Tag Archive for: Blackberry

Highlights of The Southern Tour

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Give me my ruby red slippers, there is nothing quite so satisfying as coming home. I miss my kids (hubby was with me), my bed, my dog (more on that later), my favorite mug full of my favorite tea. I am a creature of habit.

But that being said, this trip was exhausting (6 events in 5 days), but oh so satisfying. Authors can easily get obsessed (or maybe just this author?) over Amazon rankings, checking constantly to see if there is any movement. The mood swings from exhilaration when the numbers suggest books have been sold to the depths of despair when it looks like no one will ever buy any book again – well it’s enough to give you a bad case of whiplash.

But when you’re on the road, actually meeting mystery lovers who have shown up and want to talk about whodunnits, is incentive enough to kickstart the next book in the Sullivan Investigations Series.

Some highlights of the trip:

Selling out twice at Barnes and Noble in Manassas! The manager had put up an end display a couple of days before my event. Sold so many books, he had to reorder – and then I sold every single one of them in two hours.

Visiting Mystery Loves Company – a wonderful bookstore in Oxford, Maryland, in an idyllic setting. Sold out of Murder Takes the Cake there!

Visiting Warrenton, Virginia – the setting of both Murder Off the Books and Murder Takes the Cake. The people were friendly and helpful, and I saw exactly the place where the next murder will occur! I also heard some fun and scary ghost stories about the area. Definitely fodder for Murder Ups the Ante (book three).

My talks at the libraries in Middleburg, VA, Cambridge, MD, and Delmar, DE. The librarians, Sheila Whetzel, Leslie Grove, and Veronica Schell were warm, welcoming, encouraging, and enthusiastic. In a time of economic difficulties, libraries are a national treasure. Many thanks to all.

Fabulous meal at Latitude 38 in Oxford, MD. Yum, Yum, Yum.

Wonderful mini-reunion with old college friends in Washington, DC. All these years later (and it is a looooong time since we were fresh-women together) – and the friendships endure.

Time alone with my husband. With work and family demands, it’s hard to find time to just chat. Long hours in the car were made fun because we were together. Yesterday was our anniversary and I’m so glad I’m married to this wonderful guy.

The recovery of Clio. Wouldn’t you just know that we leave town and the dog gets sick. Good news is she’ll be fine. Even better news, our daughter and son handled the situation perfectly. Poor pup developed a nasty cyst that got infected. Add in a series of thunderstorms which always leaves her terrified, and she’s had a rough few days. But she’s on the road to good health and is back gobbling treats with a vengeance.

My Blackberry. Yep, it was definitely worth the investment. While on the road, I could Facebook and Twitter, and keep up with business e-mails.

So I’m home (hooray), but there are more book events planned for the summer. But first, laundry, grocery shopping, and maybe even a chapter or two of book number three!

Evelyn David

Pirates & Cell Phones

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Two things have been on my mind this week – okay more than that – but I’m going to blog about two – pirates and cell phones.

The summer before 9/11 my brother and I visited the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We had a great trip. One day was spent on Ocracoke Island – one of Blackbeard’s main ports. One man’s thief is another man’s folk hero. Depending on whose ships he was robbing, he was either praised or decried.

Pirate legends – as depicted in books and movies are romantic. As a child I saw the movie – A High Wind in Jamaica. The plot involves children captives on a pirate ship – a great sailing adventure for all involved.

Johnny Depp has the pirate persona down – or at least Hollywood’s latest version of a pirate. I wonder if that will change now that real pirates are in the news.

On Easter Sunday, the nation received the news of U.S. Navy’s rescue of ship captain Richard Phillips. Three Somali pirates were killed in the effort. One pirate was captured – reports have him as too young to be prosecuted as an adult in the U.S. I don’t fault the Navy for their heroic actions – the pirates left them no reasonable choice.

Pirates are holding about a dozen other ships with more than 200 crew members, according to the Malaysia-based piracy watchdog International Maritime Bureau. Hostages are from Bulgaria, China, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, the Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, Tuvalu and Ukraine, among other countries.

I don’t understand how the situation has been allowed to get to this point – unarmed commercial cargo ships being hijacked by pirates in speedboats with armed with rockets and AK-47s. Why in the world would cargo ships carrying millions of dollars of supplies be unarmed?

The U.S. Navy won’t be able to be in right spot at the right time to protect all American cargo ships. The ship companies are going to have to step up and defend themselves. Today’s pirates are young, poor, and fearless. They have nothing to lose, which means they are too dangerous for us to ignore them – or Somalia – anymore.

Now for the cell phone part of this blog – I had to upgrade from my beloved Blackberry Pearl to a Blackberry Curve. I say “had to” because I wore the trackball out on my Blackberry Pearl and when I went to T-Mobile to replace it, I found “my” phone was out-of-stock. I don’t know how long it would take to find another Blackberry Pearl like my old one. Apparently the world of cell phones has moved on. I didn’t want a flip phone version. And I’m not ready for a 3G phone. But I did need a new phone – and quickly. I carry my phone everywhere. If I forget and leave it at home, I have to drive back and pick it up. I admit it – I’m a Blackberry addict.

So getting the new phone was traumatic. As I moved my memory card from my old Blackberry Pearl to the strange phone that arrived by Federal Express, I had a lot of regrets at retiring my old friend.

The new phone doesn’t feel the same. Sure, it’s easier to type on and the screen is bigger, but … it’s not my Blackberry yet.

Evelyn David

To Blackberry or Not…

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I had an appointment in the New York City yesterday that would require me to spend several hours in a waiting room, followed by several more hours in another waiting room. The night before, faced with this prospect (and the one and half hours that I’d be spending on the train into and out of New York City) and thinking about other “wasted” times spent sitting around, I started to wonder: is it time to get a Blackberry?

As you all know, I work from home. Technically, although I do work for other people on a freelance basis, I work for myself. Should time spent sitting in a waiting room be productive, or should this be the time I catch up on my reading, make new friends (people in waiting rooms tend to want to talk to other people in the waiting room), or just meditate? I haven’t decided. But the pull toward the personal data assistant or whatever PDA stands for, is getting greater, and I turn to you, oh venerated Stiletto Gang readers for advice.

My sister, who works for a company who offers these devices and calling plans, said, “They’re great. But you are married to them then.” Another friend couldn’t live without hers. Would I become a slave to the PDA or forget I even had it? Do I really need to check my email every few minutes throughout the day, regardless of where I am? I’m undecided.

I returned from New York City yesterday to more than forty emails. Those of you in the corporate world are probably laughing, thinking to yourselves, “Forty? That’s bush league, sister. Try coming back to two hundred!” But in my world, forty is a lot. Especially since all of them include information that is necessary and meaningful. You in corporate America get at least twenty responses that say “I’ll be there” to the email that circulated about some meeting taking place Friday morning at ten. Those, my friends, do not count in your overall total. Would it have been better for me to sit in the waiting room and respond to at least twenty of those emails? Or does it not matter? Should my clients have to wait until I return or should I be available to them twenty four/seven? I leave these weighty questions in your hands.

I know that the Southern half of Evelyn David has a Blackberry, so I’m hoping she weighs in with the plusses and minuses of PDA ownership. I do know that I will have to invest in the device that has the largest key pad because even though I do not possess overly-large hands, I can’t imagine that I’ll be able to write messages with any kind of ease unless the keys on the keypad approach the size of those on my laptop. I know the keys are larger than those of my cell phone, but exactly how large do they need to be? All I know is that it took me ten minutes to text my daughter these two words, “not sure,” in response to her message to me, “What time will you be home?” I do not have that kind of time, people. And if you need an immediate answer from me on an important issue, do not—I repeat, do not—text me. It will be hours before I’m able to type a comprehensible reply.

I await your wise counsel. To Blackberry or not—that is the question.

Maggie Barbieri

Blogging, Promoting, Random Thoughts

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I’m writing this blog on Saturday because I know I’ll be busy next week and may forget. Things have been wild around here. First, the bathroom is finally done, but next we want to do some remodeling in the two bedrooms next to the refurbished John, which means moving lots of stuff around. When you move things, cleaning follows.

We’re expecting our eldest daughter and her hubby on Monday. They’ve been traveling all around in their motor home–to Kansas to a family reunion, South Dakota for sight seeing, back to Omaha for the Jr. Olympics because a granddaughter was competing, more sightseeing on the way to our house. I want to spend as much time with our visitors as possible. When they leave on Wednesday, we’re heading to the Angeles National Forest to a church camp where we’ll be spending time with my sister and my cousins and various other relatives until Friday noon. We’ve been to this camp before and it’s notorious for its bear visits.

From there we’re headed to San Luis Obispo for a Creative Women all day event on Saturday in the Mission Plaza where I’ll be selling my books. Also the members of the Central Coast Sisters in Crime will have a booth there and so I know I’ll be seeing a lot of my SinC sisters there. The whole point to this is I need to do my blogs ahead of time because I’ll be away from my computer. I will have my Blackberry so will be able to read my email. (I love my Blackberry. I used to have to look for computers in hotels where I could rent computer time.)

I have one other book selling event this month but will spend most of this month promoting on the Net. I’m gearing up for September when I’ll be doing one event after another because I’ll have a new Deputy Tempe Crabtree out.

My promotion begins with a talk at the San Joaquin chapter of Sister in Crime. I love this chapter and am one of the founding members.

I’ve only planned three booksignings at book stores and these are at independents, and at two of them I’ll be giving talks–which I believe works the best. I will be having a blog tour in September also. I’ll be presenting at two writers’ conferences–something I really enjoy.

As for my random thoughts, I’ve had a great time with the promoting part of being a writer. My husband and I have traveled to so many places we’d never have seen in order to attend mystery cons and other writing conferences–from Maui to Florida and lots of places in-between. On my own I’ve visited Alaska twice, and went to the Edgars in New York with a good writing friend–great experience. We’ve made wonderful friends all along the way. All-in-all, it’s been a most rewarding experience and I’m looking forward to even more.

Marilyn Meredith
http://fictionforyou.com