Fossil

jesterqueen — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 17:29:41 +0000

My fossil-obsessed daughter has me thinking along relative lines. She wanders creek beds, returning with everything from pretty (but ever-so-sharp) glass, to smooth river stones, to arrowheads. But her favorites will always be the mineralized remains of plants and creatures that died an incomprehensible amount of time in the past. We live in Alabama, near an impact site millions of years old. The nearby town of Wetumpka sits in the bowl of a small meteorite crater. Bedrock juts above the ground in a series of miniature mountain ranges.

I picked up a piece of shocked quartz there, a mineral shattered internally but whole on the exterior, shot through with fragile mica.… Read the rest

Southern Festival of Books 2016

jesterqueen — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 19:44:52 +0000

Hey book fans! If you’re looking for a literary activity this weekend and happen to be in the Nashville area, the Southern Festival of Books runs from October 14-16 at and around the Nashville Public Library downtown. I’ll be on the panel “Cons and Capers: The Many Faces of Crime Fiction” on Friday the 14^th at noon, moderated by Robert Mangeot. My fellow panelists will be Holly Sullivan McClure, Erica Wright, and Killer Nashville founder Clay Stafford. All of these people fall into what I consider the “heavy hitter” category, in my books, so let me take a second to sing their praises.… Read the rest

Homecomings

jesterqueen — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 16:00:20 +0000

We set out at early enough on Saturday, but one return home for forgotten items and a flat tire later, we arrived at our old friends’ new home late. They moved halfway across the country two years ago, and we’ve only seen them in bits and snatches since. At the end of this past July, a job change brought them in arm’s reach again.

Their son had been asking where Sam and Caroline were since noon when we finally got there. Our kids had been whining, “How much longer?” for most of the two hours since we’d popped on the spare tire, gotten the green light from a gas-station mechanic, and established a driving pace of a slightly wobbly 50 miles per hour.… Read the rest

Trenches

jesterqueen — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 19:32:19 +0000

My stagnant fingers grow mud-heavy with grading. Relegated to the same letter-trenches, they add, “Watch for fragments”, “Be careful of run-ons”, and “Cite your sources,” to nearly all my thoughts. Writing is like swimming in a bog.

I’ve never been a free-drafter, capable of simply slamming down on paper the idea, in its worst form. I’m a brain writer, half-composing a symphony of sentences before I turn on the monitor. By the time I type it out, my story is in its second draft.

When I’m writing, my God I’m prolific. I can slap down six thousand good words in a day.… Read the rest

On Bike Repair

jesterqueen — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 16:52:52 +0000

There is something to be said for fiddling, for taking apart and reassembling without a manual, for hunching in the garage floor with your bicycle’s wheels, and chain, and brakes laid out like a patient’s guts in a poorly lit surgery theatre. There is something to be said for repairing.

My grandfather was a physician, a fixer of the highest order. He operated on stomachs and hearts, limbs and intestines, because in his day, specialists were rare, and general practitioners were operating-room fixtures. He built things at home, too. His basement workshop was heaped with tools on an ugly, practical worktable.… Read the rest

Feeding the Troops

jesterqueen — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:00:14 +0000

This is a continuation of the e-mail I sent my mother-in-law in preparation for our whirlwind tour of Ohio last week. By the way. Note the absence of a photo in yesterday’s post. I forgot the camera.

Spring Break Shuffle II (Feeding the Troops)

Foods-my-kids-may-eat-depending-upon-the-alignment-of-the-stars. (This is a list to give you ideas – not a comprehensive collection of things I think you should buy for a very short visit!)

Caroline has been eating salads if we let her dump on tons of dressing, cheese, and bacon bits. (She likes it even better if it’s a steak salad.) But by “eating” I mean, “stabbing with a fork while looking skeptical, then chewing several dainty bites to be polite”.… Read the rest

Spring Break Shuffle

jesterqueen — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 13:00:16 +0000

Scott and the kids never have overlapping spring breaks. Thus, the only way we can travel is if we yank the kids out of school for a couple of days of Scott’s break and make a mad dash somewhere. Mostly, we go home to Ohio. This year was no different. Though the kids aren’t off until the end of March, we picked them up at the end of the day Wednesday, then headed North for a long weekend.

The best way to start updating you on the state of our union is to give you the e-mail I sent my mother-in-law before the trip to answer her perfectly reasonable questions about our schedule and what my kids eat.… Read the rest

Mysterious Eight

jesterqueen — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 01:16:30 +0000

So I posted a bunch of links a couple of weeks ago with promises to give more in depth information about each one. I’ve covered the writers conferences, and I’ve covered my new book. I’ll get around to my kids, sooner or later, if for no other reason than because I left Sam hanging from a precipice last time you read about him. (FIGURATIVELY!)

But today, I want to draw your attention to the anthology I’m honored to be a part of. The brilliant Michael Guillebeau, author of Josh Whoever masterminded this plot to introduce readers to new authors. He found seven other writers with drastically different styles and got us each to provide a chapter sample and a short story.In… Read the rest

The Case of the Red-handed Rhesus

jesterqueen — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 18:00:30 +0000

Hey internet! To heck with Valentine’s Day. Never mind those dead presidents. This is the week we celebrate my book! The Case of the Red-handed Rhesus is now available in electronic and hardback editions. What are you still doing here reading? Rush over and buy it!… Read the rest

To Be a Writer

jesterqueen — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 19:57:11 +0000

Subtitle: Fun With Foot in Mouth*

This weekend, I was a panelist at Murder in the Magic City and Murder on the Menu. I had a ball, and I made tons of friends, so I must not have been too weird. But there were some cringe-worthy moments, as well.

Here’s some of the crazy shit I said…

Gaffe One

On the Murder in the Magic City panel, when asked what social justice issues I liked to see in fiction as a reader, I said autism. I had the questions in advance. I had planned my answer. But I proceeded to give huge compliments to The Mysterious Case of the Dog in the Night and insult the fuck out of House Rules.… Read the rest