Tag Archive for: Murder Takes the Cake

A Rose by Any Other Name

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The good news: Murder Takes the Cake by Evelyn David will be published in May.

The bad news: Murder Takes the Cake by somebody else was published in September 2008 and Death Takes the Cake by yet another author was published in February 2009. Oy!

Book titles can’t be copyrighted.

The collective Evelyn David chose the title of our second book before it was ever written. We submitted synopses and titles for two other Sullivan Investigation mysteries back in 2006. And in case anyone is interested, we’ve got dibs (which is about as much legal protection as we can get) on An Outlet for Murder.

But I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Maybe we ought to consider some already established titles for forthcoming books. Would it increase our readership? For example:

Gone With the Wind
After a tornado touches down in Washington, DC, Mac Sullivan and Rachel Brenner investigate the case of a missing corpse. Whiskey searches for a box of missing dog biscuits. Are the two mysteries related?

A Tale of Two Cities
Mac Sullivan is from Washington, DC, but doesn’t know the birthplace of his Irish wolfhound, Whiskey. Will a cross-country tour of kennels unearth the mystery of Whiskey’s humble beginnings? And who is the corpse in the doghouse?

The Catcher in the Rye
Mac Sullivan has been hired by the Washington Nationals to find the star catcher of the team who was last spotted at a deli ordering a ham on…

Charlotte’s Web
Rachel Brenner’s best friend Charlotte has spun a web of deceit that’s already left two people dead. Mac and Whiskey race to unravel a intricately woven network of lies, while battling an infestation of black widow spiders.

Other suggestions?

Evelyn David

P.S. Sniff. Barbie shouldn’t make me cry, but this story, told by the Southern half of Evelyn David, made me reach for the box of tissues. Check it out for yourself, http://www.woofersclub.blogspot.com

Suspension of Disbelief

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I’m as eager as the next guy to suspend disbelief. In fact, I do so on a daily basis. My daughter is in college and I prefer to believe that she is in her room at 7:30 pm, diligently working on her term papers, then accept the alternative that she is blithely walking the streets of her inner city campus. Seems a reasonable leap of faith.

How about the time that my mother took me to see the opera, Samson and Delilah. I was so caught up in the soaring arias that I ignored the fact that Delilah, the Biblical siren, outweighed the puny baritone playing Samson by a good 125 pounds.

My willingness to put on hold my rational brain may explain why I’m the perfect person to write cozy mysteries. By definition, these traditional whodunnits demand that, at some level, you park your common sense at the door. Cozies celebrate Ms. Average Citizen, the only person in town, regardless of her profession, who can figure out the who, what, when, where, and how of a murder mystery that has confounded the police. One of the reasons we love these stories is we want to believe that in a pinch, each of us would step up to the plate and do what needs to be done, even if it means putting Sherlock Holmes to shame.

Murder Takes the Cake, the second in the Sullivan Investigations series, will be published in May and is now available for pre-order. When creating it, both halves of Evelyn David wanted to craft a mystery full of red herrings and clever clues, with enough humor to make you laugh out loud, while avoiding the Jessica Fletcher syndrome. Remember? Jessica, a mystery writer, lives in a small town in Maine where there is a murder a week. Amazing that housing values didn’t plummet when potential buyers looked at the crime rate.

My job as an author is to write a story with enough believable elements and characters that ring true that the reader is willing to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride. When the aria – or the mystery – is thrilling enough, that’s not hard to do.

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

A Dark Comedy

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It’s Tuesday night and I’m starting to feel the pressure of not having a blog written for Thursday. Thursdays are my responsibility! The Northern Half of Evelyn David has Mondays.

I got back from the Love Is Murder conference on Monday afternoon – it’s a long drive from Chicago to Oklahoma. I’m still a little punchy from staring at a highway for 13 hours. But the conference was wonderful and I enjoyed my time there. Picked up a few advance copies of Murder Takes the Cake. My co-author and I are using 90% of them to send out to reviewers. The official publication date is May, so even my mom is having to wait for a copy.

I had originally scheduled Tuesday off from my day job – you know, the job that pays the bills and allows me to write in the evenings and weekends? But since I’d been out of the office for a full week, lots of little annoying things were piling up. I’d received a half dozen calls from co-workers on Monday during my drive back. Nothing really critical, but all considered urgent by the callers. I decided that my week would be much smoother if I went to the office on Tuesday and got started weeding out my in-box.

I work for the Oklahoma Department of Mines running the Coal Mining division. We issue mining permits, enforce environmental regulations, and ensure that mined areas are reclaimed. With my biology degree in hand, I started as an inspector over twenty years ago. I think, as with most people, some days I love my job – others not so much. Today was one of those “not so much” days. A dear friend and co-worker is very ill. Except for a couple of scattered days, he’s been in one hospital or another since January 1. No one seems to know what’s wrong with him – all tests are negative but he’s experiencing severe lower back and abdominal pain. I’ve been picking up some of his supervisory duties while he’s been out, but we all miss him terribly.

The other major thing I’m dealing with concerns an upcoming office move. We have to vacate our current office by June 30 and, as of today, we haven’t nailed down new office space. Just in case the general public is unaware, there is almost nothing in the world harder and more unnecessarily complicated than moving an Oklahoma state agency office from one location to another. The only thing harder is closing an office. I spent at least three hours today discussing with a contractor, my immediate supervisor, my office manager, and the agency director the technical space requirements for state office building bathrooms, whether or not the square footage in bathrooms count towards our allowed office space, and how many bathrooms we were entitled to have. It was suggested … not by me … that we have one unisex bathroom in the new building and use the extra square footage for another private office. I don’t know how other people feel about unisex bathrooms in offices – but I’ll vote no every time. In fact I might have shouted to my direct supervisor over the telephone (a male whose office is in a large office building some 150 miles away from my small field office, a building that has multiple sets of male and female bathrooms on all floors) something like, “I’d give up every private office in the space before I’d give up having separate male and female bathrooms.” There was this stunned silence on the other end of the line after my outburst – I don’t think it ever crossed his mind that a unisex bathroom would be a problem.

Oh well … maybe Murder Takes the Cake will be a hit and I can give up my glamorous day job. My co-author suggested that I should try for a humorous blog this week, but I just don’t have it in me to be funny right now. Can you tell?

I’m in my living room writing this blog, surrounded by unpacked suitcases, tornado alerts blaring on the television (it’s a little early in Oklahoma for tornado season – but hey, it’s been one of those days), and I need to clean the leftovers out of my refrigerator. I also need to buy a fresh copy of Turbo Tax and do my taxes this weekend. Yea! Something to look forward to!

Funny – I need to think of something funny. I saw Rachel Getting Married on pay-per-view at the hotel in Chicago. It was billed as a dark comedy. That was half right. It was dark – very, very dark. I didn’t laugh even once, so I don’t count it as a comedy. Do you remember the movie Ordinary People? Rachel Getting Married was as much a comedy as that movie was!

So let’s see – I’ve covered travel, illness, tornados, taxes, unisex bathrooms, government bureaucracy, and bad movies.

I definitely need to find my way out of this week and get back to something cheerful – writing murder mysteries!

Evelyn David

Love is Murder – Friday Events

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My first day at the Love is Murder conference is winding down. Murder Takes the Cake and Missing showed up in the conference bookstore about noon. Believe me I was lurking in the hallway, waiting to catch a glimpse as soon as the bookseller put them on the table.

As I was counting the toes and fingers of my newborns (Just kidding but not much. Writing a book is like giving birth), Karen Syed of Echelon Press (my publisher) walked up and asked how I liked the cover. I told her the truth, I love the cover. Echelon does great covers. Whiskey is front and center again.

I had brought posters of all three books (Murder Off the Books, Murder Takes the Cake, and Missing). I put those out on a table with bookmarks. There were multiple panels on Friday afternoon, but I only had time to attend one, what with all the hallway lurking and carting promo materials from my room to the conference area. (Note to self – wear the running shoes tomorrow no matter what they look like with your suit.)

The panel I sat in on today was Power Marketing. Morgan Mandel moderated it. She did a wonderful job covering a large number of topics. Rosemary Harris, Joanna Campbell Slan, and Jennie Spallone were featured. Lots of info on blogging, making posters, and promo items was relayed.

There was a big signing event for Missing just before the dinner sponsored by Echelon authors. At least 10 or 11 of the 17 authors who contributed to the anthology were at one long table to sign copies for people who had purchased the book today. Proceeds from Missing are being donated to the National Center for Missing and Abused Children.

After dinner Centuries and Sleuths bookseller Auggie Aleksey read an essay on Sherlock Holmes.

One of my favorite authors – Jeffery Deaver was in the audience. He, along with Steve Berry and Sharan Newman, are the conference’s featured authors. Recently I read his latest, The Bodies Left Behind. Great book!

Tomorrow, I want to attend a panel at 9:00 am – The Doctor Is In – an emergency room doctor is going to offer some help with medical problems that come up in mysteries. The program mentioned “slides.” Can’t wait!

There’s a screenwriting panel at 10:00 am. I’d like to make that one too.

At 2:30 pm I’m on a panel concerning Collaborative Writing. I plan to explain how “Evelyn David” writes and why we’re able to make it work!

I’ve had a full day. Would love to end it with a viewing of the latest Battlestar Galactica but alas (writers can say “alas”) the hotel doesn’t get the Sci-Fi channel. Someone please email me at evelyndavid@evenlyndavid.com and tell me what happens in tonight’s episode!

I’ll be coming home with a few advace copies of Murder Takes the Cake. If you want one, contact us at the email address above. First come, first served. The scheduled publish date is May 2009.

Evelyn
http://www.evelyndavid.com

The Road to Love Is Murder – Part II

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A week from now I’ll be on the road to Chicago to the Love is Murder conference. It will probably be the second day of my drive – since I just can’t seem to make myself drive more than 6 or 7 hours in one stretch. Also weather will play into my travel plans. Snow and ice will move the start of my journey up a day.

For the past week I’ve been sorting through my promo items and figuring out clothes for the trip. I always pack too much and then I have to cart it all into the hotel with me. I found the Rosemont Hotel (where the conference was held the last few years) very warm even if the outside temps were subzero. My wool suit jackets were uncomfortable, but this year the conference has moved to a different hotel. Maybe I can wear the wool. Decisions … Decisions.

This week’s blogs on the Stiletto Gang have been about procrastination in one form or another. I’m good at procrastination too. I’ve got a half-dozen things I need to get done before I leave and instead I’m watching NetFlix movies. (The last season of Foyle’s War is now available).

Back to procrastination – when I really don’t want to do something I make a list about all the things I need to do. Somehow making the list makes me feel less guilty for not actually doing anything. I’m a good list maker. The first thing on my current list is to make a list for things I need to pack for Love is Murder.

I’m lucky enough to be on a Saturday panel about team writing. So on my to-do list I need to add “be sure and pack materials for the panel”: a copy of each of my books for display, as well as bookmarks and any give-away items I’m going to pass out to the panel audience. Usually three panels are running at any one time at Love is Murder, so you never know how large a crowd you’ll have – depends on the competition. For instance if John Grisham was appearing on a panel next door at the same time – even I would have a hard time listening to me!

I love mystery panels. Before (during and after) I was an author I was a reader. A big reader. I still get a thrill listening to some of my favorite authors speak – put Charlaine Harris and Nancy Pickard on the same panel and I’ll be in the front row every time. They’re fabulous writers, but also lots of fun to listen to. I met a new author, Rosemary Harris, last year at the conference. She’s a lovely person and I’m looking forward to seeing her again. She’s sponsoring a hospitality room this year to promote her new book, The Big Dirt Nap. Sounds like a gritty mystery, doesn’t it? I’m joking. Last year Rosemary gave me a pack of Daisy seeds as a promotion for her debut book, Pushing Up Daisies. Do you think this year she’ll … Just kidding, Rosemary. Anyway, I’ll be picking up a copy of her new book while I’m there.

That’s the other wonderful thing about attending conferences – besides meeting authors, you can find their latest books. Love is Murder has a book room and booksellers set up their wares on tables. Since I’m driving, I don’t have to worry about weighing down my suitcases with too many books and getting penalized by the airlines. Last year I came home with all of Charlaine Harris’s vampire series and her psychic series. I also purchased books by Luisa Buehler, Craig Johnson, and Margaret Maron.

Did I mention that Evelyn David will have two new books at Love Is Murder this year? We have a short story, Riley Come Home, in the Echelon anthology, Missing. We also are giving conference attendees an opportunity to purchase an advance copy of Murder Takes the Cake, the sequel to Murder Off the Books. Murder Takes the Cake’s official publication date is May 2009, but Echelon did a special printing just for Love Is Murder.

If you’re at the conference, hunt me down and I’ll sign a copy for you. I’ve also got some plastic “wedding ducks” to give away to buyers of the first twenty copies of Murder Takes the Cake. Hey, wedding ducks, that’s not something you see everyday!

Note to self: Add gaggle of ducks to list of things to pack.

More next week from the road!

Evelyn David

Keeping Faith

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I once watched a wonderful British mini-series, full of galloping horses, lush landscapes, and inevitably, class wars. Poor orphan girl comes to the home of her rich, foul-humored uncle, and must decide if she loves her sensitive boy cousin, his swashbuckling wastrel brother, or the stable hand who is poor but sincere. Leaving aside the issue of whether marrying your first cousin is a good idea, I, of course, was rooting for the poor stable hand. To my delight, after much bosom heaving and weeping, she ends up with the guy with no money – which is okay because she has enough for them both.

I promptly went out and read the books on which this mini-series was based – and they were absolutely wonderful. A few years later I was delighted to discover a sequel to this saga. But to my horror, the author had decided that class will out. She broke up the marriage of rich girl, poor boy, so that the society b**ch could marry within her own class – her newly-reformed rich cousin. Ugh.

As defined in the dictionary, a sequel is “a literary work, film, etc. complete in itself but continuing a story begun in an earlier work.” So while I’m the first to agree that an author has the right to do whatever she wants, for me, this particular writer betrayed the basic premise of the first books. We had a deal: true love trumps fancy schmancy class distinctions. She broke faith with her readers (or at least this one). It’s as if Margaret Mitchell wrote a sequel to Gone with the Wind and had Scarlett subdivide Tara into a housing development of McMansions. Or Thomas Harris penned a sequel where Hannibal Lecter became a vegetarian.

I love reading mystery series. It’s like meeting up with old friends. I want to know what has happened since the last time we were together. While I want a complete story that can stand on its own, I want to recognize the characters I’ve grown to love. I have no problem with personal growth in the characters, but they have to retain the essence of who they are. I promise when you read Murder Takes the Cake (due in May 2009), that the delightful Mac Sullivan, Rachel Brenner, and Whiskey are all back in prime form.

What’s the best – and the worst – sequel you’ve ever read (or saw if it was a movie)?

Evelyn David

The Art and Artistry of Wedding Gifts

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Weddings are on my mind. Of course, here’s where I’ll give the expected plug for the forthcoming, Murder Takes the Cake (May 2009) – which is fun, furry, and festive. But both in the fictional world and the real one, I’m awash in tulle and lace. In the last 12 months, I’ve hosted or attended four bridal showers, one engagement party, and two weddings. I’ve got two more weddings on the calendar in the next couple of weeks.

All of which means, besides dusting off my dancing shoes for the ceremonial, raucous hora (Israeli celebratory dance), I’m also spending a lot of time and money on wedding gifts. Part of me is envious, as I scan the bridal registries of the young couples. I wish that I could start over with new unchipped dishes and glasswear. I swear I’d still pick the same husband – but I’d like to replace my faded, thin towels, as well as my pilled, shrunken bottom sheets which pop off the mattress in the middle of the night.

Picking the right gift is always a delicate balancing act of taste and budget. The registries are much more elaborate today. Within days of getting engaged, I picked out, at my mother’s insistence, good china and silver – and in fact, got full services of both. But today, there are registries for the honeymoon, for gardening supplies, computer and electronic gifts, luggage, camping gear – you name it, somebody has registered for it.

But despite the often elaborate registries, I think every couple still receives at least one wedding gift that defies explanation. Ours was a silver-plated, four-quart teapot that rested on an elaborate, ornately carved ugly stand, and was engraved with the Greek letters of some fraternity. I still have it in the basement, waiting for the occasion when I host Queen Elizabeth and her family for tea.

Of course, no one owes you a gift and we need to remember to be grateful and gracious for the gesture and goodwill. But I read one story from a bride who recounted receiving a box of condoms as a wedding gift which seemed, pardon me, slightly tacky; or another who recalled the elaborately wrapped brick she received with a note that advised her to use it as a cornerstone when she built a house, which probably takes “practical” to a new level.

What’s your worst wedding gift ever?

Evelyn David

I Do, I Do!

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The collective Evelyn David is positively giddy to announce that Murder Takes the Cake, the sequel to Murder Off the Books, will be published May 2009. Giddy, I tell you.

Here’s a brief synopsis: The guest list is getting shorter and shorter, as the body count rises. Can Mac, Rachel, and Whiskey find the killer who wants to see the bride in red…blood red?

Weddings are on my mind. I’m hosting a bridal shower in a few weeks. While I’m not expecting anything sinister to happen, all this “till death do us part” stuff has made me sloppily sentimental about my own nuptials. Held in the middle of the summer, the temperature was about 110 in the shade, and the menu was caponette, a uniquely Baltimore kosher dish which was essentially chicken on steroids. My only nod to personalizing my wedding was to insist on a chocolate wedding cake. My mom made most (probably all) of the decisions since frankly I had no taste at that point in my life.

I do have wonderful memories of looking for a wedding dress. Mom insisted that we take my father along. As I have mentioned before, my Dad was, to put it lovingly, frugal. I guess Mom didn’t want to hear any financial hysteria when he got the bill. I tried on several gowns and Dad nixed each one, until I emerged from the dressing room in what was the most expensive dress of the group. He smiled and said, “that’s it” – and I felt like Cinderella at the ball. After the wedding, a dry cleaner “preserved for eternity” my dress. To be honest, I’m not sure why I saved it. I’m four inches shorter than my daughter and the puffy sleeves and empire waist would look ridiculous on her. As for the shoes, four children later, and my feet are two full sizes larger. But they’re upstairs in the attic as well.

Weddings today are big business. The average budget for a wedding is $28,000+ (or a fabulous downpayment on a home!). In the U.S., that translates to an annual $40 billion industry. There are wedding coordinators (versus my cousin Suzi who stood at the back of the synagogue and whispered, “go” when she thought it was the right moment for each of the attendants to move). Photographers still capture every moment, but now there are videographers as well. I have mixed feelings about videotaping weddings. While it’s true you capture every second of the big event, that also means that certain moments that memory will eventually blur to less-than-mortifying status, are now captured forever in living color on tape.

We’re adding a wedding stories page to our website (www.evelyndavid.com). Please share your favorite, funniest, or even murderous memory of your special day.

Evelyn David

After “The End”

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“The End.”

The sense of euphoria lasted about 24 hours after the Northern half of Evelyn David typed those magic words. She claimed it was her turn since I’d typed them for Murder Off the Books.

What my family and friends all refer to as “The Book” is done. Our manuscript for Murder Takes the Cake is finished!

Hurrah!

Now it’s time for the nitty-gritty part of writing—self editing and formatting the manuscript.

Yea! Not!

We’re in a dash to slash passive verbs, count the dots in ellipses, and conduct a head count of all our plot bunnies. We need to objectively examine each scene and decide if it’s necessary. Does it add to the plot; provide an important clue or red herring; give depth to a character? Or, as we sometimes discover, is a scene just useless padding, words that increase the page count without offering any other added value.

We also need to prepare the manuscript in the right format. That means literally going through every sentence to be sure that we have doubled-spaced after each period, question mark, and exclamation point. Why not just use the search and replace function? Because sometimes a sentence is enclosed within quotation marks, so a double space after a period doesn’t belong. As the Northern half often says, Oy!

This is not the fun part for me. This is like cleaning the kitchen after cooking and enjoying an elaborate feast. It has to be done, but it’s not fun.

Both halves of Evelyn David have reread “The Book” from start to finish at least four times over the past couple of days. The Northern half’s husband was the first to read the full draft. He gave it a thumbs-up and advised us on our hard liquor choices for the book. We needed an expensive malt whiskey for our plot. I didn’t have a clue. Me? I’m a connoisseur of wine coolers. Smirnoff’s Green Apple Bite is my alcoholic beverage of choice. For some reason I haven’t been able to envision a scene where “Mac Sullivan,” a retired D.C. police detective orders a Green Apple Bite.

We’ll read “The Book” a dozen times more before we show it to a couple of eagle-eyed friends for proof-reading. Tonight, I’m hoping to get through about 5 chapters before giving my eyes a rest from the computer screen, then I’ll pass the book (electronically) back to the New York half. We’ll continue to work off of one copy now that we’re in the home stretch.

As I told a group at the Will Rogers Public Library in Claremore, Oklahoma on Monday night, writing a book is like riding a bicycle. By the time you’re coasting down the hill, enjoying two full minutes of the wind blowing your hair and reveling in your well-deserved sense of accomplishment, you forget the long days of pedaling up the slope. You forget the excruciating leg cramps, the painful blisters, the heat of the sun beating down on your head, the sharp rocks in your shoes, the multiple flat tires, and …. Well you get the idea.

Anyone for a bike ride?

Evelyn David