When I was, like, eight, I begged my mother for a lucky rabbit’s foot.

(Don’t ask me why people feel these are so lucky. I’m sure the rabbit doesn’t think so.)

By then Mom was used to such requests. Already she’d caved in to my pleas for a diary that locked with a key, a heart-shaped locket, an iron-on monogram with my initials for my pink button-down shirt, and a shrunken head.

Okay, really it was a carved coconut made to look like an man in the last throes of fear of being eaten by an anaconda. I guess that explains all the nightmares and my bloodcurdling screams.

(And why, finally, Mom buried the head in the back yard– something I would never have known if my trusty Doberman sidekick, Kazan, hadn’t dug it up and trotted it back over to me. It was Mom who screamed then, when she saw it back in its usual place: on my bookshelf, next to the rabbit’s foot.

I guess that foot was lucky after all — for the coconut, anyway.

Which brings me to the topic of luck, specifically as it pertains to writing.

I know a lot of novelists who are excellent writers. Their stories are compelling, but for some reason they haven’t connected with the zeitgeist that will give them the traction that would make them the next Nora (Roberts)/ Danielle (Steel)/ Dan (Brown)/ John (Grisham)/ Stieg (Larsson) / JK (Rowling)/whomever-is-the-author-flavor-of-the-year. Maybe they weren’t in sync with an agent willing to stick it out with them while they tried to claw their way out of the mid-list.  Or maybe what the author is writing books that editors aren’t buying right now, because that genre is “over-saturated” because these same editors bought too much of a trend in which readers have OD’d on.

Yet another reason to forgo the trends, and write what resonates with YOU.

Believe in your story.

Believe in your voice.

Believe in your ability to find the right mentors (critique partners) and professional champions (agent, editor) to help you get it in the hands of readers who will appreciate it, and want even more from you.

Yes, you know where this is leading: BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

Only you can write that book.

Only you can sell that book.

Only you can give you the career you want.

So toss that supposedly lucky penny you found on the sidewalk, the fortune from the Chinese takeout box, and that parsley sprig you insist is a four-leaf clover, because none of these will get you what you want: your name on the spine of a book.

When the stars do align for you, it’s because you’re in the right place, with the right book.

Case in Point: Just this past week, MSW author, Karin Tabke was honored with Romantic Time’s Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Romantic Fiction for her book,  Blood Law.

Hell yeah, she deserved it.

If I were to be objective about the karma surrounding that rabbit’s foot, I guess I’d say it wasn’t really all that lucky at all. My grades didn’t improve. My hair stayed coiled in a frizz ball. And I was still taller than all the boys in my class. Except for Bob Butler, which is why we were always partnered for square dances.

(For your sake, Bob, I’m hope you kept growing. As for me, I was happy to top out at at five-foot six inches, in the seventh grade and let the rest of the class catch up.)

The rabbit’s foot is long gone. And thank goodness The Hub looks nothing like the coconut head, albeit sometimes I wish I knew right voodoo curse that could turn him into a bug-eyed pinhead when he acts like one. In the meantime, I’ll stay away from Vegas slot machines and Golden Gate Fields…

But not my Mega Millions tickets.

Feeling lucky? If so, play this little game with me! It’s called “Lucky 7.” Here’s how it works: I”ve posted the scene starting on page 77 of THE HOUSEWIFE ASSASSIN’S HANDBOOK, here. For a chance to win this digital eBook, email me at MailFromJosie@gmail.com with the correct answer to the question at the end of the post (worth 7 points). The winner will be chosen from the correct answers received by Midnight PT on Friday, April 20, 2012.

Earn a Bonus Point for commenting here below, about your good luck charm, or by congratulating Karin on her win.

Good luck!

– Josie

I’m so excited about what I bought today! The egg-dying kit!

Dying Easter eggs is one of my favorite traditions. I love to get the kids together, roll up our sleeves, and make a big mess in the kitchen while we create all sorts of colorful designs. The room smells like vinegar and of course all of our fingers will be pink and purple and green for days.

My daughter spotted the egg-dying kit peeking out of my shopping bag and said, “Mommy, why do we always have an egg hunt?” And I looked at her and said, “You know… I have no idea.”

She had me stumped. I had no clue why every spring we buy more eggs than we normally consume in a month and boil them and dye them and hide them in the yard, where we inevitably fail to retrieve at least one, and a four-legged critter ends up finding it for us. What does any of this have to do with the celebration of Easter or Spring?

She had me curious, so I looked it up. (Feel free to chime in if you know a different explanation, but this is from Wikipedia, so I’m sure it’s absolutely 100 percent accurate.)

Turns out, the Easter egg has to do with the Christian tradition of Lent in Eastern Europe, when people would traditionally avoid eating meat or dairy. Eggs, evidently, fell into the “dairy” category because they are a product that can be taken from an animal without shedding its blood. Quite a scientific explanation, isn’t it? Anyway, at the end of Lent, people would have stockpiled all these eggs, which they boiled, so they would keep longer and not go to waste. When Easter came around it was time to use up the eggs as part of the holiday celebrations. It became a common practice to decorate the eggs and hide them for children to find.

The Easter egg tradition is especially prevalent in Eastern Europe, where they take egg-decorating very seriously. The famous jewelry firm, Faberge, of St. Petersburg, is known for its jewel-encrusted eggs. The original Faberge egg was created for Tsar Alexander III of Russia to give to his wife in 1885.

Aside from all the religious traditions associated with it, the simple egg has long been a symbol and spring and rebirth.

Around our house, we don’t focus  on the symbolism so much as the fun that goes along with dying eggs. One of our favorite techniques is to dip some of the eggs in oil before dying them, which gives them a pretty watercolor effect. The kids also like to draw pictures in crayon, or sometimes even paint the eggs. My mother used to take egg decorating to the extreme, creating these beautiful pastel-colored sugar eggs, with elaborate dioramas inside them made of icing and silk flowers. They were amazing to look at, but I’ve never attempted them myself. The Martha Stewart gene must have skipped me.

What are your favorite holiday traditions this time of year?

Anyone who leaves a comment today will be eligible to win a $15 Starbucks card and a copy of my latest release, UNSTOPPABLE.

Have a great weekend!

I’m counting the days until the release of UNSTOPPABLE, my novella about Navy SEAL Gage Brewer. To mark the book’s digital release, I’d like to share with you something I wrote following the mission of SEAL Team Six last spring. Anyone who comments is entered to win a book!

            Several years ago I stood knee-deep in the Pacific Ocean, teeth chattering, wondering what on earth would possess a sane man to join the Navy SEALs. I was on Coronado Island that day, and my mission was partly tourism and partly research. I had decided to write a SEAL character in my next book, and had spent the past few months researching what many would call the most elite fighting force in the world.

            Coronado is a place where young men who aspire to be SEALs suffer through a ruthless training regimen that boggles the mind. For weeks on end, bands of SEAL trainees run with telephone poles, do five-mile ocean swims, undergo “drown-proofing,” endure sleep deprivation. They are systematically broken down—pushed beyond all limits, both physically and emotionally—and if they survive, they’re built back up again. Few make it through, and that is the point. Those who do come out stronger and more deeply committed to their jobs than most of us can imagine.

            It takes a special sort of man to become a Navy SEAL, which is precisely why I had decided to write a SEAL character in my next story. I want my heroes to be, well, heroic. I had recently finished reading Lone Survivor, a book about Marcus Luttrell, the SEAL who managed to live through a deadly firefight in the mountains of Afghanistan. Three of his teammates died. After being blown off a mountain by a rocket-propelled grenade, Luttrell–severely injured–crawled and walked seven miles to a village where he was taken in by a local tribe.

            How did he do this? The man is a SEAL. The word “impossible” is not part of the SEAL vocabulary. Men who become SEALs share a special vision of what it means to stand in the face of adversity.

            I will never quit…If knocked down, I will get back up, every time…I am never out of the fight. Sound hardcore? It is. It’s straight from the SEAL creed.

            A man such as this—one who is unwilling to give up under the most dire circumstances—was just the sort of hero I needed for my story, UNSTOPPABLE, which involves a terrorist plot on American soil. After months of research, I started writing about U.S. Navy SEAL Gage Brewer, and I’m still writing about him today.

            I thought about the SEAL creed as I watched the news about Osama Bin Laden. I am never out of the fight. It seems fitting, and not altogether surprising, that SEALs were the ones to finally track down the world’s most wanted man. They risked their lives, in an operation that could have ended in disaster, in order to make the world a safer place. These guys are tough, they are committed, and they never give up—not even after ten years. They are heroes. And it’s a good thing we have them in real life, and not just in books.

 Who do you view as a hero? Anyone who comments will be eligible to win a copy of UNSTOPPABLE.

Click HERE to read an excerpt. UNSTOPPABLE first appeared in the anthology Deadly Promises and is being released Tuesday as a stand-alone e-book.

For me, it was Star Wars. I remember idolizing Princess Leia, and wishing for a pet Ewok, and lining up to spend hours under the sweltering Texas sun to buy a ticket to see Return of the Jedi with my parents. I didn’t just like Star Wars, I loved Star Wars. I had every scrap of dialogue memorized and entered my teenage years hoping to one day fill out a gold bikini.

For my kids’ generation, I believe it’s The Hunger Games. This dystopian trilogy by Suzanne Collins has taken the world by storm. With more than 23 million of her books in print, Collins continues to sit atop the bestseller lists (The Hunger Games has been on the USA TODAY list 132 weeks and counting) and her saga’s popularity shows no signs of diminishing as the books hit the big screen. Tickets are already on sale for the March 23 opening, and I have to admit I was in the first wave of parents to eagerly snap up passes (why stand in the sun when I can buy from the comfort of my laptop?).

You may be wondering what all the fuss is about.

In case you missed the book, let me hit the highlights. The story is set in post-apocalyptic world (formerly North America) where society is  run by a tyrannical government. As a sadistic reminder of exacty who’s in charge, the government forces each district to once a year give up two of its young people, a boy and a girl, as “tributes” to a gladiator-style, fight-to-the-death tournament. Only one of twenty-four tributes will survive.

Unlucky participents in the games are chosen by lottery. The star of the book is Katniss Everdeen (played in the movie by Jennifer Lawrence), who endears herself to readers early in the story by volunteering to take her younger sister’s place at the games.

I had some misgivings about these books at first. Several moms approached me at the neighborhood pool and expressed “concern” that my fifth-grader was reading them. (I resisted the urge to push them in the pool for being so nosy.)

Some people think these stories aren’t appropriate for young kids because they contain violence. And serious themes. And death.

But I was glad to let my kids read them because, you know what? They wanted to. I had to practically pry the books out of their hands at night. After years of trying (unsuccessfully) to get my kids to fall in love with Junie B. Jones, or Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson, or practically any series fiction character, I was delighted to see them take an interest in reading.

I read the books myself, and while I didn’t fall in love with everything, I can certainly see the appeal. First, they have a strong female lead, who comes from an impoverished background where she has learned to use her wits to survive. Katniss is smart, resourceful, and knows her way around a bow and arrow.

Another reason I liked the story is the classic play of good versus evil. The tyrants are so tyrannical. And the setup of the games brings out the best, and worst, in everyone. At times, the dark mood of the story reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

I think the main reason these books are succeeding is because they don’t talk down to kids. The stakes are high, the themes are big, and I believe young readers can sense from the beginning that the author isn’t candy-coating her tale.

I hope the movie lives up to the book! From my perspective, anything that gets kids to fall in love with reading is a welcome addition to our popular culture.

What was your favorite movie saga when you were a kid?

Leave a comment and be eligible to win a digital copy of the new e-book from MurderSheWrites, GUNS AND ROSES. And if you already have a copy, I will be happy to send  the prize to someone you know.

Have a great weekend!

Does a place ever just move you? This happens to me a lot. I’ll be doing something or visiting somewhere and I’ll look around and go, “Wow, I need to set a story here.”

That’s what happened to me the last time I visited Montana.

I’ve been going there since I was a kid to visit family. I’ve always loved the natural beauty of the place, but I must admit there were a few road trips where I had my Walkman on, earphones firmly over my ears, as my family meandered through parks and the adults in the car implored us to “Look at that spectacular view!” every ten minutes. I guess teenagers aren’t the best travel companions.

But my last trip there, I was one of those excited grownups who couldn’t get enough of the place. Around every bend was a beautiful view or pull-off that seemed to demand we stop the car and take a picture.

At one point we were traveling through several feet in snow (in June!) and I looked around and the suspense writer inside me woke up and said, “Hey, now this would be a good place for a murder attempt.”

That’s the inspiration behind my story “Nightfall,” in the super-fabulous GUNS AND ROSES anthology, that we’ve been talking about all week. I must tell you how very proud I am of this collection–more than 150,000 original words (that’s a book and a half), written especially for this project. We are so thrilled to bring you new stories, new characters, and also some familiar favorites, like Bobbie Faye, that our readers have been asking about for years.

Here’s a sneak peek at my story, set in beautiful Montana. I had to turn the pretty setting on its head, though, to make it creepy enough for a suspense tale. It starts with Holly Henriksen, who experiences one of my personal worst fears when she gets stranded on an icy road at nightfall and is forced to trust a charming stranger who she believes may be keeping a dangerous secret.

Anyone who comments on today’s blog will be entered to win a copy of GUNS AND ROSES by the authors of Murder She Writes. And if you already have the book, we can gift it to one of your friends!

          Holly’s teeth chattered, and the man behind the wheel pretended not to notice. She glanced over at him. She’d never taken a ride from a stranger before. Probably not a smart move. Then again, it was smarter than cowering in the forest and dying of hypothermia.

            She looked out the window as he pulled up to a small A-frame cabin. As promised, it wasn’t far from the crash site. But the house wasn’t quite what she’d expected when they’d passed through fancy electronic gates to enter the D&D Ranch. The massive ranch had been purchased recently by some rich software exec, and Holly had heard about the deal all the way in Bozeman.

            A yellow light glowed from the front porch. He parked alongside a neatly arranged stack of firewood and cut the engine.

            “Gonna get cold tonight,” he said as they climbed out. He grabbed a few logs before tromping up the stairs.

            “Wait.”

            He turned to look at her. In the porch light, she saw that he was tall and broad-shouldered. He could overpower her in a heartbeat if he wanted to, and she was about to enter an empty house with him.

            “I don’t even know your name,” she said.

            “Colin Denton.” He gave a slight nod. “I’m the caretaker here, case you were wondering.”

            She hadn’t been. That’s how frozen her brain was. It hadn’t even occurred to her to wonder what this man did for a living or why he happened to be out on the isolated stretch of highway where she’d crashed her van.

            He arched his brows at her. “And you are…?”

            “Holly.” Well, duh. He already knew that. “Holly Henriksen.”

            The corner of his lip curved up. He stood there on the porch, not even shivering, in only a flannel shirt and jeans. He had brown-black eyes and a two-day beard, and it suddenly struck her how attractive he was—in a scruffy, lumberjack kind of way.

            “You want to come in, Holly Henriksen, so I can see about that cut? Or we gonna stand here all night freezing our tails off?”

            His tone was teasing, and something told her he was using it to relax her. It worked. There was something about his posture, his mannerisms, and his decisive response to everything that made her want to trust him. She climbed the steps and waited with her hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket as he unlocked the door.