The Nancy Pickard Mystery Section

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a party hosted by a local author, called the Winter Birthday Girl's Party. One of the people in attendance was the award-winning mystery author, Nancy Pickard. Until then, I wasn't familiar with Nancy or her books, but, as often happens, once I met her I started to read her work.

In short order, I became a fan. Over the years I have read a number of her books, and, I remember being thoroughly impressed when I went to a local branch of a major book store chain and there was an entire section within the mystery genre dedicated to Nancy Pickard's books. I was particularly impressed since she hails from the Greater Kansas City area.

It has been a while since I've gone looking for one of her books. Reading time has not been in abundance for me on any level. Time to read anything has become a real luxury. But, I had her book THE WHOLE TRUTH that I had purchased some time ago and recently completed it. I really enjoyed it, so thought I'd run out to the local book store and pick up another one of her "truth" books, since I was finally finding a little time to read. That's when I got a real shock.

I went to the mystery section and began looking in the spot where there had been a Nancy Pickard area set aside. It wasn't there any longer. So, I'm thinking maybe they moved it, but search tho I may, I could not find her books set-aside. So, I began to search for them under the "P" section of mystery books. And, unbelievably, there weren't any there at all. Impossible, I think! She's written over a dozen mystery books, award-winning mystery books. So, I go ask.

A very nice young bookseller takes a gander at their computer and assures me that no, they don't have any of Nancy's mystery books on site. They can order them in for me if I wish, but, with the exception of her newest (which is also an award-winner)they don't have any of her books in stock - period!

Go figure? I don't know the whys or why fors of that decision by that local book store chain, but it just seemed so nonsensical to me! How can they not carry her whole range of mystery books in the mystery section? Anyway, I took a peek at Nancy's web site and she mentions a couple of local bookstore that I'm familiar with that do carry her works. When time permits, I will definitely venture over to one (or both) of them to pick up the books I'm wanting.

One of these days, though, I hope the Country Club Plaza local of that major bookstore chain brings the Nancy Pickard mystery section back!

Another Kind of October Web

Shelia Goss is celebrating a wonderful success this month with the publication of her newest book! PAIGE'S WEB is Shelia's third book, but it is her first that is being published traditionally without having been previously self-published.



An engineer by education, Shelia was also blessed with a literary gift that she gave the same drive and tenacity she used to pursue her engineering degree. This resulted in two exceptional self-published novels, ROSES ARE THORNS, VIOLETS ARE TRUE, and MY INVISIBLE HUSBAND. With a fan base rapidly and soundly established, Shelia determined it was time to seek a traditional publishing relationship. With stats in hand she began her pursuit!



Shelia is quick to tell you that the transtition from self-published to traditional was an often frustrating, heartbreaking venture, but when she did find a publishing home the results have been exceptional. Both of her first self-published titles were republished by her new publisher, Urban Soul, with resounding success and now, as mentioned earlier, comes the debut of this first, never before published effort, PAIGE'S WEB.

We are wishing Shelia every success! PAIGE'S WEB is available everywhere books are sold!

Green, Green and More Green!

I found all these in my front yard earlier this week!I was actually taking a writing break and went out on the porch to enjoy the fresh air and decided to take a look around the yard. I'd found a couple of four-leaf clovers earlier in the summer and just thought I'd give it another glance, especially since we were about to start preparing the yard for next year and that would include putting down some chemicals that sometimes kill clover.

The first four-leaf clover just jumped out at me and from there, all over the yard, but not in patches, I found four-leaf, after four-leaf, after four-leaf! They were everywhere.

The last two that I found actually had heart-shaped leaves, and, the most intriguing thing about those two was that although I attempted several times to take photos of them, the photographs would always be blurred or so infused with light you could barely make them out! Those I pressed and tucked away in my most cherished book... obviously they are special!

Just thought I'd share! If these are by any chance truly lucky may you share in the wealth and good fortune!

Wish It Was Me

Life is so intriguing. Recently I ran across the blog of a new young author who happens to be represented by an agency that also represents a project I'm working on. This young author is just straight forward, honest, and given to giving blow-by-blow detailed information about her interactions with the agent who is also the agent representing our project. She elaborated in her blog on hours long strategy sessions on the telephone, discussions about the anticipation of pre-empts and auctions, excitedly shared how she'd been requested to provide synopsis for yet to be written books to be pitched simultaneously, and, even as a mere blog reader who doesn't know this writer, my heart was thundering at the possibilities and probabilities that await her when all is said and done.

It actually brought tears to my eyes.

Wish it was me.

MipoRadio: Where Poetry Tunes In

Looking for something exceptional in the way of poetry? Then MipoRoadio.net will definitely fit that bill. It is a collection of contemporary poets reading and performing their own works, along with some dynamic poetic programs under the production mastery of DiDi Menendez.

I am profoundly honored that I am one of the poets you can access and listen to on MipoRadio. I hope you'll give us all a listen soon!

If you prefer direct URL addresses, here you go:

MiPoRadio: http://www.miporadio.net/

Peggy Eldridge-Love on MiPoRadion: http://www.miporadio.net/Peggy_Eldridge-Love

Life's A Boomer!

The response has been excellent to the new web site Life's a Boomer. Plans are for it to become a lightening rod site of wonderful things for, to and about those of us who make-up the intriguing Baby Boom generation. We have lived extraordinary lives in extraordinary times and made and are still making contributions no one should ever be able to ignore or forget. Now is an excellent time to begin to share them in all their scents, flavors, sounds, images, and feels!

A Call for Submission (CFS) has gone out to a host of artist, authors, musician and entertainers to share their ante dotes and stories, but above all is the invitation to the everyday member of the Baby Boom generation who feels they have something special to have considered for inclusion. To request information regarding submissions send an email to Submissions Guidelines and details will be sent to you right away.

In the works also, are a series of Life's a Boomer books with themes from the whimsical to the heartfelt, the eye witness to the visionary.

Life's a Boomer! Join us for the journey!

Quasi-Literary Down Time

I haven't intentionally been on "no blog" recently, I just haven't been motivated to stop and reach out as far as writing is concerned. I even had a very nice live interview with one of the country's most talented new recording stars a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't had the fortitude to get that posted yet. It is like I just ran out of a certain kind of steam all of a sudden. I hope this post is an indication I'm getting my energy back.

I find at the moment that working creatively with my hands allows for a certain amount of retrospection that has some special healing properties. At least I think that is what I've been experiencing during this quasi-literary-down-time. I've made an array of new jewelry pieces, even tried my hand at making some of the cell phone jewels that someone brought to my attention. I went through and completely reorganized my beads, stones, crystals, glass, seeds, shells, bone, trade beads, countless findings, silver, gold hooks and posts and other jewelry making paraphernalia. That is saying something since I've been collecting all this stuff for twenty years or more!

I get odd bursts of inspiration for these creative projects too, like this art doll I made a couple of days ago. I named her FATIMA and find myself enjoying her immensely. I think she represents tenacity to me for some reason. Ms. Fatima looks to me like she's become a sage of wisdom through much struggle and difficult experience, not by luck or preferential treatment of any sort. Still she seems content! Hummm.

But, hey, guess what! My right hand is obviously itching for its pen. Time to write. Time to get with it again.

Mud Pie Maker

Okay, I'm letting you in on another part of me! I love to make things out of clay! It started with mud pies when I was about five or six ... not only had I already started to write my own fairy tales but I felt the need to try to illustrated them as well, and ... mud was my medium of choice! I say it started with mud pies because when school was out in the summer one of my favorite past times was making mud pies, and my father made me believe that I was the most creative mud pie maker who ever existed, because he'd stop and examine the ones I had lined up on the sidewalk, and those that he liked he'd pay me a nickle for!
That was all the incentive I needed! I went from mud pies to eggs by the bushel, thinking he might purchase them individually (tee hee hee)
but he was too smart to fall for that! He kept it to a nickle for mud pies, but I was already fascinated with what you could do with dirt and water and words and imagination and making my characters three-dimensional became a way of my little creative life!
I forgot about that part of my creative spirit for a long, long while, but a few years ago while rushing through a craft store my eyes fell on a row of clays and those hot summer Kansas days flashed across my heart and mind and I stopped.
I bet I can still do that, I thought, and half an hour and a sizable number of nickles later I left the craft store with a bag full of multi-colored clays! So, here's the results! There's "The Napper" and
and "The Crown of Thorns",
"The Egg Bearers",
"The Making of a Prince",
"The Champ and His Contender", and,
being the eternal optimist that I am, "The Bushel of Eggs!"

Thanks for indulging me!

Cooperating Muses

A lot of my time in recent months has been spent leaning on my creative muses who, surprisingly, have not been as temperamental as they have a tendency to be under more normal circumstance. They have bonded with the logical and technical me to figure out things I had absolutely no clue about, but were necessary to move to new creative levels.

One of those things was deciding to become more serious about my own visual art, which I've always just more or less toyed with, and seeing if it could reach a level of critical acceptance in the larger art world. I thought I'd see if anyone would be interested in licensing any of my art for prints, and, sure enough, the first one I submitted was approved.

So, I've got my online gallery in motion now. It's the Peggy Allen Love Gallery, and it has only one print today, but I have dozens I'll be adding to it in the near future. Learning the requirements of preparing artwork for presentation is interesting, but I recently inherited a MAC that's loaded for bear with everything I need to get it right, and it seems to be teaching me itself what I need to do next!

Getting that approved was great, but then I also saw my name on Palibra.com's Top 10 Best Seller list for my excerpt from TELL IT LIKE IT IS, and that really was an emotional bonus!

I'm really grateful for these small blessings.

Palibra - Like iTunes for Writers

Not long ago I got an email from an agent making me aware of Palibra. I was in the midst of completing and returning edits to my other agent, as well as juggling a host of other labor intensive projects, so I'd set the information aside.

Well, yesterday was the day I had that extra moment to explore Palibra and my hands got a little clammy with excitement once I did. As the founder, Edwardo Jackson, describes it, it is sort of like an iTunes for Writers, a place where writers can offer their short narratives (8,000 words or less) to readers for immediate download for less than a dollar. Just a penny less than a dollar at .99, but pennies do add up after while!

I was impressed with some of the names I saw that were already contributing. Writers I respect like Gloria Mallette, Karen Quinnoes, Lolita Fields and others. I signed on as a contributing author right then and offered a short work of fiction that speaks to the unspeakable issue of female castration entitled The Grabour Bush, along with another little inspirational piece, Sometime It's Only a Caboose. (Late update! Check out an excerpt from Tell It Like It Is as well!)

I think it is a great concept. It really offers writers the type of sounding board we all have long really needed, but, it also gives readers something tangible and tantalizing too! Palibra sounds like a win-win for everyone to me.

Instant Google

A couple of days ago I finished writing my article for my monthly contribution to Blogging in Black. Its posting date was a few days out, which was good, because I needed to learn the system there for posting in advance. I fiddled for a bit, got a little confused on the military time clock, but, with a little help from a fellow blogger, got it done. I felt like a proud little first grader when I finished, but I still needed to wait until the 4th day of the month to know for sure how well I'd done.

I woke up early this morning, the 4th, and rushed to my computer at the appointed time to pull up the site. My heart dropped. It wasn't there! Doggone it, I thought, I did something wrong. But, with a quick click of my refresh button I realized all it well. It was there, just as it was supposed to be!

While reading over my post, Birth of a Premise, an email notice popped up in the lower corner of my screen. I blinked. It was a Google Alert and it was alerting me to, that's right, the very article I was reading that had posted less than ten minutes or so before! Now that blew me away! Instant Google? Wow!

How things change... for the better!

A Quiet Celebration

May 24th
I celebrate you this day!

Second Life, Webkinz & This World

A name keeps cropping up that just sort of sits out there, with a few words surrounding it that tweak the curiosity just enough for you to remember it, until finally you are curious enough that you say, hum mm, let me take a look at this. So you surf, and bingo it comes up, and you find that it is a virtual world that countless people are starting to gravitate to where they can build a fantasy life and live and be whomever they chose. That one is called Second Life.

Then, the other day, one of our local stations asked the question about how many of us knew anything about Webkinz? They thought we should because local stores could not keep them on their shelf! It seems they have become the new "to die for" toy, the must have gift, the 2007 Beanie Babies!




Well, I certainly didn't know that. I'd never heard of it, but when they started to report I realized that I'd seen a few of the cute, cuddly toys nestled tightly in the arms of little ones in our family, or little cuties strolling through the mall with their parents, but I had no idea that they, too, had a virtual world of their own! Webkinz is a virtual, social world for children! Per a parent that was interviews on our local station, her young ones are learning about the responsibilities of pet ownership, property ownership, and money management through the Webkinz website!

If there are youngsters in your life you might want to ask them about this new phenomena, find out what type of a social impact it is having in their life. You might also want to find about a bit more about social worlds as a whole. As tough as times are in the real one, it might be very tempting to opt for a virtual one where you rule, but I'm not yet convinced.

Tapped by MsJayy

Now this is a bit different for me. I'm not sure what my mindset normally is when I drift here to blog a bit, but it is usually unscripted. But I'm purposely here now because I got tagged by MsJayy. I didn't know it until I was checking my site visits and saw a host were coming from her site. My eyebrow lifted and I hurried on over to see what was up, and there, near the bottom of her eloquent offering on her obsessions, was my name as one of the next five in line to spill all. My goodness, I thought, this is not a good time for me to try to delve into my wounded psyche! So, forgive me if I come up with a lot of fluff, or, if I go all the way off the deep end on the side of melancholia. Life has recently been a very, very bumpy ride.

Obsessions
1) Listening: I listen so hard now it physically hurts, especially if someone I love deeply is talking. I want to hear them. I want to make sure I am really hearing what they are saying, what they mean, and, this is probably the most painful part, trying to hear between the lines to what they aren't saying.

2) Sleeping: Sleep is a commodity that I now value beyond my ability to say. I approach it ritualistically, having been deprived of it for a spell, and I do what I can to ensure that once I have lured it to me, I can keep it for at least four or five hours. Prescription sleep aids were against my better judgement, and over the counter sleep aids would just take me to the door of a good night's sleep and abandon me there, but, I stumbled upon a wonderful tea, made by Tazo, and rightfully named 'Calm'. So I am careful to differentiate that I am obsessed with sleep and not 'Calm', but, at least for the moment, they go hand-in-hand.

3) Direction: My direction is an obsession. Any road taking me there is no longer acceptable. I need to know where I'm headed, what mode of transportation I'm taking, I'm adamant about reading the signs posted along the way, and about what I'm supposed to do when I reach my destination.

4) Possibilities: There are possibilities that have introduced themselves to me in the lives (and deaths) of others that I resent having been opened up as possibilities. Though this may seem an odd statement: I am obsessed with limiting my possibilities. Some of you will understand.

5) Writing: Momentum as a writer stalled momentarily, but it is back in spades. The poet in me is a slave driver now! I weave poetry now as though I were at a spinning wheel with my foot cemented to the pedal. Short bursts of prose or long fiddled with premises are finding themselves hammered out into coherent synopsis, that become respectable outlines, and are turning into long overdue finished projects. I am writing ruthlessly, continuously, passionately, and authentically.

Okay? Next up is Carla, Shelia, and I'm not going to come up with anymore because my FIVE have already been tagged! Did I play fair? I hope so!

Mother's Day: Sachet L'Air du Temps

I know, I know, I've shared this before on Mother's Day, but this is for my mother - now more than ever. Her sweet spirit is ever near.




Sachet L'Air du Temps

The scent of her lingers in folds,
creases and closed boxes,
often sweet surprises stumbled upon
on the worst of days

when angry men and crude
women rip, snatch,
and seek to pry loose

my smallest joy.

The aroma, easing forth at first,
a mere suggestion, strengthens
as if steeped in

freshly warmed care. A sweet sachet
impervious to boundaries seen,
relentless in its mission,
and, when it is gone I find

I am completely whole again.

©2000 Peggy Eldridge-Love
From You Beckon

Tinkering

---

I've been tinkering with watercolor, flinging and slapping, dabbing and stroking, and it has felt good. Just something to do while I wait on something else to materialize. One of them I named 'Or Not'. I'm abstract oriented when it comes to art, but my husband picked that piece up and immediately said that it looked like a face to him. It surprised me that he zoned in on it so quickly. He saw straight through it - so I'll have to 'face it or not'. I'm not as abstract as sometimes I think I am.

I've written a few articles recently that I like. My momentum is picking back up and that is a good thing.

The Stretch

Photo: Pavel Potapov

I understand - now - so I unclench.
We no longer head in that direction
though I do not yet know another.
Senseless to resist - still - so I unfurl
from my fetal curve to stretch.
Trust? So I say. Truth? So I hope.
You did not ask this time.
I am reminded to be still.
To wait.
Now.
©2007 Peggy Eldridge-Love

Next!

It is a good thing that things change. They need to, regardless of how terrifying change and the element of the unknown tends to be. I am altering my routine on numerous different levels, from small little things like what time I shower, to actions that take much more thought and adjustment.

I'm examining my habits, too. The interesting revelation is how many habits I have that I was unaware of. I discover that my mouse has to be in an exact spot before I will click it when I'm using my desktop computer. I note the time when I post an entry into my journal, and though days may pass in between entries, it is almost always the same time within a few (wee hour) minutes of the entry before that I'm jotting out my heart. So, I flipped it. I made an entry first thing in the morning --told myself how I wanted my day to go for a change, rather than telling myself how it went. I'm tired of being so habitual.

And things I cling to. Heck, I want to uncling every where I can. I don't want to allow anything to matter too much. I'm not talking about giving away my possession or all that nonsense, I'm talking about eliminating the unnecessary wherever the unnecessary may be. If I'm having to think about it and it's not productive, it isn't bringing me joy and happiness, it's not helping someone else, and if it is a source of stress or strain, it is time for it to go!

So, it is a season of change for me, time to step away from the comfort zone and into a zone where truth and genuine peace can abide. Change is a good thing.

Blogging in Black

I was recently extended an invitation to become a regular columnist with Blogging in Black, a wonderful blog that deals with books, writers, and the writing business. As the name suggests, the emphasis is primarily on African American literary matters, but the experiences shared, addressed, discussed, lamented, exalted, and explored are universal.

Other regular columnist and guest bloggers include and have included Jewells, Monica Jackson, Carla Curtis, Angela Henry, Tee C. Royal, Linda Dominique Grovesnor, Dakota Knight, Shelia Goss, Wendy Coakley-Thompson, and Cherlyn Michaels, to name but a few. Those are definitely some names that should whet your appetite! Their various insights and prospectives are always invigorating and provocative.




So, here is a link to my first contribution, titled with great originality: Deal or No Deal! I hope you make Blogging in Black a daily part of your Internet browsing from now on.

Ah, Spring!

©Nudgies®

I've had a flurry of positive literary news the last couple of days. Projects moving forward at very respectable clips. Promises of probable new projects in the offing, both fiction and non-fiction. A few articles picked up by a new entity that has a ready checkbook that they aren't afraid to use. But, that also means work, lots and lots of work. You best believe I am happily rolling up my sleeves!