Month: May 2020

Coming to an audiobook near you!

I recently interviewed myself about the upcoming audiobook release for Secret Agent Manny. Nobody else was clamoring to do it, so I just wrote down some questions for myself and then answered them.

What is the title of this book?

I’m excited about my first audiobook, Secret Agent Manny, a comic pseudo-spy novel (more comic than spy, although the pseudo part would probably be the best adjective of the three, if I’m being perfectly honest).

I have a hard time getting into a project (especially a large project) until I have a good title, and although I’m sometimes open to suggestions for titles, it boils down to this: I’ll know it when I hear it. And then I can move forward.

I’ve been told I’ve got a knack for coming up with great titles. When another project, Do-It-Yourself Widow, placed as a runner-up in a national novel contest a few years ago, I was told that my title was the best of them all.

Now, if only I could get similar praise for the other 75,000 words in that project.

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Where did the idea come from for the book?

Secret Agent Manny started as a National Novel Writing Month project. The idea has to be credited to two writer pals of mine, James Watkins and Fara Linn Howell. While at a writing conference with them, I got a disturbing phone call from my husband, about a burglary at home. As the writing conference progressed and I heard more about this burglary, Jim and Fara poked and prodded me into believing that my husband was actually living a double-life as a spy.

Because Jim and I are both humor writers, and because Fara, though much more spiritual than I, has one of the best senses of humor in these parts, we escalated my poor husband’s imagined double-life to outrageous proportions during the rest of the conference.

By week’s end I knew I had to adapt their crazy ideas (or not-so-crazy—you decide!) into a novel—a novel that starts out with a phone call strangely similar to the one I had with my husband: “There’s been an incident at the house…”

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What genre does your book fall under?

I’d be more worried if you asked me what TABLE my book fell under. But, to answer your question: It’s a comic pseudo-spy novel. Weren’t you paying attention earlier?

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Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I don’t think there’s enough real spy action for this to be a James Bond movie, and I’m not sure the comedy translates all that well outside of book form … but since you ask, I’ll have to go with Oliver Platt for Manny and Mary Louise Parker for Amanda—but only if she’ll eat a sandwich or something first. That woman is too thin.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A bored writer with too much time on her hands begins to suspect that her quiet, mild-mannered husband is really a spy … and she inadvertently turns their lives upside down in her quest to discover the truth.

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Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

After years of telling myself that it was all right to self-publish the humor-essay books but not the novels, I realized that I have a direct path to self-publishing even the novels: I’ve worked in the prepress world for decades, and I have professional skills as both a typesetter and proofreader. Why would I wait to see my book in print for years while going the traditional publishing route when I can wear all the prepress hats myself? And everybody loves hats, right?

Life is too short to be traditional about this. Besides, within the next few nanoseconds, the term “traditional publishing” won’t mean the same thing anymore.

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How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first 50,000 words were written in November 2012, as part of NaNoWriMo. But, once I’m on fire about a project, I can churn it out quickly. The rest took another few months, but those two sets of time weren’t consecutive, so …

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What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Ha ha ha. “Genre.” “Compare.” You’re so funny.

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Who or what inspired you to write this book?

More kudos to those pesky friends of mine, Jim and Fara, for the inspiration. And once I went from having fun with friends coming up with reasons my husband is a spy to actively taking notes for a novel, the ideas just wouldn’t stop coming.

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What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

You’d be amazed at how differently you’ll look at your spouse when you realize just how many common things about him you can call into question. All you need is a paranoid, suspicious nature and a little creativity, and all hell breaks loose.

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SECRET AGENT MANNY is coming to an Audible audiobook near you SOON!

Today I taught my parents… (Part 3)

Last time on “Today I Taught My Parents,” we saw Linda teach her mom how to order food online.

This week on “Today I Taught My Parents,” Linda shows her parents how to use a webcam.

I’m sure that, back in April 1960, my parents weren’t standing next to that cake thinking, “Gosh, we can’t wait to celebrate sixty years together in 2020 during a global pandemic by looking at family and friends through a big screen, many miles away from us.” I’m reasonably certain that wasn’t their thought at all that day.

If it were me, I would have been thinking, “Mmmm, CAKE!”

But let’s not use me as a yardstick … for anything. Instead of a Big Party, I got to help them celebrate the only way we could last month: through a webcam.

My parents both use desktop computers, not laptops, so of course they didn’t own a webcam. That would have been too easy. And, by the time I got the bright idea to order them a webcam online and have it delivered to their house, every webcam within a 5,000-mile radius had been snapped up, along with a million shares of Zoom stock.

I own a few ancient laptops with webcams, but I typically use a dedicated webcam and microphone on my desktop computer when I need to attend a virtual meeting. Back around 2010, I’d gotten a crappy blue plastic webcam for free with rewards points from entering a bajillion code combinations from the bottle caps of many Diet Cokes. MANY Diet Cokes. Let me tell you, it took a LOT of Diet Coke, imbibed by both me and my husband, to get that free crappy blue plastic webcam.

It has a built-in crappy microphone and a built-in crappy suction cup on the bottom. (I’d say the suction cup sucks, but that would be paying it a compliment. It does NOT suck. Hence the problem. The thing tends to skitter across your desk if the cord isn’t positioned just right.)

But, it served me well for nearly a decade, considering the price I’d paid. (It was worth at least twice what I paid for it!) And anyone who uses technology knows how long a decade is. Most electronic equipment needs carbon dating after about five years.

The Big Problem presented itself when the Big Party I had been planning for my parents to celebrate their 60th anniversary ground to a halt. I thought I’d been pretty good at predicting the various obstacles we might encounter trying to pull off a surprise party for my parents: airline flights and schedules for family to the east of us, work schedules for all the grown grandkids here, traffic issues getting those same grandkids to my house from 50 miles away, nap schedules for their great-grandson (and, let’s face it, for me too), food choices for so many of us on different diets…

But I had somehow neglected to add “global pandemic and worldwide shutdown” to my list of possible roadblocks. Now what? No in-person face-to-face party. After 60 years of surviving each other, my parents now had to survive COVID-19 and a complete lockdown, with nobody to entertain them but each other. If they hadn’t killed each other in the past 60 years, this just might do it.

But what to do about that Big Party? In typical noble, altruistic fashion, I gave my parents that free crappy blue plastic webcam. Because that’s how I roll. I’m nothing if not self-sacrificing.

But even that simple gesture turned into a Big Production. I wiped down the free crappy blue plastic webcam with sanitizing wipes, put everything in a small cardboard box (because I’ve got an entire collection of a dozen of every size box Amazon makes), and delivered the box to my parents’ garage (while waving at them through their kitchen window). I felt like an honorary member of the bomb squad. (Should I cut the blue wire or the red wire?)

They let the box sit in their garage for two days before touching it.

A few days later, we did a test run of the webcam and microphone, using Facebook’s video chat feature inside Messenger. I chose that over Zoom because my mom was already familiar with Facebook Messenger. I didn’t relish the thought of trying to walk her through setting up Zoom from scratch over the phone. This was the same woman who used to call me for impromptu tech support by announcing, “It won’t let me! The thingy is blinking!”

With Facebook Messenger, all I had to do was hit the little blue video camera icon in the upper right of a group message—and all she had to do was answer the incoming video call.

You know, once the camera was plugged in, and the microphone was plugged in.

What could go wrong? Well, what greeted me first were my mom’s neck and one of her hands, and a lot of loud crackling noise as she fiddled with the webcam and the microphone, trying to find good spots for them on her desk. And then both my parents tried to find spots for two chairs close enough to the camera for me to see and hear them. And for them to see the computer monitor that would soon be filled with loving faces wishing them a happy 60th.

The Big Day for the Big Party arrived. I’d divided the groups of people who wanted to cyber-attend into two time slots. For one thing, Facebook Messenger video chat accepts only eight cameras at a time. For another thing, I still had those pesky schedules to contend with.

I started a group message with the first time-slot folks, and then I “called” everyone. One by one, to my delight, folks popped up on my screen.

But where were my parents?

They were still in the two-person Messenger chat I’d set up with my mom. I typed in our two-person chat window: “Hey, I’m setting up our ‘party’ with a few folks…. We’re setting up now and I’ll add you once we’re ‘live.'”

Then I added, “I added you to our small group. You’ll get the video ring thing in a second.”

Suddenly I heard a loud phone-ringing noise and realized that, in another browser window, my mom was “calling” me in our two-person Messenger chat window.

Brrrrring… bbbrrrrrringgggg… Boy, that noise got annoying really fast.

I kept apologizing to the friends and family waiting for my parents in the group video chat… and kept hearing that bbbrrrrrrrinnngggg from the two-person chat window.

My parents tried to call me a total of five times before they figured out their error. I think my all-caps response of “GO TO THE GROUP MEETING NOT THIS ONE” probably helped nudge them in the right direction.

Of course, once they actually got to the group chat, they were greeted with friends, a nephew, a kid (okay, that was me), and some grandkids and their significant others. They were wearing their matching T-shirts, which said, “I Survived 60 Years!” They seemed delighted with the turnout, and we had a one-hour online party with them both.

And later that day, a second wave of kids, grandkids, friends, and a great-grandkid swept in for a second virtual party.

And, aside from the usual glitches with cameras, microphones, cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, background noise, and technophobia, it went surprisingly well.

It was the best we could do for them, given the restrictions. We’re planning a Real Party sometime in the fall. Of this year. We hope. Unless the murder hornets and a sharknado show up. Can’t rule out any possibility these days.

And, because my upgraded webcam finally arrived from Amazon a few weeks ago, I’m gonna let my parents keep that free crappy blue plastic webcam… because that’s what a noble, self-sacrificing daughter would do, right?

I still haven’t been able to give my parents a true happy-anniversary hug yet, more than a month later, but you can bet I’ll be the first one in their driveway when our state relaxes some restrictions.

You know, after I shower in hand sanitizer and sit in their garage for two days.

You get a book! And you get a book!

Yay! Charlotte’s Website, the third book in the Red Ink Mysteries cozy series, is finally available for preorder here. If you order now, it’ll mysteriously drop onto your Kindle on May 22. I don’t know how that works. I think it’s some sort of magic. It scares me a little. And excites me too. Kinda like my husband.

For you old-school types, the print edition of Charlotte’s Website should also be available on May 22. Although this whole pandemic thing has meant no in-person book signings or book festivals, I can still send you an autographed bookplate sticker thingy to put inside a print copy of any of my books. Ask for one (or more!) here. I won’t even make you beg… much. Just remember: these are for print books. Don’t put a sticker on your Kindle. It will end badly.

Next week, you can easily (and economically) catch up on the entire Red Ink Mysteries series by taking advantage of sales on both of the previous books in the series. Can’t you feel the excitement?

https://amzn.to/35S1lAF <—-Find The Scarlet Letter Opener HERE!
https://amzn.to/35SDLDK <—-Find The Tell-Tale Heart Attack HERE!

Mark your calendar. Set an alarm on your phone. Tell all your friends. Throw a socially distanced party. Drive around your neighborhood with banners attached to your car.

Whatever you do, don’t miss these sales!

And while you’re buying and reading and buying some more, I’ll be feverishly working on more books. It’s not like I have anything better to do these days. It’s either more writing… or quarantine baking… or <shudder> housecleaning.

I’ll choose the writing every time.

And you, my friend, should choose to read. I can think of a few books you might be interested in…