Writers retreat

Just finished packing to leave for the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime's second writers retreat, which again will be at Bradford Woods, 30 miles south of Indianapolis. The chapter sponsored a weekend retreat in 2014, which was tremendously successful.

Looking forward to work sessions, talking and working with other writers, and just spending time alone to write or just walk through the woods and think.

I plan to finish an essay I have been working on for a while and a somewhat long short story. Also to bounce a couple of ideas I have for a novel in November.

Should be great. Looking forward to a great weekend.

Thanks for reading. See you in October.

Visiting a bookstore

Spent part of the last two days visiting bookstores, including a couple of independent stores. And I bought a couple of books.

Being at a bookstore is a great way to spend part of the day.

I highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading. Now head off to a bookstore.

SinC Retreat

Next weekend, the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime will hold its second writers retreat at Bradford Woods, a rustic conference center (I guess you'd call it that) about 30 miles south of Indianapolis.

I plan to get a lot of writing done during the retreat, which starts Friday afternoon and ends early Sunday afternoon. I have both an essay and a short story about Kendall Hunter I want to finish.

It does mean that weekend I will miss the first air show held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in more than a century. (I think they held a balloon race in 1909 or '10.) This year's race is part of the series sponsored by Red Bull for single-engine planes.

But anyway, I got a lot done at the first retreat in 2014. I finished writing Miss Hattie Mae's Secret during the weekend. And that short story is the last story in Decades of Dirt.

Well, I didn't have a lot to say today but I wanted to mention the retreat, which I hadn't done yet.

Thanks for reading.
 

110,689 steps

I'm not going to talk today about writing or the new anthology or interesting characters or books I like or music I play while writing. And I'm not going to talk about the upcoming presidential election.

Boring.

No. Today I'm going to talk a little about walking.

For the first time today (Friday), I walked 10,000 steps on 10 consecutive days. Now that may not seem like a lot, and perhaps it's not. But for me it was a goal a long time in coming.

I started keeping track of the number of steps I take everyday back in early April, about three months after I got a new iPhone that counts them. Without trying, I only averaged about 2,600 steps a day before April 6. For me, that's about a mile. But when I noticed that my phone counts my steps, I decided a mile every day wasn't nearly enough.

It was spring and often chilly outside but I started walking longer and longer distances every day. It took about two weeks for me to reach 10,000 one day but time and weather conspired to keep me from doing it more than a couple of times a week. That is until May 19. From then until May 27 -- nine straight days -- I walked at least 10,000 steps a day, for a total of 98,396 steps.

But then, summer intervened.

Although I have a gym membership, I love walking outside, generally alone and listening to music or just daydreaming. But I hate walking in the heat. Eighty degrees or higher is too much for me, unless absolutely necessary. And since I easily succumb to sloth earlier in the day when it's cooler, it was hard to put a string together of more than four consecutive 10,000-step days. And then there's also the issue of rain. I will walk in the rain but not a lot.

It is September now and it's cooler, although I generally still don't walk until later in the day. And so now I have managed it. In the last 10 days, my iPhone has counted 110,689 steps, meaning I walk around four miles a day.

In fact, I have walked at least 10,000 steps a day on 16 of the last 17 days and on 17 of the last 19.
Hooray for me. And I have lost weight. I'm down about seven pounds from what I weighed last March, although I haven't much changed my eating habits. (That's next, actually.)

But sadly, the streak is about to end.

I have a book signing out of town tomorrow (Saturday) and will be gone most of the day. And  on Sunday, we plan to visit our daughter in college after we leave church. By the time I get home, I'll be too tired on both those days to walk much.

But Monday starts a new week and with it will come a new challenge. For the year, I now have averaged 6,200 steps a day and I want to keep it at that level through the fall and winter. That means when it gets cold in a couple of months -- anything below about 35 -- I'll have to walk at the gym. But, like I said, I have a membership and I can use the other weight equipment to improve the rest of my body.

So I'm happy -- thrilled, really. You may not care and in the general scheme of things it probably doesn't rate much. But I've told you anyway.

So sue me.

But thanks for reading.

Callipygian: What's in a name?

Often when I say my next published short story is titled Callipygian, people ask, "Cal-la-what? What does it mean?" Only rarely does someone know. In fact, only three people that I can think of knew the definition without me mentioning it first and ALL of them graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, which is where I also graduated. Got a good education there, I'd say.

I had a class called Latin-and-Greek Derivatives. One of the best classes I have ever had,  in either high school or college.

So, what does callipygian mean? It is an adjective but that's all I will say for the moment. So give me a sec. A little background first.

I first remember hearing the word used in a sentence a couple of years ago during an interview Terry Gross was conducting on her NPR show, Fresh Air. The interviewee -- an author, I think -- used it and Terry didn't seem to know the word. So the interviewee told her. And it was then that I decided I needed to use it in some short story some time soon.

Recently, I decided to check it out online. And one of the best uses I found was in a description of Queen Bey.

Yes, Beyoncé.

Years ago, Destiny's Child did a song called Bootylicious. And today if you look at Queen Bey's body, particularly from the back, you'd say she's bootylicious. But if that word didn't exist, she'd probably be described as having a callipygian backside.

In other words, she has a big butt.

Now my short story Callipygian, which is in the upcoming anthology, The Fine Art of Murder, isn't about Beyoncé or big butts. Or at least not generally. It's about a painting of that name, which, along with two other paintings, is stolen. And the protagonist in the story, FBI profiler Kendall Hunter, is drawn into the investigation of the stolen art. Things get really interesting when the suspect in the case is murdered.

You can preorder the anthology online at Amazon, Walmart and Barnes and Noble. Here are two links:

https://www.amazon.com/Fine-Art-Murder-Collection-Stories/dp/1681570238/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1471896943&sr=8-4&keywords=the+fine+art+of+murder


https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Fine-Art-of-Murder-A-Collection-of-Short-Stories/52607722

The anthology is scheduled for publication early next month.

So there you have it. What's in a name? Well, it can be quite a lot. It can be informative, even educational. But what does this title mean. All I can say is: If you are still confused, look it up.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Me: Past and present

I decided to treat you today.

I worked on my college paper, the Purdue Exponent, in the early 1980s and here are a couple of pictures showing me back then. In the top picture, I am on the railing on the left (and the only black guy in the picture). In the middle picture I am at a desk apparently working on a story. I also edited the AP wire for national and international stories. Both of those pictures were apparently taken before I could afford a comb or a haircut.

The bottom picture is how I look today -- a lot less hair and with gray. But it's combed.

I'm planning a couple of interesting posts for next week. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.

FAM front cover

Here it is. The final, corrected front cover for The Fine Art of Murder, which will be published at the beginning of next month. Preorders are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and online at Walmart.

FAM is a collection of mystery stories by members of the Speed City Indiana chapter of Sisters in Crime. The collection includes my Kendall Hunter short story, Callipygian.

The official book launch is from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 9, at the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 86th Street and Keystone Avenue, on the north east side of Indianapolis. The chapter is celebrating a Day of Mystery at the store that day, starting at noon. While the launch is at 2 p.m., SinC members will be there all day signing books, and having games and prizes for mystery lovers.

Hope you can come out to celebrate this newest anthology. The proceeds will support the programs of our chapter.

Thanks for reading.   

Monthly Update--September 2016

I have a new post planned for Tuesday, Sept. 6, which would have been the first one of the month. But I decided to write a short post first.

I started working on the blog again in late July. I hadn't posted in about 18 months. And in August, I wrote more posts in a month than I had in several years.

I had 13 new posts last month and the most viewed were The ending, which was posted early in the month on Aug. 8, followed by The Fine Art of Murder (Aug. 22), Kendall Hunter: In person (Aug. 30,) Don't make me come over there (Aug. 19) and A writer's block blocker: Someone walks into the room . . . (Aug. 15). While I had views on every post I made last month and some from previous years, the Top. 5 accounted for roughly 38 percent of all views for the month.

However, none of my August posts ranked among my Top 5 all-time posts, and none of them came close.

But my total views last month ranked as my No. 5 best month as I started blogging in 2008.

I don't know what to make of all this -- except that I got more views if I tweeted about it first -- but I decided to let you know.

See you later in the month.

Thanks for reading.