Samhain Publishing

Genre: Gay-Lesbian Romance, Romantic Suspense

Holmes & Moriarity, Book 2

ISBN: 978-1-60928-200-4

Length: Novel

Price: 5.50

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BLURB:

Giving screwball mystery a whole deadly new meaning.

A murderous fall down icy stairs is nearly the death of Anna Hitchcock, the much-beloved “American Agatha Christie” and Christopher Holmes’s former mentor. Anna’s plea for him to host her annual winter writing retreat touches all Kit’s sore spots—traveling, teaching writing classes, and separation from his new lover, J.X. Moriarity.

For J.X., Kit’s cancellation of yet another romantic weekend is the death knell of a relationship that has been limping along for months. But that’s just as well, right? Kit isn’t ready for anything serious and besides, Kit owes Anna far too much to refuse.

Faster than you can say “Miss Marple wears boxer shorts”, Kit is snooping around Anna’s elegant, snowbound mansion in the Berkshires for clues as to who’s trying to kill her. A tough task with six amateur sleuths underfoot. Six budding writers with a tangled web of dark undercurrents running among them.

Slowly, Kit gets the uneasy feeling that the secret may lie between the pages of someone’s fictional past. Unfortunately, a clever killer is one step ahead.

Warning: Contains one irascible, forty-year-old mystery writer who desperately needs to get laid, one exasperated thirty-something ex-cop only too happy to oblige, an isolated country manor that needs the thermostat cranked up, various assorted aspiring and perspiring authors, and a merciless killer who may have read one too many mystery novels.

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EXCERPT:

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I write a number of reasonably successful series, including the popular Adrien English gay mysteries. One question I’m frequently asked is whether I know I’m writing a series when I begin the first book.

The answer is…most of the time, yes. I knew when I began Somebody Killed His Editor it would be the first in a new series. The books revolve around a former bestselling mystery author who is dumped by his partner and his publisher the same year he turns forty. I knew that besides solving a murder in each book, Christopher Holmes would be working out the mysteries of his own life, including a new relationship with a younger and more successful lover. The first three books arranged themselves in my mind. I could see the whole beginning arc of what I hope will turn out to be a reasonably long and entertaining series.

But when I started Mummy Dearest, I had no idea it would be the first in a series. It was originally planned as a one off pairing in a two-author Halloween anthology. The story was intended to be lighthearted and romantic, more funny than scary although I tried to put in a creepy moment or two. But when I turned it into my editor, she liked it a lot and suggested it would work as the first book in a series.

Now you might think I instantly jumped at the idea, but in fact I had to think about it for a little bit. Was there enough of a story premise to carry through for five books or more? Did my two main characters have enough of a potential in both their relationship and their personal growth? If the answer to any of those questions is no, then to my way of thinking, there really isn’t sufficient grounds for a series.

Mummy Dearest was about an uptight young history professor who has twenty four hours to authenticate the mummy of an ancient Egyptian princess now residing in a small town dime museum. Unfortunately Drew Lawson arrives on the scene just as Fraser Fortune, the brash producer and host of a reality show, also shows up planning to film a segment on Princess Merneith, who is supposed to rise from her glass coffin every Halloween at midnight.

Needless to say, Drew and Fraser butt heads from the start. But by the end of the story, they’ve reached some sort of resolution — of course! — though not so much of a resolution that there wouldn’t be more to explore between them. As for personal growth, well, Drew has been living with his much older department head and he’s squelched a lot of his own personality in order to accommodate his lover and boss. I thought there might be some issues to work through there. Fraser, on the other hand, is more decisive and sure about his feelings — and that’s liable to result in his getting his feelings hurt and a few other misunderstandings, so…yes. Enough to continue to explore.

And what about overall storyline? Well, there’s that reality TV show of Fraser’s called The Mysterious. Every week Fraser is off exploring some new mystery, and I could see that some of those mysteries might include vampires or werewolves or other monsters or supernatural creatures. I always loved those X-Files monster-of-the-week episodes. That’s when it clicked. The XOXO-Files.

And so you have it. Mummy Dearest, first in a new series beginning October 4th.

As for my tips on writing a series?

1 – Make sure your characters have enough personal issues both individually and together to carry through at least five books. Just as a novel has to finish with the character in a different place from where he started, so too does an entire series. By the series end, the main characters need to be changed. They need to have shown growth, they need to have evolved through the course of their adventures.

2 – Don’t put any elements into your first story that you don’t want to live with through five or more books. For example, a health problem that might be difficult to manage or an exotic and troublesome pet or a psychotic mother.

3 – Don’t solve the big questions or resolve all the conflicts in the first book. Your characters should still have dreams and goals and ambitions to work toward through the length of the series. And as you do solve questions and resolve conflicts, make sure you replace them with additional — hopefully more serious — ones.

4 – Just as a romance novel is the journey of two people falling in love, so then a series must be about two people trying to build a relationship together. It’s that struggle to be together that creates sexual tension — not, as some people would have you believe, having a lot of sex! You want readers to be as invested at the end of the series in how that relationship is working out as they were in the first book.

5 – Keep a series “bible” with all the vital statistics of your main characters — and recurring side characters. It helps a lot to have to go back and read four books to figure out when your main character graduated from college or whether he’s allergic to penicillin.

The most important thing, though, is make sure you’re writing a series for the right reason — because you love these characters enough to tell their story over a period of years to come.

Josh Lanyon
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On Monday, November 15th Samhain will offer my contemporary Christmas novella The Dickens with Love as a free read on Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook for an entire month. From November 15th through December 15th you can get a Kindle or Nook version of The Dickens with Love for zero dollars and zero cents This is about as good an opportunity to try my work for free as you’ll find, and I urge you to take advantage of this offer.

I used to give away tons of free books. I admit that the ebook piracy epidemic did change my attitude. It’s hard to keep a generous, giving heart when people seem to be taking advantage of you. And some people are most certainly taking advantage — there will always be those who want something for nothing, who view kindness as weakness, who believe the rules don’t apply to them — but I’ve come to see that I’m punishing my loyal, book-buying readers for the bad behavior of a minority, and I’ve started giving away books again.

It’s largely the principle of the thing because most readers do buy their books — and bless them because we couldn’t afford to write them otherwise — but we authors tend to obsess about the petty thieves and forget to thank the vast majority of honest — in fact, generous — readers.

By the way, I personally don’t have a problem with a reader sharing a book with a friend or two. It’s when I see my books being downloaded in the hundreds and placed on mirror torrent sites that I too feel the piracy thing is out of control. I mean, I’ve heard all the rationalizations there are: that piracy actually helps to promote a writer’s work, that piracy is just sampling and pirates do turn around and pay for the books that they really like, that publishers rip both writers and readers off anyway, that all art should be free and no one should get paid, and blah, blah, blah. This is the reasoning of children and social misfits — and even these goofballs don’t really believe it.

Here’s the bottom line. If no one paid for books, only a very few people could afford — or would bother — to publish their work. Most writers, myself included, would have to go back to a day job and to writing the occasional story strictly for fun. That’s the financial reality. I earn a living through my writing. I pay for food, utilities, health insurance, and my mortgage all through my writing. It’s not a lavish lifestyle. We count our pennies. Sometimes literally. Very few writers earn a living writing fiction, let alone get rich doing so.

An ebook costs anywhere from $2.99 – $9.99, but the fact that I can earn a living doing what I love to do…that’s priceless. I can earn a living because the majority of my readers are kind enough (or honest or generous or loyal or whatever you want to call it) to pay for something that they could steal if they wanted to. Luckily for writers and literature, most readers aren’t that kind of person. Luckily for me, you aren’t that kind of person. So thank you.

Thank you for buying my books and allow me — and Samhain — to give you this one. Happy Holidays!

A few months ago I was reading the Good Reads newsletter which contained a short
interview with John Irving. Irving, as I’m sure you know, is the famous, bestselling author of such literary works as The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules. A light went on as I read this paragraph:

New England settings, violent tragedies, wrestling, and even the occasional bear attack are thematic elements in many of John Irving’s novels. The ingredients may be unorthodox, but the books are iconic.

You see, I’d been going through this painful stretch of self-consciousness because readers had commented on similar elements in my work. Er, similar to my other work, not similar to John Irving’s. For me, the similar thematic elements were California settings, murders and mysteries, cops, characters with disabilities, and humor. I doubt in my case that any of this is iconic or even unorthodox, but these themes, motifs, had become my “canon.”

And it worried me.

It worried me that I repeated the certain phrases, that I liked writing sex scenes with certain acts, that apparently and actually I had favorite words. It worried me that even when I tried to stop writing about the things that interested me, they kept creeping back into my stories. They were like my fingerprints. Apparently (oops) it would take acid to eradicate them from my work.

And I wasn’t even sure I should — which worried me even more.

Repetition is bad, right? Some of these readers seemed to think it was a flaw, anyway. Yet these were the familiar signposts of the road I liked to travel. The road I needed to travel to make the story worth my taking the time to tell. But as I read Irving’s comments, it all clicked.

For a serious novelist, there are recurring obsessions; repetition is the natural concomitant of having something worthwhile to say, and repeatedly needing to say it. Bears, wrestling, New England boarding schools, violent accidents—these are the mere landscape details in much of my fiction. But loss, and the fear of losing someone dear to you—these are obsessions. Anxiety, grief, the passage of time, the perils facing children (and other loved ones)—these are huge, and lingering, obsessions, and they are oft-repeated in my novels.

My obsessions are sexual identity, our secret lives, the importance of family, the effort involved in building lasting relationships, dynamics of weakness and strength…many gentle and not so gentle obsessions thread my work. I write about the things that interest me, that concern me, that are important to me. I write commercially, true, but it’s a little more complicated than that. If it were just about making money…there are easier ways to make money. No, we write because something drives us to do so. And tinkering too much with the inner workings of inspiration is a dangerous thing. Like the philosopher said, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Around about the time I read the Irving interview, I was watching a PD James mystery starring Martin Shaw. Shaw is one of my favorite actors. I’ve loved him ever since The Professionals, which was this funky 1970s British crime drama. Anyway, as I was watching him acting so smoothly and so beautifully and so believably, I noticed how familiar a few of his gestures and expressions were. The character of Adam Dalgliesh was very different from Ray Doyle, but Shaw still used many of the old tics and tricks to build his case for Adam Dalgliesh. Those little mannerisms of face and voice were his signature. His style. Much like George Harrison or Eric Clapton’s style of playing guitar or Ansel Adams way of taking photos. Every artist has his signature whether it’s in the type of subject he chooses to paint or photograph or a riff on a guitar or Hugh Grant’s adorable stammer.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was fretting over something that couldn’t be changed and, more importantly, shouldn’t be changed. Because just as my handwriting signature is unique to me, so is my style of writing — including the things I choose to write about. Trying to change the things that interest me or are important to me is like signing up for a personality transplant. Expensive and rarely successful.

Once I made that perhaps obvious connection, a weight seemed to slip from me. No, you can’t please all the people all the time. I don’t even want to. But if the majority of my readers feel the same affection for my stories that I do for Martin Shaw when he laughs that deep, wicked — and so familiar — laugh, I think we’ll all be happy.

Josh Lanyon
http://www.joshlanyon.com
http://jgraeme2007.livejournal.com/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JoshLanyon

Genre: Gay-Lesbian Romance, Historical Romance
Length: Category
Price: $4.50
Publication Date: March 5, 2010 from Samhain

BLURB:
Don’t talk to strangers, young man—especially the dead ones.
It’s the Roaring Twenties. Skirts are short, crime is rampant and booze is in short supply. Prohibition has hit Little Egypt, where newspaperman David Flynn has come to do a follow-up story on the Herren Massacre. The massacre isn’t the only news in town though. Spiritualist medium Julian Devereux claims to speak to the dead—and he charges a pretty penny for it.
Flynn knows a phony when he sees one, and he’s convinced Devereux is as fake as a cigar store Indian. But the reluctant attraction he feels for the deceptively soft, not-his-type Julian is as real as it gets.

Coming as a standalone ebook through Samhain — and as part of The Mysterious anthology through MLR Press (featuring stories by Alex Beecroft and Laura Baumbach).

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EXCERPT:
On the way back to the boarding house, Flynn stopped and bought an electric fan at the hardware store. He parked the Model T in the garage and carried the fan inside the house. In the parlor he could hear Mrs. Hoyt complaining; he didn’t catch the words, but he knew the tone. Her daughter’s voice murmured in acquiescence.
Farther down the hall, in the study where Gus had typed his Pulitzer prize-winning series of articles on the national coal strike in 1919, he could hear Dr. Pearson and Mr. Devereux bickering, but it sounded mostly amiable.
“David,” Amy called.
Flynn glanced around. Amy was coming his way, a fair-haired, broad-shouldered man in tow. The man carried a suitcase in each hand. For one shocked instant, Flynn thought the man was Paul. Then reality reasserted itself. Aside from the light hair and the broad shoulders, the man didn’t resemble Paul at all.
“David, this is Mr. Lee. He works for the Queen of Egypt Medical Supply Company and stays with us regularly.” To Mr. Lee, she said, “Mr. Flynn is an old family friend.”
Mr. Lee’s tilted green eyes met Flynn’s briefly. He looked away then his gaze returned and locked. He shifted his samples bag and offered his hand and a smile. David shifted the fan he was carrying and shook hands. He smiled back. Mr. Lee was blond and boyishly handsome.
“Casey.”
“David.”
“Well now, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. Mrs. Greer helps me out in the kitchen, but her daughter is ill and she had to leave this morning.” Amy was already turning. “I need to get back to work.” She hurried away, and Flynn and Casey Lee were left to climb the stairs to the second level on their own.
“Medical supplies?” Flynn asked. He thought he recognized a fellow veteran. It was the way Casey held himself and the quick, no-nonsense way he’d sized Flynn up. During the war there hadn’t been time to waste.
Casey laughed. “Yep. I’m the original snake oil salesman. We sell everything from elixirs to remedies for warts and asthma.” He gave Flynn a sideways smile.
“You must travel around quite a bit.”
“I’m on the road pretty much all the time these days. I was in Marion yesterday.” He grimaced. “Day before that I was in Murphysboro.”
“Yes?”
“The whole of Jackson County is talking about those murders. People are pretty worked up.”
“I bet.”
They reached the second level. Casey said, “Amy lays a mighty fine table. I always eat too much. I was thinking of going out for a walk after supper.”
“I have the same problem,” Flynn said. “Maybe I’ll join you.”
Casey smiled. He turned left to go down the hall to his room and Flynn turned right.
He was still smiling as he opened the door to his room. The smile vanished at the sight of Julian Devereux lying on his bed.
Julian wore a sumptuous plum-colored dressing gown. At the squeak of the door hinges, he turned his head and looked up under his lashes, smiling with deliberate seduction. “I knew you were back.”
Flynn closed the door and leaned back against it. “What the hell are you doing in here?” he asked, keeping his voice down.
“Waiting for you.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
“It’s my time to waste.” Julian sat up, the purple robe falling open to reveal a sleek, honey-colored body. “Although I shouldn’t want to waste much more of it.”
Flynn shook his head in disbelief. “You must be insane.” He truly didn’t know what to make of this young maniac. He had neither scruples nor morals. Worse, he didn’t appear to have any commonsense. He added deliberately, “Or stupid.”
As it slowly sunk in on him that Flynn was serious, Julian’s smile faded, lost its confident curve. His bold gaze darkened with something like hurt. “Why would you say that? The moment I saw you I saw that you were just like me. That you wanted this too.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Flynn said with quiet intensity. “Now get out of my room.”
Julian continued to stare at him with those wide, dark eyes. “I’m not wrong.” He spoke with a stubborn sort of dignity. It was almost disarming.
Flynn, however, had no intention of being disarmed. “You damned fool. You’re going to get us both arrested. Or killed.”
Julian shook his head. “People don’t notice unless you bring attention to yourself. They see what they expect to see.”
He said it quite seriously, and Flynn had to laugh. “The Magnificent Belloc? I hate to break it to you, Devereux, but you have a way of bringing attention to yourself.” He tipped his head toward the doorway. “Get the hell out. I won’t ask you nicely again.”
“Fisticuffs would draw the attention you’re trying to avoid,” Julian pointed out, but he rose from the bed, straightening his dressing gown without haste. Flynn had to hand it to him; he wore his own skin with a panache most men only managed when fully and expensively clothed.
Flynn stepped away from the door, intending to open it. Instead, he found his arms full of Julian. He pressed his slender, taut body to Flynn’s and wound his arms around Flynn’s neck. Flynn could feel the other man’s sizable erection poking through the silk of his dressing gown, and his own body automatically responded.
That was biology. It was pointless to argue with it. He tried, though, opening his mouth to blast Julian. The sound that escaped him was surprisingly without force, and then Julian’s lips, soft and honey-sweet, touched Flynn’s. It was a delicate kiss, skilful but subtle. The body in Flynn’s arms felt slight and almost feminine, but the aggression, the hunger, was all male.
Flynn’s own body tingled with uncomfortable awareness. It was all he could do not to respond to that kiss with a blaze of hunger. Instead, he grabbed Julian’s wrists, forced his arms from about his neck, and thrust him away none too gently.
Julian staggered, but caught himself. He glared at Flynn. His chiseled nostrils actually flared.
“I don’t understand you, David.”
“I’m making it as clear as I can. I’m not interested.”
“No one will know—”
“I’m not interested in you,” Flynn cut in. “I don’t even like you.”
Julian considered this, blinking, puzzled. Flynn opened the door, glanced down the empty hallway. “The coast is clear. Go.”
Face averted, Julian went without another word.
Flynn closed the door. He was tempted to lock it, but that would be ridiculous. He made room for the new fan on the dresser top, plugged it in and waited for the sparks to fly. But the fan came on smooth and quiet, the metal propellers flying fast enough to chop an unwary finger off, and a wonderful breeze washed through the warm room, erasing the faint spicy scent of Julian’s cologne.

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I was trying to think today how to explain the difference between competitiveness and jealousy. Competitiveness, I think, is a useful trait for a writer — for anyone, really. And jealousy is one of the most destructive emotions known to humans. But they’re closely akin — sometimes uncomfortably so.

Competitiveness is what spurs us on to do better, to try harder, to win — all good stuff. Sometimes winning means beating someone else, but it’s not the beating that should feel good so much as the winning.

If I’m competing with a friend for an award, obviously I want to win. I don’t want my friend to lose, though. If I can’t win, I want my friend to win. Sometimes I want my friend to win more than I want to win because my friend needs the win more. The only time I think it becomes personal is when we compete against someone we dislike. Not all our dislikes are reasonable, but that’s another story. If I dislike someone I’m competing against, then there is a peculiar (and not always guilty) satisfaction in whupping her or his ass. We’re none of us saints.

But then we have jealousy. Jealousy is a more exotic animal, a critter that many writers find lurking in the underbrush of their desire to succeed. Partly it’s due to the insecurity of our business. It’s competitive as hell out here — it feels like it anyway. Publishers are going under or cutting lines or dropping authors. Even in the best case scenario we’re all fighting for the attention of editors, publishers, readers, reviewers. And everything seems to take so long. It seems to take forever to find a publisher, for the book to finally come out, for sales to improve, for reviewers to notice us, for readers to start looking for us — and then to move one step further up the publishing food chain. And in the meantime everyone else seems to be moving so much more quickly — getting all the breaks, getting everything we should have.

Yeah, that’s where the jealousy comes in. When it seems like others are getting what we deserve. What we deserve too. What we deserve more. Sure, we’ve all thought it: Why him when I’m just as good? Why her when I was here first? Oh yeah. I’ve felt it too. And the worst part is when you feel it toward a friend.

Jealousy is not a rational emotion because if we’re rational we remember that removing the target of our jealousy does not give us what that person had. If I knock Ginn Hale off, I don’t suddenly inherit her readers, let alone her gift for storytelling. Real life isn’t like a board game. Knocking another player off the board doesn’t send us to the winning circle. It just means we’ve behaved badly and now we have to deal with that on top of being sick with jealousy. And it is a sickness if you don’t get it under control.

Here’s something I learned long ago. Your success does not mean my failure. And vice versa.

I have friends who drive themselves nuts worrying about rival authors’ advances and sales. They worry about Amazon rankings, and who got what promo dollars, who got their books faced out at B&N, who got their cover in the Publisher’s Weekly ad, who got nominated, who won, and on and on because there’s always something that someone else is getting and we aren’t.

It took a while to get to this point, but I’m happy to say that most of the time I don’t worry about what other people are getting or not getting; I’m focusing on doing what I need to do to build my career. Because that’s all I can control. And I learned a long time ago that my success doesn’t come at the expense of someone else’s.

Jealousy makes us do stupid things. Sometimes dangerously stupid things. It makes us susceptible to a pack mentality (unhappiness is even more contagious than happiness), it leads us to snub newbies and belittle our peers to each other — or even try to discredit them. It leads us to make digs and snide comments in public and private forums. At its worst it leads to anonymous letters and hate mail. It’s a sad, sick thing and, unlike competitiveness which often motivates success, it distracts our focus and dulls our edge.

But it’s human and it’s normal. So what do you do when the green monster takes a bite out of your normally generous heart?

I think part of what drives jealousy is the fear that there will not be enough to go around. THEY’LL RUN OUT OF CAKE BEFORE THEY GET TO ME!! But while this occasionally happens at birthday parties (dreadful, ill-planned birthday parties), it doesn’t happen in real life. If you’re good, if you follow guidelines, if you keep at it, you will get published. If you continue to write consistently and well — always striving to improve your craft — if you promote yourself, if you keep at it, you will succeed. Will you be Nora Roberts? No. Maybe you’ll be the next big thing. Maybe Nora Roberts will look at you and feel a pang of jealousy. Probably not. Regardless, it does take time and it does take patience. And most important of all, it takes hard work and faith in yourself. A successful writing career doesn’t happen overnight. A successful writing career is built on a series of smaller successes — several books and persistent promotion of the right kind (meaning readers don’t see your name and cringe). Every step along the way counts — which is why you don’t have time to stand behind trees throwing rocks at the other travelers. Or even water balloons.

It takes time.

And that is a frustrating thing when you’re longing for success, eager for readers to find your work and share the pleasure you had when you created it — and needing the dough, like yesterday. But when you’ve learned how to shrug off those resentful feelings, those envious twinges, when you’ve learned to regard other writers’ success stories as proof that you too can succeed — rather than as someone standing between you and the prize, you will be delighted at how free you feel, you relaxed and focused again. And when your writing friends see how confident and productive you are…they will be green with envy.

When I realized last night that I had a blog due here at Samhain, my immediate reaction was a sinking sensation. Not again, I thought, and I can’t help wondering if readers don’t feel something similar.

Don’t get me wrong. I love interacting with my readers; it’s one of the perks of the job. But I just finished the rough draft of one novella, I’ve got another due on Wednesday of next week, a third novella due on the 30th, edits to my print book for Somebody Killed His Editor due on the 21st, and edits for another mainstream project due on the 30th. I would be lying if I didn’t admit to feeling overwhelmed. And as I calculate how to best use my limited resources, I’m wondering where blogging fits into this.

How much do readers really want to hear writers rambling on about their aching wrists and their looming deadlines and their pissy feelings about other writers? Surely I’m not the only one who feels a little jaded right about now with the whole blogosphere?

Again, this isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy interacting with my readers and colleagues — I do. Maybe too much. But is it necessarily a good thing to be so accessible? I’m not sure. Does it take away that authorial mystique? Probably. There is a trade off, of course. Readers feel like they know me better — and if they like me, that’s a good thing. If they don’t like me…not so good.

Do I care if everyone likes me? No. Obviously not, or I wouldn’t continue to shoot my mouth off. But I do worry that Josh the web personality wil eventually flavor the taste of my fiction for some readers. Because, speaking for myself as a reader, I don’t want the distraction of the author’s personality. If the author as character is too vivid, I find it’s one more obstacle in crossing that suspension-bridge of disbelief.

There are no blogs I visit on a regular basis. Friends blogs, review blogs, publishing news blogs: I check in when a pal is being interviewed or someone asks me look at something, but other than that, I don’t have time. Not even for those funny, clever blogs that make me laugh every time I pop in. Not even for the blogs that make me think — or teach me something. I just don’t have the time — even when I have the inclination. And generally I don’t even have the inclination. It’s nothing personal. After a few months, let alone a year or so, we’ve pretty much heard it all. Even from the people we like. Even from the people whose work we love.

Or am I the only one who feels like this? Is it the heat getting to me? My what-feels-like-permanent migraine? The deadlines? Lack of Vitamin B?

There is also the problem of writers getting too relaxed and being a little too honest with their reading public. Bitching about bad reviews is the least of it. I’m talking about bloggers stupid enough to badmouth their publishers (or publishers denigrating writers) — or revealing personal and damaging information about themselves and others. Do I want to know about your sex life or legal problems? Probably not. And when you’re feeling calmer, you probably don’t want me to know about those things either. You surely don’t want a prospective employer — or stalker — to know about them.

So what do you think about blogging? I think it’s here to stay, but how much is too much? What’s a good balance? What blogs to you frequent — and why?

Josh Lanyon

http://www.joshlanyon.com

Hi there! I’m Josh Lanyon and I write m/m romance — usually within the context of a mystery or action-adventure novel. In fact, I have a brand new m/m comic mystery-romance coming out through Samhain in a couple of weeks. First book in a brand, spanking new series. Anyway, more about that another day. I was recently talking to my friend ZA Maxfield, another newish Samhain author, and she was asking about what I do to keep the writing fires burning bright now that I’ve been writing for about a million years. Or what feels like a million years — which is kind of the point.

I thought this was a great question because, frankly, I’ve teetered dangerously close to burnout a couple of times during the past year. Now when I tell you that I’ve already written more than 200K and it’s only May, I think you might get an inkling as to why I occasionally feel like the creative well is running dry.

So the first thing I’m going to ask with this post is that everyone out there — writers or anyone who has ever dealt with burn out — could you pop into the comment section and offer up your best tip for rejuvenating yourself? I think that would be really helpful to all of us.

As for myself, one of the best things I’ve hit on is building tiny breaks into my schedule. Like a lot of creative types, I find that I work in bursts of enthusiasm and energy. I go full bore for long periods of time, and then…I got nuthin’.

It’s at those points that I’m learning to give myself permission to slack off.

It goes against the Puritan work ethic I was raised with, I admit it. But the fact is, that I’ve discovered that building these little breaks into my schedule actually keeps me at the top of my game. I think of it as trying to force yourself to run a marathon after starving for a week. You can run for a while, and you might even be able to walk and crawl for a distance…but you’ll run a lot longer and more efficiently if you feed yourself the right things.

For writers the right things (write things?) are the things that feed your brain — that feed your imagination and your soul. So for me it means reading (poetry is great for this), watching movies, listening to music, talking a walk in the woods or on the beach or in the mountains…or just visiting with friends. Learning new stuff is really useful too, so try going to a museum or an art gallery or watching a documentary. The goal is to learn something new, put something into your brain without immediately drawing on it (which is what happens with all the research we do for specific projects).

During that down period, I think it’s very important NOT to write. Or at least, not to write fiction. If you’re like me, the minute you set such a rule, you’ll be itching to write ficiton again (so that’s half the battle right there). If an idea occurs to you, then jot it down on your trusty notepad or whatever you use to keep track of your ideas, but don’t start work on it.

It might sound odd, but I think the number one thing that helps me relax and take advantage of this down time is to think of it as prep time. Even though I’m not technically prepping for anything, everything that I do is grist for the mill. So it’s not only okay, it’s a necessary part of the creative process.

Granted, when you’ve got the kind of deadlines I’ve got, you have to keep the mini-vacations to a…er…minimum, but you do need to take them. Which means really planning out your schedule ahead of time so you’re not reacting to deadline crisis after deadline crisis — which is how I began my writing career.

The other really important thing to keeping those fires burning bright is to take care of yourself. Eat right and exercise. Make sure you’re protecting your back and your wrists with the right chair and keyboard. Don’t overdue the caffeine and don’t cut all the physical activity out of your day just because you think you can’t spare half an hour with a book due at the end of the week.

You can spare half an hour. Staying well and energetic is one of the biggest favors you can do yourself.

So those are my immediate thoughts on keeping the creative fires blazing high. How about you? What do you do to keep on your game when you’ve got deadlines looming?

Hi there! Josh Lanyon here. It’s my first time on the blog, so please bear with me as I stumble through. I’m a new Samhain writer — new to Samhain, not writing itself. As a matter of fact I’ve been writing gay or m/m mystery-romance for over a decade. I write the Adrien English series which finaled in the prestigious Lambda Literary Awards a couple of years ago — in addition to winning numerous other awards. I also co-write the Crime and Cocktails romantic – crime series with Laura Baumbach. The first book, Mexican Heat, was released in February through Samhain (and also finaled in this year’s Lambdas). This June will see the release of a brand new comic mystery-romance series — exclusive to Samhain — called Holmes & Moriarity. Very excited about that one!

Anyway, these days it seems like everyone is turning her hand to m/m mystery writing — there’s nothing like a little murder and mayhem to go with your romance. And I thought I’d help my fellow crime lovers by pointing out five of the most common the tripwires you’re liable to find strung across your path to successful crime writing. I see many an aspiring crime writer shoot herself in the foot with one or more of these gaffes, but they’re easy enough to sidestep if you give it a little thought.

1) Sleuths — cops in particular — who fail to ask obvious questions or uncover readily available information in order to artificially prolong the mystery. I read a manuscript the other day where the solution to the entire mystery hinged on the investigating officers failing to ascertain the last name of a suspect. HUH?

2) Innocuous information that could mean anything but leads our intrepid sleuth straight and unquestioningly to the truth. This is like one step from solving the crime by extrasensory perception — and unless your sleuth is a telepath, that just better not happen if you don’t want to be stripped of your deerstalker cap.

3) The preposterous giant clue that no one would leave behind but the killer apparently overlooks. Solving the mystery because the killer is really dumb just isn’t very exciting, and if the killer behaves like an imbecile, it really doesn’t matter how much the other characters talk about his fiendish cleverness…the reader won’t buy it.

4) Amateur slueths being allowed unrestricted access to information only the police would have — even worse is when the police request the help of the local amateur sleuth to solve their baffling case. It doesn’t work like this. Really.

5) Solving the crime by instinct or extrasensory perception. I have a hard time swallowing this one even when the sleuth has psychic powers, let alone when he doesn’t. Sleuths have to solve crimes by investigating and then drawing logical deductions. “Having a gut feeling” someone is guilty is just plain old cheating.

These things might seem too obvious to need mentioning, but you’d be amazed at how often they crop up in would-be mystery novels. Avoid these criminal blunders and your work could soon join the ranks of Most Wanted.

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Learn more about Josh at http://www.joshlanyon.com