A Radio Interview April 21, 2016

April 22, 2016 Rebecca Nolen 1 Comment

Women of mystery panel2 This is a photo of The Women of Mystery panel discussion at the Lone Star Literary Conference on April 8.

Here is a radio interview from last evening, where I am being interviewed interviewing Kimberly Morris.

April 29 to May 1 The Biggest and Best writing conference in Houston will be underway. Houston Westchase Marriott.

For those librarians and teachers now receiving this newsletter, I will be emailing you individually to share with you about school visits. Yes, the wasp has agreed to come with me. That’s what the BUZZ is all about.

reviews

More Good Books You’ll Like

April 17, 2016 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

My idea of an ideal day is nice weather for porch sitting and reading an excellent book. That said, I’ve had some good reading days. Not all the books I read are exceptional and I can’t list all my favorites on one page, but I’ve listed a few good ones here for you to think about when you’re out of something good to read.

Psychophilia: A Novel: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller by Michelle Muckley

Wow! Just wow! When I began reading this I had a hard time getting acclimated. When I was finally there, I ran with it. This poor, poor lady is delusional. Or is she? She keeps repeating things. She couldn’t seem to remember the most simple things, like her accident on the lake. Everyone else thinks she’s crazy, so she must be, right? I couldn’t tell until the end what was wrong with her. This writer got me. I really didn’t see it coming. This was j
just as good as anything by Gillian Flynn. Wow!

Broken Harbor by Tana French

I have loved all of Tana French’s books. This was no exception. I loved the first person point of view. I thought it was handled well and I had no trouble picturing the action. The story moves quickly from the start when the bodies are discovered, and then throughout the interviews with the doubts this detective has. The sadness about the children was done well. I didn’t like that I knew about mid-way through who had done it. I wasn’t disappointed, however, at the twists that happen near the end. I did love how the characters are so well-developed it hardly feels like a first person narrative, which I often find irritating in fiction.

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

This was an interesting premise. The entire hen party (like a bachlorette bash for the bride to be) was to take place in the middle of the woods in a glass house with no curtains and lots of snow. It was like a “closed” room murder mystery. Who could have done it?? Who else was there? The person whose POV the story is in, wakes up in the hospital with little or no memory of what happened. I really didn’t know who done it until almost the end. The author kept me guessing and I liked that. Recommended.

Author Blog Tour, reviews

Author Highlight: A New Novel by Award-Winning author Pamela Fagan Hutchins

March 31, 2016 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

pamela jan 2016 portrait

Big-haired paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily has her life back on track. Her adoption of Betsy seems like a done deal, her parents have reunited, and she’s engaged to her sexy boss Jack. Then client Phil Escalante’s childhood buddy Dennis drops dead, face first into a cake at the adult novelty store Phil owns with his fiancée Nadine, one of Emily’s best friends. The cops charge Phil with murder right on the heels of his acquittal in a trial for burglarizing the Mighty is His Word church offices. Emily’s nemesis ADA Melinda Stafford claims a witness overheard Phil fighting with Dennis over a woman. Before he can mount a defense, Phil falls into a diabetic coma, leaving Nadine shaken and terrified. Meanwhile Betsy’s ultra-religious foster parents apply to adopt her, and Jack starts acting weird and evasive. Emily feels like a calf out of a chute, pulled between the ropes of the header and the heeler, as she fights to help Phil and Nadine without losing Betsy and Jack.

I really go for books with a lot of action and I wasn’t disappointed by Hell to Pay. It could be read as the 3rd in the series starring Emily, but it works as a stand alone also. I recommend it!

Author Bio:

Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes overly long emails, the best-selling, award-winning What Doesn’t Kill You romantic mystery series (WINNER USA Best Book Award, Fiction: Cross Genre) and hilarious nonfiction. She is a recovering attorney and investigator who resides deep in the heart of S/Nowheresville, WY and TX with her household hunks—husband Eric, one-eyed Boston terrier Petey, and house goat Peyton Manning. Pamela has a passion for great writing and smart authorpreneurship as well as taking long walks, experimenting with her Keurig, and traveling in the Bookmobile. Follow Pamela at http://eepurl.com/lq-bP and get her exclusive free e-book Puppalicious and Beyond. Visit her at http://pamelafaganhutchins.com (where you can discover which of her novels she’s currently offering for free download) or drop her a note pamela at pamelafaganhutchins dot com. And if you would like her to visit your book club, women’s group, writer’s group, or library, all you have to do is ask.

reviews

A Good Book: Never Say I Can’t by Philip Catshill

March 27, 2016 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Philip Catshill was a young police officer in Britain until one day he woke up staring at a crack in the bathroom ceiling.

Told with a forthright yet sensitive tone, this novel opened up my eyes to what it is like for a person to experience a major stroke. The author survived a major stroke at the age of 30 and was eventually able to write about it in this novel about that eighteen month time period. He was determined to get back to the police service. He worked hard to talk, to walk, and to get the use of his limbs back, only to be taunted by the other stroke victims in the rehabilitation unit who said, “You haven’t had a proper stroke” once he was out of bed.

The loss of words, the way people react to a person with a disability, the struggle against prejudice from people who have had stroke, too, are heartbreaking reminders to be mindful of others. Philip Catshill’s novel is well-written. I highly recommend his novels to everyone.

reviews, The Writing Life

Free is Always Good

March 21, 2016 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Hello all,

It’s officially spring. I thought you would like a baby photo. This is the grand girl when she was the age her baby brother is now. They look so alike. I will post his when I have one.

I wanted to tell you all that my book The Dry now has a free teacher guide to go with it. It is excellent. It contains all the important things a fifth to seventh grade teacher would need for her class after reading the book. It is FREE on the home page just under the photo of the book.

Have a lovely week. It’s sunny here with lots of flowers blooming at the moment. We had such a hard rain, with hail, a few days ago that it knocked all the flowers off the azaleas.

Happy Spring!!

The Writing Life

Interview with Novelist Rebecca Nolen (The Dry, Deadly Thyme)

March 14, 2016 Rebecca Nolen 1 Comment

Here is a recent interview.

WILDsound Writing Festival

Rebecca Nolen
President, Houston Writer’s Guild
Author: The Dry and Deadly Thyme
Follow her blog

MT: Do all of your novels have a general theme and tone?

Rebecca Nolen: No. One if for adults and the other is a middle-grade. I plan to do more novels that will go with my two published novels. I’m working on a novel called Deadly Haste that takes place right before Deadly Thyme. It is a stand-alone, too.

MT: Why should people buy your novels?

RN: My children’s novel The Dry is a great adventure story for children ages 9 to 99. It’s a fantasy that involves giant bugs and also, for the science nerds like me, each chapter heading starts with a wasp fact. The wasp facts have nothing to do with the story.

Adults who love discovering a great story to keep them up reading at night, will love Deadly…

View original post 556 more words

reviews

Book Review: Pennies From Burger Heaven by Mary McKay

March 4, 2016 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

I love this review of a favorite book of mine!!!

Available at Amazon .com

Title: Pennies from Burger Heaven

Author: Marcy McKay

Genre : Literary Suspense

Publication Date: December 18, 2015

Rating: 4 Stars= Great Page Turner

Marcy McKay takes readers on an incredible journey with a little girl trying to survive. Copper Daniels is a homeless young girl searching for her mother. She learns to maneuver her way through the streets of Texas, dodging danger and staying hidden from authorities.

Copper is continuously running for her life while barely being able to feed herself. I loved her strength and faith that she and her mother would be able to get out of Texas. Copper finds out many unhealthy things about her mother’s activities, but she never turns her back away, continuing her search. This little one was very determined and her love for her mother will not let her give up, which pulled at my…

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Home and Family

Hello Leap Year

February 29, 2016 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

Nannie birth I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Here it is leap year 2016, a Monday, the day before Super Tuesday. I am not liking what I am hearing, people. The unkindness of this year’s politicians – ugh! My father would give them a good knuckle burn on their skimpy-haired heads (I’m talking all of them) and my mother would wash their mouths out with soap.

I digress. Happy leap year, y’all. Last night, instead of the Oscars and all their political rhetoric, I opted to watch Downton Abbey’s Manners program. It was highly informative and entertaining.

Apparently a gong was used in the big manors to announce lunch, dinner and tea. How that brought back memories of my grandmother’s dinner gong.

My German-Texan grandmother was raised in upper middle-class German-Texan society. In other words, her father had property and money. He was a Lutheran Sunday School superintendent for a large area of middle Texas and he was extremely smart about what property to buy. They owned a lot of property up and down the railroad. That was then. There isn’t much of a railroad industry now. They originally disinherited my grandmother when she married my grandfather. It’s a long story full of misconceptions. My grandmother married my grandfather and moved immediately to South Africa where my father was born. My great-grandparents thought my grandfather was a black man as they had not met him and only knew he was from South Africa. He’d moved there from Scotland when he was two. See, it’s a long story. And isn’t that a nice tie-in to the Oscars?

The great-grandparents are buried in Nordheim. I haven’t actually been there but it’s south of San Antonio. My grandmother was born in 1897 in Weimar, TX. It’s just west of Houston about 45 miles. The picture is of her birth certificate. I’ve been to Weimar. Every old lady I saw looked like my grandmother.

Anyway. She had this brass gong. She would ring when it was lunch, tea time (4:00) or dinner (8:00). It sat on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t big but it was loud. If we didn’t respond to the gong, she brought out the cow bell. My grandfather was Scottish. But my German grandmother was the one who actually made the steady income in the family. She managed three apartment units on their property. She saved up all that money for years and put it in a CD my grandfather knew nothing about. (Thank goodness or it would have been spent.) She actually sent me $5 a month when I was living in the wild city of Chicago in the ’70’s.

They lived in South Houston near Old Galveston Highway and Spencer, I remember the meals we had around that small table in the kitchen with the moths batting with a barely audible thwat thwat at the light bulb above the table at night. We had the windows open because to use the air-conditioning meant spending money, frowned upon by grandfather. He demanded his tea and my grandmother had been trained to make it the proper way. Boil the fresh water, pour immediately into the teapot to warm it. Then into the hot water add the tea, wait, strain into the cups. My grandfather would add four teaspoons of sugar, a bit of milk, pour it on his saucer and slurp it loudly. He’d give a long prayer of thanksgiving with his long rolling ‘r’s woven into the words before we ate. After this ritual we were always starving.

Then off to bed, the smell from the asphalt factory permeated the damp summer air, and the chirp of crickets soothed us, the wee bairns, to sleep.

reviews

A brief word about dogs: A Review of Stephanie Jaye Evans’ books

February 21, 2016 Rebecca Nolen 1 Comment

51MLA5fnRbL._AA160_ When I read Faithful Until Death by Stephanie Jaye Evans I loved the story for several reasons. First, it is set in Sugar Land, Texas. Yes, Sugar Land, two words. As a resident of Sugar Land for more than twenty years, I could locate all the places mentioned in the story, but I could also relate well to the type of people who live in the various neighborhoods, and to Bear Wells, the humble, kind-hearted gentle giant of a Church of Christ preacher. I lived there. I don’t live there now. The book rang true. All the way. It could happen, finding a body on the golf course during a morning jog. It could, surprised it hasn’t. Secondly, there was a Newfoundland dog. I’ve always wanted a Newfie. So I wrote one in my book, Deadly Thyme. They are great dogs – great as in huge, and great as in dogs who love humans and other animals. If you have a 180 pound dog, that’s a good thing.

This week I finished reading Safe From Harm and I loved that preacher Bear Wells is having trouble with his teenage daughter again. Only this time, she is trying to figure out what happened to her friend, who wasn’t a friend. She insists it was not suicide. But every time she attempts to find out more, she ends up looking down the barrel of a gun, with her father watching in horror, not knowing how to prevent his daughter’s death. It’s so well written. Truly. I recommend this author’s books. She’s so good. There was so much humor. I loved the pugs. I take that back. I adored the pugs. And I was truly surprised to find out who the killer was.

MY BOOKS, reviews, The Writing Life

Missing Cats, and Best Sellers

February 5, 2016 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

comfortable-cat Here I am. Me. Fallible. Ready to disappoint. It’s Friday February 5, 2016 (can you believe time has flown so quickly?) and I have decided that my YA novel, which is in the second draft stage is just toooo darn boring. Well, okay, I realize it’s just me saying that, but it is now on my proverbial shelf, being thought about but not worked on. I think of that shelf as the back burner of my stove, the one with the various degrees of “simmer” which may mean that spaghetti sauce could sit there all day getting better by the minute. Thing is I need to put conflict on every page as my friend Roger Paulding always says in critique group. He is so correct. Conflict on every page moves the reader to turn the pages. If there is no conflict the reader is just going to fall asleep. My YA has no conflict in it, or at least not enough to keep every reader involved. So say goodbye to the YA novel I’ve been working on for two years, and say HELLO to a new murder mystery set in London with Jon Graham as the hero. It’s true. I think it’s going to be a winner. And I don’t mean that in a Donald way. I mean, if you liked Deadly Thyme I think you might like the one I am now writing set just before Jon Graham goes to Cornwall.

But back to being a winner. You see, Deadly Thyme is a winner. I say that because for all of three nano-seconds in January, I was a true BEST-seller. I was #1 in mystery, thriller, detective series and in several other categories. I was so thrilled I think I couldn’t see straight. Yes, I may have actually made a bit of money there. And if the world’s idea of success is making money, then I won in the world’s opinion of best-selling author. Plus, I paid a few bills, or at least I will when the royalties hit the bank sometime in the next four weeks.

Most people don’t realize, and when I say most people I include myself here, because I never thought about what kind of money authors made before trying to become an author. I just figured authors made a lot of money. Best-seller doesn’t always translate into what you and I would consider rich. Last year I went in the hole only $665.00. That’s pretty fantastic! The year before my debt was over $3,000. That’s what I spent getting my books out in front of you versus what I made selling said books. But this whole book idea/plan needs further expose. Let me break it down for you in a super simplified way because I am a super simplified-thinking person. I put Deadly Thyme on sale for .99 for the month of January 2016. Bookbub, bless their hearts, accepted me into their daily deal campaign. I sold three thousand Deadly Thyme ebooks on Kindle alone in one day. For the month of January, between all the various e-book outlets I sold over 6 thousand ebooks at .99. On Kindle I made 35% of that .99. Amazon made the rest. I am not complaining. A penny is still a penny to me, as old-fashioned as that sounds, and 29 cents is still a lot times three thousand. Compare that to what happens when a traditionally published big-name author sells their e-book for $14.99 on Amazon. Check this out! The publisher makes 15%, the author’s agent makes 15%, and because it isn’t in the price range of 2.99 to 9.99 with Amazon (that’s the 70% profit range) the profit is only registering at 35%, Amazon is making the rest. The author is taking home 35% of that $14.99, less 15% less 15%. Oh bother, as Winnie-the-Pooh would say.

Deadly Haste. There, I’ve said the title of my new effort. I even found the most gorgeous Byron quote for it. “Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.” So apropos. Don’t be mad. I love really cool classical quotes. Morris would be pleased. My setting is Harrow a northwest borough of London. And there are missing cats involved here.

Full disclosure. This is a preliminary draft and I realize that as time goes by what I love won’t always get to “stick” because, though I love it, the “thing” no matter what it is doesn’t always move the plot forward. I am all about story. I want you, my precious readers, to enjoy my story. If my little beloved “thing” — like missing cats, doesn’t move the story forward it’s going to be kicked outside into the snow.

I know, it makes me sad, too.

So this is the news from my end. I hope you all are enjoying a little quiet and comfort wherever you are. Stay warm. It is cold out there.