Party time!

It's time to celebrate here at Chez Musetta!

Not only is tonight the book release party for "Probable Claws" (tonight at Ryles Jazz Club, if you're around), sponsored by the marvelous Kate Mattes of Kate's Mystery Books.

But Amazon FINALLY has "Probable Claws" in stock. Now, if you want a signed book, I strongly urge you to call or email Kate! But Amazon is really a lifeline for smaller authors, like myself, so I am very relieved!

Wanda Jewell's Free Book Stimulus Plan!

Wanda Jewell has a problem. After serving nearly 20 years as executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA), she is overrun with books. All kinds of books: finished copies and galleys, paperbacks and hardbound, limited editions, signed, personalized, and more. Each publishing season brings more. So how will she weed her collection and support her southern indie bookstore at the same time? Wanda created her own FREE BOOK STIMULUS PLAN.

Books can be purchased anywhere, but when you buy at an indie store, you don't just stimulate your reading, you stimulate the local economy. Shopping local is an investment in your neighborhood and good karma all around. And you get a free book!

Hoping to stimulate sales at indie bookstores, Wanda is dismantling her personal library and offering it to shoppers, one free book at a time. It began April 2 and is still going on Readers who purchase a book at a SIBA-member indie store and send her a copy of the receipt will receive a book from her collection completely free of charge. Visit FreeBookStimulusPlan.com for details and a list of participating bookstores Print out the request form on the site and mail it in with a copy of the store receipt (which must carry the name of the store.)

Completed form and receipt must be mailed to Free Book, 3806 Yale Ave, Columbia, SC 29205 and only while supplies last. All that Wanda asks is that you pass this on. Post it to your blog, pay it forward, print it, shout it out, Tweet and Facebook about it. What a great way to increase your karmic footprint!

(Thanks to Caroline Leavitt for this info and link.)

Delayed thanks

Well, this is good! It seems that nobody is quite sure what happened, but my acknowledgments will be added to the next edition of Probable Claws. Phew!

So, again, until then:
Acknowledgments

Writing is solitary work and the support of friends and family make it easier. For all the cups of coffee and tea, the queries and cheers, I’d like to thank the following: Caroline Leavitt, Vicki Constantine Croke, Brett Milano, Ann Porter, Sophie Garelick, Frank Garelick, Lisa Jones, and Iris Simon. My readers – Jon, Vicki, Brett, Lisa Susser, Naomi Yang, Chris Mesarch, and Karen Schlosberg – all focused on different aspects, and improved them all. My editor, Barbara Peters, was once again indispensible, as were all the great folks at Poisoned Pen. This title was suggested independently by Phil Mann and Rob Chalfen. Jennifer Ryser and Jacqueline and Craig Fantuzzi won the rights to name cats in Violet’s shelter through their generosity to the Crime Lab Project and Animal Rescue League Boston, respectively. For professional advice and ideas, my thanks go out to my cat experts, including Amy Shojai of the CWA, Dr. Melissa Clark Connelly DVM, and Scott Delucchi of the Penninsula Humane Society. Thanks as well to my lawyer friends Eric Ruben and Karen B. Cohen, and to Don Hogan, clerk magistrate for the Boston Municipal Court, and Officer Frank Pasquarello of the Cambridge Police Department, for the ins and outs of crime and punishment. You advised me well, and if I took liberties or made mistakes, they’re on me. Finally, once again, thank you to Jon S. Garelick – for everything.

Musings of a Bookish Kitty

What better place to unburden myself than at this wonderfully literary blog?

And - wow - check out this odd translation (into French?) and retranslation on another blog. I am "glad as a frog." (This is really worth it.)

New Donna Leon, "About Face"

The great Donna Leon is back in fine form, and I had the pleasure of reviewing her for the Boston Globe.

Zinged by Joyce Carol Oates!

From today's New York Times Sunday Magazine:

Joyce Carol Oates: "If you're going to spend the next year of your life writing, you would probably rather write 'Moby Dick' than a little household mystery with cat detectives."

Oh, REALLY?? And have you ever tried writing a mystery with cats in it, Ms. Oates?

Cat Fancy

Oh, and here I am interviewed on the Cat Fancy website.

Guestblogging

And here I am guestblogging on The Writers' Plot on the topic of talking cats.

PROBABLE CLAWS acknowledgments

Not sure what happened,but here they are:

Acknowledgments

Writing is solitary work and the support of friends and family make it easier. For all the cups of coffee and tea, the queries and cheers, I’d like to thank the following: Caroline Leavitt, Vicki Constantine Croke, Brett Milano, Ann Porter, Sophie Garelick, Frank Garelick, Lisa Jones, and Iris Simon. My readers – Jon, Vicki, Brett, Lisa Susser, Naomi Yang, Chris Mesarch, and Karen Schlosberg – all focused on different aspects, and improved them all. My editor, Barbara Peters, was once again indispensible, as were all the great folks at Poisoned Pen. This title was suggested independently by Phil Mann and Rob Chalfen. Jennifer Ryser and Jacqueline and Craig Fantuzzi won the rights to name cats in Violet’s shelter through their generosity to the Crime Lab Project and Animal Rescue League Boston, respectively. For professional advice and ideas, my thanks go out to my cat experts, including Amy Shojai of the CWA, Dr. Melissa Clark Connelly DVM, and Scott Delucchi of the Penninsula Humane Society. Thanks as well to my lawyer friends Eric Ruben and Karen B. Cohen, and to Don Hogan, clerk magistrate for the Boston Municipal Court, and Officer Frank Pasquarello of the Cambridge Police Department, for the ins and outs of crime and punishment. You advised me well, and if I took liberties or made mistakes, they’re on me. Finally, once again, thank you to Jon S. Garelick – for everything.

Oh frabjous day!!

The books are here! Calloo callay, oh frabjous day, she Swiffered in her joy (hey, there's a lot of cat hair around here). Four big boxes of books have just arrived -- three go back to Poisoned Pen on Monday with my signature (which is so bad anyway, it doesn't matter when my hand gets tired).

But what happened to my acknowledgments page? Ah well... tonight we celebrate! (Tomorrow, we start signing.)

Pub date: Where are the books?

Wow, this is a first! Pub date and no books. Officially, PROBABLE CLAWS is published today, but I've not received my books (nor the 75 copies I'm supposed to sign and send back to the publisher, which they distribute to various bookstores). And now I see on Amazon that PROBABLE CLAWS is listed as "temporarily out of stock." I made some inquiries and found out the weather is to blame. Seems my book is printed in Minnesota, and so the recent horrible weather and flooding has slowed things up. Supposedly the books are on the trucks now and should show up in a day or two. Considering what people who live out there had to deal with, this is minor, minor, minor. But it is a bit disorienting to have a "pub day" without a book in hand!

Pet Peeve Thursday

But I am doing some guestblogging, notably here on Dazed and Confused.

Resting...

Fields are supposed to lie fallow after seven seasons of planting, right? So I'm taking it easy this week. Well, I'm doing the various odds and ends (a book review, an article on online learning, etc.) that pay the bills, but nothing with mysteries, nothing creative. I think I burned out my last brain cell finishing "Grey Matters" last week. And supposedly "Probable Claws" hits the bookstores on Friday. But I haven't received my copies yet and I'm wondering what's up.

Ah well, if they're not around by Monday, I'll deal then. When I start re-reading... snooze...

Meanwhile, some nice reviews (and another).

First draft...

I'm sort of stunned and definitely exhausted, but I think it is now safe to say that I have completed a first draft of the second Dulcie Schwartz mystery, tentatively titled "Grey Matters."

Oh yeah, and we're refinancing our mortgage, too.

"While cat lovers will be drawn to Probable Claws for its feline characters, it's the overall book itself that will have mystery readers looking forward to the next in the series." Hey, thanks! (Read the whole review here.) And thanks to Linda L. Richards for letting me know about it!

They cropped Musetta!

Otherwise, I'm very happy with this interview, which went up today on the International Thriller Writers site.