You Have the Right to Six Words - Better Hold on to Your Hats!

I have a loaded post for you this week - Week 9 of YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SIX WORDS! - so folks, hold on to your hats and away we go...


We'll start with our recap memoir. Beth Groundwater is the author of the Gift Basket Designer mystery series. Beth spent the first part of her career working in the computer science field where her writing talent was put to use in the technical arena. She wrote manuals and proposals and reports. But good planning and goal-setting allowed Beth to retire from the computer software world early and put her writing skills to work in the fiction arena. When she's not writing, you can probably find Beth in her garden or in the setting for her second Gift Basket Designer mystery series novel, on the ski slopes. Beth's first novel, A REAL BASKET CASE was a nominee for the "Best First Novel" Agatha Award in 2007. Earlier this year, Beth followed that up with the sequel TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET accompanied by an ambitious blog tour. Beth certainly knows the value of hard work:

Networked and persisted until surprise - published!

New on our list of memoirists this week is a man who is far from new to the world of crime fiction writing. He's a New York Times best selling author many times over and he leaves us on the edges of our seats with thrillers such as THE MILLIONAIRES, THE ZERO GAME, THE BOOK OF FATE, and of course his newest hit THE BOOK OF LIES, which was released this year in paperback. Of course you know I'm talking about Brad Meltzer. Brad wrote his first New York Times best seller THE TENTH JUSTICE while a student at Columbia Law School. As a matter of fact, Columbia gave him credit for writing this book! Brad's books have been translated into over 25 languages. But not only do we know Brad for his crime fiction novels, he's also a comic book writer. Last year he won an Eisner Award for his JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. And he was also one of the co-creators of the television show JACK & BOBBY. It seem contradictory to the genre Brad writes in but by golly:

I'm a Meltzer, not a fighter.

Lisa Lutz has been a bit of a nomad for the first part of her life. She attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, the University of Leeds in England and San Francisco State University. After those college adventures, and no college degree, Lisa set to work on trying to be a screenwriter. And she succeeded in writing and optioning a screenplay called PLAN B. However, she also learned that screenwriting was not where she would stay in her career. So, she packed herself up and headed out to - Westernville, New York? Yep! And that is where she wrote the bulk of THE SPELLMAN FILES. Since then, Lisa had found her way to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and most recently she's made her way back to San Francisco. She's also found her way to two more Spellman publications: CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS and REVENGE OF THE SPELLMANS. And she's found herself nominated for both a "Best Novel" Edgar Award and a "Best Mystery Novel" Macavity Award. Her fourth book in the Spellman series, THE SPELLMANS STRIKE AGAIN, is due out at the beginning of 2010. And Lisa thought she didn't get around near enough, so her books are extending her reach. The Spellmans are published in over 20 languages around the world. For Lisa:

Six words is WAY too long.

The final hitter in this powerhouse line-up is also a writer who is no stranger to successful books. His ten mystery and suspense novels have won him nominations for Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Agatha and Macavity awards. Jeff Abbott is the international best-selling author of two highly acclaimed series: the first being his Jordan Poteet mystery series about a librarian and then his Whit Mosley series about a justice of the peace and a detective. He has also penned three standalone thrillers and tomorrow he will release TRUST ME, his fourth standalone and eleventh novel. In his new novel, Jeff will introduce Luke Dantry who works tracking extremists on the Internet. However, the safety of his computer job will soon be shattered.

The novel is not Jeff's only writing format, however. He has also written short stories included in such anthologies as BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and THE WORLD'S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES. So what is a successful thriller writer's favorite book? Why it's WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, of course!

Jeff says, "writing brought me my wife, a career I never dreamed I’d have, tons of opportunities, getting to meet the most interesting people in the world . . .you get the idea." So it is not hard at all to understand why his memoir would be:

Writing opens a thousand doors.

This week I think we loaded the bases and hit a grand slam! Many thanks to Beth, Brad, Lisa, and Jeff for being great sports. Are you groaning from my baseball analogies yet? This was a fun week of memoirs. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I hope to see you back here again, same time next week! Happy Reading!


Bouchercon countdown: 85 days!