World Book Night, Theme Week Round-up & More

There so much to share right now I'm almost not sure where to start, but let's start with my experience as a "book giver" for World Book Night.

Monday was World Book Night, and this was, of course, the first year that the United States participated. I was so honored to be chosen to be a book giver and I hope I was a good representative.

I was fortunate enough to get my first choice of book titles to give out, which was THE BOOK THIEF. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend doing so. It's classified as a young adult novel but it's powerful no matter what your age.

Being that I opted for a young adult novel and I use to teach young adults, I wanted to go to a school to hand out my books. In my school district many of the children come from families with low socioeconomic backgrounds, poor reading skills (for many English is not their native language), and homes with no books.

I spoke to a few teachers and the principal before starting my distribution. No one knew about World Book Night before this, so I was happy to be sharing the information with them. After I explained the celebration to one teacher, she just beamed and said, "that book is PERFECT for this." I also took a bag of my own books to leave in their teachers' lounge, free for the taking.

I stationed myself outside the school as the day was ending and the dismissal bell ringing. It was windy and chilly but that didn't dampen the mood.

At first a few kids were timid about accepting a book. One asked, "is it a Bible or something?" Valid question considering how many people come to my front door wanting to sell their religious beliefs. When they found out I wanted to give them a best-selling novel and they could keep it for themselves, they were a bit overwhelmed. Their smiles and excitement were so rewarding. I could have handed out books for hours like that.

I loved one young boy who said, "hey! Get your read on, y'all!" My hope now is that the book makes a difference for at least one person who took the coveted prize home on Monday. This is an experience I will be able to cherish forever. My thanks to the World Book Night USA committee for allowing me to be a part.

And of course we need to wrap up the Heroes & Villains theme week from last week. We, as readers, definitely favor our great heroes over the great villains. That may be why we love crime fiction so much...we're looking for the heroes to take care of the crime around us. Anyway, once again, Harry Bosch took the tournament beating out Professor Moriarty almost 3 to 1.

Congrats to Naomi from The Drowning Machine whose bracket submission was almost perfect all the way through. She is the grand prize winner of the bracket contest.

In the "Who Am I" Contest, we had perfect score submissions and the drawing for the prizes resulted in  Juli S. and Kim R. taking home the prizes. I'm compiling their winner packs to ship off to them.

The correct answers for that contest were:
1. Jonathan Grave
2. Dick Moby
3. Jonathan Grave
4. Lucas Davenport
5. Aimee Leduc
6. Napoleon Bonapart "Bony"
7. Hector Lassiter

Thanks to everyone who participated in that contest! I have a couple more winners to notify from drawings based on comments left throughout the week. I'll be getting in touch with those winners as soon as I take care of the two bigger contests.

My hearty thanks go out to the bloggers who particpated:

Naomi at The Drowning Machine
Les at Classic Mysteries
SuziQ at Whimpulsive
David at The Paley Center

I know obligations can get in the way of making commitments to things like this, so their participation really means a lot. I hope you were able to take some time to stop by their respective blogs.

Also, many, many thanks to the authors who contributed to this week:

Craig McDonald
Brad Parks
Steven Forman

Their fun, creative posts really added a special something to the celebration of heroes and villains. Also thanks to all the authors who participated by giving their characters' theme songs.

So this post is growing crazy out of control, so I'll add just one more part and then call it quits for today. Last Friday I went to get my hair cut - no don't run away, this really is book related. The salon was having a big Earth Day celebration, so I thought it the perfect time to leave my Emma book. What am I talking about? Well the "Where is Emma" promotion of course.

Dana Kaye of Kaye Publicity and Jamie Freveletti came up with this great promotional idea for Jamie's book, RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL. A slew of books were released to people across the country to "leave" somewhere. There's a sticker on the book that says, "if you find Emma, post to her Facebook page." And there's a community page "Where is Emma" where people are posting where they left Emma and where they found Emma. If you find her and post to the page, you can win prizes. Such brilliance! I love it.

So, I left Emma at the salon. I hope someone finds her, reports her and READS her!

Happy Reading to you all!

Love is Murder

I was mentioning this morning about having a case of the grumpies. This is about the time of year when I've taken all I can take of the winter. I have a very passionate disdain for winter to begin with, but after three to four months of snow, cold and darkness I really hate the season. So that's why Love is Murder was such a welcome reprieve. For one weekend I didn't have to worry about shoveling snow or how ugly my gas bill is. Instead I hung out with great writers and wonderful friends at Chicago's Intercontinental Hotel.

I had to know the weekend was going to be great when the first one to greet me was Dally:

Is she not the cutest little bundle of fur you've ever seen? We became fast friends, especially after she was so generous with her kisses. And she loves to snuggle.


I attended a bunch of panels and for me, they just never get old or stale. I don't think I've ever walked out of any panel having not learned at least one new thing about the authors involved.

The very first panel I attended was related to "Writing Fight Scenes." My good friend Tom Schreck was on this panel along with Jamie Freveletti as the moderator. Then I saw for the first time: Jon Land, David Case and Michael Black. Case and Black both have first hand experience in law enforcement and of course Tom is a boxer. Jamie is involved in the martial arts, both in her own practice and as an instructor. The panel discussed their pet peeves about literary fight scenes, their favorite examples and their least favorite examples.


The other session I attended on Friday was Dana Kaye's session on "Spreading Your Marketing Virus" where she shared some excellent tips on how authors can effectively market their books. She included great ideas for both social media and grass roots approaches, emphasizing the idea that you must make yourself known. She also offered up suggestions on how you can be creative and think outside the box with your marketing approaches.


Saturday I made use of the whole day attending sessions all day long. The first panel was called "Agents of Thrills: Not Cops, Not PIs, But Still on the Job for Someone Else." This one included Joe Finder, Andrew Grant, Jon Land, Laura Caldwell and the moderator Austin Camacho. It was lively and fun as the panelists shared information but also joked good-naturedly with each other as well.


The "Movie Mania" panel may have been my favorite panel. The content was enlightening and the panelists were definitely energetic. They included James Strauss, Jon Land, Marcus Sakey, Joe Finder, Hal Ackerman and Raymond Benson as the moderator. James Strauss and Jon Land spoke rather passionately about their negative experiences while Hal Ackerman and Joe Finder were much more positive. Marcus claimed he bribed his way onto the panel and he likes simply associating his name with Tobey Maguire's.


The last panel before lunch dealt with telling a good story versus having a "high concept" plot. Dana Kaye moderated this panel with Marcus Sakey, Andrew Grant, Patrick Hunt and Hal Ackerman. This was my first opportunity to hear Patrick Hunt. He has written a trilogy that deals with a portal that is allowing alien technology to enter Earth. I'm not usually intrigued by content that leans toward sci-fi, but I found this book concept very intriguing.


After lunch I found the "Thrills and Horror: How to Get to the Oh! No!" This panel was moderated by Scarlet Dean and the panelists included Jamie Freveletti, Shane Gericke, Marcus Sakey and F. Paul Wilson. This was another fun panel because the panelists worked well together, shared fun stories and all had great senses of humor. Definitely interesting stories about writing. For example, each writer gets about 200 pages into a book and then starts to feel like they've written crap and want to throw it all out. All the writers, with the exception of Paul Wilson, agreed the second book was the hardest to write. And everyone on this panel, except Jamie, outlines.


I have to admit that I attended the PI vs. Police Procedural to see exactly why they assigned Tom Schreck to it. Tom writes an amateur sleuth. He was joined by David J. Walker, Michael Black and a self-published author named Lee Williams. This panel was moderated by David Case and I was taking notes because Case really did a nice job as moderator, but otherwise I was pretty baffled on the construct of this one.


The final panel I attended was Sunday morning and I'm going to save that panel for it's own post on Friday. I have pictures and video, so we'll give it its own highlight.

Some names that aren't mentioned above in the panel events but who made the weekend great are of course the Jordans. And this weekend I had the chance to hang out with Jen Jordan really for the first time. I wish she were my sister, but at least I get to claim her as my Crimespree family sister. Super wonderful woman. Also Jill Thompson and Brian Azzarello who are fascinating and funny. Ben LeRoy and Alison Janssen from Tyrus Books, more wonderful people I want to add to my immediate family. I didn't get to see Bryan Gruley on a panel, but I always enjoy any chance to see him. What a fun guy. And my bestest roomie who puts up with my constant fangirl, my coughing in my sleep, and waking up at the crack of dawn to go to the gym...Judy Bobalik.

Of course, a conference simply can't be great unless you make new friends. I met Keir Graff and Darwyn Jones. Now I can count myself a richer person!

An all around fun weekend that definitely helped the winter uglies. Thanks for tolerating my ridiculously long post today. Hope the pictures made up for my blathering.

Happy Reading!