FAM bookmarks

The Fine Art of Murder bookmarks arrived today. I love them. Also on the front side is the cover of Decades of Dirt, which we published last year. The covers for the other three anthologies are on the back. All of them include stories written by members of the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime. I have stories in four of the five books and co-edited DoD.

The launch for FAM is Sunday, Oct. 23, at the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 86th and Keystone in Indianapolis. We will be there from noon to 6 p.m., signing books. We will have a program and reading at around 2 p.m.

Hope to see you then.

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.

The Fine Art of Murder

I had planned to blog today about lines in novels, song lyrics, plays and movies that awed or inspired me. But I learned something big today.

The Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime's newest anthology, The Fine Art of Murder, is now available for pre-order on Amazon and Walmart. (If I didn't screw it up, the links are below.) And my short story, Callipygian, is in the collection. It's about an FBI profiler who, while on vacation in Indianapolis visiting family, is drawn  into the investigation of three pieces of stolen art, including a painting called -- you guessed it -- Callipygian. Things get interesting when the prime suspect in the theft is murdered.

Edited by Brenda Stewart and Diana Catt, the collection is wonderful. I, of course, have seen a draft copy and have read the stories, and they are great. (Mine, in particular, of course.) It's a good collection and you'll enjoy it. Plus, proceeds benefit the education programs of the chapter.

The anthology's publication date is in early October but you can order it now. The pre-order price on Amazon is $12.99, while Walmart's discount price is $9.41. That's a discount of about 28 percent. (I have no earthly idea how Walmart came up with that price.)

Anyway, get The Fine Art of Murder today.

And thanks for reading.

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

An excerpt of Miss Hattie Mae's Secret, published in Decades of Dirt (2015).

Hello, everyone. Many of you have 'liked' my author page on Facebook (Look for author MB Dabney, on Facebook, and like me if you haven't already.) and months ago read on excerpt from my story, Miss Hattie Mae's Secret in the anthology, Decades of Dirt. My story is the last one of 15 stories of murder, mystery and mayhem in the book, which is still available on Amazon for $9.99. And you can also get an e-book version for $2.99.
So please, if you can and haven't yet, get a copy of Decades of Dirt. And enjoy all the wonderful stories you will find there.
And for a taste, here is an excerpt from the beginning of Miss Hattie Mae's Secret by MB Dabney.
_____  

Miss Hattie Mae farted...

Often.

When anyone mentioned the flatulence, she’d blame it on the dog. She blamed most things on the dog. Only problem was, Miss Hattie Mae didn’t have a dog, hadn’t for years.

What Miss Hattie Mae did have was a secret – one that spanned decades. The secret was like a respectful traveling companion: generally silent but always present. She was one month shy of 96 and the secret had come to define her life for more than eight decades.

Her small, five-room dwelling had a distinctive, although not all together unpleasant, aroma from all the years Miss Hattie Mae had lived, cooked and farted in the house. She was born there, lived there most of her life (even after she married), and raised her children under its leaky roof.

Hattie Mae’s father Ezra Reeves built the house right after he moved to the area with his new bride Ruth the year before Hattie Mae was born. At the time, the house sat at one end of their land, which stretched 40 acres. Over time, and with hard work and careful buying, Ezra’s property grew to more than 200 acres on which his extended family farmed cotton and soybeans. A small portion of land, the part closest to the house, also held apple and peach trees. Her mother’s apple pies were legendary in the small black community outside of Clarksville, Tennessee. When she wasn’t forced to work in the fields when she was growing up, Hattie Mae liked to play along a line of oak trees visible at the other end of their property.

The house, now sitting on a small parcel of land, was all the property she had left, though it wasn’t her only financial asset. In truth, Miss Hattie Mae was a millionaire, a recent development she cared little about.

Last year, the federal government used eminent domain to take most of her land – and paid her handsomely for it, which explained her wealth. Plans were for the expansion of a four-lane highway for traffic heading to and from Clarksville. Large land movers arrived last week to start tearing down those oak trees and reworking the property in preparation for the highway construction.

 But the land held secrets; long buried secrets that were about to be exposed for the first time in decades.

Miss Hattie Mae’s eyesight was poor, but she could still distinguish the flashing lights atop the police cars among the land movers at the edge of the line of oak trees.

“Boy,” she said, her tongue licking her lips, “Betta go tel-ah-phone yo pappy.”

____

Thanks for reading.

The Missing Medallion

The Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime plans to publish a basketball anthology next year, with the publication date possibly being during March Madness. When we pitched the idea to the publisher more than a year ago, he jumped on it immediately.

The deadline for the story submission was yesterday, July 15. The deadline was set months and months ago so there shouldn't have been a problem with making it with plenty of time left over.

One would think . . .

I got my story in under the deadline by a little over two hours.

My story is called, "The Missing Medallion", and is the fictional story of an legendary old high school basketball coach who for 40 years held on to a winner's medallion for a player who disappeared minutes after scoring the basket that clinches the state basketball championship. It was a lot of work but I think the end result is good.

Thanks to the five people who braved the first draft and who offered wonderful suggestions for improvements. The suggestions, many of them taken, greatly improved the project.

Now I wait to hear what the editor and publisher have to say. I am ready for any notes they have to offer.

The title of the anthology is Hoosier Hijinx. It will be the chapter's third anthology, following Racing Can Be Murder (2007) and Bedlam at the Brickyard (2010). My story in Bedlam was my first published fiction.

The editors for Racing are serving as editors again.

I contributed factoids for Bedlam two years ago, and this time will help write and edit profiles of prominent basketball personalities with connections to Indiana.

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for reading and keep writing.

It's been a busy couple of weeks

It's been a busy couple of weeks, and not necessarily in a good way.

We had a lot of work to do helping my daughter complete an online phy ed class in order for her to graduate from high school with the rest of her class on the Saturday before Memorial Day. After four years of high school, it was only done with 20 minutes to go.

Bit of a calm for a week -- during which time I sent out some query letters -- then preparation was in full swing for my daughter's graduation open house. (That's all the rage now, apparently.) Lots of yard work everyday -- the good thing is there are a lot fewer weeds in the back yard -- that we finished just prior to her party.

In the week leading up to the party, we learned that my dad's oldest sister, which was 87, had suffered a couple of strokes and wasn't expected to live. She died the day before my daughter's open house. My aunt was very close to my dad and was the first of his six siblings to die. It hit him very hard.

I was also working on some of the final details of the weeklong High School Multimedia Workshop that the Indianapolis Association of Black Journalists sponsors at Butler University.

The next week, which was last week, I worried about my dad and prepared for a two-day trip to my daughter's college for freshman orientation. That was last Wednesday and Thursday. I was back on Friday but, exhausted from the trip, I didn't work. (I also learned that day that the mother of one of my closest friends had just died -- yet another blow to my heart.)

I originally thought my aunt's funeral would be in Texas, where she had been living for the last six years. But her children, my cousins, decided it would be here in Indiana where she had spent the majority of her life. So there was lots of family obligations over last weekend. The funeral service, which was beautiful and classy -- like my aunt -- and blessedly short, was two days ago on Monday.

I spent much of yesterday trying to catch up on all the things that had slipped through the cracks over the last couple of weeks. I still haven't looked through all my e-mails. And I haven't finished a short story for the anthology my chapter of Sisters in Crime is publishing. The story deadline isn't for another month but I promised a first draft to my critique group by next Wednesday. So, I have a lot of work to do.

That pretty much covers things. The upshot is that I have had a lot on my plate. And hopefully in the next few days I can get back to some serious writing.

Thanks for reading. And don't give up.

2011 goals

I generally don't set New Year's goals or resolutions down on paper, so to speak, opting mostly to keep expectations quietly in my head. Whether I accomplish them or not isn't anyone else's business so I usually don't say what they are. But not this coming year. I'm putting them out there for everyone to see. (Or at least everyone who reads my blog.)

That's not to say that these goals are that ambitious. Frankly, they're not. But I wanted something obtainable to focus on and to shoot for, and I don't care if you know about them.

So, without further delay or possibly increasing your boredom, here they are:

1. I will attend two conferences this year. I already have one planned for early August, and perhaps the other will be in October. The reason for this goal is to expand networking. I don't do that well enough and attending a couple of conferences should help.

2. Write and try to publish four short stories. I tend to write long fiction -- novel-length fiction. It takes longer to do and just as long to make suitable (or what I consider suitable). Writing a few short stories should help focus my storytelling, character development and dialogue. Plus I should be able to start and finish it faster, and feel the gratification of completion quicker.

3. Enter at least one contest, either with a short story or with a novel-length work. First, I will consider ABNA in January if it is happening again. That will be for a novel. Then I will look for suitable short story contests.

So there you have it. I know it looks like I am reaching for the low-hanging fruit. And perhaps I am but I don't care. I am doing it in 2011. Check with me at this time next year to see how I did. I probably won't bring it up again before then.

Thanks for reading and don't give up on writing. I'm not.

Query News, Part II

It's been quite a week in the Query Wars. Two weeks, really.

Since the Friday before Labor Day, I have sent out 29 query letters for AN UNTIDY AFFAIR, some with partial pages attached and some without. Twenty-six were e-mail submissions, two were submissions through the agency's in-house process via their website and one went by snail mail.

No requests for additional pages, a partial or the entire manuscript. There have been 12 rejections, including one in the return envelope through the U.S. Postal Service.

This week was the big week, of course. I got four rejections on Monday, more than on any single day since I started sending at queries for my first book, FIGHTING CHAOS, three years ago. Tuesday saw two additional rejections, none Wednesday, one on Thursday and none (so far) today.

Totally, my response rate is just over 40 percent. But it may increase in the next week or so and in about two weeks I will send out reminders to selected agents. In the past, that has also generated a couple of responses.

I was reminded this week, more than once, actually, that all it will take is for ONE agent to love my book. I can't do much except send out queries until I find that ONE.

Enjoy the weekend. I will be attending a book fair tomorrow at the Hancock County Public Library and, hopefully, signing some copies of my story in BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD.

Thanks for reading. Now go out and write something good.

Excerpt of "The Missing CD"

When I started blogging in December 2007, I intended to chronicle the struggles, trials and successes of an aspiring novelist. For the most part, I think I have done that -- though a few more successes would be welcome. However, I'm still in the process.

This is my 200th posting since I started blogging and so I decided to present to my readers an excerpt from my short story, "The Missing CD." This is from the last e-mail I got before the story went to the copy editor. I don't remember there being any major changes.

This story is in the upcoming racing anthology, BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD. All the stories in the anthology relate in some manner to the Brickyard 400 stock car race in Indianapolis each summer, or to NASCAR. The book should be in local bookstores in two weeks, and is available now on Amazon, as well as on the Borders, and Barnes and Noble websites.

The launch party for the anthology is Saturday, June 12, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Carmel on US 31 North. I hope to see some of you there. And I hope you enjoy the story.

Michael

___

The Missing CD
by
M. B. Dabney

Award-winning journalist M. B. Dabney is an avid race fan whose writing has appeared in the Indianapolis Star, NUVO, The Indianapolis Business Journal, EBONY magazine, and BlackEnterprise.com. He is an officer in the Speed City Indiana chapter of Sisters in Crime and recently completed, A Murderous Dispatch, a mystery novel set in a black newspaper. He lives in Indiana with his wife, two daughters, and their dog, Pluto.


Barbara Jean was the best waitress at Rosie’s Roadside Diner on Highway 77 north of Talladega, Alabama, near the interstate. She knew all the regulars and was cheerful and welcoming to a fault. And she was particularly happy about having her one-time high school sweetheart, Bobby Lee Stevenson, having breakfast at the diner.

Barbara Jean offered Bobby Lee a big smile as she approached a booth near the back. She carried a plate full of flapjacks in her right hand, and on her forearm, balanced a plate of fried eggs sunny-side up, four strips of bacon, and an order of grits. She set the glass of orange juice in her left hand on the table before placing the plates of food in front of Bobby Lee.

“Here you go, darlin.’” Barbara Jean called everyone ‘darlin’ these days. “You need anything else?”

“No, Barbara Jean. Thanks.”

One of the old men up front in the restaurant yelled to Bobby Lee.

“Why you down here, boy?”

Bobby Lee, who looked a lot like Cary Grant early in his film career, hadn’t lived in Alabama since his father moved their struggling NASCAR team, Johnny Eldon Stevenson Racing, to North Carolina, 10 years earlier.

“Just visiting some family. One of my cousins is sick,” he said, charging headlong into the food. “You know him. My cousin, Eldon, named after grandpa. And we got a weekend off this week before heading up to Indianapolis for the Brickyard.”

Another old guy said, “You guys looked pretty good last weekend. If it weren’t for that damned fool Tony Stewart crashin’ Kevin out you might have won that Chicago race.”

“We’ll get ‘em next weekend,” Bobby Lee said. “Our guy’s a pretty good driver. We’ll get there.”

The good folks of Talladega considered the Stevenson's a hometown team and no one wanted to mention the team’s fall from grace. For lack of sponsorship, the team was forced to hire a third-rate driver named Kevin Holmes who came with his own sponsorship money from a Southern grocery store chain. That deal, which Bobby Lee arranged, financially saved the team.

Rosie’s was surprisingly busy for mid-day on a Tuesday. A regular crowd of senior citizens was up front having donuts and coffee and talking NASCAR with two truckers, who were having full meals. But there was a lone man, a stranger, sitting at the counter toward the back eating the steak and eggs special, enjoying black coffee and reading the local sports page. He was tall and thin, and wore blue jeans. His cowboy hat was on the counter next to him.

“You finished, darlin’?” Barbara Jean asked Bobby Lee when she saw that he was done. Then she added with a slight flirt, “You need anythin’ else?”

“No, I’m fine, Barbara Jean,” he said, ignoring the come-on. “Just leave the check on the table for me while I go hit the john real quick.”

She nodded, wrote the check, and left it on the table as he headed to the restroom.

Bobby Lee spent a few moments in the restroom. No one was looking his way as he came out. And no one noticed he was carrying a white business-sized envelope in his right hand. As he passed the stranger at the counter, he dropped the envelope on the red vinyl stool next to him. The man didn’t look down and Bobby Lee kept walking. Once at his table, Bobby Lee grabbed his check and headed to the front to pay.

The cash register was on the end of a counter near the entrance and Bobby Lee had the crowd's attention as he walked up. He gave Barbara Jean a knowing smile as he paid the bill and tipped her more than 25 percent.

As everyone else in the joint was fawning over Bobby Lee, the stranger reached for the envelope, opened the flap and looked inside. He saw the left half of 10, nonsequential 500 dollar bills, and a picture of a newspaper sports columnist from Indianapolis named Henry Rennert.

The man with the cowboy hat tucked the envelope in his inside jacket pocket and motioned to Barbara Jean to refill his coffee. It was bitter tasting because it had been sitting on the warmer too long, but he drank it anyway. He was facing a 10-hour drive and needed to stay awake and alert. And once he arrived at his destination, there was work to do before he completed his job.

Three days later, on Friday morning, Henry Rennert was found dead in his Speedway home. Police said Rennert apparently was shot after walking in on someone burglarizing his home.

BEDLAM

I was finally able to upload this image of the front and back covers of BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD, thanks to my friend Seth (who always tells me I should get a MAC). The anthology will be in local bookstores during the week before Father's Day. (What a great gift idea!) The launch party is June 12.

I compiled and edited the factoids between the 15 short stories in the book, which was edited by Brenda Stewart and Wanda Lou Willis. They will appear on a local television (Channel 8) program tomorrow from 8 a.m to 9 a.m. to discuss the book and the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Thanks for reading.

BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD

As you are aware, I am a member of the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime and our next anthology, BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD, is being published soon. In addition to being the secretary of the chapter, I am head of the committee planning and executing the marketing of the book.

Well, today I finally learned the exact publication date. May 1.

Apparently, it will still be a couple of weeks before the book hits stores but it will be in time for race activities in May. And now we can plan a launch party, which I am hoping to have in mid-May.

It is too bad I will miss our regularly scheduled SinC meeting tomorrow due to my continuing health issues but I am excited about the next several weeks. I want to start lining up interviews with authors in the anthology for different publications if i can interest them in doing a story, and hope to get something in the Star, NUVO, the Recorder, possibly one or two television and radio stations locally, the Hendricks County Flyer and possibly the papers that serve Mooresville, New Castle and Muncie.

I am really looking forward to this. It should be fun.

I also helped edit part of the book. There are 15 stories, each involving some aspect of NASCAR or the annual Brickyard 400 race in Indianapolis. But between each story there are these factual inserts. I read and edited the inserts.

Then, of course, there is my story in the anthology. If I'm not mistaken, it is the 12th story in the book. It's called, THE MISSING CD, and is about a local TV anchorwoman named Hannah "Hank" Watkins who is drawn into the probe of a murdered newspaper sports columnist who was investigating some problems in a NASCAR race team.

I like the story. At 6,000 words, it's a little longer than some but I think it is interesting.

When the book comes out, I will let everyone know. Then you can see for yourself.

Until then, thanks for reading and keep writing.

I'm back! Again.

I'm back. This is my first posting since October and I plan to get back to it on a regular basis. But first let me update you on what's been happening since October.




First and foremost, my Winter Project -- battling prostate cancer -- is nearly over. Thank the Lord!

I have had 41 daily radiation treatments and only two remain. Thursday's will be the last and after that I should be cured. At least that is the hope and prayer. I won't know anything for about a month, not until doctors draw blood and check my PSA levels. They should be near zero. The side effects are quite tiring but they should also start to diminish and then completely go away after treatment ends. I should be back to normal -- and with me, who really knows what that is -- within a couple of weeks. Thankfully, everything still works (and that's my last word on that!).

I entered National Novel Writing Month back in November and won. I reached the 50,000-word mark on Nov. 15, and finished the novel at 54,000 words four days later. I met a number of writers, both online and in person, and try to stay in contact with new friends.

AN UNTIDY AFFAIR is a murder mystery about a struggling private eye in Philadelphia in May 1985 who is asked by a pretentious socialite to investigate whether her husband is having an affair. He is having the affair but what the detective also finds is murder. And the victim is the socialite's lover, whose badly burned body is found amidst the ruins on the city block police destroyed when they bombed the house of the radical group MOVE.

Now five drafts later, AFFAIR is just under 70,000 words, a little short for the mystery genre -- the target is at least 75,000 -- but it is what it is.

I have started querying agents but no bites yet. I will keep you posted.

Members of my critique group loved it, which was a welcome surprise. It is in first person, and marks my first venture out of a third-person narrative.

At the moment, I am concentrating on AFFAIR and querying agents, but soon I will have to move on. I haven't decided whether to return to THE DEATH OF ART, a murder mystery set in the art world. I love the story and the characters. I was half way through the novel last summer and fall when, first, I had to deal of the knowledge of my cancer and, then, I entered NaNoWriMo. I haven't decided whether to return to DOA or to let it sit for a while and start a new project. More on that later.

I am still an officer in the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime and our anthology, BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD, has an early May publication date. I am looking forward to that for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that once it is published I will no longer merely be an aspiring author. I will be a published -- though still struggling -- author. (One step at a time.) My short story, THE MISSING CD, is the 12th of the 15 stories in the anthology. We are still working on the marketing and don't have a date yet for the launch party. Unfortunately, The Mystery Company closed its doors in February so we are looking at a Barnes and Noble in Carmel. (I worked for Jim Huang at The Mystery Company for several months before its closing and truly enjoyed it. I learned a lot about how the industry works from Jim, who is tremendously knowledgeable. He will be missed in Indy.)

I have several friends entered in ABNA this year -- the semi-finalists are being named today -- and I continue to root for them. Plus my friend Gae Polisner's book is slowly moving toward publication next year, the wonderful Milton McGriff had a successful book signing and discussion of his novel, 2236, last month, and the delightfully talented Hank Phillippi Ryan last month published DRIVE TIME, the latest novel in her Charlotte McNally series.

I will try to touch on many of the above topics in the weeks to come. But for now, I am glad it is spring and I look forward to a productive year of writing.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Short stories

I was reading a newsletter from Sisters in Crime and near the end of one article the author mentioned something that Ray Bradbury sometimes recommended -- writing a short story once a week for a year. Now for me, that is one heck of a goal.

As a freelance journalist, I write for a living and thus I write a lot. But that isn't writing fiction. I don't make up what I write. I just report what I know and write it.

So, writing 52 short stories in a year would be nearly as hard for me as it would be for someone new to writing. I would have an advantage because I'd already have the discipline of sitting down in front of a computer regularly and typing. But that's probably it. The mindset is totally different.

But it is an intriguing challenge, and it's one I'm considering. The first thing I'd need to do is establish a set time each week to write a short story. Then, working in advance, I'd want to think of and partially develop five or six short stories before I'd start writing. But even then, after one or two dozn stories, I predict I would be working week to week for at least six months. That would be a long haul.

That having been said, it is a worthy goal consider. I can't do it now but perhaps by some time in the fall I can seriously consider it.

I will try to let you know.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Another contest

Two years ago, I entered the annual writing competition sponsored by Writer's Digest, which, in my view, is one of the best magazines ever. After I updated it, I entered LOSS OF CONSORTIUM in the screenplay category. (CONSORTIUM is about a young woman who sues her husband's employer, which is a newspaper, for $50 million for the loss of conjugal rights.) It was a light romantic comedy. If ever produced, it would be good on Lifetime or another network marketed toward women.

I didn't win. However, I was awarded an honorable mention, which was better than I expected. I got a certificate.

CONSORTIUM was my first and only full-length screenplay.

I was in the middle of DEATH AT THE JUNGLE-BUNNY JOURNAL, which, of course, is now titled A MURDEROUS DISPATCH, last year at this time and didn't have time to enter the competition. But I decided to enter this year, although I am hip deep in THE DEATH OF ART (DOA).

I thought of entering a short story I originally wrote a number of years ago about a young mother who needed a break from her busy life. And while I can't remember where I put the story, or the short-film screenplay adaptation I did of the story, I remember enough of the story to start it over again.

But then, just last night, I came up with another idea. There are 10 categories in the competition and I can enter more than one. But I would certainly enter the memoirs/personal essay category.

There are a number of short personal essays I have written over the years about events in my life, particularly those involving my daughters. (Meeting six-year-old Jessie and her mother years ago in a Barcelona market. Riding the rails overnight between Paris and Luxembourg. Ericka's first trip to the doctor. Going to JFK for George. THREE TIMES. Ericka and Michelle's first flight alone. My first trip to the drugstore to get "supplies" for one of my daughters.)

But the story I am leaning toward is an expanded version of something I blogged about this month. My first pitch session. While I have written about those other things, the pitch session, and the details surrounding it, are the freshest in my mind. Plus I enjoy the story. The ending wasn't exactly what I wanted but, at a time when I was having a major battle with despair, it was uplifting.

So that is my plan. I could change my mind. The deadline isn't for nearly two months. And I have that funny story about when Angela and I misplaced one of the children for about 15 seconds. But the pitch session, if rewritten well, should do well. At least, that is my hope.

Now I have to get back to DOA.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Poor old 2008

This is my 96th -- and last -- blog entry of 2008. Not a bad output but less than I should have done. Overall, however, it has been a good year for my fiction writing. I still don't have an agent but finding an agent was only one objective this year.

The first and foremost objective was to become a better writer. And I think I aced that. As I look back at my fiction before this year and compare it to what I have done this year, there is little comparison. I like "Fighting Chaos" and it will always be special to me but this year's writing is much better.

In my first blog entry in 2008, which was on Wednesday, Jan. 2, a was still planning a murder mystery novel. I said I probably wouldn't start for several weeks and had not yet decided on how the victim would killed. I was thinking it would be poison. (Most of the blog, however, dealt finding names for characters, which is a problem I still wrestle with.)

Well, I started the novel about a week later, finished the first draft in May and the victim, George Wilson, is hit in the head and killed. (I thank Mariska Bogle for that idea. She suggested both the victim and the method.) And while I thought I had finished the final and seventh draft more than a month ago, I am pouring through it once more, preparing it for a writing competition at the beginning of February.

But that's not all.

I joined the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime and joined a critique group. Along with study and practice, the critique group is one of the reasons I have improved so much this year.

In addition to the finishing the novel (which is currently named "Death at the Jungle-bunny Journal"), I wrote a 7,000 word short story for the racing anthology our chapter is putting together. I am also writing some of the factoids that will go between stories.
And I went to Philadelphia to begin research for my next novel, which is called, "The Death of Art," and have written two chapters. And while constantly re-writing Jungle-bunny has kept me from having completed more of DOA, I still plan on completing it over the winter.

And then the search for an agent will be renewed.

In 2009, I plan to increase my blog output, attend at least two writers conferences other than NABJ, find an agent, finish DOA, and plan and start whatever I will write after DOA.

So, it will be a busy year. I look forward to it.

Thanks again for reading, have a happy New Year and keep writing.

A short story

I decided over the weekend to take an ever-so-short break from my second novel to write a short story to submit for inclusion in a book of short stories on murder and NASCAR’s Brickyard 400.

I spent most of Sunday thinking about the story and even started putting some of it down on paper . . . well, computer, really.

I’m not sure how long I should be and hope that it’s no more than about 3,500 words. At the moment, the story’s a bit complicated and probably too complex for the format. If that’s the case, I will have to edit and shorten it. We will have to see.

I doubt that it should take that long to write, probably less than a week. I generally write quickly. Then I will have one or two friends look at it before I submit it for possible publication.

If it is included, it will be my first piece under the name MB Dabney. Up until now, I have always used Michael Dabney.

That’s it for today.

Thanks for reading and remember, keep writing.