Here is some interesting news from a recent YouGov poll which proves how awesome my readers are!
46% of American adults read no books in 2023. Zero. Nada. Yipes!
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As I write this, it’s currently 4° F. 🥶 We don’t have any snow in Spokane right now. I consider that a blessing. I haven’t skied in years and was never any good when I did. In fact, my first attempt at downhill ended up with me in a hospital and a several-inch scar under my knee.
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Happy New Year!
Well, the day after the new year. I figured you were busy yesterday and didn’t want to hear from me. Hopefully, you spent January 1st hangover free. I stopped drinking about a year and a half ago. I never drank a lot, but I was getting so many migraines that I was hoping to find a link.
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Sammy Hagar is my favorite singer. I loved his work with Montrose and Van Halen, as well as his solo career. In fact, I paid homage to the Red Rocker by naming the Flip-Flop Detective after him.
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Writing a book doesn’t always look like a straight line or a race to the finish. Sometimes it’s like hiking up a steep mountain—a slow, steady pace with the hopes you’ll eventually make it to the peak.
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The difference between failure and feedback is a willingness to continue.
As an independently published author, I spend a fair amount of time marketing myself and my books. This process includes a newsletter, social media, my blog, and paid advertising. Marketing is a skill that doesn’t come naturally to most folks—me included.
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Here’s something cool.
I recently finished reading Ross Macdonald’s THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE. It’s a Lew Archer novel written in 1951. I loved the book. It’s pace was quick and it had some excellent banter in it.
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This is Desert Steve’s Gas ’N Go. Okay, not really.
But it was in the first Flip-Flop Detective novel, STRAIT TO HELL.
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Cozy mysteries captivate readers and viewers alike with their intriguing blend of crime and comfort. They are a sub-genre of mystery novels that typically feature an amateur sleuth solving crimes in a small, tightly knit community, often with a touch of humor.
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Several years ago, I started tracking my annual reading. I did this after learning how important the most successful individuals valued reading. I wrote several posts over on my personal finance blog, The Bumbling Millionaire. When I stepped back from that project to focus on my crime fiction writing, I didn’t want to lose track of the annual reading list. It felt too important.
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A reader (Bryan) asked a question concerning the Cozy Up series. He wondered if the “Little Sister” nickname that U.S. Marshal Gayle Goodspeed call’s Beau was somehow related to True Grit. The question surprised me, and I asked why he believed it to have originated from there.
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My flagship series, the 509 Crime Stories, recently had its covers upgraded. For some, that was a change to the title font. For others, that was a complete redo.
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In August 2021, I released a double collection of short stories—Murder by Any Other Name and Black and Blue in the Lilac City. I dubbed both “509 Crime Short Stories” and created a series separate from the 509 Crime Stories.
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I thought I would do something different this week and share one of my favorite scenes. This comes from my short story, “The Legend of Roy Utt,” which appears in the 509 Crime Anthology, A Bag of Dick’s.
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Always be where flip-flops can be worn.
If you could live your life by a single rule, what would it be?
That’s a question I asked myself one summer afternoon while running around my neighborhood in flip-flops.
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My writing career began in 1996. Sometime during that year, I sat at my computer and wrote a single-page story. It featured a cop drinking in a bar. Anger and bluster filled every word. It was an unreadable tale written by an unhappy man.
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In 2019, I attended Left Coast Crime (LCC), a writers’ conference held that year in Vancouver B.C—only six hours from my hometown. It was my first conference of the sort, and I quickly learned it offered many great experiences.
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The knockout game is the concept of randomly selecting a victim and then rendering them unconscious with a single blow.
It’s violent, it’s illegal, and it always preys on a weaker victim.
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SPOILER ALERT!
If you haven’t read THE BLIND TRUST yet, this post gives away a big component of the story. Turn back if you want to keep this reveal hidden.
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For a period of roughly six months, I woke up frequently with a song snippet in my head.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. I wasn’t concerned by it. More than anything, it was an oddity. A funny trick that my mind seemed to be playing on me. When the songs happened, I kind of enjoyed them.
Those musical greetings gave my mornings a little bit of a twist.
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