using the Chromebook in ways I still don’t understand, but then kids are that way. And we grew wonderfully close. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhbaYgFKEtEKZ4xq53QXvnv7CCUhyZyrcTiOFDGkxMy_nBpvPDxZ1t-zLyr_Y0LpXlKXnj6hAxfazg6bAlg_Z3qGgJeAXfFjhXuCKeuz63QaR94h8o_thoBRXAZzcYvEhE_njU1KiG7YR/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhbaYgFKEtEKZ4xq53QXvnv7CCUhyZyrcTiOFDGkxMy_nBpvPDxZ1t-zLyr_Y0LpXlKXnj6hAxfazg6bAlg_Z3qGgJeAXfFjhXuCKeuz63QaR94h8o_thoBRXAZzcYvEhE_njU1KiG7YR/" width="180" /></a></div>Meanwhile, my son had been isolating with his family in suburban Maryland from the first of the month, because the day he returned to his office from a vacation, someone down the hall hadn’t come in because she’d been diagnosed with the coronavirus, the first victim in a very large office building. It was an ominous event not only for the patient and her family, but for everyone else who worked in the close-knit group.<p></p><p>Because there are serious health issues in his family, my son takes no chances. He packed up his stuff, went home, and set up an office in his basement. From that point on, he, his wife, and their daughter stayed in their house and backyard, working and going to virtual school. And they got lonely. </p><p>The last of my side of the family — my stepdaughter and her husband — live in a rural valley in Southern California and were also isolating. Over the last year, they’ve endured wildfires, floods, and a mudslide that took out their road. (It could’ve been much worse!) They’re two musicians who have each other, their bicycles, their instruments, and three bossy cats for company. Still, they got lonely, too.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTXQCGhzAQKXximdInyEIzzeN83Q3mJAzvKrQB0hqAg9SvwjMtOvqGG8NhKKnqeZV8UXcfW32b5ecLTayd8aEvSVSBs6EueVuyiRR9pXdUODaufGVIJzazp2IDeK_ICwoEJhnnN8IiW2oT/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1560" data-original-width="1288" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTXQCGhzAQKXximdInyEIzzeN83Q3mJAzvKrQB0hqAg9SvwjMtOvqGG8NhKKnqeZV8UXcfW32b5ecLTayd8aEvSVSBs6EueVuyiRR9pXdUODaufGVIJzazp2IDeK_ICwoEJhnnN8IiW2oT/w227-h276/4+john+%2526+son+-in-law+on+bench+they+rebuilt.jpg" width="227" /></a></div>Back here in Maine, no matter how busy the five of us were, and how much time we spent together, we sensed we were missing something as well. Our pre-pandemic lives likely had been very much like yours, with trips to grocery stores, dinners with friends, movies, simple things like that, but as March passed into April, we began to understand all of that was over not just for now, but for no-one-knew how long. <p></p><p>Becoming lonely for our “before” life morphed into something difficult to describe, a feeling perhaps, an emotion. It was like an open door that just wouldn’t fit into its historic frame.</p><p>This is when a mini-miracle occurred. My son, who is notorious for not answering phone calls or emails or text messages, announced all of us needed to meet weekly for a family Zoom. As far-flung as we are in normal times, and as infrequently as we’re in touch even then, this was a revolutionary concept. </p><p>What? ‘See’ each other every week even though we don’t live nearby? It’d been years since all of them had been in school and living at home with us in Santa Barbara....</p><p>There’s something unsettling about making a commitment to reverse a longstanding (a couple of decades’ worth of) habit. What if we found we bored each other? Or argued? Worse ... what if we discovered we didn’t really like each other all that much anymore? </p><p>I was put in charge. I learned how to create a free Zoom. I sent out invitations. And here we are, all of us nearly a year later, with my daughter and her family back home in Brooklyn, still meeting weekly. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6uE-4rvjuf1WNd-HN1YIa5thaSWtRXdzkeRZq0UzUhegIJ-NUVGZKf9yBIhXdd5OeK9hVaECuVUTHVTABgqWVGyLwIMaY8bgIK-RNPoEfXYAtHOZrufXqS8Mbnnfqg32GsswjuhnVHdwH/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1040" data-original-width="1925" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6uE-4rvjuf1WNd-HN1YIa5thaSWtRXdzkeRZq0UzUhegIJ-NUVGZKf9yBIhXdd5OeK9hVaECuVUTHVTABgqWVGyLwIMaY8bgIK-RNPoEfXYAtHOZrufXqS8Mbnnfqg32GsswjuhnVHdwH/" width="320" /></a></div>We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries together. We discuss baseball and football, which is reliably lively since we don’t all cheer for the same teams. The grandkids drop by to wave and relate news. Last weekend, my granddaughter was riding the family’s stationery bike to earn screen time. Some of us hold up our cats in greeting. Others of us cook and Zoom at the same time. Or eat and Zoom. No one is bored. Everyone shows up most of the time. <p></p><p>We’ve grown a connection among us that feels alive and nurturing. We are alone physically, but not emotionally. The door to life fits into its frame again, and we have a family closeness we’d forgotten. </p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Dear Rogue Reader ... What have you found to make the pandemic better for you?</span></b></p><div><br /></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-28797608147617384862021-03-03T08:00:00.039-05:002021-03-03T08:50:49.554-05:00SHERRY KNOWLTON GOES ROGUE ... JOIN HER IN BOTSWANA! <p></p><p><a href="http://www.gaylelynds.com" target="_blank">Gayle Lynds</a>: Sherry Knowlton has an adventure with each of her award-winning books, and the location of her new one, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Delta-Alexa-Williams-Novel/dp/1620064332/ " target="_blank">Dead on the Delta</a> </i>is a real humdinger – Botswana, Africa. Why there? Because her heroine, lawyer Alexa Williams, decides to hie herself off to spend four months researching lions, looking forward to “witnessing the elemental life-and-death struggle of the African wild.” Instead Alexa ends up being hunted on the vast Okavango Delta. <br /></p><p>So what’s a writer to do about a location so far away and, well, exotic? She must visit first. Here’s Sherry’s tale before the tale...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXX-empemQcorLuEqUQTKXrcT7TiRFlsYO7Y_6ZfP0reI_jbIKI6sksUiNjlncB8pmR5I7JcgeeLGPwOaJADeU5dq6dpsmCqDbxxdkrvNMSyvytbl7R4b2TacL3WhtZjo48pB5sRxx-y0d/s2048/1+Sherry+Knowlton+head+shot.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1766" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXX-empemQcorLuEqUQTKXrcT7TiRFlsYO7Y_6ZfP0reI_jbIKI6sksUiNjlncB8pmR5I7JcgeeLGPwOaJADeU5dq6dpsmCqDbxxdkrvNMSyvytbl7R4b2TacL3WhtZjo48pB5sRxx-y0d/s320/1+Sherry+Knowlton+head+shot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">By <a href="http://www.sherryknowlton.com" target="_blank">Sherry Knowlton</a></span></i></p><p>I research all my books, some on site in places like the fracking fields of Northeastern Pennsylvania or Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. So, when I decided to set my next Alexa Williams book in <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/botswana?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=3271e2960ab94fb16d293f556afef8e1ea614e0c-1612204298-0-AbPXo6GMs2xQHBkPj5jW73pvpm4D_mGB5P4c3Z40V-szx1zVwiF0jZ_r6rUCOffNI8fe1rVN1Fl861cYkXT23naOA2yBF7uqwbNvb3KjSxppKAmCspEg6fef7Qp4UR1ssZc9w6BsKP1dOnORpLQMDM7z214o0GDKJ_FvvQYVBB2xLgzvJZCm0WHDJ5AhLUZ3MWhNuqhf93VT-XaOhnuypPh_K0WmPTTFo2AbG5BZ7jU0U0lTtkzdOlvT0iLZ0l6VCUe3-CsuZ6AWxewJysC-b3aZtqHJloF3HZjihmkuKRyPxe_jfkIv0OSPVQbtEBtCIOZVYGS-O2df8wR4FBTVShQ" target="_blank">Botswana</a>, what a wonderful excuse for a safari. </p><p>My husband and I have been on safari multiple times, and I especially love Botswana’s Okavango Delta. But experiencing Africa for the sheer joy of the adventure is different from absorbing enough information to credibly weave together the elements of the suspense thriller that I wanted to write.</p><p>There were things I needed to know. About animal patterns, poaching, Botswana’s famed anti-poaching force, government and politics in the country, lion research and more. Plus, I’d never been to the capital city of Gaborone or spent more than a few hours passing through the small town of Maun, the gateway to the Okavango.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5-LAZs-jF71fzDradpaTJw3dhM4VopvVg90c8PtMrKiHvLVEqzS4epYcfR9L1NGpGIZZU8fiu0KJRhgakj5W3jQUUAbbTKWjXcZOtmyOlBM_gMxvReunGxEs8KUOsYf4YNtZyyj6mJS-/s514/2+Knowlton+elephant+2.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="514" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5-LAZs-jF71fzDradpaTJw3dhM4VopvVg90c8PtMrKiHvLVEqzS4epYcfR9L1NGpGIZZU8fiu0KJRhgakj5W3jQUUAbbTKWjXcZOtmyOlBM_gMxvReunGxEs8KUOsYf4YNtZyyj6mJS-/w286-h279/2+Knowlton+elephant+2.jpeg" width="286" /></a></div><p>So, my husband, Mike, and I flew off to Botswana and Southern Africa for four glorious weeks. The core of that time we spent on safari in Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe with some friends. That immersion in the wild was amazing. We observed the Big Five and countless more species from small planes, safari vehicles, boats, and on foot. Our great guide was Dave Luck, who our host company, Wilderness Safaris, calls one of their most experienced and knowledgeable. Most important, Dave set aside plenty of time for me to pepper him with my constantly evolving list of research questions.</p><p>Before and after our safari, Mike and I spent time on our own, carrying out my research mission. Upon arrival in Johannesburg, we took a day to adjust to the time zone, and then hopped a plane to Gaborone. While there, I met with a contact from the US Embassy who had agreed to give me off-the-record background for the book. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxMM9RhUjO9AY9PiC4K_Of7P3yX_Zlq_8VjcV6BvGw8INW53viKsXplVFQ9XsVx702yoruSrkf7MoKP-NalIIe1LS53_ZmB0lOClsWLtMXzRxW0S_zIZ3X2YBajpbTEoKP8MFRf9wXUQO2/s2048/3+Knowlton+elephant+1.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1356" data-original-width="2048" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxMM9RhUjO9AY9PiC4K_Of7P3yX_Zlq_8VjcV6BvGw8INW53viKsXplVFQ9XsVx702yoruSrkf7MoKP-NalIIe1LS53_ZmB0lOClsWLtMXzRxW0S_zIZ3X2YBajpbTEoKP8MFRf9wXUQO2/w332-h220/3+Knowlton+elephant+1.JPG" width="332" /></a></div>Our other days in Gaborone were devoted to touring; learning the neighborhoods, observing life in the streets and halls of government, and learning about the HIV/AIDS infrastructure that supports the medical needs of a country where 25% of the adult population is infected with the disease.<p></p><p>In a great compliment to the mystery genre, our city guide made sure that we stopped at several sites that figure prominently in <i>The #1 Ladies Detective Agency</i> series and television adaptation of the books. Early on, it took me a few minutes to realize that when he spoke familiarly of Precious and Grace, our guide meant the fictional Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi from the books. Alexander McCall Smith is a legend in Gaborone.</p><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Esc7kp_AprijDL-Plssk-j-aZ0orWtawBZceuarY5svfaiWCGvlF3awMOr9bsNBKEBPEHaBchKlR9FJnbddrLGJMc7lQhqSmdzOjlpjOz6jPc_r_m9BKh5wfYBTnGIARm-q7X1D0CP3m/s1986/4+Knowlton+Black+Maned+Lion+used+on+book+cover+-+Copy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1561" data-original-width="1986" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Esc7kp_AprijDL-Plssk-j-aZ0orWtawBZceuarY5svfaiWCGvlF3awMOr9bsNBKEBPEHaBchKlR9FJnbddrLGJMc7lQhqSmdzOjlpjOz6jPc_r_m9BKh5wfYBTnGIARm-q7X1D0CP3m/s320/4+Knowlton+Black+Maned+Lion+used+on+book+cover+-+Copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The highlight of my research came when Mike and I headed back to the Okavango to spend a few days with lion researcher Robynne Kotze. In my planning for the trip, Wilderness Safaris helped arrange time with Robynne. <p></p><p>I’m so grateful to her employer, the University of Oxford’s WildCRU unit, for allowing her to engage with me in the field. Generous and enthusiastic, Robynne educated me about the life of a lion researcher, study methodologies, conservation issues, politics in Southern Africa and more. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLkKTz6a_lzmjT0NRpYWnE9I1vgohpmkRZ8L-miNvXssLkFZHvswpfbcItt2eFIQKZYuGqbqDsKjzNDobL_qhkdvP0FLLdxiqjqxBgtKJh5_no2pWFPkwYmfj711X3QY0kNskxj16q8Zy-/s499/dead.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLkKTz6a_lzmjT0NRpYWnE9I1vgohpmkRZ8L-miNvXssLkFZHvswpfbcItt2eFIQKZYuGqbqDsKjzNDobL_qhkdvP0FLLdxiqjqxBgtKJh5_no2pWFPkwYmfj711X3QY0kNskxj16q8Zy-/w214-h320/dead.jpg" width="214" /></a><br /> Robynne and her group work on a research project called the Trans-Kalahari Predator Programme which studies lion populations in both Botswana and Zimbabwe. The Director of the project, Dr. Andrew Loveridge, has written a book about his experience as the researcher who had long studied Cecil the Lion until the famous cat was killed by an American big game hunter. </p><p>Most fun were the hours we spent driving through the bush, looking for lions with Robynne. One of the handsomest fellows we encountered even made it to the cover of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Delta-Alexa-Williams-Novel/dp/1620064332/ "><i>Dead on the Delta</i></a>. The cover artist was able to use my husband’s photo of this striking lion as the basis for his design.</p><p>For the next Alexa Williams novel, I’ll probably return the action to Southcentral PA, the primary setting for the earlier books. But, what’s the lesson I’ve learned from my African research experience? Make sure I send Alexa to many more exotic settings around the world. </p><p><b></b>Fiji? Bali? Nepal? The opportunities for hands-on research are endless.</p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">What about you, Rogue Readers ... where would you love to visit someday?</span></b></p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></b></p><p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-86746467968767914152021-03-01T08:00:00.002-05:002021-03-01T08:00:04.816-05:00ROGUE WOMEN FEBRUARY ROUNDUP!<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHDUsPMAhqTustssPwhpv2UKmC_yMhd8p5rhwirekSszB9ShipgzRkSCcXN9rIvHl7xCpSURJZjWLIlktMqisUv-S_LuJ7rlvdTrGhcYp2MBJNvQMWaQrmEglsx40pKNYfLa2rij3aV2Hh/s1500/rww-roundup-logo-red+JPEG.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; font-weight: 700; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHDUsPMAhqTustssPwhpv2UKmC_yMhd8p5rhwirekSszB9ShipgzRkSCcXN9rIvHl7xCpSURJZjWLIlktMqisUv-S_LuJ7rlvdTrGhcYp2MBJNvQMWaQrmEglsx40pKNYfLa2rij3aV2Hh/s320/rww-roundup-logo-red+JPEG.jpg" /></a><b>Here's what we Rogues talked about, researched, and revealed in February...</b></p><p>As we geared up to celebrate Valentine's day, Karna Small Bodman gave us a little rundown of <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/02/the-mystery-of-valentines-day.html" target="_blank">the history of the day and some great reading recommendations</a>.</p>ZJ Czupor took us on a deep dive through the phenomenon of <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/02/mystery-minute-goes-rogue.html" target="_blank">doppelgängers</a> in science and literature.<br /><br />Author of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mercenary-Novel-Paul-Vidich/dp/1643136208" target="_blank">The Mercenary</a>, </i>Paul Vidich, shared his expertise and top tips for <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/02/five-keys-to-successfully-researching.html" target="_blank">researching a historical novel. </a><br /><br />Book rejection can be really difficult to navigate, and Lisa Black opened up with us about how she's persevering through her <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/02/my-book-less-2021.html" target="_blank">"book-less 2021." </a><br /><br />Valentine's Day isn't just about romantic love. And for all who might rather read less conventional tales this month, Jenny Milchman shared her favorite <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/02/not-romantic-love-8-thrilling-reads-for.html">"not romantic love" book list</a>!<div><br />As a sneak preview to an <a href="(https://thrillerfest.com/x-treme-craftfest" target="_blank">X-Treme CrafFest</a> session airing in July, Chris Goff shared some of her musings about <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/02/relationships-fiction-vs-real-life.html">how to craft compelling character relationships</a> based on real life relationships.</div><div><br /></div><div>J.T. Ellison, the "Thriller Chick" herself, was a guest on our blog. She gave us some <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/02/jt-ellison-goes-rogue.html">special insight</a> into the context of her upcoming March release, "HER DARK LIES." </div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-20658225143652384842021-02-26T08:00:00.009-05:002021-02-28T16:36:11.176-05:00J.T. ELLISON GOES ROGUE<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">Karna Small Bodman</a>: We are delighted to welcome <i>New York Times</i> and <i>USA Today</i> bestselling author of more than 25 novels and the EMMY award winning co-host of the literary TV show, A Word on Words, J.T. Ellison. With millions of books in print, her novels have been published in 25 countries. Here J.T. tells us where she got the inspiration to write her new thriller, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">HER DARK LIES</a>, described as one featuring a mystery, a ruined wedding dress and troubling shadows hovering over what should be a lovely wedding in an idyllic setting.<br /><br /><i>by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">J.T. Ellison</a></i><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7wwO622FY4GvYaWsw2s6vRk5bnFXCeF1osXbyRnP0Af5xgU2zfoTcxWjVf-Hf2feqldyqTvgtEB4UxH9eJvkR-e64TJxAzixei2_NGMylOvo1gQOQlpZC-xUxgRR3GrmdG6FQOxKnLh_i/s273/unnamed+%25281%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7wwO622FY4GvYaWsw2s6vRk5bnFXCeF1osXbyRnP0Af5xgU2zfoTcxWjVf-Hf2feqldyqTvgtEB4UxH9eJvkR-e64TJxAzixei2_NGMylOvo1gQOQlpZC-xUxgRR3GrmdG6FQOxKnLh_i/s0/unnamed+%25281%2529.jpg" /></a></div>For those who know me, it’s not a surprise that my latest novel is set off the coast of Italy. My family is Italian and live in the Piedmont region, so any excuse to visit, I find.<br /><br />Our last trip to visit family was a bit of a disaster. We went to Italy to celebrate my major milestone birthday. It was my parents, my husband and myself, my brother, and one of my nephews.<br /><br />It rained, almost every day. We all caught terrible colds. We tend to migrate around when we travel, in order to see and experience as much as possible, and there were six of us (sometimes eight) in a rented van (nicknamed, appropriately, Van Go) barreling around the Italian Alps, sneezing and coughing, and, well, arguing. If you’ve ever been sick on vacation, you understand. It’s ten thousand times worse when you’re not at home. Being overseas, it is one heck of a challenge.<br /><br />Como was our last stop, and we planned to be there three days before flying home. Traffic was awful, the roads so narrow we nearly scraped off the mirror a few times. Add in the sneezing, coughing, shouting — in Italian and English — by the time we alighted on the shores of Lake Como, everyone was primed for murder.<p class="MsoNormal"></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdsHyrR1TLpZyInPYIojzEqoLPoef6qkeZSG84jBsEuQyR9NNPKLCDW4TS-gqcVbcydumqrn6LQzO5G4vOgJb-wwVDXGmLWfusu8NRkabSiT4Px2VEUoVT5cbpUWrnVo7bzaG68Ryr0Qgx/s320/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdsHyrR1TLpZyInPYIojzEqoLPoef6qkeZSG84jBsEuQyR9NNPKLCDW4TS-gqcVbcydumqrn6LQzO5G4vOgJb-wwVDXGmLWfusu8NRkabSiT4Px2VEUoVT5cbpUWrnVo7bzaG68Ryr0Qgx/s0/unnamed.jpg" /></a></div>Thankfully, we found some excellent codeine-laced cough drops and soldiered through. There was good wine, of course. Our room had a beautiful terrace that overlooked the lake, and miracle of all miracles, when we woke, the sun was shining. My birthday had arrived, and finally, things were looking up.<br /><br />I’d lost my voice at that point (a decennial tradition) but this was my first time on Lake Como, so I packed up a box of tissues and we caught the ferry. We toured around on the lake all day, disembarking at the various towns, gobbling down risottos and Prosecco. Eventually, we simply sat in our seats on the ferry’s top deck and motored around the lake. It was a wonderful day.<br /><br />Spirits restored, we settled in for a special birthday dinner. As the wine arrived, a yacht pulled up to the dock on Comacina, Como’s sole island.<br /><br />A wedding party emerged, disappearing into the island’s heart. It’s become something of a family joke — it never fails, no matter where we are, we run into a wedding. We could hear the makings of a grand party going on. As we were served dessert, fireworks began. I was wildly impressed that my husband had managed fireworks for my birthday, but quickly found out it was a Comacina wedding tradition.<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPoAfh17Czf2iy6b9r_uuGdDP8DF3OJoM3oNsCrXIrSOcKHb5GCzuOtel7ozD8qveIqfiooZ9lE5WMqgNNDWMFQiUfa-fzhbzJ2lt593DvKbVNcKcO9SVjO9X5r7bzf7VM225i1qpeLH6K/s320/unnamed+%25282%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPoAfh17Czf2iy6b9r_uuGdDP8DF3OJoM3oNsCrXIrSOcKHb5GCzuOtel7ozD8qveIqfiooZ9lE5WMqgNNDWMFQiUfa-fzhbzJ2lt593DvKbVNcKcO9SVjO9X5r7bzf7VM225i1qpeLH6K/s0/unnamed+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div>We all had a good laugh, and I knew immediately I had to find a way to write this into a book. The setting, the yacht, the wedding, the fireworks. Murderous intentions. A novel was born.<br /><br />Comacina has a number of legends surrounding it, which piqued my interest to do more research in the area. But to achieve my vision for the novel, I also needed crashing waves, extreme isolation, and a sheer cliff face, so I married Comacina with Capri for the cliffs and grottos, set it off even farther west where no one can reach it easily, and put a grand fortress on the cliff. Only later did I realize I’d put my fictional Isle Isola smack dab in the Tyrrhenian Sea between the Scylla and Charybdis. So fitting.<br /><br />Being on an island in the middle of the sea, only accessibly by yacht, hydrofoil, or helicopter, during the stormy season, amped up the isolation needed to make<i> </i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><i>HER DARK LIES</i> </a>the ultimate gothic thriller. Its roots are as Italian as I am. I can’t wait to go back to Italy and see what sparks for me next!<br /><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">This new thriller will be our March 9. In the meantime, you can visit J.T.'s website <a href="http://www.jtellison.com" target="_blank">here</a>! </span></b><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Thanks, J.T. for being a guest here on Rogue Women Writers. </span></b></p></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-51482263140664135572021-02-25T08:00:00.019-05:002021-02-28T16:32:01.814-05:00RELATIONSHIPS: FICTION VS. REAL LIFE<p><a href="https://www.christinegoff.com/" target="_blank"> by Chris Goff</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Big Reveal</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmKxt_Qz-uuOXhYtBBZQkZ8-YR7E_P5b3DhdSvlp8r0igsogbkQ4PmKTmAORPl23UNznJrZko-QBlac78SLePvRtsSk_pYzk1t1pifLDQA089hGUB77bDWYasQ4GqkbdFzrO_siB69ZD9N/s289/spy+character+clip+art.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="289" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmKxt_Qz-uuOXhYtBBZQkZ8-YR7E_P5b3DhdSvlp8r0igsogbkQ4PmKTmAORPl23UNznJrZko-QBlac78SLePvRtsSk_pYzk1t1pifLDQA089hGUB77bDWYasQ4GqkbdFzrO_siB69ZD9N/w320-h193/spy+character+clip+art.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In July, I will have the distinct pleasure of discussing this topic with fellow Rogue Carla Neggers in our <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">X-Treme CrafFest</a> session entitled “Character Relationships,” airing during Virtual ThrillerFest XVI, June 28-July 10, 2021. Attendees can tune into over 100 conversations featuring over 200 industry professionals, all discussing specific aspects of the writing craft: setting, dialogue, conflict, opening sentences, etc.<br /><br /><b>So what do Carla and I know about Character Relationships? </b><br /><br />A lot! I am the author of eight books—six in a Birdwatcher’s Mystery series and two international thrillers. I’ve been nominated for a lot of awards, won a few and honed my craft for nearly 30 years.<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ChY3cHPwh-1i8oDdbVbXljpBPy0LNDOOrUqR8pGz6mC2AKh2Vz7MiiAK9Ui9xEcrWY6vouCJOaJUjdex39_tJsjvZbPR_hVG8C5yEUWJ_lF5KvVTWY290LMdy0B63FYLYofUk9KwIp5d/s1205/ChrisGoff-9295+%2528002%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="1205" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ChY3cHPwh-1i8oDdbVbXljpBPy0LNDOOrUqR8pGz6mC2AKh2Vz7MiiAK9Ui9xEcrWY6vouCJOaJUjdex39_tJsjvZbPR_hVG8C5yEUWJ_lF5KvVTWY290LMdy0B63FYLYofUk9KwIp5d/w200-h134/ChrisGoff-9295+%2528002%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Okay, I admit, I have ten years’ worth of learning curve sitting in boxes in my basement. At least four novel attempts and a slew of short story attempts. But who doesn’t?<br /><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_gF35sE2USjU4Gx8tQIa_FVd0x2tdpg2sH4a62XsYfLCfdiP_09ez1TXbuvBqxYmYZVunVKwha_LjApVnLVmEK5IhUvRIkkHN_R3Dy4hIpczgYBrIJhIsyTxu8v1rfYsPacGEJPQwIJF/s1867/Carla+Neggers+headshot+%2528002%2529.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1338" data-original-width="1867" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_gF35sE2USjU4Gx8tQIa_FVd0x2tdpg2sH4a62XsYfLCfdiP_09ez1TXbuvBqxYmYZVunVKwha_LjApVnLVmEK5IhUvRIkkHN_R3Dy4hIpczgYBrIJhIsyTxu8v1rfYsPacGEJPQwIJF/w200-h143/Carla+Neggers+headshot+%2528002%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Carla, maybe!<br /><br />She is the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of more than 75 novels, including her acclaimed Sharpe & Donovan suspense series. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and sold in over 35 countries. <br /><br />I’m in awe.<br /><br /><b>But I digress. </b><br /><br />In the world of crime fiction, there is an ongoing debate about what’s most important– character or plot. As a beginning writer, I would have said plot. After all, it’s the pulse-pounding ride that makes a thriller so exciting, right? It’s all about the chase to the end to see justice triumph. But, as a seasoned writer, I’ve changed my mind. After eight books, I’ve come to the realization… <br /><br /><b>It’s character that drives the story. </b><br /><br />After all, justice looks differently to different people. How justice looks depends on whether you’re the protagonist or the antagonist, the wife or the other woman, the boss or the employee.
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU6kObaJ8TIgCDOv6xEcooX074gIyh_VZhcdUn3zL2cQki4FGVw3BM5VUMhtQxqDFWcbveWdpabutrd6mXob9wNvq7j4FJS-aXF-OtgJYjK2QqoG5Vd7jESdHXZW_6PvQsuRQhNRdtOhHX/s315/DARK+WATERS+FINAL+COVER+-+200x315.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU6kObaJ8TIgCDOv6xEcooX074gIyh_VZhcdUn3zL2cQki4FGVw3BM5VUMhtQxqDFWcbveWdpabutrd6mXob9wNvq7j4FJS-aXF-OtgJYjK2QqoG5Vd7jESdHXZW_6PvQsuRQhNRdtOhHX/s0/DARK+WATERS+FINAL+COVER+-+200x315.jpg" /></a></div>It took me years to complete my debut thriller, DARK WATERS. The idea came to me in 1999. I was in Israel for eight weeks with my daughter. She was eleven and there receiving medical treatment. I was the parent on the ground. I had just turned in my first book in the Birdwatcher’s Mystery series, and was under contract for four more in the series. I knew I should be working on Book #2. Instead, I spent the eight weeks focusing on my daughter and taking notes. Lots of notes. The more I watched, the more I was struck by the by the complexity of Israeli society. There were lots of Jews, who believed different things. Some weren’t religious, some were. Some were orthodox, some were ultra-orthodox. There were Israeli Arabs, separated by a border wall from their Palestinian relatives. I was enthralled with how many similarities there were to things happening at the borders in the US.<br /><br />It was right at the time when suicide bombings were gearing up, and the fear and anger was palpable. <br /><br />Later, when I worked on the book, it was the characters in my book that made the story work. It was their differences, offset by their similarities and their common goals, which drove the plot and made the story come alive. <br /><br /><b>The good the bad and the ugly. </b><br /><br />It is incredible how nuanced relationships are. You can love someone and still not like them. You can be in awe of someone’s accomplishments, but despise them as a human being. You can try with every fiber of your being to make someone understand, and still not be able to make them comprehend. <br /><br /><b>And that’s what makes it interesting! </b><br /><br />Like in real life, it’s the push and pull between characters that captivates the readers. Who is smarter, the villain or the protagonist? Does the person your character loves unconditionally, place conditions on their relationship? Do the characters have different belief systems and yet want the same outcome? For the same or for different reasons? <br /><br />I’ve spent the past few days thinking about what I want to say in our session, and what I want to ask Carla. I know there’s a lot I can learn from her. And for the past week, I’ve been taking notes again, and begun tweaking Operation Gentoo. One thing I know for certain, the stronger my characters, the better the book.<br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">If you could share one truth about relationships or character, one
thing you’ve learned over the years, what would it be?</span></b></p>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-13119394453010308042021-02-19T08:00:00.000-05:002021-02-19T08:00:04.204-05:00NOT ROMANTIC LOVE: 8 THRILLING READS FOR FEBRUARY<p><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://www.jennymilchman.com/" target="_blank">Jenny Milchman</a></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Did anybody else have those carnation campaigns around
Valentine’s Day in high school? I think they were a student council fundraiser,
maybe to pay for prom. The fact that I don’t really know shows my relationship
to the carnation sales (and also to high school). I didn’t even go to prom, and
I was never the one getting carnations delivered in every single period,
standing up in a <i>for me? </i>dance over and over again. My best friend and I
had each other’s carnation backs, saving the other from being flowerless.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Point being, Valentine’s Day can be tough. As a teenager who
has yet to experience romance. And as an adult in myriad ways. Plus February is
about much more than Hallmark. So I thought I would share some thrilling reads
that each embrace a different kind of love.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA4XR8JRTAAjHGAyowNmj62RMwG-VPdD40TVyvqOUbAc9WxLNkbDlUMUNcrRnuhKgWw-xl5acJ3lf1bDrxKrY2Nyt8Cms4KKq7CG3_-kyKaQNO1U2R3d4161loYbjdBxtWp-xPyog8LRa2/s187/speaking+of+summer.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="187" data-original-width="123" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA4XR8JRTAAjHGAyowNmj62RMwG-VPdD40TVyvqOUbAc9WxLNkbDlUMUNcrRnuhKgWw-xl5acJ3lf1bDrxKrY2Nyt8Cms4KKq7CG3_-kyKaQNO1U2R3d4161loYbjdBxtWp-xPyog8LRa2/w130-h198/speaking+of+summer.jpg" width="130" /></a></i></div><i><div><b style="font-style: normal;">Love for a Twin Sister</b></div><div><b style="font-style: normal;"><br /></b></div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Speaking-Summer-Novel-Kalisha-Buckhanon/dp/1640091912" target="_blank">Speaking of Summer</a></i>
by Kalisha Buckhanon <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Anybody who has a sister will relate to the love that infuses
this dark literary mystery. Autumn’s twin sister, Summer, disappears one snowy
night from a rooftop in Harlem. There is only one set of footprints in the
snow, and the door from the building is locked. Intriguing setup—but the
strong, beating heart of this story is the lengths to which Autumn will go to
find out what happened to her sister, and the tangled, twisted bonds of
sisterly love.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbQQftMg89hQROhyphenhyphenm_-RgrsoK4oTTHmuAokQsQ9k9PqN_sSJbrUderI8vaCUPBSV0pUw9N0W0O9iAGOp933fxj2PxHr6oIIzLnwfCdbxfDtBZ90MxHnH03FQDQ5219IdchyphenhyphenQGf8xEKAIRQ/s187/dont+turn+around.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="187" data-original-width="124" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbQQftMg89hQROhyphenhyphenm_-RgrsoK4oTTHmuAokQsQ9k9PqN_sSJbrUderI8vaCUPBSV0pUw9N0W0O9iAGOp933fxj2PxHr6oIIzLnwfCdbxfDtBZ90MxHnH03FQDQ5219IdchyphenhyphenQGf8xEKAIRQ/w130-h197/dont+turn+around.jpg" width="130" /></a></i></div><i><div><b style="font-style: normal;">Love for a Cause</b></div><div><i><br /></i></div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Turn-Around-Michelle-Gagnon/dp/0062102915" target="_blank">Don’t Turn Around</a> </i>by
Jessica Barry<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I know, there’re two Jessica Barry novels on this list.
She’s, like, [cue tween-y voice] my new #faveauthor This book frightened me to
my very toes, as in, I had to stop reading at one point and go stalk around the
house to put me back in the Now instead of the terrifying world Barry creates
where society is divided, and you can almost (note that I did say <i>almost</i>)
see the other’s point of view. In those shades of gray, which Barry delves into
furiously well, true terror lies.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBa5xk5geYytaxa55SCtRYtjcqkQBFw_3rRQ3H8Q8rFoaTxEUORErsILfJG7iC_76WUo5Wz0wFcArrdCrW-JIYiGZnlMmDf3CjQAO2VVYMkcVUMQyuzpePv1mP7lJywnlTD3NoIItghETb/s438/the+vanishing+half.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="290" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBa5xk5geYytaxa55SCtRYtjcqkQBFw_3rRQ3H8Q8rFoaTxEUORErsILfJG7iC_76WUo5Wz0wFcArrdCrW-JIYiGZnlMmDf3CjQAO2VVYMkcVUMQyuzpePv1mP7lJywnlTD3NoIItghETb/w133-h200/the+vanishing+half.jpg" width="133" /></a></i></div><i><div><b style="font-style: normal;">More Twin Love</b></div><div><b style="font-style: normal;"><br /></b></div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-Half-Novel-Brit-Bennett/dp/0525536299" target="_blank">The Vanishing Half</a></i>
by Brit Bennett <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another twin sister disappearance novel, dealing with the
topics of identity, race, and the dark legacy men leave on women. Is it
possible to grab hold of another life, even if it means never seeing your family
or going back home again? When Stella Vignes stumbles almost accidentally upon
the chance to live as a white woman married to a wealthy businessman, she takes
it, although it requires abandoning all that she loves. And then one day, her stack
of lies is threatened.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2xQaskK4psA-t12T3Y0j4pSdedvfvE1kz57YOc3AzIZsXt-IElkMmSrR_vtSi43rV4Gmw9vnzvEAQ_vMftyECP9f9xYVvDtpTFenHczKA8Q6XzefEmurXxMYRlNOhM9ofw7CMXev3Xuwl/s196/freefall.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="196" data-original-width="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2xQaskK4psA-t12T3Y0j4pSdedvfvE1kz57YOc3AzIZsXt-IElkMmSrR_vtSi43rV4Gmw9vnzvEAQ_vMftyECP9f9xYVvDtpTFenHczKA8Q6XzefEmurXxMYRlNOhM9ofw7CMXev3Xuwl/s0/freefall.jpg" /></a></i></div><i><div><b style="font-style: normal;">Mother/Daughter Love</b></div><div><b style="font-style: normal;"><br /></b></div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Freefall-Novel-Jessica-Barry/dp/0062874837" target="_blank">Freefall</a></i>
by Jessica Barry<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The love a mother has for her daughter propels this
wilderness thriller. When a small plane crashes in the Rockies, there are no
survivors. Or are there? Because even though Maggie Carpenter hasn’t spoken to her
daughter in years, knows nothing about her life, job, or her impending
marriage, she can’t believe that Allison perished in that fiery crash. And as
Allison makes her way home, her journey places the mother who won’t give up on
her in grave danger as well.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzzKe9VaAXHHBp6Q8Q0134tGMgt3CALvCuKl8_e5BXimbSRxyV-P9-PWTm5kC-oM7_2UPX9Tjc7LEkNqoi3xyFK0ruXOys5OS9FeossjiYv7H4t-Q7-7Ziq_Z5w6gkI4QtpMqGeYmkpc8/s450/the+lost+night.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="291" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzzKe9VaAXHHBp6Q8Q0134tGMgt3CALvCuKl8_e5BXimbSRxyV-P9-PWTm5kC-oM7_2UPX9Tjc7LEkNqoi3xyFK0ruXOys5OS9FeossjiYv7H4t-Q7-7Ziq_Z5w6gkI4QtpMqGeYmkpc8/w157-h244/the+lost+night.jpg" width="157" /></a></i></div><i><div><b style="font-style: normal;">Can’t We Just Be Friends Love</b></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Night-Novel-Andrea-Bartz/dp/0525574719" target="_blank">The Lost Night</a></i>
by Andrea Bartz<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The love friends have for each other can be as deep as any
other. But the flip side is how intense the hatred and rivalries and betrayals
can also run. A group of friends has grown up; it’s been ten years since they
left their drunken, partying days behind, with one key member dead. But when
one of the living starts to wonder why her memory of the last night they spent together
is so cloudy, everything else has to be questioned too. Hipster Brooklyn and
millennial life are put vividly on the page, as well as the reality of what happens
when we leave our youth behind with secrets still buried.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP4N_vF5KH-Rtf5H6mcQ7ZY35DIaqKBdDunvIg2FwKrJINsBIkfpj6MRy1jR1Ss53jxTEBgUz9Q2mTamfqJWAnj1cdmvTCPvdDki5WPdh2ok2JGXAH-Nip3ET9HZOjpr8SmonDYnSk_ZAl/s415/such+a+fun+age.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="275" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP4N_vF5KH-Rtf5H6mcQ7ZY35DIaqKBdDunvIg2FwKrJINsBIkfpj6MRy1jR1Ss53jxTEBgUz9Q2mTamfqJWAnj1cdmvTCPvdDki5WPdh2ok2JGXAH-Nip3ET9HZOjpr8SmonDYnSk_ZAl/w146-h220/such+a+fun+age.jpg" width="146" /></a></i></div><b>Love for a Child Who Isn’t Your Own</b><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Such-Fun-Age-Kiley-Reid/dp/052554190X" target="_blank">Such a Fun Age</a></i>
by Kiley Reid<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How much must you love kids to be a professional nanny?
Arguably, Emira Tucker behaves more lovingly to her three year old charge,
Briar, than does Briar’s snooty, entitled mom. But when Emira is accused of
kidnapping little Briar in an upscale grocery late one night after her
employers have leaned on her to work extra hours, all you-know-what breaks
loose in the upper crust neighborhood where the Chamberlains live, on the
media, and in mom Alix and nanny Emira’s lives. Especially because Emira is in
no way a kidnapper, and Alix doesn’t know her three year old at all.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_3ns_R30yureGdsLsJTp4M7A2VVgf2FL52nk0tC0L1fAaqTFORzYrz6pYqDxF12aR2LF23-F3D-Q6Whl0nnvL-FuValR-DEcXsUoYWGXCcXc1oBhXHZYA6aJu1pSLREdOpvob6Pn-s3EF/s187/confessions+in+b-flat.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="187" data-original-width="125" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_3ns_R30yureGdsLsJTp4M7A2VVgf2FL52nk0tC0L1fAaqTFORzYrz6pYqDxF12aR2LF23-F3D-Q6Whl0nnvL-FuValR-DEcXsUoYWGXCcXc1oBhXHZYA6aJu1pSLREdOpvob6Pn-s3EF/w137-h205/confessions+in+b-flat.gif" width="137" /></a></i></div><b>Love for an Era</b><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-B-Flat-Donna-Hill/dp/1640638296" target="_blank">Confessions in B-Flat</a></i>
by Donna Hill<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is the most traditional love story of my selections.
Will Jason Tanner, a new arrival to New York City at the height of the civil
rights movement, who comes bearing the anti-war message of Dr. Martin Luther
King, woo beat poet, Anita Hopkins, a devotee of Malcom X? But this novel is
also a love letter to an era, one we in many ways need to revisit, rediscover,
and reboot now, as we seek to build new and loving binds with each other.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiarqhL8S7ltFUUGDTSWWiWBST8QuaXOgt_G-D7uOlF2BBgitS3chgKL0xxvVXA7TqjnJGlbGBnA6YdFZJa4CUYTMbpvaXPKSRSIW38486TakvAbnqWBze1CHsodrs0WalIIim1ii7IRJa/s426/before+she+disappeared.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="282" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiarqhL8S7ltFUUGDTSWWiWBST8QuaXOgt_G-D7uOlF2BBgitS3chgKL0xxvVXA7TqjnJGlbGBnA6YdFZJa4CUYTMbpvaXPKSRSIW38486TakvAbnqWBze1CHsodrs0WalIIim1ii7IRJa/w142-h214/before+she+disappeared.jpg" width="142" /></a></b></div><b>Love for a
Stranger</b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Before-She-Disappeared-Lisa-Gardner/dp/1524745049" target="_blank">Before She Disappeared</a></i> by Lisa Gardner<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Frankie Elkin is Lisa Gardner’s new heroine, a woman who
seeks and finds people who’ve been forgotten to the world, their lives, even
their own families. There are so many people truly alone in the world, or who
feel alone in it, and that’s why everybody needs a Frankie: fierce, dogged, and
brave. Because this is a Lisa Gardner novel, we know the character will come
riddled with flaws that make her relatable and real. But you also know you’ll
find in Frankie a heroine for the times, along with the truest message of love,
which is: Never, ever give up.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">What's on your Valentine's month reading list? Let us know! </span></b></p>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-12694791249123912082021-02-12T08:00:00.027-05:002021-02-12T08:00:00.182-05:00MY BOOK-LESS 2021 <p><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">By <a href="https://lisa-black.com/" target="_blank">Lisa Black</a></span></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl-WgAhO4zwBkCPryC6_RRkiHjrbNGxv502O3BC-58JUsv_LlcrAxh8vZzWWNnYKRnYspyZh1H0Px1v5LBHETBXQo2aZSKZCT3VRWZeM6kyfupbXs7YSerDbWNQLJZ-mbBs3gphWN85STG/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl-WgAhO4zwBkCPryC6_RRkiHjrbNGxv502O3BC-58JUsv_LlcrAxh8vZzWWNnYKRnYspyZh1H0Px1v5LBHETBXQo2aZSKZCT3VRWZeM6kyfupbXs7YSerDbWNQLJZ-mbBs3gphWN85STG/w354-h285/flaming+books.jpg" width="354" /></a></div><p>I will not have a new book coming out in 2021. </p><p></p><p>Last summer I finished what I thought would be the first book in a new series. My protagonist could be described as ‘like Jack Reacher, if Jack Reacher were a fortyish ex-housewife with no martial arts training.’ I loved it. My agent was enthusiastic about it. We sent it to the publisher.</p><p>The publisher said: No. </p><p>Not ‘this needs some work.’ Not ‘the villain isn’t convincing.’ Not ‘here is ten pages of suggested changes.’ </p><p>Just ‘no.’ </p><p>They did add: ‘But you know what we’d <i>really </i>like…’</p><p>In the writing world, having a book rejected is not only a shock, an interruption to the publishing schedule, a pain in the #*&^$ neck and possibly a financial hardship, but it really hurts your feelings. It’s a punch to the gut like your mother throwing your drawing away instead of hanging it on the fridge. It’s like spending your senior year working up the courage to ask a particular person to the prom and when you do, they give a snorting laugh and walk away. It’s like overhearing your spouse confiding to their best friend that they should have married the person they dated before you. </p><p>It is, in a word, the worst. <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaa7sNZi5juwRquxcspcJBZhzbQpcoZ-T1VR_vps0BzORdKHHWSLnG1ADzv3FwcH6zV9M5bJdC8iNp-VXhGZr8WKspJo10mHOnobTsL4KaBOnyPE_pALjBQy0gjqJ-5xGOsNo1lzAkWkre/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaa7sNZi5juwRquxcspcJBZhzbQpcoZ-T1VR_vps0BzORdKHHWSLnG1ADzv3FwcH6zV9M5bJdC8iNp-VXhGZr8WKspJo10mHOnobTsL4KaBOnyPE_pALjBQy0gjqJ-5xGOsNo1lzAkWkre/w311-h207/regret.jpg" width="311" /></a></div><p></p><p>In case I haven’t made it completely clear, it’s not only that a year of your life has been utterly wasted. (Sure, you can tell me it was a learning experience and all for the best and it will make me a better writer, but I won’t believe you. On principle, I won’t believe you.) It’s not a matter of second guessing, such as: Did I choose the wrong setting? A boring title? Maybe I should have given my character red hair. </p><p></p><p></p><p>No, a rejection this flat makes you doubt your very sanity. <i>Am I so out of touch with reality that I thought this was a good book? Am I crazy, or just stupid? </i></p><p>Of course I handled the whole thing with maturity and professionalism. For example, I moved through the seven stages of editorial rejection in record time: </p><p>Disbelief: What, no? You’re just going to say no? As in, like, no?</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE2Fl3LRiQQJcH5rPMt_6_5NP-hg3kCC_D_A_LJINUES5UHbYYcaw7rI_rS1Ee9hhe8DRWtJyBqtFzCr5XdzMNjKTGDIh0F9uMYbjufvpoQ5_gYGxAJBIfn4zjqvIvbhGOwGAJEZBeuTy7/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE2Fl3LRiQQJcH5rPMt_6_5NP-hg3kCC_D_A_LJINUES5UHbYYcaw7rI_rS1Ee9hhe8DRWtJyBqtFzCr5XdzMNjKTGDIh0F9uMYbjufvpoQ5_gYGxAJBIfn4zjqvIvbhGOwGAJEZBeuTy7/w220-h329/misery.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>Denial: This can’t be right. Is my editor on vacation? Did the snarky temp at the front desk write this email?<p></p><p>Bargaining: What if I throw in a sex scene? What if I make the character twenty years younger and a one-armed trapeze artist who escaped from a circus in Uzbekistan?</p><p>Guilt: This is karma for not completing the three-page character profile of the protagonist’s second cousin.</p><p>Anger: The publishing world has been taken over by uncouth mercenaries who wouldn’t know a good book if they were stuck overnight on the Flushing line with nothing but a copy!</p><p>Depression: I suck. This book failed because I suck, have always sucked, and they probably only published all those other books because my mom made them. </p><p>Acceptance: All right—what would you, publisher, <i>really</i> like? [Maybe I can repurpose this manuscript down the road….]</p><p>But of course, it was 2020. The country, the entire planet, was having the worst year ever and I’m going to publicly weep and moan because I typed ninety thousand words that no one wants to read? Complain to my husband, who was out of work for 8 months? To my niece who’s trying to teach middle-schoolers via Zoom? To friends and family who have loved ones in the hospital with Covid-19? Nope, not an option. Besides, who wants to advertise the fact that they crashed and burned into a still-smoking heap of failure? </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNzoGnJGFjqYKkDfhfuPllxueFmrcc6zVaX7EPpvOJxwnuPCNM9Yzu1WZiZug3YpBBVVMlj1i2xmfDjkt7T6Bg_B7yEdr0qorYVQQC-nyJPOUJnlI2Y3WbCufAGTQpCUPhuDchIZt5-Sr/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNzoGnJGFjqYKkDfhfuPllxueFmrcc6zVaX7EPpvOJxwnuPCNM9Yzu1WZiZug3YpBBVVMlj1i2xmfDjkt7T6Bg_B7yEdr0qorYVQQC-nyJPOUJnlI2Y3WbCufAGTQpCUPhuDchIZt5-Sr/w320-h230/trash+pile.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>So there I was, wallowing in a writer’s peculiar and lonely kind of misery—but here’s the kicker: I actually mean this to be an <i>inspiring </i>blog. Because I’d been there before, and survived. <p></p><p>I’ve had a book rejected before, a previous year of my life tossed in the can. I’ve had chapters axed, a character completely remade, book ideas vetoed without even an outline read. Once before an editorial meeting I spent ten minutes explaining my next plot to my agent only to be warned: “Yes, well, don’t say that. Say pretty much anything <i>but </i>that.” </p><p>There is a lot of rejection in the writing life, and yes, you have to get used to it. But you also have to believe that it’s only a rejection of this particular piece of writing. It’s not a rejection of you. Writers write a lot of stuff--some of it works out, and some of it doesn’t. </p><p>You only fail when you let it stop you. </p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">So tell me, dear readers: when did you refuse to let a setback stop you? </span></b></p><p> </p>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-51554578168078775562021-02-11T08:00:00.012-05:002021-02-28T16:46:16.420-05:00FIVE KEYS TO SUCCESSFULLY RESEARCHING AN HISTORICAL NOVEL <i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://paulvidich.com/">Paul Vidich</a></span></i><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcPrPzkQtAbK5wRm60rMO1ELg8e4fUnwYtw4OMNkb5Km7GbZ4uAfYvDkrhyphenhyphenPQOkIbYhmy_4JYrL2kTBHGflWAWLTFARYv9nbbhZ56XgnakxDjuMvc7-2lEElCWL4RrvcteV82koknmc7lS/s300/Paul-Vidich-Portrait-234x300.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcPrPzkQtAbK5wRm60rMO1ELg8e4fUnwYtw4OMNkb5Km7GbZ4uAfYvDkrhyphenhyphenPQOkIbYhmy_4JYrL2kTBHGflWAWLTFARYv9nbbhZ56XgnakxDjuMvc7-2lEElCWL4RrvcteV82koknmc7lS/s0/Paul-Vidich-Portrait-234x300.jpg" /></a></i></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">The Memorial Wall in the lobby of CIA Headquarters in
Langley Virginia has 133 black stars carved into Vermont marble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each star represents a fallen agency
officer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many are named, but a few are
identified only by the date and place they died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My new novel, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mercenary-Novel-Paul-Vidich/dp/1643136208/" target="_blank">The Mercenary</a></i>, is inspired
by one anonymous man represented by a star.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Initially, I was intimidated by the challenge of telling the story of a
high-ranking KGB officer exfiltrated by the CIA, not because it was about Cold
War spies, (I had addressed this world in my previous novels), but because my
novel was to be set in Moscow, a city I had never visited – and couldn’t in the
pandemic. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span>I wanted to make sure <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Mercenary </i>evoked a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>vivid sense of
Moscow in the last years of the Soviet Union. To create an authentic sense of
that place and time, I knew I would have to do a great deal of research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before sitting down to write the novel, I did
six months of extensive research to get five things right: setting, characters,
dialogue, location, and the historical context. This breakdown was helpful for
my spy novel, but it can offer readers and writers useful tips for any type of novel
research.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZwTPvHhJkOnKUgSXVnLkmn7zwCyySHxIOCcWXfEZRsWdCn14vAiko9KBl_tGCshWrxrEXqKAC7OvQDgfjA9L0wwLKhbn5Xzzb7AHR7nFaNhvnfdlTc2ZARmo9OSGihdqNNMNhJrxEyGT/s1280/The-Mercenary-Paul-Vidich.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="853" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZwTPvHhJkOnKUgSXVnLkmn7zwCyySHxIOCcWXfEZRsWdCn14vAiko9KBl_tGCshWrxrEXqKAC7OvQDgfjA9L0wwLKhbn5Xzzb7AHR7nFaNhvnfdlTc2ZARmo9OSGihdqNNMNhJrxEyGT/s320/The-Mercenary-Paul-Vidich.jpg" /></a></div><br /><b>SETTING:</b> Setting may be the novelist’s first critical choice. Setting means a certain place at a certain time where the story unfolds. Setting is not just scenery, or nice descriptive passages, although an illustrator’s eye for a place is part of it. It’s about mood, it’s about the things that draw a character to a place, establishes the novel’s atmosphere, and evoke the story’s imaginary world. Setting provides the yearnings, fears, attractions, and possibilities that are available to characters who find themselves at a unique moment in a particular place. It is the stage for the characters whose stories will be told. <br /><br /><b>BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS:</b> In <i>The Mercenary</i>, I needed to imagine men and woman whose choices, values, and actions were convincing and of the era. I read several autobiographies of high-ranking KGB officers who successfully defected to the West. Their stories are gripping real-life accounts of spies and they paint a graphic picture of the paranoia, incompetence, intrigues and sheer nastiness of the KGB. I was able to understand the hopes and fears of men who were caught in the Soviet system, and once I inhabited their world, I created Viktor Petrov, a KGB Lieutenant Colonel who wanted out. He became a whole person who lived in a specific apartment block, drank too much, spoke with a provincial accent, and cared deeply for his son. I created him, as all writers create characters, by accessing my own emotions and psyche, combining them with the real-life accounts of the KGB officers, and then I scraped all this material into a mental space, breathed on the ember, and gave life to Petrov. <br /><br /><b>DIALOGUE:</b> It is critical. It reveals character and it drives plot. But to make dialogue authentic, you need to know your character well. I listened to the voices of the Russians who I researched and developed an ear for imitation. Often writers make the mistake of describing a character to help the reader imagine, but writers sometimes wrongly use Somerset Maugham’s technique of sumptuously describing a person’s aquiline nose, grey eyes, knitted brow, and so on, and by the time the reader has finished the paragraph the reader still doesn’t have the faintest idea what the person is like. But if the character opens their mouth and says something, you reveal them in two or three lines. <div><br /></div><div><b>LOCATION:</b> In my previous novels, set in Havana and Washington DC., I visited the cities doing something akin to location scouting. I wanted to see where the action happened, the routes my characters took from their hotel, where my characters lived, and what they saw when they walked down the street. I couldn’t visit Moscow in person so I did my location scouting with Google maps. The street view feature allowed me to visit the city virtually. Street names, traffic patterns, pedestrian’s clothing can all be seen. All these little details are important to establish authenticity, but they have to be transparent. If a detail stands out, the writer has failed. There is tendency in historical fiction to show off period details, but a detail that draw attention to itself takes the reader out of the moment.
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZbZheLWyOdSSiggG3e0CF1k2x9mTrj9oVFgmXHJueUw6z0FizXKaeSjTFRrGnCYIyH44XAQky7MHiiPifkmfGruKrJwcodxP0b5CAoXqamRYWA4rLHg89I_qH8piltmWGnhhzAK0ClFvF/s320/81dbBggMEbL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZbZheLWyOdSSiggG3e0CF1k2x9mTrj9oVFgmXHJueUw6z0FizXKaeSjTFRrGnCYIyH44XAQky7MHiiPifkmfGruKrJwcodxP0b5CAoXqamRYWA4rLHg89I_qH8piltmWGnhhzAK0ClFvF/s0/81dbBggMEbL.jpg" /></a></b></div><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">HISTORICAL CONTEXT</b>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read as much as I could to understand the
Soviet Union in 1985.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Afghan War had
been raging for several years and the Soviet occupation had become deeply
unpopular and depleted the Soviet economy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Details of the historical moment helped shaped
the tone of the novel, and became background for several of the characters,
allowing me to insert myself into the mind of those characters. Serge
Schmemann’s <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Native-Land-Centuries-Russian/dp/0679757074" target="_blank">Echoes of a Native Land</a></i>, a <i>New York Times</i>
correspondent’s memoir of living in Moscow, provided a stark and moving account
of the city in the 1980s that was infinitely suggestive.<p></p>
Finally, when I had finished a draft of the novel, I looked to see if I could find a sensitive reader whose personal experiences could validate the experience of a foreigner living in the Soviet Union’s pervasive surveillance. I was fortunate to be find John Beryle, American Ambassador to the Russian Federation 2008-2012, who also happened to be a counselor officer in the American embassy in 1985. He provided invaluable insights into specific details, Moscow life, Russian vocabulary, and he corrected mistakes that would only be noted by someone who lived and breathed Moscow in the ‘80s. <br /><br />The writer’s sleight of hand is to create a world that is authentic to the reader. It is not easy to do, but it’s what makes the books we admire succeed. <br /><br /><span style="color: #2b00fe;">What are some of your favorite tips, tricks, and strategies for writing an historical novel?</span><i><span style="color: #cc0000;"></span></i><p></p></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-73880780015272675912021-02-09T08:00:00.001-05:002021-02-09T08:00:10.103-05:00MYSTERY MINUTE GOES ROGUE <p><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">By <a href="https://zoltanjames.com/" target="_blank">Z. J. Czupor</a></span></i></p><p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh38xhzS4qZP1AqwVyoIFIPKC7PWytTyWo59ozdz1ZWH9O4OMTFl5k4iV9fJKMRWSFqke9w5gYj7sTgJ_Pqr6e2SuErLPgOhguyBYny6Z3rtfzGDoQ_oln5TGmTTSkG5g4p_y5zkpL4p4Uf/s199/image001.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="199" data-original-width="133" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh38xhzS4qZP1AqwVyoIFIPKC7PWytTyWo59ozdz1ZWH9O4OMTFl5k4iV9fJKMRWSFqke9w5gYj7sTgJ_Pqr6e2SuErLPgOhguyBYny6Z3rtfzGDoQ_oln5TGmTTSkG5g4p_y5zkpL4p4Uf/w165-h247/image001.png" width="165" /></a></b></div><b>Doppelgänger: Myth, Literary Device, or the Real Deal?</b><p></p><p>Unless you are an identical twin, would it unnerve you to bump into your dead ringer … your doppelgänger?</p><p>Would your lookalike be your exact double, your evil twin, or just a mischievous spirit?</p><p>When a carbon copy character emerges in literature, the author is playing with our sense of reality. In a novel, when another duplicate self appears, doubts automatically surface. The main character questions the double's identity (who are you?) and the main character questions him or herself, (who am I?). In other words, the use of a doppelgänger as a literary device helps writers portray complex characters.</p><p>Seeing through the main character's eyes, it sets readers wondering if their protagonist's experience is real, an imagination, or hallucination? That duality inspires terror and dread. </p><p>In general, the doppelgänger creates a creepy or eerie tone within a story, possibly because we see ourselves from outside our own bodies. In other literary situations, an incompetent look-alike can be used to humorous effect.</p><p><b>"Doppelgänger" is German meaning "double-goer" or "double walker." </b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72FqjzmjYRbgfq2epYGCitO-T-8vFvT1UmSUOMgPBQ44bDHTpuHnI2GbER_Xwt3CUFqRNIQGz-nkrslstR5Sa-e0bsCvhgsAm8B6Q0mcdCwQXkzTZGN-qEDAJ2kcjFEEwM5nObA51dcCk/s405/graphic+doppelganger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="398" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72FqjzmjYRbgfq2epYGCitO-T-8vFvT1UmSUOMgPBQ44bDHTpuHnI2GbER_Xwt3CUFqRNIQGz-nkrslstR5Sa-e0bsCvhgsAm8B6Q0mcdCwQXkzTZGN-qEDAJ2kcjFEEwM5nObA51dcCk/s320/graphic+doppelganger.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>It was introduced by German author Jean Paul, in his 1796 novel<i> Siebenkas</i>. In fact, he invented two words: <i>doppeltgänger</i>, (with a "t") his name for an uncanny lookalike; and <i>doppelgänger</i>, to describe a meal in which two courses were served simultaneously. But it wasn't until 1824 that the latter word stuck to mean "apparition of a living person." </p><p>Myths about spirit doubles have been around for thousands of years. In Ancient Egypt, the "ka" was considered one aspect of the soul and depicted as a spirit identical to the body. This myth also lived in Europe, Africa, in Norse mythology, and in English and Irish literature during the 18th and 19th centuries. These oral and written traditions assumed that if you saw your ethereal double, it was a harbinger of bad luck, or … signaled death.</p><p><b>Dueling Natures</b></p><p>Perhaps it was these myths and oral traditions that inspired numerous authors over time to explore our dual natures. </p><p>In Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1821-1881) novella, <i>The Double</i> (1846), a mild and antisocial government clerk meets his bold and assertive reflection. The doppelgänger encroaches on the clerk's affairs and drives him mad by the end of the story.</p><p>Edgar Allan Poe's (1809-1849) short story "William Wilson" published in <i>Burton's Gentleman's Magazine</i> (1839) is about an English schoolboy who meets another child with the same name and appearance. This spitting image follows William throughout his life and impedes his ambitions.</p><p>The doppelgänger, however, is different from the alter ego <span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">— </span>the alternate self, which is embodied by a single person, i.e., Superman/Clark Kent or Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. The device is also different from the imposter who dresses or acts as another character, such as Tom Ripley who pretends to be his Princeton classmate in <i>The Talented Mr. Ripley</i> (1955) by Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995). </p><p>Some critics consider the doppelgänger plot ruse to be a cliché, but popular stories still abound in novels, soap operas, TV, film, and video games. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8n1QetGYMGlSOyfR96NGgfpb7MtaotGe213GtxoUe5HtuWo5pWsp25bHyB9BGvwocze2E2l1U8JM3u3B_OduTgd9dTPp6JepJ5dsFgPLWbizDLG-M23KWAJlUy6w0m5AbYe-ZGnX_tVUx/s658/Body-Double-US+Tess+Gerritsen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="658" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8n1QetGYMGlSOyfR96NGgfpb7MtaotGe213GtxoUe5HtuWo5pWsp25bHyB9BGvwocze2E2l1U8JM3u3B_OduTgd9dTPp6JepJ5dsFgPLWbizDLG-M23KWAJlUy6w0m5AbYe-ZGnX_tVUx/s320/Body-Double-US+Tess+Gerritsen.jpg" /></a></div><p>An extensive list of well-known modern mystery and thriller writers has also employed the doppelgänger or evil twin plot tactic, i.e., Stephen King (<i>The Outsider</i>, 2018); Joyce Carol Oates (<i>Jack of Spades</i>, 2015); Tana French (<i>The Likeness</i>, 2008), and Tess Gerritsen (<i>Body Double</i>, 2004) to name a few. The gambit also is popular in romance, science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. </p><p><b>Are doppelgängers the real deal? </b></p><p>There are several cases in which historical figures have reported seeing their duplicate selves including President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) who told his wife, Mary Todd, that he saw his reflection doubled in the mirror with one face beside the other. She said the mirror image looked deathly and foreshadowed bad news. Nevertheless, she thought Lincoln would be re-elected but wouldn't "last through it." Lincoln won re-election but was assassinated forty-two days into his second term.</p><p>Neuroscientists claim that intense emotions can cause you to perceive an illusory body which shifts your awareness away from your body to the perception of a separate bodily self. In neuroscience jargon, this is called <i>heautoscopy</i>, where scientists study data from brain scans of patients who experience their "double selves" moving and interacting along with a sharing of emotions and thoughts.</p><p>Some physicists have speculated that the "Big Bang" — a theory that our universe was created by a massive explosion—also created a parallel universe. They argue that since space is infinite, matter can arrange itself in a finite number of ways, like cards in a deck. Sooner or later our matter is going to repeat, but not necessarily our mental configuration, which could cause an evil doppelgänger version. For example, in its simplest terms, if you love chocolate, your evil twin from a parallel universe would hate chocolate.</p><p>According to folk wisdom, everyone has at least one doppelgänger, or maybe as many as seven other "duplicate selves" walking around the world. Creepy, but not very likely.</p><p>There are seven billion people on the planet. There is bound to be someone out there who shares your same features. Right? Scientists, however, claim there's about a one in 135 chance that a pair of complete doppelgängers exist <i>somewhere</i> in the world. But the likelihood of someone walking around looking identical to you, specifically, with your facial features, is only one in 1 trillion. </p><p>Psychologist and paranormal investigator Jayne Harris, who authored <i>What Dwells Within: A Study of Spirit Attachment</i> (2015), says, "Whatever the real truth, belief in the spirit double has instilled both fear and wonder in people for thousands of years and will no doubt continue to do so. After all, the wonder of life is surely its mysteries."</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHC-F31Q5r3koax5SeRCc78vE2E5HJKCBAUg4ohblRqPhZcZDJ8CYU_oTWX_Kbjo25ruCxN2iAR8zraVcI1ZlNFbdcif50CmMCszSrks2b6047kuFC1fo7GNULVcr84N48P7T6b_cdQNo2/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="743" data-original-width="589" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHC-F31Q5r3koax5SeRCc78vE2E5HJKCBAUg4ohblRqPhZcZDJ8CYU_oTWX_Kbjo25ruCxN2iAR8zraVcI1ZlNFbdcif50CmMCszSrks2b6047kuFC1fo7GNULVcr84N48P7T6b_cdQNo2/" title="How They Met Themselves, watercolor by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1864)." width="190" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;"><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;">How They Met Themselves</i><span style="text-align: left;">, watercolor by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1864).</span></div><p></p><p><br /></p><div><br /></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-514276886167045742021-02-06T08:00:00.007-05:002021-02-06T08:00:02.858-05:00ROGUE FLASH – KARNA BODMAN'S THRILLER ON SPECIAL SALE <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7U17CfWv4NSIJ-eNw81D1N9p4X6Fb4S95BKtDc51pfgJAdOWu3LT0jtKvc8XEGh-fDnBhqIUPe3RZL8W8040asYhSGTf0UOwZeT3VF6W-Ld_UpHW4sW3L6x6czQt33hObdvjd9dpLL3Y/s377/Trust+wins+medal.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="250" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7U17CfWv4NSIJ-eNw81D1N9p4X6Fb4S95BKtDc51pfgJAdOWu3LT0jtKvc8XEGh-fDnBhqIUPe3RZL8W8040asYhSGTf0UOwZeT3VF6W-Ld_UpHW4sW3L6x6czQt33hObdvjd9dpLL3Y/w202-h305/Trust+wins+medal.png" width="202" /></a></div><br />Just in time for a Valentine gift, Rogue Karna Bodman’s latest thriller <a href="http://bit.ly/trustbykarnabodman" target="_blank"><i>Trust but Verify</i> </a>just went on sale at Amazon. Both the hardcover and audio versions are available at a special price, though not for long.<p></p><p>It is especially timely to make this announcement in conjunction with President Ronald Reagan’s birthday, which is February 6, because the author served six years in the Reagan White House,<br /> first as Deputy Press Secretary, later as Senior Director of the National Security Council. </p><p>This thriller features a member of the White House staff an<br />d an FBI Special Agent who race to unravel an explosive plot that threatens the lives of international financial leaders and would sink stock markets worldwide.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2fMTcUbH9qB5c6Na-m-_R3xrluw_SBWEEitZyOVgq27I_yAhafasGJmyuEEjWWON-i9I36QWYv-DQnJETwRd79RHEEagQgzjh0bumoU6ZkzZmVrLGAB4Cg_4UYEVSgRNErBUpixtkKr8/s2000/Reagan-Bodman3.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1363" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2fMTcUbH9qB5c6Na-m-_R3xrluw_SBWEEitZyOVgq27I_yAhafasGJmyuEEjWWON-i9I36QWYv-DQnJETwRd79RHEEagQgzjh0bumoU6ZkzZmVrLGAB4Cg_4UYEVSgRNErBUpixtkKr8/s320/Reagan-Bodman3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p><i>New York Times</i> bestselling author, Lee Child, describes it this way: “Bodman’s hard-won insider information and sheer storytelling talent make this a book to remember. This novel was recently awarded a medal by the Military Writers Association of America. </p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Happy Valentine’s Day from Rogue Women Writers.</span></b></p><p> </p>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-76722180398759422302021-02-03T08:00:00.038-05:002021-02-04T18:52:55.321-05:00THE MYSTERY OF VALENTINE'S DAY<p><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>by <a href="https://karnabodman.com/" target="_blank">Karna Small Bodman</a></i></span></p><p>Valentine’s Day is next week. Won’t it be nice to take some time to focus on romance rather than simply remaining safe during challenging times. You know why we all must be careful and keep our distance. But do you know why we celebrate love and close companionship on February 14, when Americans are expected to spend over $27 billion on cards, chocolate, roses and other gifts? Is any part of Valentine’s Day’s history authentically romantic? <br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwgKENH-1WX9F4JM6XYqQrhGeNqZzN7_wCIn2Qezd822_aMzo-kE8VmIrdONXTv0IljsK7OK48lKigSIw7xSN1OSNbEeZaGxM2YVD_tlr4IbK_PwLpNADl_DqNNU29xT54bQz3ocfIQOi-/s1000/Valentine+history.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="561" data-original-width="1000" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwgKENH-1WX9F4JM6XYqQrhGeNqZzN7_wCIn2Qezd822_aMzo-kE8VmIrdONXTv0IljsK7OK48lKigSIw7xSN1OSNbEeZaGxM2YVD_tlr4IbK_PwLpNADl_DqNNU29xT54bQz3ocfIQOi-/w304-h209/Valentine+history.jpg" width="304" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="text-align: right;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;">You’ve probably heard that the day has something to do with a patron saint named Valentine, but the actual origins are shrouded in mystery since there are different “martyred saints” with that name. According to one legend, Valentine was a Roman priest living i<span style="text-align: left;">n the third century who secretly married couples after the Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage because he thought single men made better soldiers. </span></p><p></p><p>Anther legend focused on a man named Valentine who, while imprisoned, helped Christians escape and sent the first “Valentine” to a woman who visited him while he was there. He reportedly signed it, “From your Valentine.”</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQr70zfcB1LWEaKdTB9ujIfkxNybZx_q5BEBsg-kB4A4mHfIas5pml7JxVwoNk5ETV29aYOt6TtADNyaeAZN3DPgrCTYbNK8MhkCv3CQQYLIrzyVGVOvSENkweREB8QqyldaIZaDzjIBXv/s1400/St.+Valentine.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="1400" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQr70zfcB1LWEaKdTB9ujIfkxNybZx_q5BEBsg-kB4A4mHfIas5pml7JxVwoNk5ETV29aYOt6TtADNyaeAZN3DPgrCTYbNK8MhkCv3CQQYLIrzyVGVOvSENkweREB8QqyldaIZaDzjIBXv/w423-h270/St.+Valentine.webp" width="423" /></a></div><p>What about the date in February? Some believe that it originated in the Middle Ages when birds’ mating season was thought to begin on February 14. The first actual mention of celebrating Valentine’s Day as one that centers on romantic love goes back to Geoffrey Chaucer in 1375 with a line from the poem <i>Parliament of Foules</i>: “For this was sent on Seynt Valentynes’ day/ Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.”</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFdEcWWis2z6dNpiXTsFnyy9Q3-2Ox9m6dUbYE_iETmDB3hA1rQayG3rf3KYK3XJ0I6m4G7jKoHo957HDmKxkrrfp2_vhtB8-YPEOrB2mYYbLrwI-BAe1eeEUsyAebJmLt3ZlifUG1k6UE/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="313" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFdEcWWis2z6dNpiXTsFnyy9Q3-2Ox9m6dUbYE_iETmDB3hA1rQayG3rf3KYK3XJ0I6m4G7jKoHo957HDmKxkrrfp2_vhtB8-YPEOrB2mYYbLrwI-BAe1eeEUsyAebJmLt3ZlifUG1k6UE/w173-h272/Out+of+the+Picture.jpg" width="173" /></a></div>When it comes to choosing how to celebrate the day with a gift for your own Valentine, you can certainly send a card, but how about choosing a book . . . perhaps one focusing on romance, mystery or a combination of the two? Since we Rogues are women, I thought I’d pull together a short list of novels penned by bestselling women authors that just might fit the bill.<p></p><p>A new series by Tracy Gardner from Hallmark Publishing features both romance and mystery. The first is <a href="Out of the Picture: A Shepherd Sisters Mystery from Hallmark Publishing: Gardner, Tracy: 9781947892620: Amazon.com: Books"><i>Out of the Picture</i></a>. The star of this story is Savanna Shepherd, a former art authenticator who can tell a forgery from the real thing. She’s described as having a talent for spotting secrets hiding in plain sight. One reviewer tells us this is “A story of family, new beginnings and community … that holds you in pleasure, particularly for mystery and romance story lovers. You will be gripped by the story’s irresistible pace…it will not disappoint.”</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikKzq8UORVgwndPI9goS0UueufBbBRluYl-KCPuQwF3fHxXsJGrjWVlvx-wuGU3V5rpKqasjPSoYU7F777NvCg2vANZvmO9teFEFulN7qTwoprqOUnX6ZzsOm9Gsn4gnDxaW75ymTIwgim/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="313" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikKzq8UORVgwndPI9goS0UueufBbBRluYl-KCPuQwF3fHxXsJGrjWVlvx-wuGU3V5rpKqasjPSoYU7F777NvCg2vANZvmO9teFEFulN7qTwoprqOUnX6ZzsOm9Gsn4gnDxaW75ymTIwgim/w215-h338/Behind+he+Frame.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>The second in this series is <a href="Behind the Frame: A Shepherd Sisters Mystery from Hallmark Publishing: Gardner, Tracy: 9781947892972: Amazon.com: Books "><i>Behind the Frame</i></a>. In this installment, Savanna is convinced that the arrested murder suspect did not commit the crime, and with the help of a doctor, who is her new romantic interest, they uncover hidden resentments and intrigue. This novel also gets rave reviews with readers saying it is, “Everything I love in a cozy mystery: an appealing location, an intriguing mystery to solve, plenty of suspects to consider, and a wonderful group of likable characters.” <br /><br />If you think your Valentine might like to read more focused mysteries (vs. the “Hallmark variety”) here are two brand new releases that immediately hit the bestseller lists. We have written about author Marie Benedict before when her terrific novels, <i>The Only Woman in the Room</i>, about the inventions of actress Hedy Lamarr, and <i>Carnegie’s Maid</i>, about a servant who may have inspired Andrew Carnegie. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-hBiAIcioRcoKUZKk_boMQ7gwesjOnIJygYimDDXr4UYA1NT4alLeQCQtqIeitm8gv0_RmOYZBHyZOdKCxxvw1xBiST5agC3qTywxhBRIwHBBCln6tc_xp5ToOyvE0THN-ILd89I7VcfU/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="329" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-hBiAIcioRcoKUZKk_boMQ7gwesjOnIJygYimDDXr4UYA1NT4alLeQCQtqIeitm8gv0_RmOYZBHyZOdKCxxvw1xBiST5agC3qTywxhBRIwHBBCln6tc_xp5ToOyvE0THN-ILd89I7VcfU/" width="158" /></a></div><br />Now Marie has penned<i> <a href="Amazon.com: The Mystery of Mrs. Christie (0760789277559): Benedict, Marie: Books">The Mystery of Mrs. Christie</a></i>. This novel takes place in 1926 when famous author, Agatha Christie disappeared for a mysterious 11 days, one of the most notorious events in literary history. What happened to her when her empty car was found on the edge of a deep pond, the only clues being tire tracks and a fur coat left in the car which was strange for such a frigid night? What is real and what is mystery? Read the book and decide for yourself.</div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">A final recommendation is a book released just last month,<i> <a href="Amazon.com: The Wife Upstairs: A Novel (9781250245496): Hawkins, Rachel: Books ">The Wife Upstairs</a></i> by Rachel Hawkins. This too was an instant <i>New York Times</i> and <i>USA Today</i> bestseller. CNN called it “One of the most anticipated books of 2021.” It’s described as being “A delicious twist on the Gothic classic, <i>Jane Eyre</i> that pairs Southern charm with atmospheric suspense.” It’s also called “A delicious thriller with a fresh, sharp twist that you’ll likely want to read in a single sitting.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZynaeS5SwmqJLfQdvDP5ApKyFCMHgp9wXvS7jUmM43lZM5B8VyGJq4N7KeqG-RWiu6cYG5dD-ZY5N3L_5biYWl2xVu_u4l-V4Ly8T5sxiURhM_yRttbpzoymtZXUNcFCXU3BorEc5B-th/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="328" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZynaeS5SwmqJLfQdvDP5ApKyFCMHgp9wXvS7jUmM43lZM5B8VyGJq4N7KeqG-RWiu6cYG5dD-ZY5N3L_5biYWl2xVu_u4l-V4Ly8T5sxiURhM_yRttbpzoymtZXUNcFCXU3BorEc5B-th/" width="158" /></a></div><br />Of course, I would also recommend books written by my Rogue colleagues that are listed on the left of this page. These thrillers appeal to both men and women. If you haven’t sampled their story telling skills, you might want to order one of their books as a gift on February 14.</div><p></p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">What are YOU going to give your own special Valentine next week? Leave a comment – we’d love to know. And thanks for visiting us here on Rogue Women Writers. </span></b></p><div><br /></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-32166825519204642582021-02-01T08:00:00.015-05:002021-02-01T08:00:00.137-05:00ROGUE WOMEN JANUARY ROUNDUP!<p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHDUsPMAhqTustssPwhpv2UKmC_yMhd8p5rhwirekSszB9ShipgzRkSCcXN9rIvHl7xCpSURJZjWLIlktMqisUv-S_LuJ7rlvdTrGhcYp2MBJNvQMWaQrmEglsx40pKNYfLa2rij3aV2Hh/s1500/rww-roundup-logo-red+JPEG.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHDUsPMAhqTustssPwhpv2UKmC_yMhd8p5rhwirekSszB9ShipgzRkSCcXN9rIvHl7xCpSURJZjWLIlktMqisUv-S_LuJ7rlvdTrGhcYp2MBJNvQMWaQrmEglsx40pKNYfLa2rij3aV2Hh/s320/rww-roundup-logo-red+JPEG.jpg" /></a></b></div><b><br />Here's what we Rogues talked about, researched, and revealed in January...</b><p></p>Most people make resolutions at New Year's, but Rogue Jenny Milchman goes all out and makes <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">resolutions for every month of the year</a>.<br /><br />ZJ Czupor takes a hard look at Mario Puzo in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">"He Did It For the Money,"</a> a tale of how the Godfather came to be.<br /><br />Ever wonder if a writer's background made them the writer they are? <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">Chris Goff spills the beans in Shoutout Colorado.</a> <a href="https://www.christinegoff.com/">Chris Goff</a> tackles the pandemic with the idea for a new book: <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/01/the-spy-who-worked-from-home-or-not.html#comment-form">The Spy Who Worked From Home. </a><br /><br />His first novel won the ITW Thriller and Barry Awards and was nominated for Edgar®, Anthony and Hammett Awards. And his sixth book, The Breaker, is just coming out. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">Nick Petrie shares with the Rogues just how hard writing can be.</a><br /><br />Plenty of authors write really good action sequences, but few have ever really lived that life. Not true for this months <a href="https://therealbookspy.com/">The Real Book Spy</a>'s Rogue Recommendation, Brad Thor. Check out his new thriller: <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/01/the-real-book-spys-january-2021.html#comment-form">American Traitor</a>. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.carlaneggers.com/">Carla Neggers</a> told us how to <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2021/01/organizing-creative-workspace-that.html#comment-form">create a writing space that 'sparks joy</a>'. <br /><p><span style="font-family: georgia,times,times new roman,serif;"><br /></span></p>Chris Goffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06546017052651960844noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-58576449920346427832021-01-23T08:00:00.052-05:002021-01-23T14:57:46.935-05:00ROGUE FLASH: A Chance to Zoom with Liv Constantine <p>Pre-order <i><a href="https://livconstantine.com/books/the-wife-stalker/" target="_blank">The Wife Stalker</a> </i>and email your receipt to livconstantine2@gmail.com for a chance to win a giveaway of books AND join a Zoom party with best-selling writing team <a href="https://livconstantine.com" target="_blank">Liv Constantine</a>! </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ImJfz4WrKqxSCOPeAyGXQq7tKvRPhtQRfCarxYTzGkgLHP270Mb4eeaYa9O_yUiAocjEJqmBbeKBGMBUTiz8qJvdT6AMnK7w9GR_DkzaR6wHH_jiOYzpO2p5L-r_DTq5ASHuyRJLL6bO/s940/Pre-Order.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="940" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ImJfz4WrKqxSCOPeAyGXQq7tKvRPhtQRfCarxYTzGkgLHP270Mb4eeaYa9O_yUiAocjEJqmBbeKBGMBUTiz8qJvdT6AMnK7w9GR_DkzaR6wHH_jiOYzpO2p5L-r_DTq5ASHuyRJLL6bO/w400-h335/Pre-Order.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>“Compelling and surprising, THE WIFE STALKER is a fast-paced page-turner, full of unexpected twists and an ending I did not see coming. Impossible to put down!”</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span> <span> </span></span>- Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of ALL THE MISSING GIRLS and THE PERFECT STRANGER</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>After watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfWDHWZjRxE&feature=emb_logo" target="_blank">the trailer</a>, we can't wait to binge-read <i><a href="https://livconstantine.com/books/the-wife-stalker/" target="_blank">The Wife Stalker</a>!</i></b></span></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-29457529562192850932021-01-22T08:00:00.045-05:002021-01-22T08:00:01.443-05:00THE REAL BOOK SPY'S JANUARY 2021 RECOMMENDATION IS...<i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://therealbookspy.com" target="_blank">The Real Book Spy</a></span></i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ra8LmZyvU-PNzb2DVEYVFa2OmBNpYXzD9RyvRMowU0UxK_Zx16_6MOxg6j_5akbOVSb9F5V0t61uOhQKu_VnlF8yWlvQey-hY7sCcq7j2aNZNgzG3fKY3LwbjbYvuB9n1kJB6njS2W8T/s374/TRBS+goes+Rogue+for+FB.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="254" data-original-width="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ra8LmZyvU-PNzb2DVEYVFa2OmBNpYXzD9RyvRMowU0UxK_Zx16_6MOxg6j_5akbOVSb9F5V0t61uOhQKu_VnlF8yWlvQey-hY7sCcq7j2aNZNgzG3fKY3LwbjbYvuB9n1kJB6njS2W8T/s320/TRBS+goes+Rogue+for+FB.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Plenty of authors write really good action sequences.<br /><br />But few have ever <i>really</i> lived that life. <br /><br /><a href="https://bradtaylorbooks.com" target="_blank">Brad Taylor</a>, author of the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling Pike Logan series, is one of the few writers who’s actually experienced the kind of hard-hitting action he writes about. A 21-year veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and Special Forces, including eight years with the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, Taylor knows a thing or two about combat, and that been-there-done-that authenticity bleeds through on every single page.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTrpNmHS4KnU3i7sMH8pI6nOv2LIFgasXOfPfiqsgk0Fc2rmOnm-F3qtXSfjQBOO3_8GVJXfqvpVJ0qpexyClk84R5nWVvxHmdRb47iCIsf0JUvYK4ge-sUImisFb_Y7kEPqa7mX628r7d/s604/American-Traitor_Brad-Taylor-400x604.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTrpNmHS4KnU3i7sMH8pI6nOv2LIFgasXOfPfiqsgk0Fc2rmOnm-F3qtXSfjQBOO3_8GVJXfqvpVJ0qpexyClk84R5nWVvxHmdRb47iCIsf0JUvYK4ge-sUImisFb_Y7kEPqa7mX628r7d/s320/American-Traitor_Brad-Taylor-400x604.jpg" /></a></div>In his latest blockbuster thriller, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Traitor-Pike-Logan-Novel/dp/0062886061" target="_blank">American Traitor</a></i>, Pike Logan—who is the leader of the Taskforce, an elite, off-the-books counterterrorism unit—and his significant other, Jennifer Cahill (also a member of the Taskforce), head to Australia for what is supposed to be a relaxing getaway. Instead, things go sideways almost immediately when they discover that their host, former colleague Clifford “Dunkin” Delmonty, is on the run from a team of Chinese hitmen. <br /><br />Dunkin, it turns out, stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have, and as Pike and Jennifer piece the clues together, a larger conspiracy emerges . . . one so big that it could very well lead to a war between China and Taiwan unless the Taskforce can expose the truth and stop the bad guys before it’s too late. <br /><br />In typical Brad Taylor fashion, <i>American Traitor</i> feels ripped straight from the headlines. Without giving anything away, few writers have their finger on the pulse of the geopolitical world the way Taylor does, making his stories feel at times a bit too close for comfort. While much of the genre is still focused on Russia, North Korea, and/or Middle Eastern terrorism, Taylor’s take on what China may or may not be up too is rather refreshing, albeit a bit terrifying. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgulJ4_SODt4xQuVsdbz1pmQqPSivtNuerzRa9vtRpcNop_mu9Xs-hYTqASXqrnqTRohyzYcMFMDUaenSAco9alS3BM3ZFV66IxeBqAbBSffGka26Fh5Jq2oZasboq3fVXTKDhwyVgCsurQ/s294/Brad-Taylor-credit-Claudio-MArinesco-1-thumb.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgulJ4_SODt4xQuVsdbz1pmQqPSivtNuerzRa9vtRpcNop_mu9Xs-hYTqASXqrnqTRohyzYcMFMDUaenSAco9alS3BM3ZFV66IxeBqAbBSffGka26Fh5Jq2oZasboq3fVXTKDhwyVgCsurQ/s0/Brad-Taylor-credit-Claudio-MArinesco-1-thumb.jpg" /></a></div><br />As for Pike Logan, well, he reached must-read status years ago. If you’re a fan of Vince Fynn, Brad Thor, Tom Clancy, or Mark Greaney—you will love Taylor’s work. Personally, I’ve always appreciated his diverse cast of characters, which has always featured a mix of strong, kickass women. It’s not uncommon these days to see authors try to include more women into their stories, but Taylor was doing it long before anyone else, and frankly, he just plain does it better. Pike is the star, sure, but Jennifer is every bit as important to this series, and you can expect her to steal plenty of scenes in this one.<div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Thank you to <a href="https://therealbookspy.com" target="_blank">The Real Book Spy</a>! We love action-packed plots and kickass female characters so <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Traitor-Pike-Logan-Novel/dp/0062886061" target="_blank">American Traitor</a></i> is sure to be a Rogue favorite!</span></b></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-20250764034265104162021-01-20T08:00:00.040-05:002021-01-20T08:00:04.810-05:00NICK PETRIE GOES ROGUE<div class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYi4IbP4XNZIZPAhe0r3NtkHi5ukuaW3wjW_E0x9u0N3DK2ETZgVcNbFpuIJ5PWM0AwmXxwN_lgm6-0RnVsCgAYDkCzt_9mNYbnQBY_tEvLlMtmuCiTXF68ModacqEOL9mkoo9lPzaWpew/s293/Screen+Shot+2020-12-19+at+11.01.53+AM.png" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYi4IbP4XNZIZPAhe0r3NtkHi5ukuaW3wjW_E0x9u0N3DK2ETZgVcNbFpuIJ5PWM0AwmXxwN_lgm6-0RnVsCgAYDkCzt_9mNYbnQBY_tEvLlMtmuCiTXF68ModacqEOL9mkoo9lPzaWpew/s0/Screen+Shot+2020-12-19+at+11.01.53+AM.png" /></a></div><i>Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington and won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. His story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in The Seattle Review, a national literary journal. </i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>His first novel, THE DRIFTER, won the ITW Thriller and Barry Awards, and was nominated for Edgar®, Anthony, and Hammett Awards. He won the 2016 Literary Award from the Wisconsin Library Association and was named one of Apple’s 10 Writers to Read in 2017. Light It Up was named the Best Thriller of 2018 by Apple Books and has been nominated for a Barry Award.</i><div><i><span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://nickpetrie.com" target="_blank">Nick Petrie</a></span></i><div><br />The last time I spoke with <a href="http://www.kjhowe.com" target="_blank">K.J. Howe</a>, just before the Night of a Thousand Authors, she surprised me with a question: As a writer, what are you proudest of? <br /><br />I’ve done a lot of interviews in the last six years, and nobody has ever asked that question before. I wasn’t terribly proud of my answer, that’s for sure. I said something about how I was proud that I could write a book a year – although even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t coming out right. <br /><br />I have wanted to be a writer since high school. I spent more than twenty-five years learning how to tell stories, accumulating three unpublished novels and countless short stories along the way. All this while running a small business, having a family, trying to have a life. <br /></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_XwQbEzGEKbN7q38ctauZl5yM8FSyoH4elMiXRnbXdmctbXzSLMv8GKMToW_smcmOSuesn5INqjjj6OypDvhnft05zjEzrIRZ5uB-SM3kn7XZ_gyBC2d_7KdRgXLcaX83h9LrC93rTqf6/s450/drifter-mass-market.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_XwQbEzGEKbN7q38ctauZl5yM8FSyoH4elMiXRnbXdmctbXzSLMv8GKMToW_smcmOSuesn5INqjjj6OypDvhnft05zjEzrIRZ5uB-SM3kn7XZ_gyBC2d_7KdRgXLcaX83h9LrC93rTqf6/s320/drifter-mass-market.jpg" /></a></div><div>Then Putnam agreed to publish <i>The Drifter</i>, and asked for another book in a year’s time. My upcoming novel, <i>The Breaker</i>, will be my sixth published novel. And two years ago, I shuttered my business, so I can write full time. Which is another challenge entirely.<br /><br />Writing is hard work. It’s fun, for sure, but it’s also difficult, especially when your writing life, which, for me, was a precious unpaid preoccupation for twenty-five years, becomes the thing that pays your mortgage. You spend eight hours a day, for months at a time, alone in a small dark room staring at a screen and trying to be <i>creative</i>, goddamnit.<br /><br />I was a carpenter and home renovation contractor for fifteen years, so I don’t want to equate the challenges of skilled physical labor, with all the attendant risk to life and limb, to sitting at my desk and typing. Compared to working three stories up on a steep-pitched Victorian, teetering on narrow planks as we tear off four ancient layers of shingles with pitchforks and lay down a new roof during the hot, humid heights of August? Sitting at my desk and typing is a breeze. <br /><br />But writing isn’t typing. Writing, for me, is about digging deep into myself to find the hearts of my characters and to put their emotions – which are <i>my</i> emotions, because all my characters come from someplace inside of me – on the page for all to see. Which means that writing entails a different kind of risk than demolishing a building or raising a roof, but it is risk nonetheless. The risk of exposing my own flawed heart to the world.<br /><br />Another challenge to the work involves the fact that it’s really hard to know how well you’re doing, from paragraph to paragraph, scene to scene, chapter to chapter. Do the words do what I want them to do? Does the reader feel the emotion I’m trying to convey? Does the action telegraph in a way that makes it vivid? Is the whole thing just a cliché already done better by someone else? <br /><br />It takes me the better part of a year to write a novel, and most of that time is also spent trying to stay afloat in the quicksand of my own self-doubt.<br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYZXZ8j5bBLgA7Cbr6Wi4pnxQ19oYjAMp9kiF7L-GDqaNvFVqqGj0uteDffuydT_EZbq_68FCCNpdMuN9Jp87NiNfx6TO_Lz3QlLwBtMgBqgJWdlsTnvcwl_xPMOowVQZhZCVGHFekNsKr/s553/Screen+Shot+2020-12-19+at+10.57.58+AM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="367" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYZXZ8j5bBLgA7Cbr6Wi4pnxQ19oYjAMp9kiF7L-GDqaNvFVqqGj0uteDffuydT_EZbq_68FCCNpdMuN9Jp87NiNfx6TO_Lz3QlLwBtMgBqgJWdlsTnvcwl_xPMOowVQZhZCVGHFekNsKr/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-12-19+at+10.57.58+AM.png" /></a></div><div>For many years, maybe because I wrote mostly in isolation, I thought that I was the only person who felt this way. Since my first novel was published, I’ve spoken to many, many accomplished writers who have spent decades navigating their own confidence quicksand. It’s become clear to me that, in order to succeed in creative life, even in the smallest way, you need enormous reserves of energy and resilience and optimism in the face of great opposition. It’s no wonder that the writers I know tend to be pretty amazing people. <br /><br />So, back to Kim Howe’s original question. What I’m proudest of, to be utterly honest, is that I manage to keep writing, despite everything. Despite my own self-doubts, despite a quarter-century of failures and near-misses, despite the uncertainties of how my agent and editor and readers will receive what I’ve written. Even now that I’m an award-winning, bestselling author – I still feel those doubts, and I still write every day anyway.<br /><br />Here’s why.<br /><br />In the late 90’s, I went to a talk by Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and Nobel laureate. Someone in the audience asked him: What’s the hardest thing about writing poetry? He gave her a gentle smile and said, “Getting started, keeping going, and getting started again.”<br /><br />Implicit in Heaney’s tiny impromptu poem, of course, is the recurrence of failure, and the power of perseverance.<br /><br />I can’t tell you how much that sly comment has meant to this writer over the decades. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Thank you, Nick! We can't wait to read <a href="https://nickpetrie.com/pre-order-the-breaker/" target="_blank">THE BREAKER</a>. </span></b></div></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-15062370464451453332021-01-15T08:00:00.034-05:002021-01-15T08:00:02.096-05:00THE SPY WHO WORKED FROM HOME: OR NOT!<i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://www.christinegoff.com" target="_blank">Chris Goff</a></span><a href="www.christinegoff.com"></a></i>
<div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBx00AExRv0xdzcIefGS3TetoNrM5jFOGBhS2ZQEiuoNHAY6cL7z499b_tSwkzOMlLRiYt922M_hPlT8_MDernYsBRHQsJxjUpAMVp24Sf8f6CCI1u28XAunkgIz9Zi4AiGbuzQLT0XKVQ/s1870/spy+image.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1870" data-original-width="1870" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBx00AExRv0xdzcIefGS3TetoNrM5jFOGBhS2ZQEiuoNHAY6cL7z499b_tSwkzOMlLRiYt922M_hPlT8_MDernYsBRHQsJxjUpAMVp24Sf8f6CCI1u28XAunkgIz9Zi4AiGbuzQLT0XKVQ/s320/spy+image.jpg" /></a></div>So, I joked about writing <i>The Spy Who Worked from Home</i>, but to be honest I saw a lot of potential there. Except, it turns out, it's hard to spy from home. Spying is all about intelligence gathering, and in today's world with all the secure buildings and heavily defended cyber connections, its hard to gather much useful intel on a laptop in your pjs. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>What happened when Covid 19 struck?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Some agencies, such as the NSA, stuck with their "strictly forbidden to work from home" policies, and tried creating classified office space. They designated work hours, set up shifts for various teams and contractors, and disinfected the office space during shift change. </div><div><br /></div><div>Other spies tried working from home. Not a problem when working unclassified elements. A big problem for classified work. And, as the intelligence communities are known for over-classifying information, it soon became clear some things needed to be declassified. It may turn out that there will be <i>less</i> material deemed classified that spies want to get their hands on, and <i>more</i> clues out there to what material is classified.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Keeping tabs on the workforce! </b></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PL63TpJqVcX3vktOAAmmcrteaYv8mphyphenhyphenXB9ZX3pAFprq6WiHO5zFwgc2EoNsX7inSIAbEOgRNCq5khxjb7AwTb7cxkJKzGWqduyewzHZsXXHJN3SyV2Ke9z4aDiyHz_OyIZ2QygBKyHq/s562/woman+spy+image.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PL63TpJqVcX3vktOAAmmcrteaYv8mphyphenhyphenXB9ZX3pAFprq6WiHO5zFwgc2EoNsX7inSIAbEOgRNCq5khxjb7AwTb7cxkJKzGWqduyewzHZsXXHJN3SyV2Ke9z4aDiyHz_OyIZ2QygBKyHq/s320/woman+spy+image.png" width="320" /></a></div>Spies also faced problems similar to the problems the regular workforce experienced. With everyone working at home these days, a lot of employers want ways to keep better tabs on their employees. Work surveillance isn't new, but digital advances during the pandemic have taken it to new heights. It's almost like the boss is standing over you. Cyber apps let your boss know exactly what you're up to, what apps you are using most, what digital devices, and even what keystrokes you're making. One cyber surveillance company reported seeing a 16% increase in orders, and a 40% increase from current customers asking for more licenses. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just what everyone wants, their spy boss looking over their shoulder, recommending ways to be more productive working from home. What ever happened to the silent agreement that I'm doing my work and you're getting results?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>So, are there spies doing real spy work from home?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yes! Take the two Chinese engineers indicted for "researching vulnerabilities in networks of biotech and other firms publicly known for work on Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and testing technology." They targeted firms in multiple countries: Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK. They targeted AI companies, defense contractors and a solar energy company. They stole hundreds of millions of dollars in trade secrets. Working for themselves they attempted blackmail, and other times stole information of obvious interest to the Chinese government. In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray accused China of a "whole-of-state effort to become the world's only superpower by any means necessary," and said. "The FBI is now opening a new China-related counterintelligence case ever 10 hours." In fact, nearly half of the 5,000 active counterintelligence case currently under way across the country are related to China. </div><div><br /></div><div>And the UK claimed that hackers targeting organizations trying to stop a coronavirus vaccine in the UK, US and Canada "almost certainly" operated as "part of Russian intelligence services."</div><div><br /></div><div><b>How are they doing this?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The theory is the Russians hackers used malware (specifically WellMess and WellMail) to download files from machines. The malware was planted through "spear-phishing" campaigns, targeting individuals who unknowingly—or rather unwittingly—gave up passwords and access codes.</div><div><br /></div><div>The UK's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) calls out a hacking group called APT29, also known as The Dukes or Cozy Bear. NCSC says it's more than 95% certain the group is part of the Russian intelligence services. Cozy Bear was first identified as being a significant "threat actor" in 2014 by Crowdstrike, an American cyber-security firm.</div><div><br /></div><div>With a name like Cozy Bear, do you have any doubt these guys are working from home, on laptops in their pjs? Me, either! </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizOcxoGDjN8Ac38j2RVFMQwixDeNyv4dqYkOP6qWlKsyQSpDfkAAv29qUvkVo30dS5UZYjTHVueTgroHrVmlmSRcn82wQVEtaGqH17x3FXxSnPRADvP-CmfZIFX2x_i5duEne1aUinceOs/s2048/24+Mikkelson+Harbor+g.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1289" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizOcxoGDjN8Ac38j2RVFMQwixDeNyv4dqYkOP6qWlKsyQSpDfkAAv29qUvkVo30dS5UZYjTHVueTgroHrVmlmSRcn82wQVEtaGqH17x3FXxSnPRADvP-CmfZIFX2x_i5duEne1aUinceOs/s320/24+Mikkelson+Harbor+g.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div><b>So where does that leave me?<br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Clearly <i>The Spy Who Worked From Home </i>is not a book I'm destined to write. There is a lot I know. There is a lot I can research. (My friend <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lee.goldberg" target="_blank">Lee Goldberg</a> convinced me of that in his latest write up in <a href="https://crimereads.com/the-thrill-of-researching-your-crime-novel/?fbclid=IwAR0tcgQx08F0Hs4wF0Q5-DCkzTnMUolESGEPJ69_k0h7JsPWH0jhp7iTgEQ" target="_blank">CrimeReads</a>.) And I may be technically saavy, but not at the hacking level. Which leaves me to take Lee's advice and finish researching my latest work-in-progress. Working title: <i>Operation Gentoo</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>What are your theories of what will happen with the traditional spy genre? What changes to you see coming?</b></span></div>Chris Goffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06546017052651960844noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-47517944269118741282021-01-14T08:00:00.007-05:002021-01-14T08:00:43.081-05:00ROGUE FLASH - Chris Goff is featured in Shoutout Colorado!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7EYyQPlAMVVb6t3ujLDv6RKwmNJfYnWn0xxZoPOMrR2lpVIYoWMDXAwxk0mjra64pxMjW4nrTdESDkDE6OJhyHTUKxuEXpyJqKTXOW_lzoSStCPhJQxx3ox_78bf0SjwBnjBdpAtaDJ7q/s1152/IMG_1842.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7EYyQPlAMVVb6t3ujLDv6RKwmNJfYnWn0xxZoPOMrR2lpVIYoWMDXAwxk0mjra64pxMjW4nrTdESDkDE6OJhyHTUKxuEXpyJqKTXOW_lzoSStCPhJQxx3ox_78bf0SjwBnjBdpAtaDJ7q/s320/IMG_1842.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Shoutout Colorado is an online publication designed to spark meaningful conversations. They like hearing from small business owners, mom-and-pops, and independent artists. It’s all about bringing attention to the entrepreneurs and creatives who live in the community. <p></p><div>Shoutout Colorado reached out to Chris and asked her to tell them how her background shaped who she is today. Her answers give you an insight into who she is and what makes her tick. <b><a href="https://shoutoutcolorado.com/meet-chris-goff-crime-novelist/" target="_blank">Check it out here</a>. Be sure to leave a comment, and become part of the conversation!</b></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-77825842467705857842021-01-12T08:00:00.081-05:002021-01-12T14:35:43.689-05:00MYSTERY MINUTE GOES ROGUE<b><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://zoltanjames.com" target="_blank">Z.J. Czupor</a></span></i></b> <br /><br /><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmd0eI_w1Iv-HOhM5ddCYaMxqlgm0lE6uHZ8m4kBDmGoI1jS4bTYThCtmh-rHDaerdOZ8bwacuhWjat2YhV2JURUgimWVN98-WGIjLjZifB4VKFSLlneBlljdkNfgASSp1wFOb9lVokeXZ/s300/zj-author-shot-0718.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmd0eI_w1Iv-HOhM5ddCYaMxqlgm0lE6uHZ8m4kBDmGoI1jS4bTYThCtmh-rHDaerdOZ8bwacuhWjat2YhV2JURUgimWVN98-WGIjLjZifB4VKFSLlneBlljdkNfgASSp1wFOb9lVokeXZ/s0/zj-author-shot-0718.jpg" /></a></div><b>He Did it For the Money</b><br /><br />In 1920, he was born to poor, illiterate Italian immigrants in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. At the age of 12, he dropped out of school to get a job after his father deserted the family. He worked as a railroad switchboard attendant to help put food on his family's table. Later, he graduated from City College of New York and joined the US Army Air Force in WWII. Because of his poor eyesight, he was stationed in Germany and India as a public relations officer. After the war, he returned to New York and attended the New School for Social Research and Columbia University.<br /><br />His first published work was a short story, “The Last Christmas,” which appeared in <i>American Vanguard</i> (1950) and at the age of 28, he wrote his first novel, <i>The Dark Arena </i>(1955), which received fine reviews but only earned him $3,500. Ten years later, his second novel, <i>The Fortunate Pilgrim</i>, got similar reviews, but only earned him $3,000. <i>The New York Times</i> called the latter novel a "small classic."<br /><br />Still in need of money, he found work writing and editing for a line of pulp magazines like <i>Male, True Action </i>and <i>Swank</i>,where he wrote adventure stories based on real events, such as WWII battles.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqp1iut2dqT8ncBpexmU-A8vp_JYvsYZrZ_JWho7ttc3ZYORwS9DOBx0_xkqD1T_wZqApj3OKSOTqlVc5r16PV842QV7gvJoTxKsdz6bmM0V4WYUFgEjN7aYSUfZ8FWS8tJBuY7ERa0r3c/s600/Mario+Puzo+photo.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqp1iut2dqT8ncBpexmU-A8vp_JYvsYZrZ_JWho7ttc3ZYORwS9DOBx0_xkqD1T_wZqApj3OKSOTqlVc5r16PV842QV7gvJoTxKsdz6bmM0V4WYUFgEjN7aYSUfZ8FWS8tJBuY7ERa0r3c/s320/Mario+Puzo+photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In the late 1960s, Mario Puzo (1920-1999) was married with five kids and living in Long Island. He was virtually broke. His eldest child, Tony, said, "His father liked to do things first-class even though we only had fifth-class money. He ran up a lot of debt.”<br /><br />Puzo's editor told him his last novel, <i>The Fortunate Pilgrim</i>, might have done better if it had more Mafia in it but he ignored the advice for he did not want to write about organized crime. He wrote two more undistinguished novels before he decided to put his highbrow literary goals aside and set out to write a novel with commercial appeal. <br /><br />"I was 45 years old and tired of being an artist…It was really time to grow up and sell out as Lenny Bruce* once advised," Puzo wrote in his memoir. <br /><br />So Puzo wrote a ten-page outline for a novel based entirely on research. He called it <i>The Godfather</i>; a fictional account of the Corleone crime family whose son Michael takes the reins after his father is murdered. But his publisher passed. <br /><br />Later, a friend arranged a meeting at G.P. Putnam’s Sons, where Mario regaled the editors for an hour with Mafia tales. They gave him the green light and a $5,000 advance. <br /><br />The advance was a strong motivation—an offer he couldn't refuse—so he set out to turn his outline into a novel. In 1965, he retreated to his basement nook, a broom-closet-like space that had enough room for a desk, typewriter, and little more. While he wrote away, his five children would often go downstairs and play loud games. Tony said his father would say, “Keep it down. I’m writing a best-seller.” <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheMcXQ_lUisS2angE0SOwqnrrOxhyphenhyphenO_I7O-zcjp-1vCTJIaSpr9ti6f0tNADOuXGnNYIpub_fk9-au4HDGVnv2-4X13-albi6VQ_5zljL2-RLCVCwflrXdbyvQOUXI315p_bFaiUlQ6E7i/s1500/The+Godfather+cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1176" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheMcXQ_lUisS2angE0SOwqnrrOxhyphenhyphenO_I7O-zcjp-1vCTJIaSpr9ti6f0tNADOuXGnNYIpub_fk9-au4HDGVnv2-4X13-albi6VQ_5zljL2-RLCVCwflrXdbyvQOUXI315p_bFaiUlQ6E7i/s320/The+Godfather+cover.jpg" /></a></div>While he worked on <i>The Godfather</i>, Puzo was also writing three stories a month for Magazine Management, along with book reviews for <i>The New York Times, Book World, Time</i> magazine, and a children's book <i>The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw</i> (Platt & Munk, 1966). Puzo said, "I must have knocked out millions of words. I tell ya, it's absolutely the best training a writer could get, to work on those magazines. You did everything."<br /><br />He finally finished the novel three years later, in 1968, because he needed the final installment of his $5,000 advance to pay for his family’s planned vacation to Europe. Even after he turned the novel into his publisher, he was not happy with the finished manuscript and thought he would do one more rewrite when he returned to America. <br /><br />But he was in deep debt. Writing in his memoir, <i>The Godfather Papers and Other Obsessions,</i> he admitted owing $20,000 to relatives, finance companies, banks and assorted bookmakers and shylocks. The Europe vacation would cost him more money than he had. His wife did not know that when they came home Puzo planned to sell the house. <br /><br />Upon his return, he had lunch at the Algonquin Hotel with his editor Bill Targ and was stunned to learn that the publisher sold the paperback rights for $410,000 to Fawcett Publishing before it was released in hardback. Back then, the record for paperback rights was $10,000. Today, that $410,000 would equal more than $3 million. Puzo said he didn’t dare rewrite his manuscript, figuring his publisher wouldn’t like it and would take the money back.<br /><br />Published in 1969, <i>The Godfather</i> became a phenomenal success and remained on the <i>New York Times</i> Best Seller list for sixty-seven weeks, sold more than 20 million copies, and is still in print. Puzo then collaborated with director Francis Ford Coppola on the three screenplays that make up <i>The Godfather</i> film trilogy. The first two movies won nine Academy Awards, including best picture and best adapted screenplay for Puzo. The films catapulted <i>The Godfather </i>into a worldwide phenomenon. <br /><br />The novel and films had a huge cultural impact in that this was the first time Italian Americans were depicted as three-dimensional characters and not just cardboard foreigners who spoke in heavy accents. Even mob figures of the era liked the film and said it was “on the money.”<br /><br />Mario Puzo was never affiliated with the Mafia. Incidentally, the word “Mafia,” never appears in the film script. He said, “I never met a real, honest-to-god gangster. I knew the gambling world pretty good, but that’s all.”<br /><br />Following on that success, Puzo wrote screenplays for the first two <i>Superman</i> films (1978, 1980) and an uncredited version of <i>The Cotton Club </i>(1984).<br /><br />On his nationally syndicated television show on CNN,<i> Larry King Live</i>, King asked Puzo, "Why do we like the family Mafia theme so much?" Puzo answered, “Well, because it’s wishful thinking. I think everybody would like to have somebody that they could go to for justice, without going through the law courts and the lawyers.”<br /><br />He added, “<i>The Godfather </i>was really, to me, a family novel, more than a crime novel.” <br /><br />Despite the novel's success, Puzo still considered <i>The Fortunate Pilgrim</i> his best work. In his memoir, he wrote, "The book (<i>The Godfather</i>) got much better reviews than I expected. I wished like hell I'd written it better."<br /><br />Mario Puzo wrote eleven novels: <i>The Dark Arena</i> (1955), <i>The Fortunate Pilgrim</i> (1965), <i>The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw</i> (1966), <i>Six Graves to Munich</i> (as Mario Cleri, 1967), <i>The Godfather</i>, (1969), <i>Fools Die</i> (1978),<i> The Sicilian</i> (1984), <i>The Fourth K</i> (1990) and <i>The Last Don</i> (1996). His last two novels, <i>Omerta</i> (2000) and<i> The Family</i> (2001) were published posthumously. He also wrote three non-fiction books and ten short stories.<br /><br />He continued to live in the same house in Bay Shore, Long Island, the one he almost had to sell. But he did remodel it and doubled it in size.<br /><br />Puzo was born poor and never felt like he had enough money. When he died of heart failure in 1999, at the age of 78, his net worth was around $20 million.<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">###</div><div><div><br /></div><div>*Leonard Alfred Schneider (1925-1966), better known as Lenny Bruce, was a stand-up counterculture comedian, satirist, and social critic.<br /><br />Some of Mario Puzo’s most famous lines are:<br /><br />· “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”<br /><br />· “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.”<br /><br />· “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”<br /><br />· “The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, lies in its loyalty to each other.”<br /><br />· “What is past is past, never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.”<br /><br />· “Behind every successful fortune; there is crime.” (based on Honoré de Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime.")<br /><br />· "Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day's writing. If you can't start the next day fresh, get rid of your wife."<br /><br />· "Moodiness is really concentration. Accept it because concentration is the key to writing."<br /><br />· “Actions defined a man; words were a fart in the wind.”<br /><br />· “Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that’s why they have godfathers.”</div><div><br /><div><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Thank you, Z.J. Czupor for bringing the genius behind <i>The Godfather</i> back to life! Readers, do you have a favorite tale written by or about Mario Puzo?</span></b></div></div></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-49545131120376965392021-01-08T08:00:00.084-05:002021-01-08T08:00:00.202-05:00NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR THRILLER READERS & WRITERS<i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://www.jennymilchman.com" target="_blank">Jenny Milchman</a></span></i><br /><br />It’s that time of year again. Happy 2021, Rogue Readers! I hope that whether these 12 goals resonate with you and become part of some fun to-do’s, or just provide interesting things to consider, they offer a lens into this thrilling reading, writing life that brings us all together here at Rogue Women Writers.<br /><br /><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbnusCjKQeAyB6kwoLfZ2DQ4ImjBcajNCdiXv_sU-kEmV8vC-ol4oV8WJH3d1mc_4N61Fs3AxIpvMpVbE_XVFlj8gS7-mdWyVGMKqVB3PXLvlhBARe2sx4I9k8yBSFXW_C9XbVuuwHLM2Q/s358/Picture1.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="358" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbnusCjKQeAyB6kwoLfZ2DQ4ImjBcajNCdiXv_sU-kEmV8vC-ol4oV8WJH3d1mc_4N61Fs3AxIpvMpVbE_XVFlj8gS7-mdWyVGMKqVB3PXLvlhBARe2sx4I9k8yBSFXW_C9XbVuuwHLM2Q/w200-h134/Picture1.png" width="200" /></a></div><b>1. January</b> It’s a fresh year, a blank slate, a blank page. I like to use this time to be intentional, envision how I’d like the next twelve months to go. I may not get exactly where I predict—heck, I may not even get close, especially if a curve ball is thrown in like, cough, a global pandemic—but it helps to set my year on course. Readers, what would you like your book year to look like? Do you want to read more, or differently? Writers, what kind of project do you picture taking on with a shiny new year ahead? Reach for the stars. Where do you want to go this year? <div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinoDMLQEziQmIRD8X0SvS9K3Lo_O7iGzcKw2PddiXbfUGNaH5DHsSNWC48dP54gh3bOA8hxXxTCO0ObrdHHyKMJAYCy2qQCTRTvzWjkuEuDzuzc5yKnU-dM1w83A8JgymE7kvG5XWkPBI1/s312/Picture2.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="206" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinoDMLQEziQmIRD8X0SvS9K3Lo_O7iGzcKw2PddiXbfUGNaH5DHsSNWC48dP54gh3bOA8hxXxTCO0ObrdHHyKMJAYCy2qQCTRTvzWjkuEuDzuzc5yKnU-dM1w83A8JgymE7kvG5XWkPBI1/w132-h200/Picture2.png" width="132" /></a></div><b>2. February</b> It’s the dead of winter and we need ways to warm up. Readers, what book would heat up your month? Maybe one set in a warm clime—think <a href="https://www.randywaynewhite.com/">Randy Wayne White’s</a> series in Florida. Or something with loads of action like <a href="https://gregghurwitz.net/">Gregg Hurwitz’s</a> Orphan X books—all that attacking works up a sweat. Thriller writers, turn up the heat on your work-in-progress. Get your protagonist in hot water, more trouble than came before. Insert a smokin’ plot twist. <br /><br /><b>3. March</b> Spring is in the air! A change of seasons is a great time to think about changing things up in your reading and writing life. If you’ve been reading one sub-genre, try a different one. Check out a spy or assassin thriller if you typically read domestic suspense. Or a book by a female author if you typically read men, and vice versa. Writers, this is the time to send your work-in-progress in a new direction, or unearth a particularly important clue in the thawing ground of your mystery.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYe7dJ63vzV08MF0A5NdgB_Zgrg2i9Mw8rxkecMiaMf37aeeOfsqGwUol9YD_ZKUCDqUxamUfD1g8XBcrvYmjcmkuqznwh3VeZLXI4m6hv3xWKLTmE98yL_Lkm37tc2MIIvDgJ1_GPzSgS/s352/Picture3.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYe7dJ63vzV08MF0A5NdgB_Zgrg2i9Mw8rxkecMiaMf37aeeOfsqGwUol9YD_ZKUCDqUxamUfD1g8XBcrvYmjcmkuqznwh3VeZLXI4m6hv3xWKLTmE98yL_Lkm37tc2MIIvDgJ1_GPzSgS/s320/Picture3.png" width="320" /></a></div><b>4. April</b> The cruelest month, according to T.S. Eliot. A time of taxes and flowers, rain and sun. April for me is about contradictions. One day it feels like summer, the next winter doesn’t seem to have ended. Take a page from the book of opposites and apply it to your reading life. What two authors have nothing in common? Have fun identifying a pair, then read one book by each. Writers, try working on two scenes or chapters at once—and make them as different as you can. Or just follow Eliot’s example and find a book that exemplifies cruelty—<a href="https://bookshop.org/books?keywords=Thomas+Harris">Thomas Harris</a>, anyone?—then create the cruelest character you can dream up. <br /><br /><b>5. May</b> This is an easy month in some ways. Warm, anyone tied to the school year knows a break is nearly nigh, and even non-school birds are likely to enjoy the long Memorial Day weekend. Readers, settle in with an old favorite—one of those books we turn to again and again that reminds us of good [reading] times. Writers, time to give our characters a breather. Thrillers benefit when the relentless pace is interrupted every now and then; this lets readers appreciate it when the action kicks in. So give your story the equivalent of a nice, warm May afternoon. Then interrupt it! After all—summer is coming, and it won’t be all sunshine in the thriller world.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0dfaisgYQtepYVTLBEWTirA0GDr-SIq5wsvaK-0vLUaUmtOwOvdO_rAZC4EIVSaNZYM-FrT5cEwyCWcyKZS3uzK2UggF03TNgxGlI46i5NWfGCkVkrFm_QABTHO-na1zUVWwqiaCqKLfQ/s527/Picture4.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="339" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0dfaisgYQtepYVTLBEWTirA0GDr-SIq5wsvaK-0vLUaUmtOwOvdO_rAZC4EIVSaNZYM-FrT5cEwyCWcyKZS3uzK2UggF03TNgxGlI46i5NWfGCkVkrFm_QABTHO-na1zUVWwqiaCqKLfQ/s320/Picture4.png" /></a></div><b>6. June</b> Weddings, graduations, big events. Let’s translate that into reading and writing. Concretely, by checking out one of the great thrillers about marriage (try <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Robyn-Harding/2118717773">Robyn Harding’s</a> <i>The Swap</i>) or kids at school (<a href="https://lisalutz.com/">Lisa Lutz’s</a> <i>The Swallows</i> is a swoon for me). Or figuratively—find a book to read that will be an accomplishment and milestone for you—perhaps a classic you’ve always wanted to read but haven’t. (Dostoyevsky is one of the first great thriller authors). Writers, could a scene in your work-in-progress use a milestone to further the plot? <br /><br /><b>7. July</b> Summertime and the living is easy. Except in the thriller world nothing’s ever easy. Vacation lit is a burgeoning sub-genre (you heard it here first. Well, maybe not <i>first</i>). Readers, check out <a href="https://zojestage.blogspot.com/">Zoje Stage’s</a> latest, <i>Getaway</i>. There are great vacay films in the thriller genre—a whole subset of survival ones like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7336182/">Outback</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2944198/">Backcountry</a>. Writers, have you considered setting a book in a new and exotic location?<br /><div><br /><b>8. August</b> It’s hot out and we can stand a little chill. Let’s do the opposite of what we did in the dead of winter and consider the cold lit sub-genre. Readers, check out <a href="https://bookshop.org/books?keywords=Julia+Spencer+Fleming">Julia Spencer Fleming’s</a> <i>In the Bleak Midwinter</i>, or <a href="https://sktremayne.com/">S. K. Tremayne’s</a> <i>The Ice Twins</i> or a <a href="https://stephenking.com/">King</a> classic like <i>The Shining</i> or <i>Misery</i>. And writers, a great way to work the writing muscle is by incorporating weather into your work. I think of it in terms of the senses—a great writer lets us feel, smell, see, even taste the weather. Write a scene and make your reader shiver—physically <i>and</i> figuratively. </div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGPUxgd-yDDjuMdkmeIaNJhcf3gYxtFF9lcnM65DJh7CqWLcP-1NCWTKScHfpWnxntgDcKgmeXRp06ASkjZ6XR3XRptAhPWdpMp9gX8Bg8NAyNbjqF5-PJh-zPzxmnuNt4MPaEEIyQpYVO/s206/Picture5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGPUxgd-yDDjuMdkmeIaNJhcf3gYxtFF9lcnM65DJh7CqWLcP-1NCWTKScHfpWnxntgDcKgmeXRp06ASkjZ6XR3XRptAhPWdpMp9gX8Bg8NAyNbjqF5-PJh-zPzxmnuNt4MPaEEIyQpYVO/s0/Picture5.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div><br /><b>9. September</b> Even more than January, September feels like a new start to me. Readers and writers, take time to look back on where you have been these last eight months, and what you would like to do before another new year comes around again. Steam ahead toward a reading goal like number of books read? Dig into that tome that’s been sitting on your night table or e-reader? Writers, is it possible to complete a writing project if you give a big push now?<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi49Jp8sJzjW77qXfrNS2zbU-pITbY8g8EajWuDDC2-ieRN54A3YQDogeEgUlqatSXM2wdaw-QYhTH-I7D1fS7v5cMBdKW0HQX__VFzq79NKMZlDV9nDfOhFHo7K9jzHSIJQI1XZfscIpoy/s420/Picture6.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="237" data-original-width="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi49Jp8sJzjW77qXfrNS2zbU-pITbY8g8EajWuDDC2-ieRN54A3YQDogeEgUlqatSXM2wdaw-QYhTH-I7D1fS7v5cMBdKW0HQX__VFzq79NKMZlDV9nDfOhFHo7K9jzHSIJQI1XZfscIpoy/s320/Picture6.png" width="320" /></a></div><b>10. October</b> This is my favorite month so I’m going to suggest we give that a reading and writing slant. Nothing but fun this month! Carve out your very best reading time. Want to spend a whole day with nothing but a good book and scrummy food? October’s your month. Let the fam know—or tell yourself—that you’re off chore-duty today because you Have to Read. You deserve it. Writers, give yourself a break on whatever part of the process is hardest for you. Are you looking for agents and hitting a wall? Hit the pause button instead. Stuck in the murky middle of your novel? Skip ahead to a scene you can’t wait to write. <br /><br /><b>11. November</b> Time to hunker down, for winter is coming. Haul out the afghan and put together a reading list, all the books you haven’t gotten to yet this year. Go to the library or bookstore—if we’re post-pandemic—or online and get yourself some reading treats before the cold weather and/or end of another year slams us. Writers, crawl deep into that work-in-progress, stay there till you’re so bleary-eyed you have to come out. You’ll be amazed at what you’ve accomplished!<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8-nTUNjKEe_AotgOGpVgfzITqcki42AnysUB56LGSUCH8RLhq9X-o2pGjQulLcUcM3NodqRObSh4jckVYdY3AhpZw_WdMkCVawbqIs9zIq0QPNrTbyGJrpTDHD_rrMFvXV_x35xX5idv/s397/Picture8.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8-nTUNjKEe_AotgOGpVgfzITqcki42AnysUB56LGSUCH8RLhq9X-o2pGjQulLcUcM3NodqRObSh4jckVYdY3AhpZw_WdMkCVawbqIs9zIq0QPNrTbyGJrpTDHD_rrMFvXV_x35xX5idv/s320/Picture8.png" width="320" /></a></div><b>12. December</b> No matter what you celebrate, make this month a holiday. Host a book club party either in-person or virtually. Read a holiday-themed book. Authors, a slowdown is coming in the biz and even your editor will probably miss a few days looking out for that book that’s past its deadline. Emerging writers, give yourself a break on querying and use this time to gather trusty readers to critique your soon-to-be-finished book. After all, another new year is almost here to fill with reading and writing goals! <div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Readers and writers, inspire us by sharing your ambitious goals for 2021!</span></b></div></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-23614388440182237652021-01-04T08:00:00.005-05:002021-01-04T12:17:08.430-05:00ROGUE WOMEN DECEMBER ROUNDUP!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaTEk30oOwJBN_yj3NiIbd-vQ6ybPIK5AAxJazZj3uZzMHjldkd23ATQrFvCf_xFDZLf124jG2KlCvKh19_ykmQWLnUyXgv44oF8jJOaC-o4OQZzEvaC6I7xFpkE0f8n9Oi-jGckcOsTRe/s1600/Use+for+Blog.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaTEk30oOwJBN_yj3NiIbd-vQ6ybPIK5AAxJazZj3uZzMHjldkd23ATQrFvCf_xFDZLf124jG2KlCvKh19_ykmQWLnUyXgv44oF8jJOaC-o4OQZzEvaC6I7xFpkE0f8n9Oi-jGckcOsTRe/s320/Use+for+Blog.jpg" width="320" /></a><b>Here's what we Rogues talked about, researched, and revealed in December...</b><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://dianecapri.com/" target="_blank">Diane Capri</a> went Rogue to tell us about her <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2020/12/diane-capri-goes-rogue-queens-gambit.html" target="_blank">latest book in the Jack Reacher companion series, </a><i>Full Metal Jack.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>"Just the facts, Ma'am." <a href="https://zoltanjames.com/" target="_blank">Z. J. Czupor</a> spent this month's Mystery Minute on why the beloved show Dragnet opened with <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2020/12/mystery-minute-goes-rogue.html" target="_blank">police badge #714</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>hygge </i>(pronounced hue-guh) is the Danish art of living life with intent. <a href="https://www.carlaneggers.com/" target="_blank">Carla Neggers</a> gives us her suggestions for incorporating <i>hygge </i>into our lives by creating <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2020/12/hygge-and-art-of-reading-nook.html" target="_blank">a perfect reading nook</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://karnabodman.com/" target="_blank">Karna Small Bodman</a> shares some Rogue suggestions for gift giving and holiday treats in <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2020/12/bites-and-books-for-christmas.html" target="_blank">Bites and Books for Christmas</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Ever feel like throwing a book across the room when you hit the end? <a href="http://www.lisa-black.com/" target="_blank">Lisa Black</a> delves into why readers like satisfying endings, and then lists <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2020/12/endings-and-beginnings.html#comment-form" target="_blank">a few books that left her sputtering. </a></div><div><br /></div><div>And <a href="https://www.christinegoff.com/" target="_blank">Chris Goff</a> finishes the year with these <a href="https://www.roguewomenwriters.com/2020/12/holiday-cooking-disasters-who-hasnt-had.html" target="_blank">hilarious tales of holiday disasters</a>. I mean, who hasn't experienced an epic fail?</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-8498929981235812422020-12-30T10:00:00.338-05:002021-01-04T12:16:46.112-05:00HOLIDAY COOKING DISASTERS: Who hasn't had one?<p><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <span><a href="https://www.christinegoff.com/" target="_blank">Chris Goff</a></span></span></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi49MjyD8Xoq49NfRXA0YOr8aXx2Hyh7s7UPY0hN8AMstFK0B_sfXc_qStuUSEwMbsgVBj0XPhF2ds-ay-6Wv4LuGsVTS_lgdKgAY0vn5COkFWR_zJeCng5vUEMTBj9eLpOBbIQVzvn0hS0/s190/Grammy+-+Tiny+Beans.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="190" data-original-width="130" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi49MjyD8Xoq49NfRXA0YOr8aXx2Hyh7s7UPY0hN8AMstFK0B_sfXc_qStuUSEwMbsgVBj0XPhF2ds-ay-6Wv4LuGsVTS_lgdKgAY0vn5COkFWR_zJeCng5vUEMTBj9eLpOBbIQVzvn0hS0/w274-h400/Grammy+-+Tiny+Beans.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>This year on Thanksgiving, we
celebrated the birth of our third grandchild—a very bright spot in an otherwise difficult
year. Ten days before the holiday, we’d gotten a late-night phone call from a
couple of kids, laughing because her water broke and they had to leave for the
hospital, but the bed was wet, and the dog was a bit anxious, and they weren’t
sure what to do. Fortunately, we did, and told them to leave for the hospital. Then we collected the bedding,
the towels, Pickles, the dog, and the dog food, while they had a baby. Little Grady!<p></p><p></p>
A couple of days later, we took Pickles home and met the tiny bean—Covid-style! Clean coverups, hand sanitizer, masks.... Thanksgiving was quickly approaching, and we’d promised to make dinner. Except, we were living in a house without a kitchen. The refrigerator was hooked up in the garage, and periodically blew the breakers. We had no stove, just a microwave set up on sawhorses in the living room. No sink! And our counter consisted of a piece of construction grade plywood laid over the top of uninstalled kitchen counters.<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
Not to be deterred, we donned our PPE, and in a covert Covid operation (CCO) transported all ingredients, and sneaked into their kitchen through the breezeway. (<i>This makes for a great scene in my new book: The Spy Who Worked from Home</i>.)<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
But I jest. We actually just went over to the kids' house, donned clean coverups, prepped the meal, and put it in the oven. Four hours later, we returned, carved the turkey, and ate, with Grady upstairs in his crib. <br /><br />During dinner, my son-in-law had his phone propped up on the table. Thinking he was watching football, I made a snide comment as mothers-in-law are wont to do, and my daughter laughed. “Mom (<i>drag it out sarcastically</i>), he’s watching the baby cam.” Sure enough. Nick turned the phone around, and there was little Grady sleeping in the crib.<div><br />About that time, the baby twitched (barely!), and the phone lit up, and a warning scrolled across the screen. <i>Movement has been detected! </i>Apparently, off mute, Computer Lady blurts out the warnings. <i>The temperature has dropped one-tenth of a degree! </i><br /><p></p>Dang! The baby cam works better than our home security system. (Perfect for The Spy Who Worked from Home.) It's more expensive, but highly effective! Makes me wonders how I ever raised six kids to adulthood without one?! <br /><br />But I digress. We're talking about holiday disasters, and I have them that go back years. It turned out, so did my fellow Rogues. <br /><br /><b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/#">Karna Small Bodman</a> had a similar story of remodeling.<br /></b><br /><i> Several years ago, I was redoing a DC house–kitchen completely torn up, fridge and microwave in the living room—and my son wanted to host a Super Bowl. What to do? So, I baked a huge batch of chicken in my next-door neighbor’s stove, made a big salad, and then fixed a whole slew of little red potatoes in the microwave because I wanted to serve “Redskins.” </i><br /><br /><b>Which she topped with the story of a dream date.</b><br /><br />I went to a holiday dinner hosted by a bachelor who admitted he didn’t cook much. On the kitchen counter sat a bowl of what looked like turkey stuffing with bits of something weird in it. I asked what it was. He shrugged and said, “Well, I was looking around for things I could put in the stuffing I bought. Thinking about how my mom always added things to hers. I saw a package of microwave popcorn and mixed the kernels into the stuffing, figuring that when it got hot, they would pop. They didn’t.”<br /><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/#">Lisa Black</a> shared a similar theme.</b><br /><br /><i>My mother’s birthday was in January, so as a young newlywed I decided to host a dinner for 12 in her honor. I don’t remember the entree, but I made homemade sourdough bread—completing the long process of creating the starter, letting it ferment, moving it to the refrigerator, etc. <br /><br />The day before the party, our hot water heater died. I had no qualms that my trained mechanic husband could fix it. We had to go buy one (a whole nother story) then, as he finished installing the heater, I baked my bread. To keep it warm, I wrapped the slices in a towel, placed them in a wicker basket, then put the entire thing in the still-mildly-warm oven. <br /><br />The doorbell rang. People were seated. Then I opened the oven only to discover the wicker basket had not been real wicker. The plastic had melted into globules, and the small wires stuck out like barbed wire tines, only longer, and more dramatic. Luckily, the towel had protected my labor-intensive bread. Plucking out the slices, I plopped them into another container, tossed the evidence, and figured what the diners didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Meanwhile, I had learned a valuable lesson about the low melting point of synthetics!</i> <div><br /></div><div><b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/#">Valerie Constantine’s</a> story can only be labeled Comedic Horror.</b><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixTaXacu5AFgiKvvnFVACmeWV-M8G2i5Jr7SStzN9TWRgFQP6XvkX96mKqBsyjjsv_r2yOEi6OmRUwnosHaVosjMh7YHc88HREbnbHhleBzUPybf2JJRGah2l57F5E68bvkWNUcPTH9U4Q/s1588/il_1588xN.2427967522_1q63.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1191" data-original-width="1588" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixTaXacu5AFgiKvvnFVACmeWV-M8G2i5Jr7SStzN9TWRgFQP6XvkX96mKqBsyjjsv_r2yOEi6OmRUwnosHaVosjMh7YHc88HREbnbHhleBzUPybf2JJRGah2l57F5E68bvkWNUcPTH9U4Q/w400-h300/il_1588xN.2427967522_1q63.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></div><i>These Greek Christmas cookies are called Kourambiedes and everyone in our family looks forward to them at the holidays. Making them is labor intensive with all of the mixing done by hand until the dough is ready to be shaped into these sort-of crescents. Every year I “helped” my mother make these special treats that always came out perfect. One year, however, when we began to shape the cookies, we were puzzled to see tiny red dots throughout the dough. My mother shrugged and continued to bake them anyway. After all, they would be covered with confectioner’s sugar to make them pure white. It wasn’t until later that she noticed the little chips in her red fingernail polish. Her polish had rubbed off into the dough! Moral of the story: Nail polish in small doses is safe to ingest!</i><br /><div><i><br /></i></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioYHTFIDtfez7xHRp6jlkeFRBpZubnSh1u6SGjP2kxwsrCKTC0BL0mueql4obVoWnMsEkYIkCMjilLA2fIwokffSoxyFIDXBwN6E9CGpc_kD5S4AtWMKvrb_G0D7NvBpM8wlvDtN66s6XH/s2048/IMG_6451.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioYHTFIDtfez7xHRp6jlkeFRBpZubnSh1u6SGjP2kxwsrCKTC0BL0mueql4obVoWnMsEkYIkCMjilLA2fIwokffSoxyFIDXBwN6E9CGpc_kD5S4AtWMKvrb_G0D7NvBpM8wlvDtN66s6XH/w320-h240/IMG_6451.jpg" width="320" /></a>Of course, judging by the pictures <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/#">Lynne Constantine</a> shared, nail polish in the cookies doesn't do much for one's fashion sense.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>An abundance of stories.</b> <div><br />There was the time Wes stuffed the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner for 21 people, put the bird in the oven, then checked it two hours later to discover he’d forgotten to turn on the oven.<br /><br />And the time I was tasked with cooking a roast for Thanksgiving at my mother-in-law’s. My sister-in-law arrived and immediately turned down the oven. When I noticed, I turned it back up. Kay immediately turned it back down. Up, down. Up, down. Needless to say, dinner was delayed while the roast finished cooking and Kay and I sat in timeout.<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1CUEF5_U5EG-CmpsI0-SwCIW0aOTuhP2m19ycRt9YVreBrOvAqoFgw8AI5cHdeBEwdl7PwlS4vJx4GGOr41kJpHokH2XeDmkKnv3H1YRouHvwwFdgga4ajPn_e5mqXxght-PphSFZgDZ/s2048/1914+Model+T.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1155" data-original-width="2048" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1CUEF5_U5EG-CmpsI0-SwCIW0aOTuhP2m19ycRt9YVreBrOvAqoFgw8AI5cHdeBEwdl7PwlS4vJx4GGOr41kJpHokH2XeDmkKnv3H1YRouHvwwFdgga4ajPn_e5mqXxght-PphSFZgDZ/w400-h225/1914+Model+T.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then there was the Christmas Eve we drove the 1914 Model T (<i>top up</i>) to dinner. My father-in-law had suffered a series of strokes and couldn’t talk at that point, but when offered a ride in the Model T, his face lit up. After dinner, we stepped outside to find it was snowing. <i>Hard! </i>We foundered on the side of the road about a half mile from the farmhouse. Wes and I waded through the deepening snow—Wes for the tractor, me for the car. It created a few tense moments with my mother-in-law and our kids, but Dad just chucked and laughed. He refused a car ride and insisted on staying in the Model T as it was towed back to the barn. <i>Best Christmas Eve ever!</i></div></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>This year, with the threat of Covid-19, many of us are celebrating alone. Still, the Rogues hope you've had a chance to make some fun memories this holiday season. We wish you the merriest!<br /><br /><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Do you have any favorite holiday disaster stories?</span></b></div></div></div></div>Chris Goffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06546017052651960844noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-68593887458770128802020-12-22T08:00:00.067-05:002020-12-22T08:00:05.789-05:00ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS<i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="http://www.lisa-black.com" target="_blank">Lisa Black</a></span></i><br /><br />Opening to the first page of a book always has that same delicious thrill of anticipation as when the theater lights dim and the curtain begins to rise from the stage. Will I be delighted? Will I be amazed? What is going to happen? <br /><br /> But as wonderful as beginnings are, every book is really about its ending. There, we expect the story to come full circle, we expect that the things that have happened to be used in a relevant manner, we expect to be <i>satisfied</i>. <br /><br /> Writers who plot, like me—as opposed to writers who are [fly by the seat of your] pants-ers—know how the book will begin and how it will end. The difficult part is figuring out how to get from one to the other. <br /><br /> I am prompted to this theme because this cursed, dratted year of 2020 is ending, something that everyone has been wishing for and commenting on for eight or ten months now. Like many others, my year has largely sucked: my husband was out of work for seven months, I lost a brother and a cousin (non-Covid-related reasons), I spent over a year on a book that was rejected, and I watched helplessly as others endured much greater misery and much more overwhelming trials. I could have lost much more, and didn’t. And now 2020 is ending! Yay! <br /><br /> Except we all know better than to think simply turning a calendar page will make everything reset to ‘Normal’—or even ‘Better.’ Illness, injustice, stress and anxiety can’t just be tossed out with the used calendar. <br /><br /> But maybe this is why we like <i>books</i>. In a book, the author controls the ending. They can make sure the clues logically add up to one person’s irrefutable guilt, that the hero learns lessons <i>en route</i> that will serve them well in the final confrontation with the villain, that the reader will not be left wondering how Norman got his hands on the museum’s antique knife later found in his ex-wife’s body or why Josie suddenly understood Ukrainian when in the Kabul safe house. And woe to them if the author fails. Rules can be broken, twists can and should be unexpected, readers can be a little miffed that the protagonist didn’t get the cute guy at the end, but they should always feel that the story is now complete. <br /><br /> Yes, there have been endings that skirted the cliff. <i>The Murder of Roger Ackroyd</i>, as brilliant as Agatha Christie’s book was, did leave many a reader sputtering “But was that really <i>fair</i>?”<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilJ9-PjF13wG8bsHlkEiavldg7r0Ch3virm89Q_SbrcXoDUtL3w7tNUgMWjIos1DZ1sUvCSwdrhSI5L9FjdDC0yWHmoS3FhA5jRl1CZlM_SII1dbLSSVHCnQaJc0QwgV85zs3qlXaUnvxA/s546/pet+sem.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="312" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilJ9-PjF13wG8bsHlkEiavldg7r0Ch3virm89Q_SbrcXoDUtL3w7tNUgMWjIos1DZ1sUvCSwdrhSI5L9FjdDC0yWHmoS3FhA5jRl1CZlM_SII1dbLSSVHCnQaJc0QwgV85zs3qlXaUnvxA/s320/pet+sem.JPG" /></a></div>And full disclosure, if I dare: I sputtered myself at the ending of <i>Pet Sematary</i>. Unless I’m badly misremembering, the text touched on ancient Indian burial grounds, dreams, and some sort of giant who roamed the earth after dark. As a horror novel it’s absolutely fabulous, but if I can just say one little thing: if Dean R. Koontz had written it, he would have tied all those things together in a kind of explanation, a la <i>Phantoms</i> or <i>Twilight Eyes</i>. It might have been far-fetched, but it would have been <i>something</i>. <br /><br /><i>Her</i>, by Harriet Lane, I found a fabulously written, utterly engrossing book, in which the ending made me want to throw it across the room. I loved <i>Gone Girl</i>…but it’s ending? <i>Super</i> frustrating. <br /><br /><i>Hannibal</i>, by Thomas Harris. <i>Maybe</i>, IMHO, somebody couldn’t figure out how to end the book. <i>Maybe</i> somebody fell too much in love with his own characters. <i>Maybe</i> I’m just too pedestrian and can’t think outside the box. We may never know. <br /><br />My friend Britin Haller absolutely loved <i>Fierce Kingdom</i> by Gin Phillips “…until the end. And I hate to say that because it truly was one of the greatest books I’ve ever read.”<br /><br />We could even complain about <i>Gone With the Wind</i>. WTF? Two and a half hours and she and Rhett <i>break up</i>?<br /><br /><i>The Collector</i> by John Fowles. It certainly wasn’t what I expected, but I can’t say I’m happy about it.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKa0qwqQ_vmLwXNQj-lkEx-HQWSwF0Ge2i8kQHT8zsl5rcRMGQFkNRcyWgLJzh1T2s9-AufYCQNRXJ_-8XkrM8PAn5j97V-ajVoN8JpcJK2SNrblDtxrr0WIukSNPtkPIXlEsUbs2Ko4DO/s268/ellery+queen.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="268" data-original-width="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKa0qwqQ_vmLwXNQj-lkEx-HQWSwF0Ge2i8kQHT8zsl5rcRMGQFkNRcyWgLJzh1T2s9-AufYCQNRXJ_-8XkrM8PAn5j97V-ajVoN8JpcJK2SNrblDtxrr0WIukSNPtkPIXlEsUbs2Ko4DO/s0/ellery+queen.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>But as there have been happier New Year’s Eves, there are so many wonderfully satisfying endings in books. Anything by Ellery Queen or John Dickson Carr, in which all fifty-three separate clues are assembled in their proper order. <i>Lord of the Rings</i> leaves us with a nostalgic but fuzzy happiness as all the characters trundle off to their respective lives, exactly where they want to be. <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, of course, proves that good things will eventually come to those who are true to oneself. <i>A Christmas Carol</i>, in which the character has completed an exhausting journey to become exactly the man he should be. <i>The Shawshank Redemption</i> by Stephen King. <i>Room</i> by Emma Donoghue. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_bEmMGwuxSjFMsyxQfUAMp1OxwNF7j6RTbmv0A9A6vvxJQFOmbts54sokCC5Y-YVJ2-nmeM4n3DwM9Yc3O8em9xZRmAYDkjRhcGSbYa63Or5qW3IStJtCXbUcm8HuQ_pSWnMFq3jpTqI/s359/bone+collector.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="242" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_bEmMGwuxSjFMsyxQfUAMp1OxwNF7j6RTbmv0A9A6vvxJQFOmbts54sokCC5Y-YVJ2-nmeM4n3DwM9Yc3O8em9xZRmAYDkjRhcGSbYa63Or5qW3IStJtCXbUcm8HuQ_pSWnMFq3jpTqI/w135-h200/bone+collector.JPG" width="135" /></a></div><div>Best of all, I think, are when endings completely take you by surprise but, after a moment’s thought, you see they make total sense. <i>Sharp Objects</i> by Gillian Flynn. <i>You Will Know Me</i> by Megan Abbott. <i>The Bone Collector</i> by Jeffrey Deaver. <br /><br />And that’s my New Year’s wish for everyone: that in 2021, we get to write our own, highly nourishing ending to each and every day. <br /><br /><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>What about you? <u>No spoilers</u>, but what book has the most (or least) satisfying ending?</b></span></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6755874888423703600.post-70763061118403514702020-12-16T08:00:00.133-05:002020-12-16T09:39:59.183-05:00BITES AND BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS<i><span style="color: #cc0000;">by <a href="https://karnabodman.com" target="_blank">Karna Small Bodman</a></span></i><br /><br />How will we all celebrate Christmas this year while staying safe and praying for the best? We Rogues have some ideas to share with you: holiday recipes to enjoy along with a few gifts for family and friends.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo6x8THFY6a5ySitd1dfc17gLWG551bPC45SE6LrtfT6k9lUZKYpliaG9fen5EnrB51PqpEiKxGxSs3vSEEqNFu3-K4Dg-MVuCeNCYPwyB4TAM4XTUaE3Bymj5uAaX_27ZrLBKq9DXLxOd/s1008/muffins.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="1008" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo6x8THFY6a5ySitd1dfc17gLWG551bPC45SE6LrtfT6k9lUZKYpliaG9fen5EnrB51PqpEiKxGxSs3vSEEqNFu3-K4Dg-MVuCeNCYPwyB4TAM4XTUaE3Bymj5uAaX_27ZrLBKq9DXLxOd/s320/muffins.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>For a lovely breakfast treat <a href="https://www.jennymilchman.com" target="_blank">Jenny Milchman</a> offers this recipe for her Raspberry Sour Cream Muffins: <br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Preheat oven to 375 and line a 12 cup muffin tin</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In 1st bowl, combine zest of one orange and ¾ cup sugar, ½ cup melted butter, 1 cup sour cream, 2 beaten eggs</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In 2nd bowl, mix 1 ½ cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In 3rd bowl, dust 1 ½ cups raspberries with 2 teaspoons flour, reserve a few for the tops of the muffins</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Combine ingredients, fold in berries, fill muffin tin, top with reserved berries, sprinkle with sugar, bake 18-22 minutes….enjoy!</li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRLGbCU9MyfmD_tWTbTaWIWKSPRe1G7hKuUFtPUdRb-LLTLh5K5I88lxtP61rpkGFROsj_T2JX8jtpSeMuueAm6JPK3RRFMP84ibGcbI0-Q5Vs0kB9IQhsrqqbvpykxJReJaInOFJgHnR_/s499/nbdy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="355" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRLGbCU9MyfmD_tWTbTaWIWKSPRe1G7hKuUFtPUdRb-LLTLh5K5I88lxtP61rpkGFROsj_T2JX8jtpSeMuueAm6JPK3RRFMP84ibGcbI0-Q5Vs0kB9IQhsrqqbvpykxJReJaInOFJgHnR_/w229-h320/nbdy.jpg" width="229" /></a></div><div><a href="https://livconstantine.com" target="_blank">Liv Constantine</a> suggests a book described as a moving account of an author’s relationship with her grandmother, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Will-Tell-You-This/dp/0525654712/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Nobody+will+tell+you+this+but+me&qid=1607612354&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Nobody Will Tell You This But Me</a></i> by Beth Kalb. Well known author Jodi Picoult says, “I have not been as profoundly moved by a book in years.” This story recounts both family lore and family secrets spanning four generations. </div><div><br /></div><div>The <i>New York Times Book Review </i>writes, “I delighted in Bobby’s joy. I cried twice.” And the host of <i>Good Morning America</i> said, “Told in her hilarious grandmother’s voice, this memoire chronicles a family’s story.”<br /><br />Liv also contributes a recipe for hors d’oevres, Pomegranate Pistachio Crostini:<br /><ul><li>Preheat oven to 400</li></ul><ul><li>Arrange 36 slices of French bread baguette on ungreased baking sheet, brush tops with butter, bake 4-6 minutes then cool</li></ul>Mix and spread over the toasted bread:<br /><ul><li>1 tablespoon melted butter </li></ul><ul><li>4 ounces softened cream cheese </li></ul><ul><li>2 tablespoons orange juice</li></ul><ul><li>1 tablespoon honey</li></ul><ul><li>1 cup pomegranate seeds</li></ul><ul><li>½ cup finely chopped pistachios</li></ul><ul><li>2 ounces dark chocolate candy bar, grated.</li></ul></div><div>Serve, of course, with your favorite cocktail or wine.<br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0C645WKZFElUIeIFk-vUh_O45I29GJ5-pubBeVtDk3hA6UL_HUciA1pDVh_o_g9Jy9w-4uVLvT-Cv2Cdxq02ABU5AG-u62eDTK5s6puCmPGpPUNYbgFVH9oIOS3hy9xHO3AO05oUuo9rD/s499/tea.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="371" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0C645WKZFElUIeIFk-vUh_O45I29GJ5-pubBeVtDk3hA6UL_HUciA1pDVh_o_g9Jy9w-4uVLvT-Cv2Cdxq02ABU5AG-u62eDTK5s6puCmPGpPUNYbgFVH9oIOS3hy9xHO3AO05oUuo9rD/s320/tea.jpg" /></a></div><div><a href="https://www.carlaneggers.com" target="_blank">Carla Neggers</a> suggests a lovely book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/National-Trust-Book-Afternoon-Tea/dp/1911358200/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=The+National+Trust+Book+of+Afternoon+Tea&qid=1607615675&s=books&sr=1-2" target="_blank">The National Trust Book of Afternoon Tea</a></i> which is chock full of recipes that go perfectly with a cup of tea – a nice gift for someone who enjoys the quintessential British ritual. You’ll find recipes for sandwiches, tarts, cakes, scones, preserves along with everything you need to know to brew the perfect pot of tea. <br /><br />And here is Carla’s suggestion of a simple topping to add to mashed or baked potatoes, melt atop baked salmon or spoon onto grilled burgers. <br /><br />Simply mix together: <br /><ul><li>1 cup unsalted butter</li></ul><ul><li>1 teaspoon coarse salt</li></ul><ul><li>2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives</li></ul><ul><li>2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley</li></ul>Chill for 2 hours to blend the flavors (and you can freeze it for a month)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lisa-black.com" target="_blank">Lisa Black</a> contributes a quick treat you can make and give as a luscious gift, what she calls her Foolproof Fudge:<br /><ul><li>Melt a 12 oz. bag of chocolate chips (semi sweet or milk chocolate) with</li></ul><ul><li>A 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk</li></ul><ul><li>Remove from heat, stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla</li></ul><ul><li>Put in a wax-paper lined pan, cool completely before cutting.</li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZF4wL1Wx0F-pha7MgFkgeGe-kgFrqjN2k1GbZ_0kYryzbgjwR5lYJdXNY19O8uWtw7H7rnOJfnw4q6ybtUuV5-3w3gaoGiNc6Tk0HZ_1K2uQJLrV63W19gkY93X4XFLF6nhcGkmIi7low/s2048/Frother%255B1%255D.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZF4wL1Wx0F-pha7MgFkgeGe-kgFrqjN2k1GbZ_0kYryzbgjwR5lYJdXNY19O8uWtw7H7rnOJfnw4q6ybtUuV5-3w3gaoGiNc6Tk0HZ_1K2uQJLrV63W19gkY93X4XFLF6nhcGkmIi7low/s320/Frother%255B1%255D.jpg" /></a></div><div>I’d like to suggest you top off your holiday meal with a cup of cappuccino. You don’t need to have a fancy coffee/cappuccino machine. Just brew a cup of coffee, then top it with foamed milk from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Miroco-Stainless-Automatic-Cappuccino-Chocolates/dp/B07HH9BHL1/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=Frother&qid=1607616234&s=home-garden&sr=1-8" target="_blank">this frother</a> which makes a great Christmas gift as well. You simply pour a small bit of milk in this frother (that sits on a stand that's plugged in) -- push a button and in about 20 seconds you have froth you spoon on top of your coffee. To clean it, just rinse it out (don't put it in the dishwasher though). </div><div><br /></div><div>One final recommendation of a book for a Christmas gift is <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Carnegies-Maid-Novel-Marie-Benedict/dp/1492662704/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Carnegie%27s+Maid&qid=1607615986&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Carnegie’s Maid</a></i> by Marie Benedict. I so enjoyed this story about a (fictitious) Irish maid hired to serve in one of Pittsburgh’s grandest households. She hides the secret of her past while learning about the business tycoon’s investments, and, in the process, inspires Andrew Carnegie to eventually devote his vast fortune to the creation of libraries across the nation. Readers and authors are forever grateful to this man for his contribution to education and enjoyment for all. </div><br /><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Now, do you have a favorite holiday recipe or gift idea you would like to share? Please leave a comment and tell us. Thanks for visiting us here on Rogue Women Writers and a very Merry (and safe) Christmas to you!</span></b></div>Rogue Women Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07426857397379507573noreply@blogger.com7