Nice Review @ Bookreporter.Com

Warning, if you go to the site, the rest of the review gives away much of the book. Posted below is what doesn't.

Author Livia J. Washburn’s latest foray into literary murder mysteries successfully marries entertainment with literature, highlighting the works of playwright Tennessee Williams in a fast-paced and enjoyable mystery novel. The prolific author has a winner in series heroine Delilah Dickinson, a Southern belle and feisty redhead (just don’t call her “Red”) with a knack for solving crime. Washburn has just the right touch with the literary theme, providing informative tidbits about Tennessee Williams’s life and work, without bogging the novel down with minutiae. A fun read!

The Winners

Using Random.org the winners are:

Mark Justice: Killer on a Hot Tin Roof

Marscha Jacobs: Huckleberry Finished

Even More Free Books

This time I'm giving away two of my literary tour mysteries. I have two books, so there will be two winners. First is my latest a hardback from Kensington, Killer on a Hot Tin Roof. (I love that cover!) and second, recently released in paperback, Huckleberry Finished. Email me at washburn@flash.net by December 5th to enter.

And The Winners Are

Using Random.org the winners are:

The Pumpkin Muffin Murder - Cullen Gallagher

Killer Crab Cakes - Scott Cupp

The books will go out Monday.

Free Books!

I have one autographed copy each of the paperback KILLER CRAB CAKES and the trade paperback of THE PUMPKIN MUFFIN MURDER that I will be giving away, so only two people can win this time. Email me before November 25, 2010 (Thanksgiving) to enter the drawing. washburn@flash.net.

One of my favorite recipes in THE PUMPKIN MUFFIN MURDER:

Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins

Filling:
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese softened
1 egg
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:
4 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3 tablespoons chopped pecans
3 tablespoons butter

Muffin:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups canned pumpkin
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and flour 18 muffin cups, or use paper liners. Fill any unfilled muffin cups in tin with water.

Filling: In a medium bowl, beat softened cream cheese until smooth. Add egg, brown sugar and vanilla. Beat until mixed, then set bowl in freezer to set while mixing other ingredients.

Topping: In a medium bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger and pecans. Add butter and cut it in with a fork until crumbly. Set aside.

Muffin batter: In a large bowl, blend together flour, sugar, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice and salt. Make a well in the center of flour mixture and add eggs, pumpkin, olive oil and vanilla. Beat together until well mixed.

Place pumpkin mixture in muffin cups about 1/2 full. Take the cream cheese mixture out of the freezer then add one tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture right in the middle of the batter in the muffin cups. Having the chilled cream cheese mixture will help you keep the cream cheese from touching the edges. Sprinkle on the streusel topping.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Makes 18 muffins

Note: If you have dogs, add a heaping tablespoon of the leftover canned pumpkin to their meal. All of my dogs like pumpkin and it’s a healthy treat.

The Pumpkin Muffin Murder

Publisher: NAL Trade; Original edition (November 2, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0451231325
ISBN-13: 978-0451231321

This is the fifth book in the Fresh Baked series and on the stands now. Much of the book is centered around Holland Lake Park in Weatherford, Texas. This historical park features two double log cabins built in the mid-1800s. During my research, I discovered that the park where we took our daughters to play when they were young has had major changes. The log cabins are still there, but the old wagon they used to play on is gone and shiny new playground equipment replaced it. I'm sure kids enjoy the new playground, but it was sad to see the old wagon gone. It seems like kids today have less chances to just use their imagination when playing. The research at the park certainly brought back a lot of nice memories even with all the changes. My daughters are both grown now and teachers at our local schools, but I will always remember them sharing bread with the ducks and geese and laughing happily at Holland Lake Park.

Summer Battle with Google

Google I really like Google when I’m looking up anything on the internet. Then the whole Google verses Author lawsuit came up and we discovered several of our books available on Google that paid us nothing. Even that didn’t bother me as much as the latest thing they did. We had an internet bookstore where I sold books from our old bookstores. Most of my sales were on eBay and half.com. In 2008 we lost all of our stock when our house and studio burned to the ground. This summer Google decided that we had a bookstore and gave our home address and phone number. I have been battling to get it off Google since we started getting strange phone calls and I discovered it on their search engine. We would get calls almost every day wanting to set us up with something, usually to take credit cards, and from customers wanting a certain book. This would have been really nice when we actually had some books to sell, but under the circumstances it was just annoying. Every time I’d get set up to do some writing the phone would ring and I’d have to jump up. It became so bad that I ended up buying two more phones so I could put them near where I was working. I had to send off for a pin number, and of course that didn’t work. It would say it’d let me edit, but then it would just post that information, too. Finally after being annoyed all summer, I was able to get a second pen number and take it off the search engine. I'm not sure why it didn't work the first time. That's one thing about computers, you can do exactly the same thing and it won't work 5 times and then it'll suddenly work the 6th time you try something.

Killer Crab Cakes

Killer Crab Cakes is now available in Japanese. I love the covers they put on this series. This book was set in Rockport, Texas where I spent many fun vacations as a child.

The book was published in trade paperback last year and will be reprinted in paperback soon.

Seduced By A Vampire

Just received author copies of the Australian edition of my book The Vampire Affair. It's a 2 book in 1 edition sharing with Nancy Holder's Son Of The Shadows.

I like 2 in 1 books and wonder why there aren't more of them in the USA. Usually here publishers only use this format for reprints not original novels. I would think 2 in 1 books would be a great way to launch new authors paired with a well known. I understand bestselling authors probably wouldn't want to share the royalities, but it is hard for a new author to get a foot in the reader's door.

Also Coming

Killer On A Hot Tin Roof. This Kensington hardback will be released on November 30, 2010.

Because of her friendship with Professor Will Burke, Delilah becomes involved with arranging a tour for people who want to attend the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival held every year in New Orleans. She figures that a group of English professors and their spouses will be a low-key, intelligent, and, well, professorial bunch. Unlike some of her trouble-plagued tours, she expects this one to go smoothly. Which, of course, she realizes later, is a sure-fire way to jinx things.

Coming

The Pumpkin Muffin Murder: A Fresh-Baked Mystery. This NAL Trade title will be released on November 2, 2010.

The fifth in a delectable series fans can't wait to sink their teeth into. Includes fifteen recipes! Phyllis loves to spend quality time with her grandson. She'll be taking him to a festival with hopes of winning the baking contest-now that her friendly competitor, Carolyn, is judging and not competing. But when a decorative scarecrow is actually a dead body in disguise, it's Phyllis's sleuthing skills that are needed. The dead body is that of the festival's organizer- and his wife, Carolyn's friend, falls under suspicion. Carolyn turns to Phyllis for help, because who's better at dishing out some justice than a baker extraordinaire who can handle the heat...

Barnes and Noble Mystery Discussion Group

What was the June selection for the Barnes and Noble Mystery Discussion Group? It was my novel Frankly My Dear I'm Dead. Mystery Reader posted a little about it here.

Review of The Vampire Affair.

Check out Craig Clarke's blog Somebody Dies for a review of The Vampire Affair. Thanks Craig for the kind words.

Kim Harrison’s Black Magic Sanction

In New York Times bestselling author Kim Harrison's most complex and nuanced adventure yet, bounty hunter and witch Rachel Morgan fights a deadly battle—mind, body, and soul

Black Magic Sanction

Rachel Morgan has fought and hunted vampires, werewolves, banshees, demons, and other supernatural dangers as both witch and bounty hunter—and lived to tell the tale. But she's never faced off against her own kind . . . until now. Denounced and shunned for dealing with demons and black magic, her best hope is life imprisonment—at worst, a forced lobotomy and genetic slavery. Only her enemies are strong enough to help her win her freedom, but trust comes hard when it hinges on the unscrupulous tycoon Trent Kalamack, the demon Algaliarept, and an ex-boyfriend turned thief.

It takes a witch to catch a witch, but survival bears a heavy price.

I discovered the Kim Harrison books when James and I went to his Uncle Sidney’s 80th birthday party. We stopped at a bookstore before we left Brownwood and I picked up one of her paperbacks. I searched all the Half Price bookstores in our area for the others, but didn’t have a lot of luck. Thank goodness for the internet. James bought the rest of the series for me for Christmas and he gave me the hardback of this book as a late birthday present. If you like paranormal novels, this series is a must read.

Review of Huckleberry FInished

There is a nice review of the second Delilah Dickinson Literary Tour Mystery, Huckleberry Finished here. Thanks Dennis for the kind words.

Just Relax Already

I’ve discovered a breathing technique I like to use when my mind won’t slow down at the end of the day. You breathe in one nostril while holding the other closed, and switch the nostril you’re holding closed and breathe out for ten deep breaths, then switch. Was that clear? Breathe in the left nostril, out the right 10 times, switch and breathe in the right and out the left 10 times. This isn’t something you can do in public; since it looks very silly switching back and forth holding a nostril closed, but it is relaxing. It clears all the crazy book deadlines, plot twist that aren’t coming together, taxes that need figuring, etc, the pure panic of how I can possibly get it all done, by keeping the mind busy remembering what number you’re on and what nostril you’re holding. If you don’t believe it works, try it. It also works better than counting sheep at bedtime.

A New Review of A Peach Of A Murder

Clean Cozy Mysteries has written a nice review of the first book in my Fresh Baked mystery series.

I enjoyed the book. I did figure out the ending, something I almost never do, before the heroine did, but it was still an unexpected and unusual ending. I was satisfied with how it ended and how the story developed.

Check here to read more.

Do You Write from the Heart or For the Bucks?

I like to think it’s possible to do both. For instance while working on the plot for my next paranormal romance I discovered that books with vampires or werewolves sell better. My book was about shape shifters, but not werewolves. I wondered if I should try to come up with a different plot, but then it dawned on me. With just a little twist the book could be even better and the titled changed from Shifting Affections, to Enemy of the Wolf. Fingers crossed that the editor likes the changes, because she liked the original idea.

If you’re going to get published today, I think you have to think about the money, too. For example what are the chances of selling a gothic novel today? Slim. Writers have to keep up with the market in order to keep selling. This is the reason James and I have been able to continue writing for thirty years. We’ve written in many different genres over the years and have had a ball doing it. I wouldn’t think it would be fun to write one type of book for thirty years. So, keep an eye on the market, it’ll be changing again.