When you're hot...

...it's enough to scare you half to death.

Lately it seems all reviews result in 5 of something - glowing words about a book that had me shaking in my shoes on the day it was released and has me still wondering how I got it all right.

The next book is due out shortly, just waiting to hear my release date - but we've gone through two edits, the final line edit is underway and the cover is just hanging around waiting for something to bit between its pages. DEJA YOU is different - much different - than BLIND JUSTICE - but then so is NO BULL - the next one out after that. The signed contract for NO BULL is in the mail and I've turned in the latest version of the manuscript to my editor.

Now I have another three or four to get finished and turn in somewhere - either Cerridwen Press who are so good to me with the three books above - or submit to New York and try knocking down those walls again. Maybe now with a track record, I'll get a more serious consideration.

Which ever it is, it's a trying time. Everytime I send something out I wonder if it can be as good as BLIND JUSTICE or was I a one book wonder?

Murder on my Mind

Seems all I want to write these days is tales of murder. Got a body? Find the killer! Whatever happened to stories about love, relationships, saving the whales and being happy?

I write about all of them (just know that one of my works-in-progress (wip) has a whale that needs saving) and I still write about murder.

I started a new book last week - got bit by the 'thought bug' and ended up in front of my computer with just a germ of an idea - nothing about the characters or the plot but about old, crime scene photographs. Then I linked a piano & piano bar, old newspaper clippings, a cat named Bandit and two detectives named Ivory and Blackwell.

What put all these bits into one book?

The title. What else fits better into a book called MURDER IN BLACK & WHITE?

The first germ of the idea came to me when I was looking at an old photo album. I made some crack about the starkness of black and white photos and how black and white told it like it was...or something along those lines. The words hadn't even left my mouth when the title was staring me in the face.

And to show this wasn't just a dumb idea that I tried to make work...I've got 65 pages of story down, sent the first three chapters to a critique friend, run the edits and revisions those pages required and sent off the first partial submission to a NY publishing house.

Needless to say, I have to finish the book, but at the rate it's going and with the rest of the story stored in my head, I don't think it will take long.

This is the kind of book I like. A book that is just 'there' when you sit in front of the keyboard. A book like BLIND JUSTICE in many respects--a book I can just flow with - words seem to come when I need them. And, in a twist of fate that wasn't intended when I began, this book will flow from BLIND JUSTICE, in some ways like a sequel. I needed a police department, I needed some brass and I needed a couple of characters up the ladder from my heroine, Detective 3rd grade Jennifer Allenby - enter Captain Brandon Hawke, Lieutenant Barry Silver and maybe, just maybe a particular psychic.

The first thing Jennifer gets is a promotion and a new boss - then the rest of the story unfolds from there. Is there romance? Of course! Happy ending? Maybe.
Murder? Of the most revolting kind!

To blog or not to blog...

...that is the question. Seems like I don't have time to do everything I should these days and my blog is suffering for it. Once ever 3 weeks isn't really enough to make it worth while, yet I do want to share news with readers when the chance presents itself. Like last week and this morning.

Check this out! This is the cover I received late last week for my next release at Cerridwen Press. Deja You is romantic suspense and should keep you wondering. The tag line - Charli Robertson's day started like any other...until Ethan Howard took control.

You'll have to read it to find out more than that - otherwise this would be a spoiler.

Then this morning I found out BLIND JUSTICE had been reviewed on Romance Divas and when I read the review, I took off on my own little trip. Talk about being on cloud 9!

Reviewer Amanda Brice said: "Kelsy George is the next James Patterson. That’s right. You read it here first. I liken Blind Justice to Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club series, but that is just because his name is better known. In fact, I thought Ms. George’s Golden Heart-winning story was much better."

Read the rest of the review at http://www.romancedivas.com/bookreviews.html

Now if that doesn't make me feel good, nothing will.

Now if I could only settle down long enough to write - the third book in the series starring Norrie Benedict and the Rocklynne Police Department has been started. I'm on page 45 already - having introduced a new heroine and brought a hero from Dead Man's M.O. - the BJ sequel. Amazing how these stories just seem to grow!

No time...like the present

Actually - that heading should be 'no time' period. That seems to be what I have of late...no time for doing the things I should while I work feverishly at getting a fourth manuscript ready for my editor at Cerridwen Press. I sent another off last week...now just have to wait and see when she has time to read it and if it's what they want. That could be the deal-breaker - it's a lot different than my other books and it may not fit them. Oh well, all I can do is keep going. The one I'm working on now is more along the lines they release.

Spring has certainly sprung here on my island...I have everything in bloom outside my RV - tulips, daffodils, mums, crocuses, primulas, calla lilies and geraniums - the nice part is a lot of them will go all year and the for the ones that die back, there's always something to replace them. Getting new fuchias this year, last year was too hard on them, with no light to speak of under the old growth cedar. Here, I've got light and lots of it! And there's enough light to give me hanging baskets of wave petunias - think I'll get purple and hot pink this year.

Interesting week we've had here - no hot water. The propane valve on our hot water tank went and all we've had for the last six days is cold water in the taps. It's like camping all over again. Anytime I want hot water, boil the kettle. Thank goodness there is a wonderful shower house in this park...don't have to boil water to have a bath. It will be fixed next week - seems the part has to come from Elkford, Indiana. Think they must be sending it by Greyhound.

A friend from my days in Alberta has confirmed her visit here in June - we're going whale watching! Probably off the southern tip of Vancouver Island where J, K and L pods hang out. Don't want to take a chance that the northern residents have returned - they don't usually show up til the last 5 or 6 days of June and that's cutting it awfully close.

As if I don't have enough to do, I volunteered to judge the published category of the Daphne Awards for Kiss of Death chapter of RWA. Have read the first two, one of which was great, the other pretty disappointing...three more to go.

Crack!! That's the sound of the whip I keep for myself...to remind me I shouldn't be goofing off and chatting with friends...need to get back to work. I'll try to keep posting more often, but forgive me if I don't manage. Got a book to write!

Doesn't rain but it pours

Actually, this could refer to our weather or my current week.

We got only our second snowfall of the entire winter on Thursday - eight inches or thereabouts, all gone by Friday except for that on the north side of trees and hedges. It wasn't even cold. The temperature was above freezing while it fell.

But, in this case, I'm talking about my current week.

Starting with my release on Thursday, of BLIND JUSTICE. It finally made it! Friday I busily worked at getting my website fixed to reflect that event and when I turned on the TV was horrified to learn that a young Orca whale, Luna (L98) lost and separated from L-pod that hangs out in the Puget Sound, had met an untimely end playing with one of the tugs he loved. Read Luna's story at http://www.reuniteLuna.com and you'll see why I was so upset. The stupidity of it all overwhelmed me and I shed more than a few tears for the poor young whale. I have Luna's picture on my desktop and have spent numerous breaks just looking at the photo.

Saturday, I had to come up with something to run as a contest for BLIND JUSTICE and it took some humming and hawing to decide what I would or would not do. Got that announced on Sunday then sat back, trying to decide what to work on next. I'd just decided I would go back to writing Spirit of the Deep, about a young Orca whale (I wonder what made me decide that?) and was reading it through to remind myself where I'd been going with it.

Had company which distracted me for the rest of day so it was Monday morning before I finally got down to it. Then, I was distracted again as one of my incoming emails was from my editor - offering a contract for my second book with Cerridwen Press. DEJA YOU will appear sometime this year, date to be announced once they receive my signed contract. It's already on the way back to them, but since I must rely on Canada Post to get it there, who knows when that might be. I pay for the speedy delivery but last time it took them nearly four weeks to get it there - the post office in Ohio screwed that up royally. This time, I'll be jumping up and down if the same thing happens. I'm already chewing my nails -- I sent it yesterday and the number I can track by is showing as not in the system - 24 hours later. Hmmmm.

In the meantime, I'll now be working my way through DEAD MAN'S M.O. -- the sequel to BLIND JUSTICE. My editor is waiting to see it.

Now I'm off to add DEJA YOU to my website - try and come up with something witty and wonderfult for a description. Have to be careful I don't give away the plot!

Tomorrow is Release Day!

I don't think I've ever been so nervous!

As a result of what I do for a living, tomorrow is my big day and it's giving me a headache, butterflies and nervous tremors. I'm a raving wreck! My husband has given up trying to talk to me, I keep zoning out while he's talking, wondering if everything is really all right. Will my work be there tomorrow when I sign on?

What is it? It's release day.

A book I've worked hardfor and fought with over the past three years will be available to the general public tomorrow morning. For better or for worse, my baby is out there.

This story, BLIND JUSTICE, one that's had it's ups and downs, got sidetracked a couple of times, has been contracted twice and is only now making it to public sale, has been the book of my heart. At least I think it is. There are others that are important to me, books I'll treat as if they were my children, but BLIND JUSTICE is the book that waited while: I recovered from a heart attack; was rewritten to something it shouldn't have been in a misdirection caused by signing with an agent I liked but who wasn't right for the story, and that I agreed to a contract for only to find out it would be 3 years before it saw the light of day. When given the out because of the wait, I took it--then went back to Cerridwen Press who'd offered a contract the same day as the other company - just a couple of hours too late. They still wanted it, thank goodness!

And now, tomorrow, I'll have done everything there is to do. I can't revise another word. I can't change my plot because it might be off a tad in one chapter. I can't go back and make any character better than they are now.

It's too late.

Tomorrow is Release Day.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck!

This and That in the week that Was!

Here it is March already and February just sort of disappeared. Probably because I was up to my eyebrows in revisions and because I went to see my mother for two and a half weeks, in Alberta.

Arrive there the day they went in the deep freeze. They hadn't had any snow and the temperatures were in the 10-12 C range (around 50-55 Fahrenheit) and the sun had been shining mindlessly all winter. The day I arrived, we drove into town with the approaching snow storm and it just got worse from there.

I, of course, living where it seldom goes below 0C/32F, no longer own a winter jacket, boots and gloves are unheard of. I managed to find a touque but when I needed it, it was buried in a suitcase.

Didn't take long to remember that frozen feeling and got right back into running from car to door, door to car.

While I in Edmonton, did the final line edits for BLIND JUSTICE - being released on March 9th (that's just two more days!) Other than that, didn't get any writing done the entire time.

Visited a few friends while I was in town, spent a lot of time in the assisted living home where my mother resides (why do they keep the rooms at 74 degrees? whew!) and on the day I headed for home, again on Greyhound, picked up 80 lbs of bison meat for our freezer. Talk about cold. The morning we chose to pack up all those roasts and steaks, the wind chill was -31C/22 below F. Now that's cold!

Got my bison meat all packed and carried home to our freezer and we're once again enjoying bison steaks.

Also caught a cold while I was away. Probably all that recirculated air on the bus - but that bus ride, at least the one TO Edmonton is another whole entry on its own.

Weather is beginning to have huge hints of spring - in Vancouver, BC, the cherry trees are out in bloom. Here, my daffodils, tulips, crocuses and irises are blooming, as is my somewhat late Christmas Plant (not to be confused with a Christmas cactus.) When it finally got going, it had three beautiful flowers and may have a few more on the way. I'm sure it must have another, more recognizable name, but I haven't a clue what it is.

I doubt if I'm going to get much of anything done this week - it's the final push on promoting BLIND JUSTICE. Once that's released, I can relax.

Also had to rewrite my blog entry about the photo shoot - the photographer asked if his local chapter of the photographer's association he belongs to could include it in their newsletter. Who am I to refuse? I hope it works for him.

Will be back in a day or two - after the release party I plan on holding here Thursday morning. See you all then.