Writing – Linda M. Au

Hit the road, Linda!

It’s almost NaNoWriMo Eve, boys and girls! And what does that mean? It means Linda has to get ready to write another novel during November as part of the annual self-flagellation ritual known as National Novel Writing Month! Yay!

This year’s novel will be a romantic comedy called Hit the Road, Jack! I’ve been doing a lot of planning for this novel…

Let’s see…

Basic plot points logged in the Plottr software… check!

Basic character sketches typed into Scrivener… check!

Book cover done and ready to use… check!

Scary horror movie reruns on repeat all through October… check!

Massive amounts of Halloween candy consumed until I want to throw up… che—WAIT! NO! I’m not ready!

I knew I was forgetting something! The chocolate! But I can solve this dire situation in plenty of time for NaNoWriMo Eve, thanks to socially distanced grocery pickup and a little bit of will power (so I don’t eat all the candy before the little brats—I mean, the cute kids in adorable costumes—get here next week).

Sure, they’re kinda cute, and sure, I’m gonna have bowls of candy ready for them, even if their costumes are just unwashed pajama pants and dirty, used N-95 masks, but they’re not getting my stash of Fun Size Hershey’s Miniatures!

Everybody knows that—after cheap liquor and cigarettes—chocolate and coffee are both classic novelist fuel. (Kinda like rocket fuel, only better tasting.)

So, once I’ve got my rocket fuel here alongside me, and once the little brats—I mean, cute little trick-or-treaters—are done nibbling away at my candy stash, I’ll be ready for NaNoWriMo 2020.

Because, after the year we’ve all had, what could go wrong? I figure sitting at a typewriter, hooking myself up to a coffee drip I.V., and inhaling chocolate for a month is a sort of mirror of the past six months anyway.

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…

The Magic of Mail

brown paper envelope on table — Photo by John-Mark Smith on Pexels.com

Yesterday I received my first piece of legit fan mail. I mean, an actual handwritten letter from someone I did not previously have any contact or association with. She wrote because she had read a copy of Train of Thought and it reminded her of her own Amtrak trip years ago. And she had to write to tell me all about it.

It’s a delightful letter, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading every line of its four pages. (I may or may not have already reread it a few times.) It’s humbling to think a perfect stranger not only read my book but felt compelled to dig out matching stationery, stamps, and a pen and write to me all about her own train adventure. In this day and age, who does that? Well, besides this woman. And me, when I write back to her (using a typewriter, of course).

Typewriter enthusiast and occasional actor Tom Hanks agrees with me. In California Typewriter, he admits that, if someone takes seven seconds to send him a thank-you email, he’ll delete it. But if someone takes seventy seconds to type him a real, paper thank-you note, he’ll keep that thing forever.

He’s right. Through LinkedIn, I recently I got back in touch with a friend from elementary school. She’d moved away when we were kids, and we wrote letters back and forth till our first year of college. A few weeks ago, I sat up late one night and reread every single one of her letters to me from the 1970s. I was laughing and crying and reliving those fun, naïve days. I then snapped a picture for her of all of those letters spread across my desk. She was amazed. Next I’m going to scan each one so she can have as much nostalgic fun rereading them as I did.

The fun of receiving personal mail never gets old. It’s why I eat the cost of a few stamps sending Christmas cards to people who live just a few miles—or even just a few blocks—from my house. There’s something about opening that mailbox and seeing your name on an envelope that doesn’t have the electric bill inside. Something that says, “Hey, I thought about you today…”

The bigger tie-in? It’s simple. Tom Hanks is onto something here. Make the world a little smaller while you still can. If you want to truly touch someone’s life in a quiet but unmistakable way, write a letter. Use stationery. Get out an envelope. Buy a stamp. Then wait for the magic to happen.

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What sorts of personal mail or letters have you kept over the years?

Erma-Gerd!

So, here I sit in a glorious hotel suite a few miles from where, tomorrow, I’ll be entrenched among other people of like mind. I’m at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. It starts tomorrow. A few of us have come in a day early to get our heads cleared, to get settled here in this strange land of Ohio.

And then tomorrow, the craziness starts.

I’ll come home inspired, exhausted, and thrilled. I’m so ready to start. Because yes, even introverts get out into the world sometimes and have fun.

I’ll just have to curl into a fetal position for most of Sunday afternoon. But it’ll be worth it.

And the Beat Goes On . . .

This past week I released both the print and Kindle editions of my cozy mystery, The Scarlet Letter Opener. Not the first novel I’ve written, but the first novel I’ve put out there in the big, wide world.

And it feels a lot like watching your firstborn grow up, move out, get married … all those overused empty-nest clichés. It feels like all of them, but a lot more personal because, if your novel flops, you can’t blame it on anyone else but yourself. Nature, nurture, whatever. It’s all crap when you release a novel. Well, you can try to blame it on the cover designer or your beta readers, but that’s just a passive-aggressive device to avoid blame, and it’s not fooling anybody.

Anyway, a few of my trusted friends [read: I’m pretty sure they’re not going to kill me in my sleep] finally convinced me that it was time to step up to the plate and shoulder the blame.

Wait… this isn’t coming out the way I had expected. Not really enticing anyone to read the book, am I?

Let me skip all the boring crap about how a writer’s creative yet blocked mind works and get right to the important stuff. The pertinent facts and rules:

1. The Scarlet Letter Opener, a cozy mystery, is now available on Amazon.com.

2. Please buy it and/or borrow it from Amazon.com.

3. If you buy and/or borrow it and enjoy it, please leave a favorable review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Authors rely heavily on those reader reviews (especially the good ones).

4. If you buy and/or borrow it and don’t enjoy it, keep it to yourself, all right? Nobody wants to hear your negativity.

* * * * *

In other, semi-related news, another novel should be showing up within the next few weeks. This one’s a lot more serious. The cover reveal should happen later this week. Rules 2–4 above will still apply. You’re officially on notice.