I've Moved

Thank you for visiting this blog, but I've moved. A lot has happend, so please see my new posts at www.jeannemeeks.com.

Lydia Ponczak's Book Launch

Lydia Ponczak

           Who's After Samantha?


My friend and fellow Southland Scribes writer, Lydia Ponczak, launched her first novel, Who's After Samantha, last week by hosting a party at Kinootz's Pizza in Midlothian, IL. She gathered a big crowd and made each of us feel special. She was nice enough to publicly credit me with giving her editing suggestions for her second Samantha novel. 
     Lydia is a sweetheart of lady who loves being Polish, dangling earrings, and the color red. Her protagonist, Samantha, is just as funny, flamboyant and feisty as the author. 
     I love Samantha! The character is gutsy, flirtatious, and "on the wrong side of fifty." She finds a real murder victim at a mysery writing seminar and her troubles begin. Samantha must deal with the murderer/ stalker, her clueless suburban husband, and a hunky Chicago cop in her own bumbling, but slyly effective way. Her "Samantha-isms" had me laughing outloud.
     The many suburban Chicago references in the novel made me feel at home. A number of restaurants and small town hot-spots mentioned owe Lydia a free meal.  
     Lydia has the gift of gab which serves her well on her local cable TV show,  News In View. She is a real treasure. Read Who's After Samantha, available on Amazon, and give yourself a treat. 

Love Is Murder

 "I KILL PEOPLE" was a best selling tee shirt at the Love Is Murder writers' convention in
Chicago. I spent the weekend with a couple hundred people who do just that––at least on
paper. What a weekend it was! Lovers of the mystery genre—aspiring authors, established
novelists, and veterans on the New York Times Bestseller list––all rubbed elbows, shared
ideas, and laughed together.

Publishers, agents, and experienced writers gave tips to us novices
to hone our writing skills
. . . to hook our readers with just the right beginning
. . . to not get muddled in the middle
. . . to nail the ending.
Those workshops were instructive, but the real fun came from
meeting crime scene experts. You should have heard the conversations!
      "How long does it take to suffocate a person?"
      "My victim was murdered . . ."
      "How much blood would . . ."
Gruesome, but in that crowd, very normal.


Thursday evening I shared a table with Dr. David Ciambrone, a retired scientist, weapons designer, oceanographer, and coroner with eleven books published, including a non-fiction book on poisons. He helped me "get it right" by describing the effects of a crushed skull and by giving me facts about the poisonous blue bead lilies which become a weapon in my second novel, Wolf Pack.

Scott Gamboe

Scott Gamboe was a paratrooper and a Desert Storm veteran. He now is a forensic investigator for the Peoria medical examiner and the author of three police thrillers. While sharing a dinner table with him, I asked about rigor mortis and the smell that would emanate from a body after 12 hours. I can now accurately describe the dead bad guy in Wolf Pack.

Marco Conelli

By the way, dinner was delicious.

My favorite may have been Marco Conelli who could star in any of the TV cop shows. He's a veteran NYPD detective who specialized in undercover gun and narcotic seizure and now works in Organized Crime Control. He writes award-winning crime novels and entertains the crowd with his real-life experiences. My novels will not be as hard boiled as Marco Conelli's, but I now have a better feel for drug busts and organized crime. A bit of those may show up in a novel I have percolating in my brain.

How important is realism?
My goal is to immerse readers in the exciting locals in my novels, so I researched Rim To Rim by hiking across the Grand Canyon and Wolf Pack by exploring Isle Royale. The backpacking jargon rings true. The scenery descriptions are accurate. I've never experienced any crimes, but tried to make them credible by asking for advice from law officials, medical personnel, and now these forensic experts. What fun!

Have you ever felt cheated by a story in which the author didn't "get it right"? How much research do you do––or do you write only what you know?

 HOOSIER BACKPACKING 

I’ve been to Bad Hollow ten times, but I still don’t know how to get there. The trailhead is at a secret location at the end of a series of roller-coaster roads snaking through the spectacular Fall colors of Brown County, Indiana. A rutted lane ends at the bottom of a steep hill where we parked our cars this past weekend. Our group crossed private property to find the overgrown trail on the edge of the vast Hoosier National Forest.

Our intrepid leader, Fred, got permission in 1994 to use the hidden trailhead and has explored and memorized the trails, ridges, and creeks each Spring and Fall ever since. The trails crisscrossing our section of Hoosier are not marked with blazes and have precious few signs. Instead, Fred points out “Mary’s rose bush” or “the Big Tree” to indicate the correct turns.

Fred celebrated his 70th birthday years ago and now encourages group members to memorize the route to Bad Hollow so the tradition can continue. Several hikers whipped out their GPS units. Though I’m a minimalist and generally frown upon intrusive electronics in the wilderness, having a reliable GPS mapping the way is a comfort.

For seven miles I huffed and puffed up and down hills and gullies following the sturdier legs of eleven other hikers, all laden with 22-45 pounds of gear in their backpacks. Bright blue skies and fifty degree weather made for perfect hiking. The views through the thinning tree tops was thrilling, but the carpet of leaves hid roots, acorns and rocks, and created uncertain footing. We took turns falling.Bad Hollow is a lovely narrow valley thick with pine, maple, and paw paw. A stoney creek meandering through our camp provided water for our two-night stay. The water was scant this season and went under ground for hundreds of yards, so we positioned our fire ring in the dry creek bed. Clustered around the heat of a good blaze is how you get to know your fellow campers: the retired doctor who is building a cabin on the Alaskan permafrost; the brilliant lesbian teacher; the engineer who also dives to collect fish for Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium; the ex-state’s attorney with crime stories enough to fill the cold evening hours.

We had left homes, careers and loved ones back in civilization to subject ourselves to strenuous exercise and temperatures below freezing. Each of the twelve hikers gathered at that fire agreed that the scent of wood smoke clinging to our jackets and permeating our closets back home is a pleasure. Each understood the others’ innate need to be out in nature, our uniqueness, perhaps oddity. 

The beauty and solitude of Bad Hollow drew us into the wilderness. That campfire made it our home.

END

PS:  While mesmerized by the flames, I concocted mystery scenarios in my head and envisioned characters based on the friends sitting around the campfire, or maybe the local eighty-year old hiker we had met earlier that day who left us in his dust, or the turkey hunters in blaze orange. Should I tell them they may be in a novel? Do you base your characters on real people? Do you ask their permission?

Book Signing at Centuries and Sleuths

Centuries and Sleuths is a gem of a book store: cozy, unique, with warm and friendly owners behind the counter.

Today the Forest Park, IL store hosted the book launch for my writer's group buddy, Helen Osterman.


I attended the event to support Helen, but also to learn. Someday I'll have my book, "Rim to Rim," published and want to know the finer points of how to throw a book launch party. (You are all invited!)

Helen chatted about her new release and third in a series, "The Elusive Relation" and gave interesting background information--with pictures--of the centuries old English country house that became the setting for her mystery. She admitted to using book research as an excuse to take vacations.

Helen even provided delicious muffins made from the recipe her character, Emma Winberry, uses to bake muffins whenever she needs comfort food.

After reading the first two books in Helen's series, Emma, is like an old friend. Diana Vickery, from the Cozy Library, says, "Emma Winberry is Miss Marple reincarnated."

Tonight I look forward to curling up (after the Bears game) with "The Elusive Relation" and getting to know Emma even better.

Dutch Oven Recipe

Fall is my favorite time of year––summer hangs on, but winter whispers in my ear. Maple trees turn neon yellow and orange, oaks a deep red. Last Saturday was one such gorgeous autumn day in central Illinois. We piled into the SUV with my grandson and headed for Champaign, IL. Our first stop was the Paxton train museum where the old volunteer enthralled four-year-old, Sean, and we adults with train stories and a tour of a caboose.



After an hour of trains, we continued south to Curtis Apple Orchard, a autumn tradition popular with U of I students and their parents. Admission is free, but the Curtis family covers the cost of the displays and entertainment by charging more than grocery store prices for apples and pumpkins. It's worth it. Sean loved the many children's activities and I loved watching him play. While he munched on apple donuts and apple juice, we listened to blue grass ballads, complete with banjo and bass fiddle. Sean picked his perfect pumpkins and we headed home.

My son had a blazing fire waiting for us in the fire pit. The coals glowed ember red. Our families had planned our dinner to be cooked completely over an open fire in the backyard. On the menu:
                                     Hobo Casserole with corn bread in a Dutch oven
                                     Cheese fondue in a bread bowl wrapped in foil
                                     Apple pie in pie irons

Here's the recipe for Hobo Casserole:
     1 tablespoon oil                                           1 1/5 pounds ground beef
     1 onion, diced                                             1 green pepper, diced
     1 can of pinto or black beans                       1 1/5 cup frozen corn  
     2 cans tomato soup                                      1 TBL Worcestershire sauce
     1 packet taco seasoning                               2 cans water
     ------
     8 oz. of rotini pasta (or other)                     1 small box of corn bread mix
                                                                           (egg and milk)

Push burning wood to the sides. Put the oil and crumbled beef in the Dutch oven
and set on coals, 2-3" deep. Cover. Monitor pot. Cooking times will vary depending
upon intensity of heat.
- When beef is browned, saute onion and green pepper until soft.
- Add remaining ingredients except pasta and corn bread, and heat until boiling
- Stir to prevent sticking, rotate pot to prevent hot spots. Use new coals, if needed.
- When mixture boils add pasta, and return to coals for 8-10 minutes, rotating pot.
- Stir to prevent sticking.
- Mix corn bread batter according to package directions. Spread batter on top of pasta
  mixture. Do not stir in. Cover pot.
- Return to coals and place addtional coals on top of pot lid to create even heat.
- Bake for about 15 minutes; or more depending upon heat of coals and surrounding fire.

Serves 6 hungry people.

The secret ingredients are the smokey flavor. . . and a gorgeous autumn day.  Enjoy.
                  

Save Your Work!

     Last week I knocked a glass of water into my MacBook keyboard. The screen went blank immediately. I mopped and dried and waited to no avail. My laptop was dead and I envisioned two years of work going up in smoke.
     I thought I was safe because I saved my work every so often to a thumb drive and kept it at a remote location. Not so. The version of Rim to Rim, my completed manuscript, on the memory stick was a month old. Editing is an on-going process for me.  The loss of my notes and outline for my current novel, Wolf Pack, worried me most. I didn't know how to replace the work I'd done.
     I knew that the longer moisture sat on the circuits, the worse the damage would be. The next morning I hurried to the Apple store and waited five hours for an appointment with a computer genius. I confessed my clumsiness and he expressed his sympathies. He examined the laptop and quickly determined that circuits were corroded and the unit had sustained Stage 4 damage––the logic board, the casing, the trackpad and MagSafe. $750. My only question was . . . Can you save my memory? He wasn't sure.
     The young man with the black gauges perforating his ear lobes was wonderful. He said that since I hadn't lied to him about how the damage occurred, he'd waive the charges . . . the entire $750! Wow. So I bought a external hard drive for $89 and asked him to transfer whatever memory he could onto it before sending the damaged laptop out for repair.
     The memory transferred successfully and saved me from worry and dread during the week without my laptop.  Let this be a lesson:
     1)  Back up your work frequently
     2)  Save current versions of your work on memory sticks and store them at
          different locations.
     3)  Send an e-mail to yourself with your files attached and leave it unopened in
          your mailbox. You can retrieve it by logging in from a different computer
     4)  Buy an external hard drive which saves your work and automatically up-dates
          itself -- cheap insurance.
     5)  Never lie to an Apple computer genius.

Have you experienced a computer damage horror stories ? What do you do to safe-guard your precious work?