Carol Preflatish

This weekend finds me a little sad. I had hoped to attend the Magna cum Murder Crime Writing Festival in Muncie, Indiana. I attended for the first time last year and had hoped to be able to go again this year. There's a myth out there among some non-writers that think if you publish a book, you'll get rich. That's not necessarily so. My first book was released in December 2009 and since that time, I've received one royalty check, one royalty check in almost two years. I'm going to attribute that to a couple of things, I was a brand new published writer, so no one knew me and the ebook explosion had not happened yet. My second book is due out in January and I'm hoping that will help increase sales in my first book. It usually does. Saved by the Sheriff will not only be in ebook format, but should also be out in print as well. However, I still won't be able to quit the day job. On thing I didn't know much about when my first book came out was how to mark...

No, no, not me. But, if the law enforcement authorities ever look in my laptop, they would probably be doing a lot of questioning. As a writer of mystery and suspense, I do a lot of research on the crimes in my books. I'm getting ready to start book #4 in the mystery series that I hope to get published someday and so far, there's been a murder, a serial killer, several thefts, and this one will be about arson. You should see all of the web sites I have bookmarked from doing research. Scarey stuff. As I've mentioned before, National Novel Writing Month starts on November 1. One of my writer friends asked on Facebook the other day what our books would be about. I had a book somewhat plotted and posted a blurb about it, but warned that I would probably end up changing it and well, I did. I came up with a new plot last night and will get that new blurb written soon. My plans for this weekend are to edit the manuscript that I just signed a contract for. The publisher has asked...

I have an interview up today at The Eclectic Writer blog . Please stop by and check it out. Thanks. Carol

Yesterday, I posted about our camping trip to Brown County, Indiana and said that my husband and I had a reason other than vacation for our trip. I wouldn't exactly call it a bucket list, but we have decided to try to do at least one thing each year that we have never done. The first thing we chose to do was pan for gold . I know what you're thinking, gold in Indiana ? Why yes, there is gold in them there hills, but not the kind of gold found in California in the Gold Rush Days. Millions of years ago, glaciers from Canada slowly moved south as far as Indiana and those glaciers moved a lot of the earth, including gold, along with them. This is why it's so flat in northern Indiana. The glaciers stopped at what is now Brown County and why there is gold in some of the streams there and a few other places in Indiana. We made our decision to pan for gold at a bad time of the year. It's the end of the season for a few reasons, one it's getting cold and it's no fun gett...

Slosh-slosh-slosh-slosh . That is the sounds of my and my husband's shoes on Thursday. We went camping and after two-weeks of no rain and the best weather, it rained during our camping trip. Not just rain, but a few times, a downpour. We, of course, knew it was going to rain, so we had prepared for it. Unfortunately, we did not realized that both of our shoes leaked and spent all day and most of the evening on Thursday with wet feet, socks, and shoes. Luckily, we did take extra shoes and socks, but didn't want to change into them until Friday morning, so not to get them soaked, too. Even with the wet weather, we had a great time. We went to Nashville, Indiana, camping at Brown County State Park. For those that aren't familiar, Brown County is one of the prime places to go to view the fall leaf color. The photo to the left does not do the view justice at all. The leaves were gorgeous to look at, once the weather cleared. My favorite store to visit while in Nashville is the ...

Six Sentence Sunday is something that many authors do by posting six sentences from one of their books. My sentences below are from a police procedural mystery that I am working on. Last night, I finished writing Chapter six. I was hoping to have it ready for release this fall, now I'm pushing it back to later this winter. The scene below is a part of a phone conversation between the main character and his old girlfriend. Six Sentence Sunday: "Actually, I'm working on a case where someone is stealing antique signs from businesses in town," he said. "Any suspects?" she asked. "That's the problem, everyone's a suspect because no one's a suspect." "Maybe you're looking too hard, or maybe the theft was just a diversion for another crime," she suggested. "Katherine, you're beautiful. If you were here, I'd kiss you," he said.

If you're a writer, or if you've followed my blog for a while, you know what NaNoWriMo means. If not, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and is held every November. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. If you're a glutton for punishment, you participate every year. Yep, that's me. I've participated in NaNo every year since 2002. Have I ever won by making it to the 50,000 words. No, I haven't. Do I feel like I have failed every year by not meeting the goal? No, I don't. Why? Because I still accomplished something. My book, Love, Lies & Deceit was my NaNo project for 2004 and was published in 2009. My next book, Saved by the Sheriff will be released in January 2012 and it was my NaNo book in 2006. Both were started from scratch for NaNo and both times, I completed about six chapters in a month. I consider that a huge beginning. I have a couple more books in the wings that I'm working hard to complete that were past NaNo p...

1955 - 2011

We've had beautiful weather for the past couple days. It's cool at night, was actually 34 degrees early this morning, but the days have been wonderful. I thought I would share some photos that my husband and I have taken in the past few days. These are the petunias in a hanging basket on our porch. I have to give credit to my husband for keeping them looking so well. He watered them practically everyday when he put water out for our dog this summer. Purple is my favorite color and these were just beautiful. I checked on them today and I think our cool temps last night didn't set too well with them. They're a little wilted today. Yesterday, I walked down to our persimmon tree to see how far along in the ripening process they were. The persimmons are turning orange and getting a little soft, but no where near close to being ripened yet. As I went on my wa lk yesterday, I had a couple companions. Our dog, Dexter and our cat, Kitty. Dex is blind, but gets around better than...