Three states, four days, 17 visits

Last week I did school visits in Warsaw, Ohio; St. Louis and St. Charles, Missouri; and Olney, Illinois. It was an ideal situation:

• The kids were really attentive, despite it summer-like conditions and looming spring breaks.
• It was really warm, like 85 degrees. Back home in Portland, my family was losing power due to snow.
• I didn't lose anything, even my tiny slide clicker that fell out of my pocket and onto the floor of the bathroom once 
• I was really afraid I would get lost on the drive from St. Louis to Olney, but Hertz's Never Lost worked - I only got sort of lost once, which is a record for me.
• I even lost two pounds!

I had never been in any of those states before, if you don't count O'Hare.  The trees were different, the bird song was different, even the road kill was different (we don't have gophers in Oregon).

When you speak to 2,000 kids in three states, what kind of questions do they ask

• Are you rich?
• How old are you?
• How come you didn't come here in a  limousine?
• Why in your last two books are the girls from rich families and the boys from the wrong side of the tracks?  (I told that girl in Olney, Illinois that my editor had noticed the same thing)

Lewis & Clark in St. Charles, Missouri

 

Actual evidence box used to store guns
on loan from St. Charles police department

One of Olney's white squirrels

A Redbud - we don't have them in Oregon

Looking back on my first published book

Now that a tight deadline is behind me, I've had a tiny slice of free time to clean out and sort through books, clothing, and papers I might not have touched in years. And look what I found! The beginnings to my first published book, Circles of Confusion.

Here's the Publisher's Weekly synopsis and review:
An amateur sleuth with an unusual day job debuts in this lively romantic mystery, Henry's first novel. Claire Montrose works for the Oregon Motor Vehicles Division in Portland, checking applications for vanity license plates. Her mundane job is interrupted by a call from her mother, who reports that Claire's great-aunt has died, bequeathing to Claire the contents of her mobile home. Aided by her boyfriend, an obsessively careful insurance adjuster, Claire sorts through Aunt Cady's belongings. Among the piles of old knickknacks, she finds a beautiful small painting of a woman sitting at a table. Aunt Cady had been in Germany during WWII and Claire suspects the artwork might be one of many masterpieces that disappeared in Europe around that time. To have it appraised, she flies to New York, where an expert tells her that the painting is a forgery. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, however, a handsome artist says that the canvas may be an authentic Vermeer. Attempts to steal the painting convince Claire that the artist may be right?but can she trust him? Or should she trust the expert who thought the painting a forgery? Danger follows Claire back to Portland, but she proves clever enough to outwit even the wiliest villain in her offbeat, vital first outing as a sleuth. 

When I was writing the book, I needed to describe the possible Vermeer she inherits. It's believed that Vermeer painted in his own home, usually in one room, which is why the light falls the same way from the same window, the same chair appears in painting after painting... So I created my own Vermeer by cutting and pasting bits of other Vermeers. Here it is:



I also brainstormed what would happen in the book, starting with the words "Find Painting" in the center circle:



Now there's a program you can use for free to create mind maps like this, which you can find at bubbl.us . I used it to brainstorm next year's book, Finish Her Off. I think I might start start a new one for 2014's book, The Girl I Used to Be.

I just gave birth to fraternal twins!

Today is the pub date for my 12th book, The Night She Disappeared! 12! I can barely comprehend that. (And the truth is that I wrote three books before my first one sold, and since then I’ve written books that haven’t sold in between ones that did, and I’ve got a couple more written that aren’t out in the world yet, so I’ve actually written at least 20 books.)

Reviews

"When 17-year-old Kayla Cutler, an employee at Pete's Pizza, disappears while delivering an order, her fellow employees are shocked and disturbed. Unfolding over the two weeks after Kayla vanishes, Henry's (Girl, Stolen) heart-pounding mystery alternates among the perspectives of numerous characters, including Kayla's co-workers Gabie, who is traumatized by Kayla's kidnapping (and believes that she was the intended target), and Drew, a "straight-C stoner" who is supporting his drug-addicted mother, as well as a diver searching the Willamette River, a psychic, Kayla herself - and the man who kidnapped her. As Kayla plots an escape from the room in which she's being held, Gabie and Drew try to investigate what happened to her, holding out hope that she's still alive. It's a riveting story that many readers will finish in one sitting, full of suspects and augmented by police reports, interviews, and newspaper articles that, along with the variety of voices, make the events feel all the more real. Each chapter is a surprise, and the tension builds steadily until the inevitable climactic face-off."

- Publishers Weekly



"The thriller is narrated using a collage technique. Interspersed with the kids' and perpetrator's first-person accounts are police reports, 911 transcripts, webpages, interviews, etc., which add interest and texture....Gabie and Drew's budding relationship is believable, and it has a strong wingding climax followed by a feel-good ending."

- Kirkus



"The Night She Disappeared is a genuine thriller that races along from first page to last. Tightly plotted and neatly told."

- Marcus Sedgwick, award-winning author of Revolver

Foreign and other rights
Rights have already sold in Germany, England, and Turkey, and the book is a Junior Library Guild selection.

Girl, Stolen out in paperback today
It’s also the pub date for the paperback edition of Girl, Stolen.  They’ve given it a whole new cover.



And I made a video about what inspired the book and some of the research behind it.

Vultures and body dumps

Depending on how gritty a mystery you want to write or read, a new study on vultures and corpses might interest you.

The article begins:
For more than five weeks, a woman's body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field. Then a frenzied flock of vultures descended on the corpse and reduced it to a skeleton within hours.


But this was not a crime scene lost to nature. It was an important scientific experiment into the way human bodies decompose, and the findings are upending assumptions about decay that have been the basis of homicide cases for decades.


Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted the absence of flesh and the condition of the bones as evidence that the woman had been dead for six months, possibly even a year or more. Now a study of vultures at Texas State University is calling into question many of the benchmarks detectives have long relied on.

Read more about the vulture study here.

I’m on a list-serv with a woman whose daughter worked on one of the Texas body farms, and she once offered us an opportunity to suggest research we’d like to see done.

Wow - this guy totally understands what my blog is all about

Just got this email:


I'd like to inquire about doing a sponsored blogpost on your site aprilhenry.livejournal.com for our site [redacted]. We sell
pre-owned Rolex watches and have been in business since 1980 and are looking for more exposure online.


It would probably be a short interesting blurb 250-350 words about Rolex watches.
Here's a list of some blog post titles we've done in the past:
- Are Rolex Watches A Good Investment?
- The Most Popular Rolex Watches For 2012
- Famous Vintage Rolex Watches Worn By Celebrities


Our budget is around $15 for the post and we can also write the post. Is this something you'd be open to?

Who makes the perfect spy?

A man who was a spy writes, “Operations people don’t just collect intelligence; they blackmail foreign officials, scientists and business people; bribe union leaders; break into embassies; assassinate people; overthrow governments; and sometimes, far worse (or better, depending on your perspective).”

Read about who makes the perfect spy here.

Lucky me! My books are eligible for an award!

Lucky me! My books are eligible for an award! And it will only cost $75 to $95 each to enter each book.

The email I got begins:

"Character Building Counts (CBC) Book Awards honors books that deliver a character-building message. No matter what genre your books is in (children's, YA, adult fiction, or adult nonfiction), it may well embody character-building lessons that society can benefit from. Prizes include radio time, book seals, press releases, Internet presence, and more.
Energize your writing career by becoming a CBC award-winning author. Get the attention and acclaim your work deserves."

I think it's telling that the email has a lot of pesky grammatical errors. And when you check out the website, what do you find? Lots and lots of self-published books.

Any time I get anything like this I google some key words as well as the word "scam."