Wedding countdown is in full swing in the Perkins’ homes! My daughter and her fiance have handled most of the planning (thank goodness!) allowing me to play with the fun parts. Don’t worry, there’ll be no spreadsheets and seating charts, they aren’t as much fun to look at. Things were much simpler when my husband […]
Box sets have been a marketing staple in the publishing industry, but a lot of people are ready to call the technique dead and bury it. Queue the band and plan the funeral. Or not. The opportunities presented by setting up a box set remain as numerous—and practical—as ever. The sets offer a chance to […]
By Cathy Perkins I had to go to LA for the day job this week. At LAX, I trotted out to Ground Transportation. I’d heard LA didn’t allow Uber drivers in the ground transportation aisle (where the nine million shuttles and taxis wait), so I grabbed a taxi to head to my meeting. The driver […]
Aloha! I’m heading out this morning for Left Coast Crime. Left Coast Crime is the big reader-oriented mystery conference that’s always held somewhere on, well, the left coast. This year it’s in Honolulu. I know, a sacrifice to head to Hawaii when we still have snow on the ground, but I’m up for the challenge. […]
Ah, Valentine’s Day. Doesn’t it capture the good, the bad and the ugly in a relationship? Yikes! Hopefully it’s all good, but so often the best words to describe a relationship are, “It’s complicated.” My husband and I ran errands on Valentine’s Day and watched with amusement as people made mad dashes into Edible Arrangements, […]
December is traditionally the month of reflection—a time to look back at the year to assess goals and accomplishments. My husband and I were talking last night, not so much about which goals we met, but rather about 2016 events that made us happy. While engagements, new jobs and houses for our kids top the […]
We’ve been talking (off and on) about gratitude this month. I poked around to some of the sites I routinely follow and have loved all the recognition this month that as individuals, as a community, (and totally avoiding politics here, but I’m gonna say it anyway) and as a nation, there’s a lot to celebrate. […]
Like many authors, I have a day job that keeps me far too busy. Right now, I’m scrambling to handle everything that was deferred due to a giant deadline. (Said deadline meant 12+ hour days for weeks and weeks – ack!) One of those deferred items is making sure all the slides for my teaching […]
We’ve talked about transitions this month. Transitions in our writing careers. Transitions in manuscripts. A different kind of transition has been keeping me up at night–transitions in families. Perhaps it isn’t surprising. After all, “family” is a central theme in my stories for a reason. These days, my sleepless nights begin with a call from […]
I picked up a new craft book (aren’t all authors addicted to improving their craft?) that has me excited about writing again. Part of my funk over the winter had been that writing seemed yet another job – with a long list of Must Do tasks – and like most of you, I had too […]