Just a reminder...

Today is the last day The Lonely Hipster will be offered for free on Amazon, so if you haven't downloaded it yet, you know what to do.

ALSO! Starting tomorrow, January 23rd, I'll be offering another one of my short stories, The Sea Queen's Daughter, for free through the 27th. Grab it up if you haven't already.

Thanks to everyone for making The Lonely Hipster's debut week a success!

THE LONELY HIPSTER now available, free for a limited time!

Today's the day! The Lonely Hipster is available for purchase on Amazon.com. But you don't even have to purchase it because it's free to download for the next five days, January 18th-22nd. So click, read, and enjoy!

Want a summary? Of course you do:

A mystery where murder meets coffeehouse romance, beards, and flip-flops... 
Stantonville is a small town where everyone knows everyone else and they all get along—or do they? Adam McGill, Stantonville’s lone hipster, gets a lot of flack from the other residents for being lazy and suspicious. So when the town’s wealthiest resident, Peter Stanton, is found shot with a note that reads “McGill” in his hand, suspicion immediately falls on Adam. And the police aren’t the only ones he has to worry about—he's also being followed by the people who actually shot Stanton! 
With the help of the cute barrista in Stantonville’s lone coffee shop, Adam needs to find Stanton's shooter—and move out of his mom’s basement—before he winds up in prison. Or worse.

Pssst... One Day to Go!

The Lonely Hipster has a scheduled release date—tomorrow! Remember I'm going to offer it for free during the first week, so make a mental note to check this blog for buy links or search Amazon for it between January 18th and January 22nd.

Thanks to all my readers for their support and encouragement! I'm excited to finally be sharing this story with you.

THE LONELY HIPSTER—Excerpt

We're getting close to the release date of my next mystery novella, The Lonely Hipster! To whet your appetite, here's an excerpt from the book. And, if you're a member of Goodreads, The Lonely Hipster has its own Goodreads page! Feel free to add it if you're into that sort of thing.

And now here's a peek at our lonely hipster detective in action. Enjoy!

Dubiously, Adam closed his eyes. He felt Moira touch his hand and a zing traveled up his arm.
“Okay, now. In your mind, I want you to replay finding Old Man Stanton, starting from the beginning, and describe it to me. But instead of telling me what you see, tell me what you smell and hear, and touch if it’s applicable. Ready?”
Adam took a deep breath. “Cut grass. Bad Books.”
“Bad Books?”
“It’s a band. I was listening to music. Ummm vibration from the mower. Then a loud pop. Silence. Too much silence, not even a bird. Cool grass on the sides of my feet. The slap of my flip-flops on the stone steps. Rough stone under my left hand. The faintest tinkle of falling glass.”
Adam stopped and swallowed hard. Moira reached out to squeeze his hand again, and he squeezed back.
“There’s a strange smell. Gunpowder? But that’s only part of it. There’s something else, something I’ve never come across till now.”
“Keep going.”
Adam drew a shaky breath. “The curtain on my face. Stiff, rough. Crunching as I walk in to the study. The glass cutting the bottoms of my feet. There’s that smell again. It’s perfume.”
He opened his eyes a found himself staring directly into Moira’s. “Whoever was in the room before me wore perfume.”

Will Adam be able to sniff out the killer, or is the perfume a red herring? Questions! Find out later this month when The Lonely Hipster is released.

Coming Soon: THE LONELY HIPSTER

Hello everyone! I know things have been rather silent on ye olde blog lately. I've been focusing mainly on non-fiction writing for the last few weeks and didn't really have any updates available.

However! I wanted to let you all know that I'm gearing up to publish The Lonely Hipster, a mystery—or hipstery, as I like to call it—about the only hipster living in a small factory town, in January. I already have the cover put together (thanks to my brother for agreeing to be my model! You can also see him on the cover of Tweet the Police) and just have to work on formatting. Very soon it will be ready to publish!

My plan is to offer The Lonely Hipster for free on Amazon.com during the first week after it's published, then price it at 99 cents for the next three weeks before raising the price to the typical $2.99, where I will keep it indefinitely. This way the first people to purchase the novella will get the best deal on it. So watch this blog for the release date and you'll be able to download the novella for free!

I also recently published two novellas, The Fornarina Affair and The Aspen House, to Smashwords. I'm still waiting on them to be published to B&N and iTunes, but I will update the buy links on my books page once they're available. In the meantime, if you use a reading device other than Kindle or a Kindle app, you can download the EPUB, PDF, and LRF versions of both those novellas at Smashwords.

I want to thank all my loyal readers, friends, family, and fellow authors for their support this year. I honestly would have given up on writing a long time ago if it wasn't for your encouragement and help. I hope you all have a great holiday season and here's to a fabulous year of reading and writing in 2014!

Writing Links Wednesday—Venice and Writing

The yellow brick road of Torcello.

Almost forgot about WLW! This week I have several Venice-related links and a few writing opportunities.

• Torcello, one of the "other islands" in the lagoon dominated by Venice, is one of my favorite places to visit. It's a quiet marsh dominated by a brick road that leads past tiny farms to one of the oldest cathedrals in Italy. The cathedral contains the earliest-known depiction of the devil (c. 800), plus the mummified body of a saint you can peek at through a window behind the altar. It's very cool. Venice probably looked like Torcello before it was built up.
• Speaking of the other islands, Murano's glass blowing industry (i.e., it's only industry) is in trouble. Will focusing on "high art" instead of utilitarian pieces save the island?
• This is a dizzyingly long list of writing fellowships and awards, most of which are free to enter or apply.
• NaNoWriMo is less than a month away! This writing pacemaker might help keep you on track.

Five Favorite Movies Set in Venice

Ah, Venice! Ever since I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as an eight-year-old, Venice has seemed like the most absolutely romantic place on earth. There really is no other city like it: an enclave of music and art, ships of exploration and secret identities, pink lights and rivers for streets.

All of this makes Venice a great setting for movies. A few years ago, I resolved to watch every single movie set in Venice that I could find. I doubt I’ll ever actually complete my goal, but here are my top five so far. What are yours?

1. Casanova (2005), starring Heath Ledger and Sienna Miller
To quote Richard Roeper, “This movie is a romp. A romp, I tell you!!!” Venice looks gorgeous, Ledger looks gorgeous, and I am a total sucker for the sort of insanely complicated comedy-of-errors plot that this movie has. Also, I’m a complete Casanova geek. I’ve read his entire autobiography, and once I got lost in Venice because I was too occupied thinking about how awesome Casanova was and listing all his accomplishments to pay attention to where I was going. I also met the man who created the masks for this film, Alberto Sarria. Fun fact: mask making has been the most profitable Venetian business since the 12th century. Which is saying something.

2. Dangerous Beauty (1998), starring Catherine McCormack and Rufus Sewell
Based on the incredible true story of Veronica Franco, a 16th-century Venetian courtesan who saved the city only to be tried by the Inquisition as a witch, Dangerous Beauty is searingly romantic and an incredible portrait of the city of Venice. Because she’s a courtesan, and smart, Veronica has incredible political power in a male-dominated world. Men respect her opinions and she influences foreign policy, all with the awareness that her fortunes rest on her ever-fading beauty. What I love most about this film is the ending: I was preparing myself for Veronica to die, when suddenly the Inquisition was like, “Venice! What can we do?” before packing up their bags and hieing back to Rome. I found the whole thing a little unbelievable until I found out THAT’S ACTUALLY WHAT HAPPENED. Venice 1, Inquisition 0.

3. The Tourist (2010), starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie
If you like classic suspense movies like North by Northwest or Charade, The Tourist is right up your alley. Jolie is gorgeous as a sophisticated ice queen who falls for a “cool” math teacher from Wisconsin. Jolie brings so much to this role and I love Johnny Depp. The only issue I have with The Tourist is that I don’t think Venice was utilized enough as a setting: a majority of the shots are interiors that could be found in any major European city. But it does have Paul Bettany in it, so I’m willing to overlook that.

4. Casino Royale (2006), starring Daniel Craig and Eva Green
Casino Royale surprised me with the fact that it was 1. awesomely good; and 2. a romance. Most of the film doesn’t take place in Venice, but I think the connection between the gambling scenes and the Venetian scenes was brilliantly done, seeing as how cards were supposedly invented in Venice and it was home to the first casino, the Ridotto. Even though Bond and Vesper are only in Venice for about the last fifteen minutes of the movie, the Venice scenes are the most memorable in the film. They’re brilliantly shot and perfectly utilized, and the cinematographer deserves major props.

5. Don’t Look Now (1973), starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland
Speaking of that chase scene through the streets of Venice in Casino Royale, you might remember Vesper’s scarlet coat. That’s actually a tribute to Don’t Look Now, a horror flick that shows the grittier side of Venice. I’m not going to say it’s my favorite movie ever, because it’s kind of silly and weird, and there’s a random sex scene with Donald Sutherland and his naked butt (he is my old man crush, but still, TMI). HOWEVER, I like the unique way the cinematographers treated Venice and how the city seemed creepy as heck by the end of the movie. But the real reason you should watch Don’t Look Now is the red coat: it’s a part of pop culture. Aside from Casino Royale, it’s been referenced in Flatliners, In Bruges, the 2005 film The Dark, and many songs including Big Audio Dynamite’s “E=MC2” and the M83 song “America.”