Priorities

Which do I choose?
Finishing up a chapter of my book, or going with a stressed-out friend for moral support as she discusses surgical options with her doctor?
Of course, I chose the friend.
But what about picking up my mother-in-law from the airport or finishing the chapter?
Spending scarce time with my usually-on-the-road husband or finishing the chapter?
Solving a mini-crisis for my mother or finishing the chapter?
Dealing with yet another detail following my brother's death or finishing the chapter?
Sometimes I feel like it's all too much, these demands. Other times I feel like I'm using them mainly to help me avoid writing.
Which is it? Good girl who can't say no? Or lazy author looking for an excuse?
Priorities.
I'll let you know when I figure out what mine are.

Days Go By

Has it really been a month--more!--since I've written a word on this blog? So much for the immediacy of the Internet. I keep drifting back to the old-school, pen-and-ink journal. It's just more satisfying to feel my ballpoint sliding across paper, my scrawl barely keeping up with my thoughts. It's better than sitting here, tap-tap-tap, click-click-click, watching the cursor blink when I stop to gather my thoughts.
Better to be out somewhere in the fresh air, maybe sitting with a beer or a cup of tea, staring at the ocean waves or the palm fronds rippling in the breeze. Now, that's inspiration.
Had a couple of weeks' vacation, exploring Holland by bicycle. It was great, even more so to have 15 days in the same time zone with my TV reporter husband. No interruptions. No breaking news. Well, OK, there was some message-checking and e-mailing on the Crackberry (his, not mine. I could go a million years without catching up electronically).
We loved the Netherlands, though. Great food, beautiful countryside, nice people. Everyone spoke English, making us feel, once again, like ignorant Americans. One tiny quibble: What's with the brutal wind? On bikes, it was like riding into that famous picture, "The Scream.'' Of course, we should have known. Their national symbol is the WINDmill, after all.
Duh.
Ignorant Americans!

A Hand Up

It struck me last weekend at Sleuthfest, how generous many of my fellow mystery writers are. They're willing to share writing and marketing tips, inside info about the biz, gossip about which editors and agents are good--and which are bad. It's really a welcoming community.
Not that the journalists of my prior life aren't nice people, too (well, some of them, anyway). And it's not that there aren't egomaniacs and narcissists in the fiction community. I'm thinking of one moderator in particular, who walked all over her panelists, making THEIR panel all about HER! She must not have read The Moderator's Manifesto, the instructions all of us who agreed to run a panel received.
To wit: "The panel is about the panelists, not about the moderator. That's why it's called a panel.''
But, for the most part, these are genuinely nice and giving folks. Starting with Linda Fairstein, the hotshot NYC prosecutor-turned-mystery writer who was the keynote speaker, all the way down to the local members of Mystery Writers of America/Fla. Chapter, the conference host ... all seem ready to offer a hand to those still finding their way.
It's refreshing, especially in these times of the cut-throat contests on Survivor, and the slash-and-burn competitors on Donald Trump's Apprentice.
I hope I never feel I have to climb over somebody else to achieve success.

Conventioneering

Just back from Miami Beach, where Sleuthfest is being held this year. The annual convention of mystery writers is quite a trip: cat lady cozy authors to dark thriller types. A real mix. I guess I'm closer to the cat ladies ... though I'm not wild about cats. I'm definitely not in the dark thriller camp: serial killers, abducted kids, plots to blow up whatever. I had enough of that stuff as a news reporter. Give me light and fluffy in my mystery fiction, any day.
I wish MAMA AND THE MURDERER was already out ... the convention is a good chance to promote your book, get the buzz going. A year-and-a-half away is a bit too disant to really promote (and, from what everyone says, promotion is what it's all about.)
Still, did a couple of panels, met a few nice folks, had a few cocktails. Can't ask for more than that.
Plus, I got a nifty little badge to wear: HELLO, my name is Deborah! I'm a conventioneer!

The Tragedy Biz

Such sadness unfolding in the news today, a day after the shooting at Virginia Tech that took 30-plus lives ....
It's moments like this I'm truly grateful to be out of the news business. This is the type of story that news organizations throw staff at. All hands on deck. I'd probably be there for USA Today. Or, if not there, then somewhere else linked to the story: the living room of a family in Florida, grieving over their lost child; at Columbine or the Amish school or some other site made sacred by a mass slaying; at some other college campus where kids are scared and the media is asking the question ... could it happen here?
It's weird that I don't feel even a twinge of "missing out'' on covering such a big story. I'm just relieved I don't have to do it, absorbing one more time all that grief and loss and pain.
I can turn to my little mystery novels, where I get to decide the endings. Where no one truly suffers. Where good wins out.
Fiction.