Tag Archive for: 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

As Bees in Honey Drown

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On Saturday, the family traveled in a driving rainstorm to Philadelphia to see As Bees in Honey Drown. Our daughter was the director. Proud Mama that I am, give me a moment to kvell. The play was marvelous; the casting sublime; the costumes, set design, music, in fact, all the artistic decisions were creative, brilliant, and so clever that Steven Spielberg might want to put my daughter on speed dial. In other words, the afternoon was a clear the bases hit.

Beyond all questions of maternal pride, the play was also thought-provoking. It asked: what would you do for fame and fortune? How much of yourself would you sell in exchange for at least fifteen minutes, if not more, of fame? The protagonist is a newly-published author. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. His book has gotten good reviews – but the financial payoff has been minimal. Hmmmm, also sounds familiar. (Brief BSP interruption – have you seen the review of Murder Takes the Cake in the Midwest Book Review????!!!!)

Okay, back to the discussion.

We first meet Evan Wyler (a pen name – hmmm), at a photo shoot where he is directed to take off his shirt – so he’ll appear “hot.” Hmmm, okay, not so familiar. I think it’s safe to say that neither half of Evelyn David has been asked to look “hot” for a promo shot…but you get the idea. Evan wants to wear a v-neck sweater leaning on a pile of books by Proust; the photographer knows that sex sells.

The plot, alternately serious and hilarious, follows Evan’s adventures and misadventures as big bucks are dangled in front of him at the cost of his sense of self and personal ethics. He whines that despite spending nine years writing his well-received novel, he still scrambles to pay the rent each month. Offered the opportunity to write a movie of Alexa Vere de Vere’s life for $1,000 a week, he’s eager to sign on despite the fact that he knows immediately that at least part of the tale she is spinning is an outrageous lie. Hollywood beckons.

So would I sell out for fame and fortune? Um, yes, faster than a New York minute.

No, no – I didn’t mean that. Sure the money was momentarily blinding; the photo spread I envisioned in People Magazine was tempting (tops on, of course). But I’d like to think I recognize what’s important in life and the inevitable cost when you trade ethics for dollars or power or even that photo shoot in People.

There’s always a fine line between promotion and selling-out. For that matter, there’s a fine line between promotion and boring people to death as you try to publicize your book. But as both halves of Evelyn David gear up for marketing Murder Takes the Cake, we’ll keep As Bees in Honey Drown in mind (and our tops on!).

Evelyn David

Don’t Knock on the Glass!

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“Don’t Knock on the Glass!” That was the sign taped to the emergency room office window. I stared at it for about six hours on Friday. No one knocked on the glass during the whole time I was there. I guess the sign worked.

I saw a lot as I waited for news about my father’s condition. He’d had some chest pains earlier in the day and we brought him directly from a doctor’s office to the emergency room. He was taken behind the electronic doors into the locked ER exam rooms and hooked up to a heart monitor – while I parked the car in the nearest open parking space – about a half mile away on the other side of the hospital.

My mother stayed in the locked unit with my father and I stayed in the waiting room. There was a second sign, this one taped to the wall by the locked doors, warning, “One visitor per adult patient, two visitors per child patient. You must have a pass to enter exam area.” This sign didn’t work so well.

During my time in the waiting room, that visitor rule was regularly violated. Once I counted eight visitors for one guy. His wife, three kids in the middle school age range, plus her sister who had a couple of babies hanging on her, plus a mother-in-law, all went into to the unit without a pass. They just waited for someone to exit the unit and then while the doors were still open, went in. The kids came in and out with regularity as they made trips to the vending machines down the hallway and then back into the locked unit. No one ever challenged them.

You can learn a lot just by watching. I sat in a seat where I could see into the unit when the doors opened. Sometimes my mom would appear and give me the thumbs up signal and I would nod at her before the doors would close. One time an anxious forty-something man stood in the doorway with his weeping daughter hovering just to the side. By standing in the doorway, he kept the doors from closing. He stood there, trying to catch a glimpse of his son. Minutes before he’d been talking to the nurses behind the glass about his twenty-four-year-old son who had just been brought in by ambulance.

I know the son was twenty-four because the father’s voice carried as he said, “He’d been with his son twenty-four years ago when he was born in this hospital and if he was dying, he wanted to be with him now.” Without expression, the nurse behind the glass said the son wasn’t in the computer system yet and the man would just have to wait. It would be about twenty minutes. Another nurse in the unit – I could see her through the open door – told the father that the young man was behind curtain twelve. The nurse behind the glass ignored her and repeated to the father that his son wasn’t in the system yet and she didn’t know where he was. The anxious man turned angry and tried to get the two nurses to talk to each other. No go. All this while the kids with their vending machine loot were going back and forth around the man, through the open doors.

After about five minutes of this, two uniformed city cops appeared (called by the nurse behind the glass). They approached the man, demanding answers. “What’s your problem, buddy? Why are you creating a disturbance?”

The father never raised his voice, but he never backed down either. He told them he only wanted to be with his dying son. That he’d done nothing wrong; nothing to warrant the staff calling the police.

I heard one cop say, “They wouldn’t have called us, if you’d done nothing.”

I wanted to raise my hand and offer supporting testimony, but wisely refrained from getting involved.

Finally, a third nurse came out of the unit and joined the cops and the distraught family. She seemed very annoyed with the demanding father and abruptly dismissed his concerns about his son. She told him and the cops, “He not dying. He’s sitting up and alert.” She then walked away.

Why in the world that information about the son’s condition couldn’t have been shared with the family ten minutes earlier is beyond my powers of imagination. For some reason, the nursing staff didn’t want this patient’s family with him – maybe it was a drug overdose or some other reason they needed time alone with the patient. But instead of telling the family the truth, they blatantly lied and said they didn’t know where the patient was. All that angst was so unnecessary.

A family came in with a very frail appearing, elderly woman. She was in a wheelchair, being pushed by her sixty-something Stetson-wearing son and his wife. The elderly woman’s husband was beside her, very unsteady on his feet. The son and his mother were admitted beyond the electronic doors, while the rest of the family waited outside. Later the son came out, asked the wife to take his father down to the coffee shop, telling them he’d join them in a few minutes while the mother was receiving some tests. About twenty minutes later the son reappeared and headed down the hallway to the coffee shop.

Maybe ten minutes after that the elderly woman was wheeled out by a nurse and parked in front of a television. I guess they needed the space in the locked unit, and decided to leave her to wait for her tests in the waiting room. But her family wasn’t there anymore. The woman got up from her wheelchair and shuffled two steps forward. I just knew she was going to fall. Before I could intervene, a middle-aged woman and her preteen son, who appeared to be leaving the hospital, stopped in front of the woman. I think the elderly woman had asked them where the ladies room was. I heard the middle-aged woman say it was quite a distance, down the hallway and around the corner. The old woman looked desperate. Before either woman could say anything else, the young boy, without any prompting, offered to wheel the elderly woman’s chair to the restroom door. The elderly woman gratefully accepted his help. His mother smiled and went with them. The kid couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, but he got my hero of the day award!

You can see a lot when you sit in a emergency room for hours and watch the people. One woman was wheeled into the emergency room by paramedics. She was curled up in a wheelchair, sitting on her feet, doubled over in pain. She was probably in her early 40s. She was yelling about her chest hurting. The paramedics parked her outside the glassed-in office and left. The nurse behind the glass was not impressed. After about ten minutes of the woman wailing about her chest hurting – instead of answering the nurse’s admittance questions – the woman was moved into the locked exam room area. Ten minutes later, she was wheeled out and left in the waiting room. She continued to vocalize her distress, sometimes screaming, sometime moaning, but always doubled-over in her chair. This went on and on. Everyone in the waiting room was watching the woman; pregnant women with scared toddlers, elderly people fearful of what was to come, and family members wondering how “their” loved one was being treated.

I’m guessing the screaming woman was a frequent flyer and maybe she was in some stage of withdrawal. Or maybe she was in need of mental health treatment. Either way, I was shocked that the staff would leave her in the waiting room. Numerous doctors, nurses, and aides walked by the woman but never slowed. I wondered what would happen if I called 911 on my cell phone and reported there was a woman in distress. Probably nothing since the paramedics were the ones to transport her to the hospital in the first place.

The kids made another trip for soda pop and candy.

I’d had enough. I went and stood in front of the nurses’ station and stared at the employees behind the glass.

I didn’t knock.

I waited until they acknowledged my existence. Took at least five minutes.

When they asked me what I needed, I told them I’d like an update on my father’s condition – that he’d been there a couple of hours and I was sure he was in their system.

The nurse-in-charge smiled and handed me a pass.

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

P.S. The standard of care in the emergency room was matched by the rest of the hospital. Four long days later my father checked himself out of the hospital. He’d been observed, monitored, and stress tested. His blood was tested. He saw his assigned hospital staff doctor twice in the four days. Once when he was first checked into his hospital room and once more on day two for about five minutes. The last day, after waiting for more than eight hours for his doctor to appear and discuss his test results, he’d had enough too. He went home.

Easter Time and the Eating is Good

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As I read Marian’s blog on Monday, I got to thinking about the upcoming Easter festivities that will take place here this coming Sunday. We do the eggs, too, but rather than eat them and enjoy them with the meal, we’ll color them, hide them, stick them in the refrigerator after they’re found, and eventually, make egg salad in a week or so when it becomes apparent that nobody who unearthed an egg would ever eat it unless I doctored it up with mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

And while I’m sure there are some wonderful culinary traditions for Easter that exist in many families, we don’t have one that I recall. Which is why I’ll be crashing Marian’s Passover dinner. (Just kidding. You can’t write about food like that and not expect me to covet an invitation.) Our family thought we had the tradition of roasted spring lamb but apparently it was a culinary tradition that left some family members cold. Sure, Mom would roast a leg of lamb when we were children, but it has come to light that many of the family members do not like leg of lamb with the exception of me and Mom, and most would prefer something else. This became apparent ten years ago on Easter Sunday when I gave birth to Patrick, child number two. Although I expected to be with the family around the table for the celebration, I was in labor. Mom had bought the biggest leg of lamb she could find—just for me (!) as I’m constantly reminded—and then I didn’t attend, having a baby taking precedent over my dining on lamb with mint jelly. (Which, I assure you, was so much better than the post-labor ziti and ginger ale I was served by a very surly orderly who wondered why I was so hungry at seven in the morning.) So, I find myself with the task of having to make up for the Easter where “we had to eat lamb and you weren’t even there.” Remember, we’re Irish Catholics. We hold grudges.

This year, Dad wants filet mignon. Mom wants lamb. Husband will eat whatever I serve. We have an assortment of children between the ages of two and fifteen who have their own mealtime idiosyncrasies with at least one vegetarian and one chocoholic in the mix and another who joneses for Diet Coke like it’s nobody’s business and would eschew food in favor of carbonated beverages. Henceforth, I’ve decided to go with what we affectionately call the “combination plate” here at Chez Barbieri: filet mignon, lamb chops, mashed potatoes, a variety of vegetables, a meatless ziti, and a lasagna. Oh, and bread! Because if there is nothing that pleases this crowd more, it’s bread, more bread, and lots of butter.

See, here’s the thing: we’ve all supposed to have been doing some sort of fasting and abstinence for the last forty days of Lent, the holy season that precedes Easter. Sunday’s upcoming Bacchanalian festival of eating, otherwise known as a very holy day in the Christian faith, is intended to make up for how hungry you ostensibly are or should be. This tradition dates back to ancient times and is supposed to usher in our season of planting and harvest (did I get that right?). But let’s face it—how many of us are ever truly hungry? We may get a hunger pang that indicates “oh, it’s lunch time” but for many of us, true hunger is not something we experience on a regular basis. That’s something I’ll think about as I serve more food than my ten guests could ever eat and give thanks for the bounty that our country affords us.

As far as I’m concerned, everyone should just be happy with the spread, and I promise you, they will be. If they know what’s good for them.

Maggie Barbieri

Unwelcome Interruptions

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Spring. It’s here.

I think.

It wasn’t here on the weekend – 6 inches of snow – but the temps in the high 60s during the day on Monday took care of any lingering chill.

As I write this blog – while watching Dancing with the Stars – the weather guys break into the show. Darn, I won’t get to see Shawn Johnson or that Sex in the City actor dance. Note: I’m pulling for Rodeo Rider Ty to win. I’m guessing Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend or the Microsoft guy will be the next voted off the dancing island.

Back to the weather. In Oklahoma nothing is certain as far as weather is concerned. Snow, rain, high winds, tornados – all in the last four days. The weather guys are on the tv screen. They don’t dance. Okay, maybe some dancing around the subject. They are talking amongst themselves since their storm spotters don’t have any good footage to send them. The consensus seems to be that even though the National Weather Service has issued the “Tornado Warning” (as opposed to a mere “Tornado Watch”) the local guys don’t really expect any tornados. But, with the “Tornado Warning” out, it’s current policy for all the network channels in Oklahoma to cut from the normal programming to the high tech weather forecast centers. We’re treated to the Doppler radar map and storm tracking projections. I might get rain in about two hours. Sigh.

Wait! Now they say the warning is going to expire! Yes! Yes! Now I can at least see Medium! Or most of it. Seems it’s already started. As the weather guys fade from sight, Alison is having her opening dream sequence. The dream thing is my least favorite thing about the show – I know it’s just a plot device for showing her psychic visions, but I don’t care for it. Makes me tired for her. She never gets a good night’s sleep, between her dreams and her kids. Hey, is there a show on television with better child actors than Medium? If there is, I haven’t seen it.

My co-author and I have several “works in progress” featuring psychics. One of them actually has no dogs or cats. Bet you thought we couldn’t write anything without four-legged furballs in it! Good psychic mysteries are harder to write than you might think. Your psychic hero or heroine can’t get so much information from his or her sixth sense that the mystery is solved before it even gets started. The psychic clues have to be vague enough to leave room for the reader to get involved in the detecting, otherwise it’s not really a mystery. I love Charlaine Harris’s “The Grave Secrets” series. That psychic finds dead bodies. That’s pretty much her whole bag of tricks so far. As with any good series, the characters grow and change. I can’t wait to read her next one.

Medium is about half finished. The weather guys claim they are only interrupting commercials. Right! They are slow to get back to normal programming from each commercial and I’m missing the first few seconds of the show. Sigh. Reminds me of when I was living with my parents. My dad is the consummate channel surfer. He hates commercials with a passion. If you watch television with him, be prepared to miss part of your show after every channel break ends. He usually overestimates the length of the commercials and is slow to surf back to his starting place.

I’ve lost the thread of this episode. Maybe this blog too. The interruptions add up and it’s easy to lose track.

Which reminds me of plots and subplots, present and past, dreams and reality – too much switching back and forth can lose your readers. I hate time shifts in books and film. But that’s a subject for another day.

It’s raining outside. Medium is over.

Wonder who scored the lowest on Dancing with the Stars?

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

Paul Newman Rocks

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Swoon.

I don’t often get to swoon about my day job, but this time…sigh.

I’m writing a Young Adult biography of Paul Newman. Other than writing mysteries, does it get any better than penning the life and times of the man with the piercing blue eyes?

The younger generation may only recognize Paul Newman as the face of organic popcorn. Although there is a whole generation under the age of six who recognize Newman as the voice of Doc Hudson from the animated mega-hit, Cars.

I’ve just started the research, but as I wrote in my book proposal, this is a man who was constantly reinventing himself. He was an actor, director, racecar driver, political activist, businessman, philanthropist, humanitarian. He took his love of cooking and transformed it into a hugely profitable business that donates ALL profits to charities. I knew about Newman’s Hole in the Wall camps for children with cancer, but was touched by the story of donating a bus to the Hope Rural School in Indiantown, Florida so that the children of migrant workers, who too easily slip through the educational cracks, could safely get to a school that was created to meet the needs of families on the move.

I envision spending hours watching – and rewatching – Paul Newman movies. I know. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it! While he once took out an ad apologizing for what he thought was his wretched movie debut in The Silver Chalice (and I confess I haven’t seen it), who could forget him as Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus (could those eyes get any bluer?), Brick Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (ooooh, the unadulterated sex appeal and probably my favorite film), and Henry Gondorff in The Sting (Paul Newman in an undershirt, swoon)? The range of the man was phenomenal, but the range of his humanitarian outreach was even more extraordinary.

He wasn’t a saint, often drank too much, met more than his share of heartache. What I find fascinating is Newman’s ability to tackle life head on – and bounce back when he failed. I am impressed by his acknowledgment that it takes hard work to succeed. “I had no natural gift to be anything,” he insisted. “I’ve worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me.” I like the idea that he had a second, third, even fourth acts in his life, taking new risks and enjoying new challenges.

The next six months will be a hectic time alternating between the murder and mayhem of the third book in the Sullivan Investigations series – and learning more about the man whose nickname was King Cool.

Swoon.

Evelyn David

March Madness

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I usually don’t watch sports on television – I make an exception for March Madness and the women’s tournament.

I got my first basketball in the sixth grade. I loved playing. I would have loved playing on a team even more, but that was back before schools believed they had to provide equal sports opportunities for girls. Some schools offered basketball for girls, most did not. The grade school I attended didn’t think it was necessary. The sixth grade boys had a team that competed with other schools. The sixth grade girls got to play basketball at recess. Big whoop. That was 1971.

On June 23, 1972, things changed. Title IX was enacted. The new federal law stated, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

In other words, “Schools, if you want federal money, stop discriminating based on sex.”

The biggest area of discrimination? Sports.

In 1972, the school I attended had a girls’ basketball program.

We didn’t get the facilities, the locker rooms, the uniforms, the playing times, or any of the extras that the boys’ teams took for granted, but we had a team. And after having nothing before, we were ecstatic.

Today, I look at how far women’s sports programs have come and I’m very envious. All kinds of opportunities are out there for girls of all ages. Even with schools cutting back because of budget constraints, if they offer boys sports, they have to offer girls sports. There have been many challenges to the law, many disputes over what constitutes equal, and many complaints over adding girls sports if it meant cutting a boys’ sport in order to be able to fund a sport for the girls. And what the schools can’t afford, private organizations can and do. Girls’ softball, volleyball, tennis, fencing, and yes, even basketball community or club leagues are common

Are men’s and women’s sports treated equally? Are they equally funded? Equally supported by their communities? No. But I have hope that someday they will be. We have come a long way since 1972.

As I write this blog, I think of one of my heroes, Pat Summitt, the University of Tennessee women’s basketball head coach. She started as an assistant coach at the university in 1974, having grown up during the time when girls’ sports was an oddity, not a given. A lot of the respect women’s basketball has achieved in the last 34 years has been due to Pat Summitt’s efforts.

The other night I watched her mostly freshman team lose in the first round to Ball State. Although the Tennessee team and coach were visibly disappointed, along with the pundits and fans, I couldn’t help but think how lucky they were. Win or lose, their destiny is determined, not by their gender, but by talent, hard work, and desire.

March Madness? Sure. Sixty-four teams of talented, athletic, smart young women playing a team sport, their games broadcast on national television.

Quite a change from the time when girls were lucky to touch a basketball at recess.

Bring on the madness.

Evelyn David

P.S. – New interview with both halves of Evelyn David is up at Ask Wendy – The Query Queen’s blog – Check it out – Ten Questions by Ask Wendy – The Query Queen

Evelyn David interview http://tinyurl.com/EvelynDavidinterview

The Mating Game

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Listening to son number three rant about the dating scene made me realize that even if it’s been a million years since I was unattached, first dates are still the pits.

A recent example.

He’d met an interesting woman who was a friend of a friend of a friend. They’d chatted by phone, exchanged a couple of emails, and agreed to meet for a drink. This generation – and I just aged myself by a hundred years, but at least I didn’t refer to them as the young un’s – don’t want to invest any real time or money in a first date. You meet in a public location, just for drinks or coffee so it’s a limited time frame, and if worse comes to worse, you check your Blackberry and announce that you have to go back to work because of an unexpected crisis. Who’s going to argue in this economy when work calls?

From what I understand, the meet and greet over beers went well, they shared a few laughs, discovered they both like films, and before the evening ended, agreed to go to a movie.

Danger, Will Robinson.

The movie you choose can mean the difference between marriage and a lonely life of celibacy.

Ever the gentleman (I raised him well), he permitted the young woman to choose the flick. Now, if I had been advising her, there are a couple of parameters I would have suggested in choosing a film for a first date.

1. Skip all Chick flicks.
We may all be able to recite verbatim numerous scenes from Steel Magnolias and have the soggy tissues to show for it, but if the movie has the girl dying for love, it’s a pass for a first or even fifth date.

2. Pass on any movie with subtitles.
Sure there are lots of fabulous films made in Japan, Italy, France – but at this point, you’d like subtitles for what your date really means when he says, “I’ll call you.”

3. Avoid at all costs any films that have an IMPORTANT message.
AKA, you’ll walk out depressed because life sucks and there’s no point in even hoping that there is a happy ending to, well, anything because men are pigs.

Here’s what happened. They met at 9:30 pm for a quick coffee and cupcake. So far, so good. Sure it’s late for me, but they’re young. The movie was at 10 and it was a World War II movie in a frozen tundra with Nazis – not a lot of laughs to say the least. In fact, not only did many of the good guys die in the film, but the epilogue then made clear that even those who survived suffered more tragedies in life.

As he pointed out, you’re not supposed to end a first date thoroughly depressed. Since it was midnight and both had early meetings for work the next day, they parted within fifteen minutes — never to meet again.

What the worst first date you ever had?

Evelyn David

P.S. We’ve been Kindle-d. Murder Off the Books is now available in Kindle format. Murder Takes the Cake will not be published in paperback until May, but is already available in Kindle format. TechnologyRUs!

Library Love

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As my co-author and I are gearing up to promote the May publication of Murder Takes the Cake, we’re discussing our favorite way to reach mystery readers and sell books – events at public libraries.

When you give a presentation in a library, your audience is filled with people who love books, love talking about books, and want nothing more than to hear what you have to say. Some even have dreams of writing their own books. Your family may have grown weary of hearing about your writing, but go to a library and you have a room full of fresh ears.

On more than one occasion, I’ve found that a one hour event has turned into two as audience members ask questions about the books and the road to publication. That’s the best part – the questions. You never know what someone is going to ask. During my first library presentation I got a question from an elderly woman. She declared that she’d buy my book if I could assure her that no animals or people got killed in it. I told her no animals were killed but that it was a murder mystery …. The audience laughed, even the questioner.

This year “Evelyn David” will be offering “talks” on crafting mysteries, developing characters, and writing a series. We have presentations suitable for all ages and a few just for teens. We try to provide handouts – bookmarks, lists of “how-to-write” books, and a list of links to on-line writers’ groups. The door prize drawing is always a hit.

If an author is scheduled to speak at a library in your home town, go and check it out. You’ll have fun, find something interesting to read, and lend some much needed support to your local library system.

And if you’re a librarian in Oklahoma or New York (or a surrounding state) and would like a guest speaker, send us an email at evelyn@evelyndavid.com If you’ll check at our website in our “Libraries Hall of Fame,” you can see which libraries we’ve visited in the last two years. We’re setting our speaking schedule for the summer and fall of 2009 now and we’d love to add you to that list!

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com/

How Frugal Are You?

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The economy is in the pits, the publishing business has gone south, and it doesn’t take long to balance my checkbook since there’s not much in there …yadda, yadda, yadda.

I know I’m preaching to the choir.

Like most people, I’m thinking long and hard about every purchase and eliminating many of the extras in our daily lives. My husband is packing his lunch most days. I brew my own rather than indulging in an over-priced cup of coffee from the local Starbucks. We’re borrowing DVDs from the library rather than renting from Blockbuster. In a two-fer, I do most of my errands on foot which saves gas and is actually a healthy move for a sedentary writer. We eat enough chicken that cluck is our second language. I’m still buying books – but there’s a certain self-interest in contributing to the publishing industry.

I’ve also spent way too much time searching the Internet for web sites that will tell me how to be more frugal. To be honest, it’s just a cheap procrastination technique, but I have learned a thing or two. Many sites offer great coupons for discounts on everything from groceries to clothing to auto repairs. I won’t go to a store without checking to see if there is a coupon available.

Most of these sites also have tips on how to cut your living expenses to the bone. Brand loyalty? Pffft – a thing of the past. To be honest, I’m willing to use generics for most products – heck even on pharmaceuticals. But I like Tide Laundry Detergent and Bounty Paper Towels. I feel ashamed to even admit that I’m spending $$$ on these hyper-advertised products. I know I could be making my own laundry detergent with a little washing soda, Borax and Fels Naptha soap. But that’s not going to happen. I know I shouldn’t use paper towels regardless of the brand in order to save the environment. Sigh. It’s hard to be cheap, environmentally conscious, and lazy.

What’s the biggest change you’ve made to save $$$ since the economy imploded? Is there anything you just can’t give up, even if there is a cheaper alternative?

Evelyn David