Dear Reader,
If you're a chocolate chip cookie lover, be sure to enter this month's Classic Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway. I bake once a month for readers (except in the summer months, it's too hot to ship chocolate.) To enter my Classic Cookie giveaway and see happy past winners, click here.
My dear friend John Clement, author of the popular Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series, created by his mother--the late and greatly-missed Blaize Clement, is today’s guest author. John’s latest mystery, The Cat Sitter & the Canary, is now available, and you’ll find the new audiobook version of Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, read by the incomparable Cassandra Campbell, at your favorite audiobook store, too. The television series based on Dixie's exploits (from the creators of Queens of Mystery) is in development now, and coming soon, watch for the audiobook of Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof.
You’ll find all things Dixie at DixieHemingwayMysteries.com, or email: [email protected]
John is giving away 10 free audio downloads of Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, via the Authors Direct free app. To enter, email John at: [email protected]
Please say “Hello” and welcome today’s guest author John Clement…
I love telling the story of how my mom became a mystery writer, because I think it's pretty inspiring. Not only because of the way it happened, but also because it came at a time in her life when she'd already had a very successful career as a psychologist. She helped mend many a broken heart (or soul). In fact, her early books were all nonfiction. They covered everything from human sexuality to tips on raising children or dealing with the ups and downs of life's slings and arrows.
She had always been a writer, but more importantly, she had always been a lover of books. My childhood was filled with books, with shelves in every room. There was a constantly rotating stack of books on her bedside table, at least a foot high. And reading glasses! She must have had a pair in every corner of the house. I still have a lot of those books. I love them so much. When she was little, her mother would walk her once a week to the public library in the little Texas town she grew up in, and she was allowed to take out as many books as she could carry home by herself. Every day, she'd climb up into the peach tree in her backyard and read and eat peaches until her mom called her in for dinner. The day she realized she'd never be able to read all the books in the world she burst into tears and was inconsolable for days.
The idea for Dixie Hemingway came in a writing workshop she taught from home on Sundays. It was a casual affair, with eight or nine writers gathered around the dining table, sharing coffee and cookies and ideas. The assignment for that week was simple: "Write the first page of a book you can't put down." Everybody took turns reading their work out loud, and after my mom read hers, the group's reaction was an enthusiastic "And THEN what happened?"
She was so encouraged she just kept writing. A few months later, with three draft chapters printed out double-spaced in a three-ring binder, she attended a writing conference. One of the perks of the conference was the opportunity to submit your work to a well-known editor for a thirty-minute consultation. The idea was that the editor would read your work and then offer advice and tips on how to make it better. When my mom sat down with Marcia Markland, one of the "big five" publishing houses' top fiction editors, she expected a little constructive criticism and maybe a few encouraging words. What she got instead was a three-book deal, and the Dixie Hemingway series was born.
-- John Clement
John is giving away 10 free audio downloads of Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, via the Authors Direct free app. To enter, email John at: [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
KIDSBUZZ: Click here to discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.
KIDSBUZZ: Honk, honk! Help your kids ages 4-8 express their emotions with Moody Moody Cars by Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, a fun ride through the roadways of feelings for car-loving kids. For a chance to win free copies, talk with the authors, and more, see www.authorbuzz.com/kidsbuzz.
* This month's Penguin Classics book is People from Bloomington by Budi Darma. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading and enter for your chance to win.
What a beautiful story about a beautiful lady.
Todd R.
Posted by: Todd | May 13, 2022 at 03:48 PM