Murder She Writes

Happy Halloween! I’m going to be your Monday-Murder-Chick, at least for a while. I promise to try and get my posts up earlier in the coming weeks.

Let’s talk scary. Snakes—ugh! I hate snakes. We had a snake on the driveway last summer. Just a little guy probably trying to find him mommy—but I don’t care! I wanted him GONE. So while the men in the family went out to deal with the snake, I ran upstairs and yelled out the front window, “Make it go away!” Do you think I was helpful? By the way, the men all stood around and debated how to get rid of the snake for long that the snake got bored he left on his own

Enough about snakes—let’s talk about the scary books. I read Stephen King’s THE SHINNING and SALEM’S LOT in high school. When I read SALEM’S LOT, my bedroom was upstairs with a balcony that had a sliding glass door. For several nights, I swore I heard vampires tapping on the sliding glass door. I get shudders now just remembering it!

In later years, I read Stephen King’s MISERY. Yikes! Talk about psycho-fan-kidnappers! I tried to stop reading the book, I even tried hiding the book from myself, but as it turned out, I knew where I hid it. (Don’t ask—I have to live with my thought process every day and still don’t understand it.)

Mr. King’s books can scare the daylights out of me. Sort of a thrill-chill type of scary. The kind I associate with Halloween. I half expect a “BOO” when I’m reading those kinds of scary books. I laugh at myself when I jump at the phone ringing.

For movies, I’d say THE SIXTH SENSE is about as scary as I like. Lots of suspense and mystery, but not an excessive amount of fluid dripping corpses littering the screen.

To recap on movies: Fast paced, tension filled, thrill rides are good. Blood, gore and chain saws are bad.

So what about you? What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Scariest movie? How do you take your “scary” on Halloween? Thrill chills, or blood, gore and chain saws?

Bonus Question: My husband asked me to dress up as a nurse on Halloween—do you think he’s sick?

Have a Safe and Happy Halloween!

Jen

On Jennifer Weiner’s blog, Snarkspot, she has information about a contest that gives the winner a chance to fly to New York to have lunch with Jennifer, her agent and her publisher.

All you have to do is tell a little white lie….

Hi there!

Come on in and we’ll all chat about murder, writing, sex, books, how Natalie and I had the blinding realization that stalking is not our forte, or any hot topic that catches our interest.

Allison, Natalie and Deb have all said hello, Karin will once she is finished with her in-depth research on hot cops (she CLAIMS to be on vacation but I’m thinking she’s traveling the country, undercover, looking for hot cops to use in her books )

I’m delighted to be here with my fellow murder-chicks. Between the five of us, we have quite a variety of experience and backgrounds…

I’m the boring one. Seriously. Just a soccer mom who quickly realized writing about murder was much more fun than, well, anything else. Okay, truthfully, I’m a little slow. I actually tried writing historical romances for seven or eight years. After several books were rejected all over NY, I began to wonder if the dead bodies in the manuscripts were the problem.

Maybe dead bodies aren’t romantic? Sheesh, who knew? Out of frustration, I wrote a mystery and let me tell you, when it sold, I thought for sure they were kidding. For months afterward, every time the phone rang, I was sure NY was calling to tell me they’d made a mistake.

But here I am, four books and a novella later. Another book comes next year. These days, I’m sticking with the theory that as long as I don’t kill off a character and call it romance, I’m okay.

A big welcome to Murder She Writes!

“Ohhh, looky here, Maudeen…they done let that weird-a** woman into their blog
group!”

“Which one?”

“The one that writes them sceery books. That Deborah somebody or other.”

“No way!”

“It’s true. Lookit, she’s right here.”

Tsk Tsk “I swear, Leatrice, there just ain’t nothin’ sacred no more.”

“Why you think them classy ladies let her in here for?”

“Don’t know. Maybe it’s got something to do with the barimethodical pressure. You
know, the thing that gets them hurricanes all uppity.”

“You think, Maudeen?”

“Either that or it’s the moon. I think it’s full or new, one of the big ones that make
people do funny things.”

“Nah, I saw it last night, and it ain’t full. It was one of them thumbnail moons.”

“You sure?”

“Uh huh. So I guess it’s the bar. . .barimet. . .it’s the pressure, like you said.”

“Probably so.”

“Think we should stick around here now and keep an eye on things?”

“Somebody’s got to.”

“Yeah.”

“That pressure thing, you know?”

“Yeah, the pressure. . .”

Hey, welcome to Murdershewrites! Although Maudeen and Leatrice are right about me being the weird one in the bunch, I swear I’m as harmless as a roosting pigeon. And anyway, Maudeen and Leatrice have been slipping down that menopausal slope at breakneck speed for quite some time, so you can’t really trust everything they say.

On the other hand, you should definitely pay close attention to the other ladies posting on this blog! They’re a talented, energetic, fun, and creative group, women I’m proud to be associated with.

Glad you stopped by and hope you enjoy your visit!

Thanks to Allison for introducing us, and welcome to murdershewrites.com. Be afraid, be very afraid. I thought Jennifer Apodaca and I were ENOUGH trouble when we were blogging together as we sorta stalked Kelly Ripa. Turns out neither one of us was very good at stalking, since Kelly doesn’t know us from Regis Adam, but we tried.

Right now it’s kinda a free-for-all around here, with the blog just up and running, and all of us trying to get our thoughts in on top of each other (except Karin, who is APPARENTLY cruising somewhere. Does SOMEONE have TOO much time and TOO much money on her hands? Hmmmm?) but bear with us.

We shall have a regular blogging schedule, and all that good stuff. We’ll try not to make the body count too high, or too low, and we’ll certainly try to keep you entertained.

I just think you all should know that my suggestion for our tagline, before the Mae West quote, was “Killing Them Softly, One M%#&er F&%$@er at a time.” I got outvoted.

Do you think I could end up being the rebel in the group?

Do you think they’re laughing? Do you think they are about to boot me?

Oh the thinks I think when I’m thinking.

Thanks for stopping by!

Karin gets credit for the name of this new blog. (Applause.)

Titles are not my strong suit. I thought they were when I first started writing. My first manuscript I called Hot Latte because the heroine went to the corner coffeehouse every morning. Then I came up with the catchy Protecting Hart, which was my female-bodyguard-protecting-sexy-politician story. Watch Your Back was my attempt at a real mystery (as opposed to suspense). Then came Fatal Secrets . . . my paranormal romantic suspense set in the future.

None of those books will be published. And the titles? I tried to resurrect the last two, but they didn’t fly . . . with my agent OR my editor.

That’s okay, though. Each unpublished manuscript was a learning experience.

The Copycat Killer, my fifth completed manuscript, had it. What’s it? I don’t know, I just sensed this book had it. So I queried agents, ended up with a really good one, and she sold the book to Ballantine . . . under a different title. It sold as Dead Letter, per my fabulous agent. (And here I thought The Copycat Killer was a good title and had a twist, because the villain copies murders out of my heroine’s books.)

Almost immediately, my editor told me the title had to go.

Back to the drawing board, or rather the critique group. But none of the suggestions stuck, and my editor came back with Killing Secrets.

Okay. It fit. It started to grow on me.

Fast forward nearly a year. My editor calls. Title has got to go. Okay, what’s it going to be? Well, they tell me, why don’t I come up with some ideas? And while I’m at it, think about titles that will connect all three of my books.

And here, I thought naming my kids had been difficult.

Back to the crit group. This time, it was my good friend Kathia who had the idea. She’d read the second book of the trilogy, The Hunt, and loved the title. It fit the book. So she came up with The Chase, The Hunt and The Kill. I ran them by my agent . . . pass. Ran them by the editor . . . loved them.

Fast forward a couple months . . . The Chase has to go. The powers that be thought it sounded too soft for a rather dark romantic suspense. They came up with The Prey.

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

At least I titled one of my books.

So when the five of us started talking about titles for the blog, I stepped back. (Okay, actually I had a few ideas, all of which went past the group without comment. They were universally bad.)

Karin came up with Murder She Writes.

Natalie came up with our fabulous tag line, courtesy of Mae West.

And me? I’ll stick to writing hundred-thousand word books and leave the titles–and tag lines–to the experts.

Welcome to our blog. We hope you enjoy your stay.