Babies and Books

This past weekend my on-board writing room (a.k.a., the aft cabin) was taken over by two little boys—14-months and and 3 years old, to be exact—grandchildren of happy demeanor and angelic smiles who conspired to keep me from the writing I was supposed to be doing. So I settled for reading. Not the current book that I, myself, am addicted to (Gillian Flynn's wonderful new release, Gone Girl), but the classics. As in Good Night Moon, The Tawny Scrawny Lion, Harold and the Purple Crayon. Children's literature teaches succinctness and brevity. These, apparently, were meant as my lessons for the day. The universe is an amazing thing!


Apropos to the writing life, over the same two days I received several great "fan" emails and a number of web orders for the softcover edition of Matinicus. Unfortunately, the grandsons weren't impressed and pushed for a return to the reading.

Despite these adorable distractions, I'm now back at work and have managed some of the easy bits of the Reese's Leap editing along with a slew of marketing around the release of Matinicus.

This coming Saturday (June 30), and after a four-hour reading/signing stint at the South Berwick Library's Summer Book Bash, we'll be dropping the mooring and sailing off to Cape Porpoise, Maine—a five-hour run that will leave plenty of time for some serious editing while underway.

Anchors away!

Back in Business

So, I've just finished transferring the bits of my writing room from home to the aft (rear) cabin of our boat. And this is what it looks like. Kinda small, but I'll get used to it. After all, most of my first book, Margel's Madness, was written in here.

I'm starting with the easiest of the line edits, collating the bits and pieces from my various readers and plan to have that part done by this weekend. Then it's on to the real work!

I've decided to throw the occasional book review into this blog and in my last post,  promised one of Jen Blood's All the Blue-Eyed Angels. I’m a sucker for this type of mystery: a smart, wounded, tough-as-nails yet emotionally vulnerable protagonist, dead-on dialogue, terrific sexual tension, and a man-I-never-saw-that-one-coming ending that leaves me thinking about the book for days.

The protagonist in All the Blue-Eyed Angels is the plucky, thirty-something female journalist, Erin Solomon, who’s come home after many years to the small, coastal town of Littlehope, Maine in hopes of uncovering the real story behind a fire that killed an entire religious cult living on a local island when she was a child—the same island where her father later committed suicide.

Unfortunately, very few of Littlehope’s residents are happy to see her—understandable considering she’s hell bent on writing a book about a past they seem determined to keep under wraps. The notable exceptions to this less than enthusiastic reception are her sexy ex-lover and his equally sexy roomie—an FBI agent with a steamy libido and his own mysterious agenda.  As for the rest of Littlehope, someone is permanently hushing up any resident Erin suspects has a promising lead, this as her list of suspects continues to grow—a list that comes to include her estranged mother who’s carrying far too many secrets of her own, and who may or may not be at the center of a longstanding cover up.

In All the Blue-Eyed Angels, Blood has given us a powerful, emotionally complex story peopled with fully-realized characters and terrific, well-honed prose.  Thankfully, this is but the first in the Erin Solomon mystery series.  I’m very much looking forward to the others!

Moving Aboard

Okay so we're in the process of moving back on-board our sailboat--a lifestyle full of complication and compromise--and things are basically unpacked. It's been a long morning. A break here as I pause for breakfast.

Okay, I'm back. Making up the bunk in the forepeak (forward cabin where we sleep), I find myself distracted by last summer's as yet unread novels tucked in the bookshelf. Cutting for Stone grabs my eye, and then there's Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects--both of which I bought before getting really addicted to my Kindle. Plus, I just downloaded her new one, Gone Girl and I can't wait to get to both of those!

I've finally finished with the enormous early marketing push for Matinicus and have the rest of it down to a schedule now (2 requests for review and following up leads for on-air interviews each day; the requisite guest posts and posting to various FB pages, Tweeting, etc.). I'm really antsy to get back to the final edits on Reese's Leap, and get on to the as yet unnamed Book 3! Plan is to take a few days to catch my breath, clean the house--something I haven't done in months-- and then hunker own with Leap.

In my next post, I'll show you the newly set up writing cabin aboard "Skater." By then I'll have finished Jen Blood's terrific mystery, All the Blue-Eyed Angels and will give you a full report.