I am SO behind in writing. And, since I have a contract to get another book of the Death Warmed Over series to the publisher within a few months, I need to cut back on my activities and concentrate on writing.

This will be the last installment of my blog. I've opted to focus on my monthly newsletter. So if you want to keep up with my activities - please visit my website www.deathwarmedovermysteries.com and sign up for my newsletter!

Thanks,

Cindy

I woke up this morning looking at a beautiful sunrise over Austin's Town Lake. And that was just the beginning to what I expect will be a great weekend.

Jeff and I then went over to the capitol grounds and set up the MWASW booth, meeting up with George Wilhite and Kimberly Sandman. Of course I had to buy books before the first 15 minutes of the festival passed by....Bought the new Alexander McCall Smith's, George Wilhite's Rodeo Clown paperback, and a quirky book about the perfect funeral.

Right now we're taking a breather in the hotel room so Jeff can watch College Game Day, then we'll go back to the festival to see if I can find more books to spend money on.

I can't wait to meet Susan Baker, a MWA colleague and web-friend. Then see Radine Trees Nehring this afternoon - I have to get the latest book in her "To Die For" series.

And, actually, I have my own signing time at the Mystery Writers of America table, so it's not all fun...I have to work too.

Believe it or not, I may actually come back to the room tonight and do some writing on my breast cancer book - "IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU." I have some thoughts I need to put onto paper, and I'm in the mood, so I MUST take advantage of the time away from home and try to be prolific.

Until next time - GO BUY BOOKS! As MWA says "Crime Doesn't Pay...Enough"

Cindy

  I'll be attending a wonderful signing event at The Black Orchid bookstore -- here's a note from the Black Orchid's website:

 "On Fri. Oct 21 from 5:30 to 8pm, we welcome some of the finest practitioners of crime fiction. If your tastes run from procedurals & P.I.s to historicals &  cozies, come and meet: Charles Todd, Philip Margolin, Linda Fairstein, Robin Burcell, Reed Farrel Coleman, Leslie Glass, Libby Fischer Hellman, P.J. Parrish, Dana Cameron, Steve Brewer, Cindy Daniel, Christine Goff, Lynne Heitman, Marianne Heusler, Bob Levinson, Noreen Wald (aka Nora Charles), Bob Williamson and soon-to-be-published Renee Gardner. If this were a meal, it would be a smorgasbord."

I'd love to meet some of my writing and reading friends - -  so if you're in the NYC area, please stop by and say hello! 

Here's a link to The Black Orchid Bookstore: http://www.ageneralstore.com/ 

Cindy

  I'll be attending a wonderful signing event at The Black Orchid bookstore -- here's a note from the Black Orchid's website:

 "On Fri. Oct 21 from 5:30 to 8pm, we welcome some of the finest practitioners of crime fiction. If your tastes run from procedurals & P.I.s to historicals &  cozies, come and meet: Charles Todd, Philip Margolin, Linda Fairstein, Robin Burcell, Reed Farrel Coleman, Leslie Glass, Libby Fischer Hellman, P.J. Parrish, Dana Cameron, Steve Brewer, Cindy Daniel, Christine Goff, Lynne Heitman, Marianne Heusler, Bob Levinson, Noreen Wald (aka Nora Charles), Bob Williamson and soon-to-be-published Renee Gardner. If this were a meal, it would be a smorgasbord."

I'd love to meet some of my writing and reading friends - -  so if you're in the NYC area, please stop by and say hello! 

Here's a link to The Black Orchid Bookstore: http://www.ageneralstore.com/ 

Cindy

  I'll be attending a wonderful signing event at The Black Orchid bookstore -- here's a note from the Black Orchid's website:

 "On Fri. Oct 21 from 5:30 to 8pm, we welcome some of the finest practitioners of crime fiction. If your tastes run from procedurals & P.I.s to historicals &  cozies, come and meet: Charles Todd, Philip Margolin, Linda Fairstein, Robin Burcell, Reed Farrel Coleman, Leslie Glass, Libby Fischer Hellman, P.J. Parrish, Dana Cameron, Steve Brewer, Cindy Daniel, Christine Goff, Lynne Heitman, Marianne Heusler, Bob Levinson, Noreen Wald (aka Nora Charles), Bob Williamson and soon-to-be-published Renee Gardner. If this were a meal, it would be a smorgasbord."

I'd love to meet some of my writing and reading friends - -  so if you're in the NYC area, please stop by and say hello! 

Here's a link to The Black Orchid Bookstore: http://www.ageneralstore.com/ 

Cindy

  I'll be attending a wonderful signing event at The Black Orchid bookstore -- here's a note from the Black Orchid's website:

 "On Fri. Oct 21 from 5:30 to 8pm, we welcome some of the finest practitioners of crime fiction. If your tastes run from procedurals & P.I.s to historicals &  cozies, come and meet: Charles Todd, Philip Margolin, Linda Fairstein, Robin Burcell, Reed Farrel Coleman, Leslie Glass, Libby Fischer Hellman, P.J. Parrish, Dana Cameron, Steve Brewer, Cindy Daniel, Christine Goff, Lynne Heitman, Marianne Heusler, Bob Levinson, Noreen Wald (aka Nora Charles), Bob Williamson and soon-to-be-published Renee Gardner. If this were a meal, it would be a smorgasbord."

I'd love to meet some of my writing and reading friends - -  so if you're in the NYC area, please stop by and say hello! 

Here's a link to The Black Orchid Bookstore: http://www.ageneralstore.com/ 

Cindy

It's been almost a month since I've written. I'd like to say I've been busy writing.  But I haven't. I HAVE set up another office...I keep moving it from room to room trying to find the perfect atmosphere. Maybe I have it this time. OF course, until I get my bookcases up there it probably will seem empty.

Oh well. I started re-reading the manuscript I've been working on for my breast cancer book. It had been a couple months since I worked on it and I needed to get in the flow. I'll start writing on it again tomorrow. I have already determined I will set aside time each day for it. My goal is to complete it by the end of October and get it off to the publisher. I've created a website for it - at least I've accomplished something!

And...I created a newsletter. I found a GREAT e-newsletter creator and it was a breeze. I even went in and put a link on my website so people could sign up.

Off to bed. I need to get plenty of rest so my fingers will be ready to fly across the keys tomorrow.

Cindy  

It's my sincere pleasure to feature my next guest - Bill Tapply. I hope you enjoy the interview...

Interview with Bill Tapply

Author Bio

   William G. Tapply is the author of more than three dozen books. Many are about fly fishing and the outdoors, most recently Gone Fishin': Ruminations on Fly Fishing. He has written twenty-five New England-based novels, including Shadow of Death , Bitch Creek, and the forthcoming Nervous Water. Tapply’s handbook, The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing a Modern Whodunit, is used in writing classes and workshops across the country. A veteran public speaker, Tapply has been giving talks and participating on panels for twenty years. He is a professor of English at Clark University in Worcester, where he teaches writing. He and his wife, novelist Vicki Stiefel, run The Writers Studio at Chickadee Farm. Tapply lives and writes in Hancock, New Hampshire.

When did you begin writing?

   I started writing in the late '70s, magazine stories and articles. I wrote my first "novel" around 1980.  It wasn't really a mystery.  In fact, I wouldn't know how to classify it . . . Except "not very good."  I was, nevertheless, pleased that I’d stuck to it, written regularly and with discipline, had created characters and a plot and subplots and whatnot, and I thought: if I could do that, maybe I could do it again, only better. 

   My next try turned out to be "Death at Charity's Point," which, after extensive revision at the behest of the editor who looked at it, was published by Scribner’s in 1984.  It featured Boston lawyer Brady Coyne.  My editor asked for another with him, and that became the series.  One book a year ever since.  Number 21, "Nervous Water," came out this fall.

Did you have any formal training?

   I never took a writing course (except for freshman English in college), but I am well educated, plus my father was a writer.  And I have always been a voracious reader.  So I have lots of informal training.

How do you get your ideas? 

   I get my ideas one at a time.  After I finish a book, a sort of desperation overtakes me.  I am, at that time, a writer who is not writing, and who cannot write until he comes up with a new idea.  It's that absolute need for an idea that causes me to experience my world as a source of ideas.  Mostly they come from inside my head -- remembered news stories, something somebody once said, an image, a snatch of conversation.  It takes a long time to find the spark of an idea that will work for a novel and then fan it into a flame. Several months of hard thinking.  I never have more than one idea at a time.  Sometimes fewer than one.

How much of Brady Coyne is Bill Tapply? Or did you create Stoney
Calhoun as an alter ego? 

   Not to be coy about it, but all my characters are me . . . Or me, if I happened to be them.  Me if I were a divorced Boston lawyer, me if I were a Maine fishing guide who'd been hit by lightning.  But also every minor character. I must inhabit them, submerge myself into who they are.  

   Brady Coyne's narrative voice is surely Bill Tapply's narrative voice.  My sense of humor, my angle on people and events. But Stoney’s, too.  

   Flaubert was once asked how he could create such a believable female character in Madame Bovary.  He answered: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi."  That’s pretty much how I work -- not just for series protagonists, but for all characters great and small.

When did you know you'd "made it" as a writer?

   I'm not sure I have made it.  Every book, every magazine article is a challenge.  I always wonder if I’ll ever write another publishable work, if the publishers will continue to be willing to publish my stuff.  It's a very insecure business.  It's just a matter of "making it" one book at a time, and then having to "make it" all over again. 

Who do you read?

   James Lee Burke, Ed McBain, Elmore Leonard.  John D. And Ross McDonald. Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck.  Mark Twain.  My writer friends in general.  I read biography and history and fishing essays and stories.  I'm presently reading Bill Bryson’s "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and Elmore Leonard’s "The Hot Kid."

Tell us something that you'd never divulged in an interview before! 

   Since I began publishing regularly, I have written three standalone novels that are apparently unpublishable. Two of them I wrote quite a while ago and thought they had disappeared.  I mentioned them recently to my agent, and he thought they were lurking somewhere in his office. 

   It's been so long since I wrote them that I’m now thinking that maybe they really are bad, although at the time I know I thought they were pretty good.  The third I wrote more recently.  We shall see about it.

Give us the names of your books and/or series, and your website address.

   I've written 21 Brady Coyne novels, most recently "Nervous Water," plus two Brady Coyne/J.W. Jackson collaborations with my friend Philip R. Craig.  

   "Bitch Creek" is the first in what I hope will become a series (I’m in the middle of another Stoney Calhoun novel as we speak). 

   I've also written nine books about fly fishing, one memoir, and one how-to-write book ("the elements of mystery fiction").   Plus more than 500 magazine pieces. I'm on "The Writer" magazine's editorial board.  I'm a contributing editor for "Field & Stream" and a columnist for "American Angler."

MY WEB ADDRESS: WWW.WILLIAMGTAPPLY.COM

I've been watching the news and can't believe the devastation Katrina has left behind.  You don't have to be personally affected by this to feel the pain and loss.

Pray for those whose lives have been changed by this event.

Cindy

First, a boat update. We found out today that the water had gotten into the cabin and was standing about two feet deep. So, not only was there engine damage and electrical damage, there was interior damage. But--again--we're concentrating on the positives. When it's all repaired we'll have a boat that is a lot better than when we bought it! And it will have a nice clean, steam cleaned!, cabin.

MURDER ACROSS THE MAP has been sent back to the publisher and will be out in October. I've ordered the postcards and we're all getting ready to start our publicity push. What a great bunch of authors! check out www.murderacrossthemap.

I've written a children's story and will now decide whether I should try to find a publisher or self-publish it. I'm having my dad and brothers illustrate what will be the first of many:
PUPPY TALES: PETE GOES TO BRAT CAMP. This book came about after our beagle, Pete, got back from obedience training, and after I read my friend Brenda Martin's children's book. She gave me the coutrage to try a children's book after I read her story and saw how much fun it was.
Brenda is one of the hosts of TAN TALK in Tampa Bay, so look her up on the internet and on the air.

We bit the bullet and fought the crowds and went to the new Ikea store. I've been trying to find a big desk and could never find what I wanted. So I went to Ikea and got a table top, then picked out the legs I liked, and suddenly I had the desk of my dreams. I'll tuck my file cabinets under each end and have a perfect workspace. Which means...I need to get to work.

 A FAMILY AFFAIR is in the final stages. Hopefully it will hit the shelves in a month or so. Now I need to concentrate on a story line for the third Death Warmed Over mystery.

Well, I guess I've said enough. Talk to you soon.

Cindy