Naming Names

I need a name for a main character, a female serial killer who looks and acts normal most of the time.

Got a first name you want to nominate? She's white, in her mid-30s, middle class, American.

I'll send you a book or two if I pick yours.

Our new cover is up!

Face of Betrayal, the first in a new series co-written with Lis Wiehl, comes out a week before my birthday. I’m doing a reading at the Cedar Hills Powells the day it’s released, April 7. If you live in Portland, I would love to see you there.

My book reviews in the Sunday Oregonian

When I picked up the paper on Sunday, I found myself avoiding the books page. Because it had my review in it. Not a review of my book - a review I had written. I always worry that I’ll figure out I made some big error and it will be too late and I can't take it back. Which is sort of related to my fears about reviews of my books.

Anyway, in the Sunday Oregonian, I reviewed two books by Portland authors: The Fetch and Far from You.

Read the reviews here.




[Full disclosure: and on a sidenote, as another blog pointed out, don’t the jackets for Graceling and The Fetch look alike? I guess there are only so many ideas in the world.]

Is anyone going to BEA? Have I got a deal for you!

Is anyone going to Book Expo America in May? If you snag a copy of the Hunger Games trilogy, called Catching Fire, and are willing to loan it to me after you read it, I promise to:
* Donate $25 to the charity of your choice.
* Read it within three days.
* Not eat while reading or otherwise risk befouling it.
* Mail it back to you immediately after finishing it.
* Pay for postage both ways.

If the charity idea doesn't grab you, I’m willing to trade nearly anything, up to and possibly including Teen, so I don’t have to wait until September 8th to get my hands on a copy.

Signs and Portents

* I bought this Tom Peterson clock at a bankruptcy sale. He was a fixture on late night TV for many years. He would rap on what appeared to be the inside of the TV screen and say something about waking up to savings. The clock, which was given out free with furniture purchases, was supposed to say "Wake up! Wake up and have a happy day!" for an alarm, but it never worked. When I came in from my run, Tom was talking.

* Last week, when I was running I saw a license plate lying in the blackberry bushes. It read 666 DAL. From my time writing a series with a main character who worked with license plates, including Circles of Confusion: A Claire Montrose Mystery, I thought the state automatically excluded numbers and letters series that might upset folks, like FAT. Guess not.

* Where some see hope and joy, others see darkness and fear. At first I thought this post on Verla Kay's blog was a joke, but sadly, it is not. She compares Obama to Hitler. [updated to add: and she later took out parts of her post] I never went to the Blue Boards (I didn't hear about them until long after I was published), but sometimes I send new writers there. Is this a mistake? Is there political stuff like this over there?


* I found this tape in the gutter where the remains of a windblown tree had been taken away. I'm sure it will come in handy someday.

* I always like to find money, and I look for it everyplace I go. First of all, it's rare, at least in my neighborhood. I walk and/or run every day, but sometimes months will go by where I don't see anything. Second of all, money says "In God We Trust," and it reminds me of my need to trust. Lately, it's been freaky. I found two pennies one day, three another, and then last week I was walking to the post office and found 20 pennies glinting under a pine tree. Trust, trust, trust.

Do I look like a cage fighter to you?

Teen and I have been taking a kickboxing class taught by the only female certitied Muay Thai instructor in the Northwest. I really liked it - it's a true martial art. But the teacher could only teach one day a week (she has her own studio). So they got someone else in to each kickboxing who could do it twice a week.

He showed up tonight in workboots and a shaved head. He was in the Israeli special forces where he specialized in hand to hand combat and weapons work. He is also a mixed martial arts fighter, AKA cage fighter.

So there's Teen, and there's me - the lady in the pink top - plus a 16 yo guy who just shot up to six four and isn't used to it. And the instructor is talking about how we should get bags of concrete mix and kick them. "First your legs go purple from ankle to knee, but then they get tough, and you don't even feel a thing!" he explained approvingly. He wants us to grapple and clinch. He made us bear crawl the length of the room over and over for a certain length of time. When he caught me looking at the clock, he took it off the wall and hid it. (Thank God he never noticed my watch!)

When I finished high school PE, I said never again would someone yell at me and make me do things I hated. I mean, I take boot camp now, but there the instructor talks about having a fine-looking body. Not getting your hands so tough you don't even need gloves.

492 new words from The Girl in the Mini Cooper

“Hi!” Gabie smiles up at him from under the brim of her baseball cap. “Let me guess. One slice of plain and one of the Roma special?” Her pen is poised over the printed order taking pad.

Last time the man who called himself John Roberts was here, he waited until her back was to him. Then he took the pen off the counter and slid it into his pocket. Later, he sat in his car in the darkened parking lot, and he slid the pen along his lips. Between them. Thinking of Gabie. And of Gabie’s fingers and lips.

“You know what I like,” he says, thinking that Gabie doesn’t know the half of it.

Her eyes have dark circles under them, as if she hasn’t been sleeping well. With any other girl - on Kayla, for instance - it would make her look less pretty. But with Gabie, the shadows just make her brown eyes look darker and more mysterious. He could lose himself in them. He could just look and look at her.

“Well, I know you’re a vegetarian,” she says. “And that you’ll probably want a root beer to go with them.”

“Right again.” Everyone knows that he doesn’t eat meat. It was one of the reasons he called in the order that he did the night he called himself John Roberts. Three large Meat Monsters meant the authorities were probably looking for more than one guy. Guys who liked lots of meat. They weren’t looking for one quiet vegetarian guy with round glasses.

“And to eat here?” she says, enjoying their game. Thinking that she’s winning it. But she doesn’t even know about the real game they are about to play.

Behind her, the cooler door opens, and one of the guys who works at Pete’s emerges carrying a stainless steel container full of pale grated cheese. Hearing him kick the door closed, Gabie turns with a smile.

It’s the sight of that smile - fuller and somehow realer than the smile she gave him - that makes the man who called himself John Roberts a little bit annoyed with her. He is the customer. She should be giving him her full attention. But instead she is nearly flirting with this boy, this, this lout, and right in front of him, and that makes him want to hurt her, if only a little bit.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he says. “Kayla Cutler. Have they found her body yet?”

Gabie’s face goes pale and she bites her lip. She looks even more pretty, if that’s possible.

“No.” She gives her head a shake, her bangs falling in her eyes. “No.”

He feels the grin welling up in him. She has no idea. She has no idea that Kayla is alive, at least as long as he allows her to be.

She has no idea that Kayla will have to die to make room for her.

Making movies

Many authors dream not only of having their book optioned, but of actually being made into a movie. But many are called , and few are chosen. [Full disclosure: including, so far, me.]

""In 25 years in publishing, at Little, Brown and as a literary agent, I've found that most novels I've worked on ended up getting optioned by somebody," said Colleen Mohyde of the Boston-based Doe Coover Agency," but not one movie has been made." "

Read more here.

I'm a cruel, cruel woman

I've put more than 500 miles on one pair of Brooks Addictions, so it's time to change to a new pair. I love these shoes, even though they are supposed to be for someone with low arches who overpronates and I have high arches and supinate. It feels kind of cruel, though, to take the new clean pair out into the dirty world.

Are you a YA librarian or a YA book blogger?

Torched Book Cover

Are you a YA librarian or a YA book blogger? Would you like a free book?

I have a few ARCs left of Torched, which comes out in March. The publisher describes it like this: "When Ellie’s parents are busted for possession of marijuana, the FBI gives her a choice: infiltrate the Mother Earth Defenders (MED), a radical environmental group, or her parents will go to jail. At first Ellie is more than willing to entrap the MEDics, but the more time she spends undercover—particularly with Coyote, the green-eyed MEDic that she can’t stop thinking about—the more she starts to believe in their cause. When talk turns to murder, Coyote backs out, but Ellie is willing to risk everything to save her family—even if it means losing Coyote and putting her own life on the line."

If you would like a copy, send me an email with your name and address. Send it to aprilhenrymysteries at yahoo dot com. If more people have requests than I have copies, I'll have a drawing. Runners up will be eligible for an ARC of Face of Betrayal, my April adult mystery with Lis Wiehl.

Those who can't do, teach?

Teen (who was only recently promoted from kid) is being taught to write stories and essays this year. But sometimes what teachers teach and what I actually do as a writer who makes her living writing is completely different.

For example, Teen asked me, “Does every paragraph in your books have a topic sentence and three supporting sentences?”

Her teacher’s approach feels like learning how to dance by looking at a diagram. Or watching a video that doesn’t show the dancers’ feet at all.

Teen is supposed to find a way to write a creative story about a past event. She chose the 1904 World’s Fair. It featured corn palaces, and she wanted to combine it with some elements of the Children of the Corn movie. She wrote it out and asked me to look to it over. Immediately, I became like all the critics I don’t like to listen to. “But why did X happen? There has to be a reason.” And then I got explain the concept of “plot holes” to her.

What Would Emma Do?

What Would Emma Do
What Would Emma Do? by Eileen Cook, is a book about, of course, a high school senior named Emma. She has committed a few sins, but kissing her best friend’s boyfriend is the worse. And since she lives in a small town, everyone knows everything about everyone else. Now her best friend isn’t speaking to her, her best guy friend is making things totally weird, and Emma is running full speed toward certain social disaster.

Time to pray for a minor miracle. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s time for Emma to stop trying to please everyone around her, and figure out what she wants for herself.

I asked, Eileen answered
A. What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? Bonus question: have you used it, in any way,in a book?
Q. When I was young my younger brother was born with a terminal condition. I remember that I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I knew how upsetting it was for my parents. I understood that he was in fragile health and I was almost scared of him. Once my mother had stepped outside to get the mail and he began to cry. I remember thinking that he was going to die right there and then and I was terrified. I knew there was nothing I could do, but I felt totally useless. I’m not sure if it is connected, but I hate still hate situations where there are people in distress and I can’t help. This may explain why I went into counseling as a day job.

A. Mystery writers often give their characters an unreasoning fear - and then make them face it. Do you have any phobias, like fear of spiders or enclosed spaces?

E. I absolutely loathe spiders or any type of creepy crawly creature. Sometimes I lay in bed at night and wonder what I would do if a spider slowly lowered itself onto my face. Then I have to get up and turn on the light. Just because I told you my phobia- you aren’t going to make me face it are you?

A. Do you have a favorite mystery book, author, or movie?
E. I LOVE mysteries! Picking one favorite is hard so I’m going to cheat and list a couple. Minette Walters, PD James, Ruth Rendall/Barbara Vine (same author different name).

A. At its heart, every story is a mystery. It asks why someone acts the way they did - or maybe what will happen next. What question does your book ask?
E. Can you still have strong relationships with people when you don’t want the same things anymore? I am fascinated by how we change and how those around us deal with that change.

A. Is there a mystery in life that you are still trying to figure out?
E. How can I fit in everything I want to do/see/visit in this life?