Read Matanzas Bay Now!

If you saw the lead on my home page, you know the cat is out of the bag and my long-awaited mystery novel, MATANZAS BAY, is now available to eBook readers. Take a look at the cover and you instantly get the feel that something is amiss in the nation's oldest city. You might think it's the name of the author. Who is this Parker Francis? you ask. As blogged last week, that's my newest persona, a pen name under which you'll find the Quint Mitchell Mystery series and a short story collection to follow soon.

MATANZAS BAY has had a long gestation period, undergoing countless rewrites and winning two major awards as an unpublished manuscript. Now you can read about the nasty doings in St. Augustine for yourself. Download MATANZAS BAY to your Kindle by clicking here, or to the Nook from the Barnes & Noble catalog. And for a limited time, the price is only $2.99.

Here's the book description: When PI Quint Mitchell volunteered to help with an archaeological survey in St. Augustine, he didn't count on digging up a murder victim. In the nation's oldest city, Mitchell discovers links to ancient sins, comes face to face with his own past, and unleashes powerful forces that will do anything to keep their secrets — even if it means taking his life.

The eBook also contains the prologue and first chapter of the second Quint Mitchell Mystery, BRING DOWN THE FURIES, hopefully available by the end of the year. Let me know how you like it.

Sleuthing Out the Mystery

Mystery readers live vicariously inside the pages of the fictional world an author spins for them. The reader is able to tag along as the sleuth tackles the bad guys, butts heads with clueless cops, ferrets out clues, and finally solves the case.

Whether it's a cozy like Elaine Viets' Mystery Shopper Series, or the hard-boiled Harry Bosch mysteries of Michael Connelly, the mystery has always fascinated readers. Even while I was writing my adventure/fantasy Windrusher series, I kept reading mysteries. In my second Windrusher adventure, Windrusher and the Cave of Tho-hoth, I introduced a private

detective named Quint Mitchell who helped the Trembles track down their stolen cat. As I was fleshing out Quint's character, I provided him with an interest in archaeology dating back to his college days. A "what if" idea popped up in which Quint unearthed a murder victim while volunteering on a dig in St. Augustine. As writers do, I made a few notes about the scenario before returning to complete Cave of Tho-hoth.

That little what if moment cascaded into a 4-year project in which I wrote and rewrote MATANZAS BAY multiple times, entered it into several competitions, and tried to find a publisher. The novel won the 2007 Josiah W. Bancroft Sr. Award and was named a Book of the Year in the 2009 Royal Palm Literary Competition. This win allowed me to hook up with an agent, but after a year of sleuthing, she wasn't any more successful than I was.

Now the time has come to take the step so many other authors are taking and self-publish MATANZAS BAY. If you've kept up with the rapidly changing publishing world, you know that ebooks have grown into a major force in the marketplace. Previously rejected and unpublished authors like Amanda Hocking are making huge waves, selling tens of thousands of books, and raking in big money on the strength of their ebook sales.

And it's been recently reported that bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler turned down a $500,000 advance to ePublish his next Rain novel. Eisler believes that traditional publishing will soon be a niche business dealing in paper books, while ePublishing is the wave of the future. Hocking, J. A. Konrath, Stephen Leather, L. J Sellers, John Locke, and Selena Kitt are only a few of the many independent authors who have struck gold in the digital mine fields.

As I wrote in my last post, MATANZAS BAY will be coming to Kindle and Nook platforms very soon under the pen name Parker Francis. I'll report on the progress of the book launch in future posts. Stay tuned and wish me luck.

A Pen Name By Any Other Name ...

Writers have adopted pen names almost since Gutenberg made books available to the masses. Emily Bronte once wrote as Ellis Bell, her sister Charlotte as Currer Bell. Among Washington Irving's many pen names was Jonathan Oldstyle. And you may know Josef Teodor Korzeniowski better under his pen name of Joseph Conrad.

Most everyone knows that Stephen King wrote as Richard Bachman, and that Nora Roberts writes as J. D. Robb. The Ed McBain mysteries were penned by Evan Hunter, who was born as Salvatore A. Lombino. The list goes on and on, and you can find a long Wikipedia list here.

Writers assume pen names for different reasons, the most common might be to not confuse an audience of readers when the author begins a totally different series. One extreme example might be a successful children's author deciding to write erotica. It could happen. Others might feel their real name is too ethnic or difficult to pronounce, as with Joseph Conrad or Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, aka Ayn Rand.

All of this musing comes from my decision to publish my mystery/suspense novel, Matanzas Bay under the pen name of Parker Francis. The name has some family connections, but it was done to keep these adult mysteries separate from my Windrusher books, which have a wide audience of young adults.

Upcoming posts will unveil more details about Matanzas Bay, the release date, and perhaps a sneak preview of the cover.

Let me hear your thoughts on pen names and some of your favorites.

Getting the Words Right

Writers know the importance—and frustration—of, as Hemingway put it, “getting the words right.” We labor over our manuscripts, writing and revising, sometimes not knowing if we’re on the right path. With more and more people writing and publishing today, we still find too many books lacking the necessary ingredients to hook the reader and keep them turning pages.

After years of conducting writing workshops, I’ve put some of this knowledge into the form of a series of Craft of Writing booklets filled with proven techniques and helpful tips. The booklets will help you set that narrative hook with a great beginning, discover solutions to meandering middles and unsatisfying endings, write engaging scenes that move the story forward, create compelling characters, spicy dialogue, and learn strategies for revision. Each booklet is only $6.00 available by clicking on this link,

http://windrusher.com/other-works/the-writers-corner/#order_info. On that page you’ll also find an archive of a dozen articles taken from my columns in The Florida Writer.

While it’s an uphill climb to publishing success, getting the words right is the first big step. Enjoy the journey.

Conferences & Workshops

I've been involved with producing numerous writers' conferences and workshops over the past six years. I've also attended so many I've lost count, as well as presented my share of workshops. It strikes me that both are good ways to stay connected with the writing community, to polish our craft and add key individuals to our network of supporters.

Maybe you're one of those writers who found an agent or publisher at a conference. Or made a key contact that led to getting published. Or learned how to write more effective dialogue or scene structure at a workshop. All of this and more can happen when writers attend workshops and conferences with open minds and positive attitudes.

When you become published, you'll also be invited to participate at conferences, which is always a big ego boost, as well as another opportunity to sell books. Of course, there comes a time when we have to decide if our time is more valuably spent staying home and writing or attending conferences.

Let me know if you have a conference success story to share. Now I have to go back to planning the workshops for next year's UNF Writers Conference.

A Good Week

It was indeed a good week. It began with my publisher informing me that Windrusher and the Trail of Fire had won a Silver Medal in the Florida Publishers Association's annual President's Book Competition. This was indeed good news. On my way to the Florida Writers Association 9th Annual Florida Writers Conference Wednesday, I stopped by the Flagler Beach offices of Ocean Publishing and publisher Frank Gromling presented me with the medal.

After grinning through this photo session, I continued on to Lake Mary, just east of Orlando, for the FWA conference which lasted through Sunday afternoon. It was a busy four days, starting with a presentation of my Novel in A Day workshop on Thursday, moderating the agents and publishers' panel on Friday, and presenting another writing workshop on Saturday.

The FWA Conference was one of the best ever, and I've attended seven of the nine. This year's attracted 420 writers from multiple states. The highlight was the Royal Palm Literary Awards (RPLA) banquet Saturday night where over 350 people were treated to an inspiring talk by award-winning military historian , Carlo D'Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War and Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life among others. Carlo was good, but we all looked forward to learning the winners of the RPLA.

As a Regional Director and Board member of FWA, it's been my pleasure to participate in the growth of the organization that began just 9 years ago with only 7 members and now is approaching 1,200 members. The Northeast Florida region, which I oversee, was well represented in the awards ceremony, taking home 21 separate awards, including Book of the Year in the Unpublished category. Those of you who have followed my writing career may recall that my mystery, Matanzas Bay, took Book of the Year honors last year. I was happy to learn my short story, The Day Hemingway Died, took second place in the published category. The story first appeared in The Flagler Review, Flagler College's literary magazine. You can read the first few pages of the story by clicking on the Other Works button at the top of my web pages. Or just click here.

Let me hear from you if you've had a good week, like making the New York Times Bestseller list, for example.

Sergio's Story

This blog post was supposed to be a celebration of my new and improved website finally going live. You can view it as usual at www.windrusher.com. When you do, click on Author Bio and scroll down to the photo of Sergio licking my head. We only added this photo last week along with a new page of Vic's Cats.

Even as I added the photo, I knew Sergio was no longer the playful and energetic kitty he was when that photo was taken a few years back. Just two months ago, Sergio was diagnosed with the beginnings of kidney failure. We put him on a special diet and gave him lots of love. You can see by the postscript I added that Sergio lost his battle with the disease and now joins seven other cats in our book of memories.

Sergio was a neighborhood stray, growing up feral like many of our adopted cats. He came to us and we fed him. Eventually we had him trapped and neutered. The plan was to return him to our front yard since we already had a houseful of cats. First we sequestered him in a bedroom until he healed from the surgery. But somewhere along the line, we decided to keep Sergio (as we named him) and introduce him to his new family of brothers and sisters. There was Satchmo, Rocco, Sami, Gage and Sasha. Unlike these other rescues, Sergio wasn't ready to be a house cat. He spent all his time hiding under a bed. We figured he'd eventually come out and join the others, but he didn't. And he wasn't eating. The poor cat was obviously miserable inside and my wife decided it was best to return Sergio to the outdoors where we found him. So about two weeks after we brought him in, she opened a window in the bedroom and he scampered out.

A funny thing happened, though. Sergio kept returning to our front door, and we kept feeding him. After many months, he allowed us to pet him without running. This went on for more months while we made friends with this stubbornly-resistent outdoor cat. We eventually got him in the house only to have him scurry under the bed again. My wife and I looked at one another, thinking, "Here we go again." But this stage lasted only a day or two ending when my wife entered the bedroom to find Sergio not under the bed but on top of it. He looked at her as if to say, "What? Isn't this where I belong?"

Sergio was now part of the household, and a fully socialized kitty. He proved to be one of the sweetest boys we've had, never giving us any trouble. Fast-forward twelve years. We awoke yesterday morning to find Sergio in bed with us, something he never did. Was he saying goodbye as a friend suggested? Perhaps, but yesterday we said goodbye to him after the vet informed us his kidneys had shut down completely. Goodbye Sergio, and to the 12 years of friendship and good spirits you brought to our household.

I'd like to think he would have enjoyed seeing his picture on my website, and remembered fondly the times he licked my head while I sat there reading or watching television. I know I will.