A word, please

Like apparently half the women and a good portion of the men in the world, I’ve been sucked into the Heated Rivalry vortex. I’m watching it now for the third time, which makes me only low-key obsessed, according to some of what I’ve read. (To be fair, I was already a fan of director Jacob Tierney’s wonderfully unhinged Letterkenny.)

But I figured that in addition to watching and re-watching Heated Rivalry, I should read the books, starting with Game Changer, the first in the series. It starts with Kip and Scott’s story (IYKYK) and – as least as far as I’ve read – the TV script pretty much follows the book.

But a few pages in, author Rachel Reid writes something that tragically didn’t make it into the TV dialogue.

Adorable smoothie guy Kip is talking with a co-worker about his crush on a new client who turns out to be the hockey star Scott Hunter.

“So,” Maria said, leaning over into Kip’s personal space, “he was hot?”

“Oh my God,” Kip grinned. “He was volcanic. He didn’t look real.”

The word jumped out at me, and not just because Reid put it in italics. She could have had Kip reply that yes, Scott was indeed hot. Or even gone with the hotter but still familiar smokin’. But Reid leveled way up. She went for volcanic, with its stratospheric level of hotness.

It can be too easy to glide along with the familiar when writing, which is pretty much what I’m doing now as I head toward the finish of a first draft. Volcanic was a reminder of how important it is to push past that on the revisions, to kick things up a notch or three. I want my words to grab the reader’s attention, the same way Reid’s grabbed mine.

Of course, the only way that can happen is if I turn off Heated Rivalry and head back into the first draft. That fourth viewing of the show is just going to have to wait.

The hardcover of The Least Among Us, my first book featuring a small-town public defender, is on sale for the low, low price of $1.19 - alas, minus shipping and handling.

The ebooks of Reservations, the fourth in my series about journalist Lola Wicks, and Under the Shadows, the fifth in that series, are $2.99 each.

And the ebook for Best Laid Plans, the first in the four-book series about amateur sleuth Nora Best who travels around in her Airstream trailer, is $4.99

Get ‘em while they’re, uh, volcanic.

Do I love limoncello? Why, yes, I do.

Do I love PIE? Duh.

So when the Washington Post published this recipe for limoncello pie, I ran to the kitchen. Not only is the limoncello in the custard, it’s also in the whipped cream. FWIW, I thought the candied lemon garnishes were more trouble than they were worth, which didn’t stop me from devouring them. It’s a lovely pie, perfect for spring.

I hope Laura Lippman had as much fun writing Murder Takes a Vacation as I am reading it. It centers on a woman of a certain age and size who treats herself to a luxury cruise on the Seine after she comes into unexpected wealth. Said cruise turns out to be anything but relaxing. Her protagonist, Muriel Blossom, a secondary character from Lippman’s Tess Monaghan mysteries, is a delightful traveling companion.

Former Baltimore Sun foreign correspondent Dan Fesperman’s espionage thrillers are guaranteed good reads, so when I saw The Small Boat of Great Sorrows in a Baltimore bookstore, I grabbed it. A sequel to his award-winning Lie in the Dark, it’s set in Sarajevo after the 1990s Balkan wars, which Fesperman covered. It’s a tense reminder that wars linger long after politicians say they’re over.

In The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last Chance Journey Across America, Elizabeth Letts traces the remarkable journey of Annie Wilkins, who at the age of 63, penniless and with a diagnosis of only a couple of years to live, leaves her failed Maine farm in 1954 to ride horseback across the United States. Letts’ account of the dizzying social changes in the 1950s adds to the book’s pleasure.

Earlier this month I went to my first AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference and book fair, held this year in Baltimore. It was, as I’d been warned, overwhelming.

It’s billed as the largest of its kind in North America, with more than 10,000 attendees this year. It largely features writing programs and independent presses, so different in many respects from the crime writing conventions I usually attend. But writing is writing, and as always when I go to these conferences, I came away having learned something useful to apply to my own work. I also got to see old friends – equally rewarding.

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I love talking with groups about books or writing in general, either in person or via the magic of Zoom. I also give writing workshops, perfect for libraries and writing groups. Interested? You can contact me via my website or by messaging me here.

And, as always, thanks for reading!