HAPPY CHA-HANUKKAH, Y'ALL
QUIBBLES & BITS:
BIT:
Balducci's, on Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street in New York City (that'sthe Village, people, where I used to go to school), posted this sign in its meat section.
Manhattan novelist Nancy Kay Shapiro told the Daily News that she spotted the kosher faux pas while browsing at the store. A Balducci's official pinned the blame on a clerk who normally doesn't work the meat department.
Uh...um...okay.
On its Web site, Balducci's wrote: "We apologize for this unfortunate error and oversight. It was never our intention to offend anyone... We will be reviewing our employee training policy."
'Nother BIT:
I've never missed a deadline, and I had what I thought was a fair deadline for STRANGLE A LOAF OF ITALIAN BREAD. But life interfered and it turned into the deadline from hell.
Nevertheless, the 4th Ellie Bernstein/Lt. Peter Miller "diet club" mystery is written---with 2, count 'em, two twist endings---and the manuscript is about to be sent off to my editor (as soon as my free-lance editor give me the okay), and I made my deadline, and this is the first book in the series where I don't have a "heroine in jeopardy" scene (yay!) Thus, this is the first book in my diet club series where Ellie doesn't have to hiccup her heroine-in-jeopardy dialogue (she gets the hiccups when she's frightened).
I hate writing hiccups. I wrote 'em for Fifty Cents For Your Soul, too.
Publishers Weekly liked them. They said, "The over-the-top, irreverent serving of horror and Hollywood noir in FIFTY CENTS FOR YOUR SOUL is something of a departure for Dietz (Footprints in the Butter, etc.), but who can resist a book that opens with: 'The woman who straddled Victor Madison had hiccups'?"
But I digress...
Next on my agenda is the final polish on my second "Mary Ellen Dennis" historical, DESTINY'S DAUGHTER. The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter went into a third printing, was picked up for a large-print edition, and was a Holiday Gift recommendation in January Magazine so it just might be wee bit prudent to strike while the iron is hot, a cliché that, like most clichés, is more often than not, true.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE CLICHÉ?
My agent is about to send me his Destiny's Daughter revision notes. Except, I don't call them revision notes. I call them "rewrite the damn book and make it better" notes.
Next, I want to continue writing GYPSY ROSE LIEBERMAN, the mystery I started to write but had to shelve so I could finish writing what my editor calls STRANGLE.
I've been writing Gypsy in my head for weeks, and I really need to finish the first book so that I can start on the second in the series. I'm anxious to write the second book because I've already thought of a title: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY MURIEL - A Gypsy Rose Lieberman Mystery. It's about two aging moving actresses who live as virtual recluses in an old Colorado mansion.
Authors reading this blog, can y'all write a book without thinking of a title first? I can't.
And no, I'm not drinking spiked eggnog, though this blog might sound as if I am. It's just that I'm always a tad giddy when I finish writing a book.
I'll leave you now, so that I can light the menorah and make myself a kosher ham sandwich.
Over and Out,
Deni, singing "I've written a letter to Daddeeee..."
