Pirate Vishnu Book Launch Party Photos

Last night, fabulous independent bookstore A Great Good Place For Books hosted the book launch party for Pirate Vishnu. Thank you to the dozens of you who braved the rain to come to the party! Everyone who knows me knows I prefer the rain to sunny weather, so it was the perfect dark and stormy night to launch for my newest mystery.

To keep the formal part of the program entertaining, Juliet Blackwell interviewed me. 

I love throwing a good party, so in keeping with the spirit of the book (set in Barbary Coast San Francisco and India), drinks included San Francisco craft beer and beer from India. 

The giveaway for the evening was a pirate treasure including a pirate Scooby Doo. 

Several Pens Fatales were in attendance. 

One of my earliest critique readers made it as well! 

As did far-flung friends. 

 

I signed stock with the few books that remained at the end of the night -- and found myself realizing how strange it is that I now use industry terms like "signing stock" without thinking about it. 

The party was two days before the official book release day for Pirate Vishnu, so there's more celebrating to come this week! 

The End of My Sabbatical as a Full-Time Writer

100 days ago, I began the grand experiment of being a full-time writer. I was eligible to take a sabbatical at work, so I took the opportunity to finish writing The Accidental Alchemist. 

Last week, I turned in the novel. Whew!

Finishing a novel: laptop, coffee, notebook, research books,
critique reader notes, printed copy with scribbled notes, another notebook...

And yesterday, I went back to my day job!

I'm so excited about this book, but even more excited to go back to my normal life balancing two jobs that I love.

The sabbatical taught me some surprising things about writing, which I shared on the Pens Fatales blog last week. And here are my biggest personal takeaways from the sabbatical:

1. I'm not someone who wants to be a full-time writer.

Some people are cut out to be full-time writers. I've learned that I'm not one of them. I'm not giving up writing. On the contrary, I'm more committed to it than ever. But I want to write as part of a more balanced life.

I didn't enjoy the unstructured life that came with writing full time. Similar to my experience during graduate school, I felt like I always needed to be working. My regular schedule, in which I write for several hours three mornings a week plus plot on the train during my commute, works much better for my brain.

2. Writing to a deadline is awesome.

I knew this to some extent already, because I've successfully completed the National Novel Writing Month challenge several times.

But a messy NaNoWriMo draft is very different from a polished manuscript. Now I know that I can work toward a serious deadline and turn in a good finished product — which I did two days shy of my deadline.

Now that I'm back to my normal life, I'm looking forward to plotting my next novel in a paper notebook on my commuter train on the way to work, and happy that I know I'll meet my next deadline. 

My Surreal Life: An Agatha Award Nomination!

Earlier this week, the list of 2013 Agatha Award nominations was released. My locked-room mystery short story "The Hindi Houdini" has been nominated for an Agatha!

Thank you to everyone who has congratulated me this week on the nomination! The whole thing is a bit overwhelming (I'm still pinching myself), so I didn't take a step back and post the news here on the blog until now. Here's the scoop:

The Agatha Awards are given out at the Malice Domestic mystery convention that takes place every year in Bethesda, MD. The convention celebrates the traditional mystery — i.e. mysteries typified by Agatha Christie and other authors who wrote when puzzle plots were at the heart of mystery stories, and no gratuitous sex or violence was on the page.

My pet gargoyles with the anthology featuring my story.

This is my genre of mystery. I grew up devouring the books of prolific traditional mystery writers Elizabeth Peters and Aaron Elkins, who were writing clever twisty-turny plots with characters I adored. Books like that are why I wanted to become a mystery writer. And that's why this nomination means so much to me.

My nominated story, "The Hindi Houdini," is an impossible crime story starring Sanjay Rai, Jaya's magician best friend from the Jaya Jones treasure hunt mystery series. As a magician, he's the perfect person to solve locked-room impossible crimes, which he does in Fool's Gold as well. This story was published in Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology by Wildside Press in April 2013.

The Agatha awards will be given out on May 3, 2014, at the banquet at Malice Domestic. I love this convention, and this year it'll be even more fun!

Pirate Vishnu: The Treasure Hunt Begins in One Month! In the Meantime, Fun is Afoot

Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery #2, Pirate Vishnu, hits shelves in exactly one month, on February 11. Leading up to the launch, here's some fun: two giveaways, a free short story, and a book launch party two days before the official book release!

Two chances to win one of two signed copies of Pirate Vishnu along with an India wall-hanging that has a pocket to hold letters or magazines. 

Chance #1: Sign up for my email newsletter by February 10. All subscribers are automatically entered.

Chance #2: Like my Facebook page by February 10. All new Likes are entered, and all existing fans who comment between January 1 and February 10 are also entered.

Giveaway: Signed copy of Pirate Vishnu in a wall-hanging from India.

Download my locked-room mystery short story "The Hindi Houdini," available FREE for the month of January 2014. 

The story features Sanjay Rai, aka The Hindi Houdini, Jaya's magician best friend who plays a big role in Pirate Vishnu, so I thought you might like to check it out before Pirate Vishnu comes out. 

(Normally you can buy the story in Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology, a mystery anthology full of lots of great stories.)  

 

And if you're local, join me at the book launch party!

Sunday, February 9

6 p.m.

A Great Good Place for Books

6120 LaSalle Ave., Oakland CA

(in Oakland's Montclair Village) 

The event takes place at the fabulous independent bookstore that hosted the book launch party for Artifact. That party was a blast, so I hope you can make it to this one! Drinks, snacks, prizes, good company, and you can buy Pirate Vishnu two days before its official release. 

More party details are on Facebook, where you can also let me know if you plan on attending. 

It's such a strange time leading up to a book release. I've only done this once before, so it still feels so new! I love this book, so I'm excited to share it with the world.

A Look Back at 2013

If 2011 was the year of cancer and 2012 was the year of recovery, 2013 was the year of seizing the day. I was looking over the blog, and wow did I jam a lot into 2013. Some highlights:

January: Showed my agent a book proposal for a new mystery series, a paranormal mystery featuring female alchemist Zoe Faust and her sidekick, a gargoyle accidentally brought to life by a French stage magician.

My own gargoyle: stuffed animal Dori.

February: Received my first royalty check from Henery Press (for Other People's Baggage). I knew I should do something fun with part of the money, so I bought this super-cute pair of glasses I'd been eying.

Cute new glasses!

March: Attended mystery convention Left Coast Crime, held in Colorado Springs in 2013. Had a great time both meeting readers and catching up with writer pals I only see once or twice a year. 

April: Wildside Press published Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology, featuring my locked-room mystery short story "The Hindi Houdini." I love this story because I pulled off writing a true locked-room mystery like the classics I love, plus it features Sanjay from the Jaya Jones series in his first starring role.

The anthology includes "The Hindi Houdini."

May: This was the month that began to me wonder what my life had become -- in a good way.  Not only did I get to interview one of my all-time favorite mystery authors, but I also went on a last-minute trip to Europe, tagging along with the husband on a business trip of his (a business trip???). If you'd asked me about either of these things just a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have expected either of them to be in my future. (The surreal events of my life were to continue, especially in June and September.)

Attended Malice Domestic -- with a surprise highlight of being asked to step in for Barbara Mertz and conduct the Aaron Elkins Lifetime Achievement Award Interview!

Tagged along with the husband on a business trip to London with an excursion to Lisbon.

I can never resist a trip to the British Library.

Spent my birthday exploring Moorish castle ruins outside of Lisbon.

June:  Signed a three-book deal with Henery Press to publish the Jaya Jones treasure hunt mystery series!

Gorgeous new book cover from Henery Press.

July: Wrote an outline of Jaya Book 3 for Camp NaNoWriMo.

August: Henery Press published the new edition of Artifact.

September: Signed my second three-book contract of the year! After reworking the book proposal I gave my agent in January, the series sold in a three-book deal to Midnight Ink. The new series takes place in Portland, so I have plenty of excuses to visit.

October: Began 100 days of being a full-time writer, taking a sabbatical from my beloved day job to meet my writing deadlines.

November: Traveled to France on a trip that was half book research and half romantic vacation.

Participated in NaNoWriMo and attended the Night of Writing Dangerously.

December: Learned how to balance writing and life as a full-time writer.

It took a while, but I was finally finding my groove by December. My sabbatical ends at the end of January, coinciding with turning in The Accidental Alchemist to Midnight Ink. It's going to be a fun and intense January, but I'm also looking forward to getting back to my regular schedule. I've learned that I love having the structure of my day job (it helps that I love the job and my coworkers), which has been a wonderful thing to realize at this stage of my writing career.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Gigi

The 2013 Night of Writing Dangerously Write-A-Thon

I didn't know if last year's Night of Writing Dangerously could be topped, but this year's National Novel Writing Month write-a-thon was a great night. The event raised money for the Office of Letters and Light, which funds literacy outreach like the Young Writers Program. 

In addition to being a good time for a good cause, the evening turned out to be surprisingly productive! In between catching up with other writers and dining on the tasty vegan dinner and donuts (don't worry future NOWD attendees, vegan was only one of many options), I wrote 3,000 words in the next Jaya Jones novel.

San Francisco's Julia Morgan Ballroom was packed with 250 writers for six hours of writing and other shenanigans. Writing is often such a solitary pursuit that the energy of events like this is invigorating. The theme of the evening was "noir," so we dressed accordingly.

With the Herron sisters, Bethany and Rachael.

Writing beside my partner in crime who I've been writing next to for 9 years!

The San Francisco Bay Area chapter of RWA had a great showing.

The Julia Morgan Ballroom during the Night of Writing Dangerously.

15 Days in France

I kicked off my sabbatical with 15 days in France. I wasn't playing hooky from my 100 days of being a full-time writer. True, I'm definitely still in post-cancer seize-the-day mode. But in addition to being a fun vacation, the trip also served a practical purpose as part of my sabbatical: it was a research trip for two books I'm working on right now.

Jaya Jones Book 3 takes Jaya to several destinations in France, a country she's never been to before. And in The Accidental Alchemist, the first book in my new mystery series, American-born Zoe Faust lived in Paris for many years before ending up in Portland, Oregon, and her sidekick Dorian the gargoyle is from Paris. (Dorian is related to my stuffed animal gargoyle Dori, who stowed away in my luggage on this trip.)

While my critique partners are reading a draft of The Accidental Alchemist this month, I'm writing the next Jaya Jones book for NaNoWriMo. I finished an outline for the book over the summer, so this trip was exactly what I needed to fill in some details and get inspired to dive into the book. Here are a few highlights from the trip.

Les Machines de l'ile of Nantes

The old shipping warehouses of this port city along the Loire have been converted into a mechanical wonderland based on Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci.

Les Machines de l'ile (The Machines of the Isle) includes amazing creations including the Great Elephant that roams the park, and a carousel straight out of a fantasy novel. If you're into the steampunk aesthetic, you'd love this place. I'd never been here before, but after I stumbled across it last year when researching France, I knew that I wanted to visit and that it had a part to play in the next Jaya book. 

The Great Elephant at Les Machines de l'ile in Nantes, France.

A sign warns people to watch their children while the Great Elephant roams.

Clisson Castle

No trip to Europe would be complete without a day trip to castle ruins. Clisson is a medieval town not far from Nantes with a wonderful castle. 

Dori the gargoyle exploring Clisson Castle.

Clisson Castle.

Mont Saint Michel

When we arrived at Mont Saint Michel, the small island off the coast of Normandy, it was Halloween and a storm was approaching. That made for an amazing Halloween to explore the cobblestone streets and ramparts as the clouds rolled in.

Mont Saint Michel with a storm approaching.

The storm also gave me a perfect opportunity to kick off National Novel Writing Month on November 1 while sitting inside a cozy hotel room with my paper notebook while the storm raged outside. Our hotel room was a converted fisherman's cottage high on the mount, overlooking the quickly-rising tides. 

View from the hotel room, overlooking low tide in the Mont Saint Michel Bay.

I first visited Mont Saint Michel when I was backpacking after college and I knew I wanted to return. It's such an amazing place full of history and mystery that it's going to get blog posts of its own -- not to mention being an important part of the book! (One of my favorite mysteries, Old Bones by Aaron Elkins, also has two scenes at Mont Saint Michel.)

Mont Saint Michel on a foggy Halloween night.

Exploring the Mont Saint Michel Abbey.

Paris

Eating out in France is fun, even for someone like me who gave up meat. I enjoyed many meals before we got to Paris, but it was wonderful to rent an apartment and do some cooking! I love going to the markets in foreign countries to try new things that aren't available at home. The shallots in France are heavenly and my favorite snack was chocolate-covered rice cakes.

The Louvre is in the new Jaya book, so I visited twice, once during the day and once at night. Nothing as dramatic happened as when I visited in 1998, but it still provided much inspiration.

The Louvre at sunset.

The Musee D'Orsay.

I stopped by to visit my old friends at Notre Dame.

Dori the Gargoyle Exploring Paris 

My stowaway Dori had fun, too. (Dori is distantly related to Dorian, the gargoyle in The Accidental Alchemist, but Dori is much fluffier.)

Dori the gargoyle at the Eiffel Tower.

Dori the gargoyle at Notre Dame.

Dori the gargoyle exploring the Marais neighborhood.

Dori hiding out in my luggage.

Time to get back to work on those books the trip inspired!