Blogging is Forever

First and foremost, CONGRATULATIONS to our Rhys for winning the Agatha for Best Historical Mystery for her fabulous mystery The Last Mrs. Summers!!! Woo hoo!!!

JENN McKINLAY: I was reading an article about Twitter turning fifteen the other day and it casually referenced an article about Twitter’s arrival which predicted that it would be replacing blogging because blogging was dead. Deader than dead. I find this hilarious because Twitter is really just a micro-blog. Some would say a micro-blog of hate, rage, and intolerance, but I digress...

I am happy to report that we appear to still have a beating heart here at Jungle Red Writers, so it got me to thinking, what blogs or vlogs (yes, I’ll include vlogs because it is 2021) are you devoted to?  (Present JRW blog excepted, of course).

Here are my fave of faves: 

Humans of New York: It is exactly what it says it is. A blog devoted to the human beings who inhabit New York. It is brilliantly written and I have gotten so many story ideas and character studies from it. It's truly brilliant.

www.humansofnewyork.com

Adventurous Kate: A woman traveling the world alone and sharing how she does it. This blog is so much fun but it also helped me tremendously to write last year's Paris is Always a Good Idea and my upcoming August release Wait For It, both being stories about women who travel to faraway places on their own.

Bailey Sarian: This is a vlog that I stumbled upon about six months ago while researching mystery stories to use as inspiration for my books. Bailey is a former Sephora makeup wizard who decided to combine her love of makeup, mysteries, and murder (her mom was a 911 dispatcher) in a vlog. She debuted in 2013 doing makeup tutorials but busted out in 2019 when she started discussing mysteries during her tutorials. Brilliant, right? She now has over 10M followers on FB, 5M on YouTube, and 2.5M on Instagram. Plus, she's a hoot and she manages to keep her private life very private. Kudos, girl!

What about you, Reds? What are your fave blog/vlogs? 

LUCY BURDETTE: I feed my Paris obsessions with David Lebovitz, Dori Greenspan, and Secrets of Paris blogs. I love the Washington Post and New York Times cooking columns. And blogs about books and writing are too numerous to mention, but some I try to keep up with are the Wickeds, Maurice on Books, Lesa Holstine, Nathan Bransford… Oh and some on politics and Covid. Good lord, it’s no wonder I fall behind in my work!

www.wickedauthors.com

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Hmm. That is a good question, because..hmm. The New Yorker, certainly. Washington Post. NY Times. Career Authors. (yes, BSP) I tend to look at blogs when they cross my bandwidth randomly...not so many that I look at daily. 

 (And speaking of BSP: got to say--GO Jungle Red! I just checked our stats, and we’ve had NINE POINT THREE MILLION VIEWS! So--aw. Thank you, all.)  Eager to hear what everyone else is also reading!    

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Yeah, Jenn, I remember when “Blogs are dead” was all the rage. But you know what? If you have a blog, you can’t be deplatformed, or censored, or hand your work over to a social media platform OR lose everything because it’s gone belly-up (MySpace, Friendster and Vine, anyone?) Now of course, the new hot thing is Substack, which is… blogging. Blogging you can get people to pay for instead of monetizing with ads. 

*Public service announcement: Jungle Red Writers does not charge for content, post paid content, solicit ads, have sponsors OR use affiliate links. Although the number of times we raved over Downton Abbey and Bridgerton, you would think we should get a kickback.*

www.whatever.scalzi.com

My faves? The Wickeds, John Scalzi’s Whatever, Phil Are Go! For hysterical photoshopped paperback covers, The Bulwark and the Daily Beast for political commentary (free and subscription content available.) Like Hank, I also tend to read blogs (and “Substack newsletters”) that cross my path on Twitter. I should really start keeping track of them; I tend to read a great article and then forget the author's name and so can never find it again.

HALLIE EPHRON: I used to follow Tom & Lorenzo, the “fabulous and opinionated” fashion and pop culture bloggers, but then celebrities stopped going out in fabulous clothes and the runway got mothballed. 

It’s not a blog but close - The Conversation, a New York Times opinion column that used to feature David Brooks (conservative) and Gail Collins (not conservative) in a very interesting back and forth. So refreshing, people from different spots on the opinion spectrum cracking jokes and talking about substantive issues without insulting each other. I like it less well now that Brooks has taken a leave and Collins is writing with someone a bit less tart. 

And every once in a while Facebook serves up a new Randy Rainbow musical spoof. Also not a blog but irresistible.

www.randyrainbow.com

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I read David Lebovitz, too, because, Paris AND food. I subscribe to Mark Bittman's new blog/project, The Bittman Project (a bit redundant there!) which is a community driven forum on cooking and eating sustainably. Then there's Vorcaciously, and Bon Appetit's daily posts. Also Eater London. (I'm seeing a thread here…) And I subscribe to three newspapers. Honestly, even making a dent in the Sunday New York Times takes up way more time than I actually have. On a sillier note, I follow a vlog called Thatcher Joe by British YouTuber Joe Sugg. It's sweet and funny and always makes me smile, which is a good thing after even skimming those newspapers.

RHYS BOWEN:  I confess to little time for reading blogs after I’ve tackled the daily newspapers. I do love Career Authors and enjoy Travels with Twist as she is a good friend. I read the Daily Om and sometimes the Daily Beast— the first to calm me from the second!

JENN: I agree with Rhys. It's all about balance.

So, how about you, Readers? What blog/vlogs fill you up?

Most Anticipated Spring Reads

Jenn McKinlay: I am an eclectic reader, meaning I read everything. There is no genre I won't read. So, while looking at my most anticipated reads for spring, I was unsurprised to see a nice mix of genre there. Show of hands, who reads ALL the genres?

Because I like to share (librarian), here's my short list -- in no particular order -- of my most anticipated spring reads. Believe me, the actual list is much, much, much longer!

I discovered Abby Jimenez when she was a Food Network champ of Cupcake Wars - no, not kidding. She co-owns Nadia Cakes and since I write the Cupcake Bakery mysteries, I was an instant fan. Imagine my delight when she published her first book, The Friend Zone, and it was EXCELLENT! Naturally, I've been waiting for book two and was thrilled when she endorsed my upcoming summer book and then sent me an ARC of The Happy Ever After Playlist, which I just finished and let me just say -- it is FANTASTIC!

One of the cozy mysteries I have been most eager for is Death at High Tide, the start of a new series by my dear friend Hannah Dennison. If you love a good British mystery with delightful wit and a divine setting, Hannah's your writer! The series is about two sisters who inadvertently inherit a crumbling Art Deco hotel on a fictional tidal islet called Tregarrick Rock in the Isles of Scilly. Perfect, right? I've just started it and am loving it! 

Freakin' Scalzi. I straight up love this guy. Smart and funny, he's a writer's writer. Plus his Twitter feed features his cat Smudge, so we were simpatico even before I found this series, which I love. The Last Emperox is book three of the of The Interdependency Trilogy, and I am here for it. Not for nothing, but Scalzi pens a heck of a heroine and this space opera is a supercharged rocket of a ride. Strap in!

Lori Wilde has been a friend and mentor to me for years. When we met up at Bouchercon in Dallas, we had a lot to share as we'd both been moved into women's fiction by our publishers. I have been anticipating The Moonglow Sisters ever since. Three sisters raised by their grandmother, inseparable until a betrayal cuts their close ties. How will it play out for Maddie, Shelley, and Gia? No one writes better complicated family dynamics with warmth and wit than Lori. Her book arrived on my doorstep yesterday and I can't wait to dig in!

Okay, there's anticipation, and then there's ANTICIPATION! No eager-to-read-list would be complete without mentioning our Julia. At long last, number nine in her series drops this spring and I am over the moon.

I have loved Claire Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne from book one and I can't wait to have them back in my life. Seriously, I am clearing my calendar and booking a long reading sesh with Hid From Our Eyes on it's release day, April 7th, and I suggest you do the same!

So, tell me, Reds and Readers, what are your most anticipated books this spring? And do you read all genres or no?

WHAT WE'RE WRITING WEEK: Julia Reads and Edits

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As you may recall, last WWW Week, I announced I had (finally) finished and (thankfully) turned in the 9th Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne novel. Now - the edits. 

I've had very light editing with some books. I remember one where my then-editor - the legendary Ruth Cavin - gave me notes that were literally three paragraphs, each one focused on one strand of my writing. They boiled down to things like, "Cut the fat" and "Pick up the pace" and "Re-write the ending." I always have to re-write the ending, because I finish each book in a surge of unhinged energy not unlike that of a coke-and-caffeine addict on a bender. Have you ever primed a wall for painting? And at the start, you're all neat and careful about your brushwork, but by the end you just want to finish the damn thing and break for dinner, so you slap on the primer any which way? Yeah, like that.

So this book is NOT one of those less-than-one-page editorial letters. Friends, when you compose a book on and off for five years (really, more like three and a bit of actually working) it's ugly. Imagine sewing together a patchwork quilt, except every few months your old box of fabric is taken away and you get a new box with different shaped pieces for a different pattern. And you're sewing in the dark part of the time. 

So the editing process started with me giving my editor notes - a few things I knew I absolutely wanted to change, expand or refine. Then I got notes from my editor. Then I got notes from my agent. Then from a couple other editors. Don't get me wrong - these are all smart people who know good fiction. Everything they suggest or point out is something that will make my book better and stronger. But what it means is that right now, my quilt is lying all over the dining room table, the desk, and the kitchen, seams picked out, fabric in swatches and piles of shaped waiting to be sorted, reassembled, and restitched. 

So I'm not sharing yet another excerpt with you today. (If you have a hankering, just search for HID FROM OUR EYES in the blog search box. I've shared 857 prior excerpts over the past several years - although several of them are already out of the book at this point.)

What I am going to share is what I'm reading right now. I've mentioned before, I restrict my reading when I'm face-down in writing. Since finishing the book, I've been binging on mysteries, thrillers, horror, SF, nonfiction - everything really. So what aremy latest? I'll tell you.




THE MURDER LIST by Hank Phillippi Ryan (August 2019.) I'm not blowing smoke at you - we Reds tend to read each others books, as you might expect, and I got an ARC from Hank. I finally understand what psychological suspense means after reading this book - I was in psychological suspense the whole time. Who do you trust? Who's telling the truth? One of the things I like about stand-alones is that it takes everything off the table - anyone could be a bad guy, or not make it through to the end of the novel. Hank uses this to great effect. Also, shout-out to a protagonist who doesn't do dumb stuff just to advance the plot, which I've seen in other domestic/ psychological/ female-led thrillers.

THE WATER WILL COME by Jeff Goodell. This is my nonfiction read at the moment. I actually gave the book to the Sailor as a Christmas present, then took it back from him when I was visiting/ seeing him off in Norfolk. It's very well-written popular science that has one half of my brain screaming, "We're doomed!" and the other half thinking about what a riveting setting a post-sea-rise world would make for a near-future SF novel. Writers. We're a cold-blooded lot.

THE HUMAN DIVISION by John Scalzi. Speaking of science fiction... I'm re-reading Scalzi's Old Man's War novels (and short stories) and enjoying them just as much as I did the first time. If you're sci-fi-curious (see what I did there?) John Scalzi is my go-to recommendation. His books are accessible, funny, touching and there's always a special pleasure in putting yourself in the hands of an author at the top of his game.


MY BROTHER'S KEEPER by Vaughn C. Hardacker (July 2019.) Vaughn's been short-listed for Maine Literary Awards at least two times I know of, and it shows. He writes in lean, evocative prose that perfectly captures both the hard-eyed cops, PIs and criminals that populate his novels, and the forests, lakes and small New England towns where they circle and struggle against each other. If Raymond Chandler and Paul Doiron had a baby, it would be this book.

Okay, dear readers, your turn. What are you reading, or editing, or quilting?