Travels with Kaye: October 2020

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Saving the Day

No, not like Superman, saving the day. Or was that Mighty Mouse? “Here I come to save the day!” I found a clip in case you’re nostalgic for Mighty Mouse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJvM8eYcpL0

No, not like in a Save the Day evite, either.

Oops, that should be Save the Date, shouldn’t it?

So, the one I want to talk about is kind of both. Save the Day and Save the Date. I have an idea that’s helping me get through the isolation and loneliness of the pandemic. I’m not completely isolated. I see doctors and people taking my money at the grocery store and drug store. I even see some of my family, with masks on and distancing. But I don’t see the ones who would have to travel to get here. And I don’t see my writing friends at our writers’ groups, because we’re not meeting. Another big blow is not going to conferences and relaxing at the bar with my seldom-seen colleagues.

Colleagues like these fine people, my fellow Sprint Club members. That’s a group organized by Ramona DeFelice Long (on the right) to touch base once a day and post how our writing is going. The photo was taken at Malice Domestic in 2018.

Or these fine people I did a short story panel with at Killer Nashville in 2014. See? It’s not all play, we work too!

I don’t know any other group I could tour a forensic anthropology lab with. This was at Mystery in the Midlands, 2019, in Columbia SC.

I even miss those hot, sweaty tents on the parking lots, selling our books with the local Authors’ Guild of TN.

What I really, really miss, is traveling! I want to see my people in Sweden and Italy again. I want to see my brother Don and his wife Donna. I NEED to see my kids in Virginia and Austin.

I’ll finish with a picture of me and Karen Maslowski closing up the bar after the banquet at Magna Cum Murder in Indianapolis in 2018.

So I’m saving up those dates. I’m listing people I will see and places I will go, things I will do, when it’s feasible again.

What do you want to do, when you can? 2021, 2022, whenever that day comes.

Save the Date and luggage photos by pixabay.com

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

One More Time #giveaway

Due to the generosity of my publisher, Lyrical Press, I have more free audiobooks of my second Vintage Sweets mystery, DEADLY SWEET TOOTH. You can get one without signing up for the Audible program if I pick you as a winner!

If you’d like to hear a sample of this book, I have that, too!

http://tinyurl.com/y3mhojl6

The blurb for this book online goes like this:

Vintage sweets, a deadly surprise, and a mischievous Maine Coon cat—Deadly Sweet Tooth is the delightful cozy mystery you’ve been waiting for!

In a darling tourist town like Fredericksburg, Texas, a vintage sweet shop offering delicious old-fashioned favorites is a perfect fit—until someone decides to debut a recipe that’s lusciously lethal…

With Tally’s Old Tyme Sweets finally—well, almost—turning a profit, Tally Holt is taking one busy Saturday off to host a grand party for her parents, traveling performers who spend most of their time on the road. Tally’s counting on the publicity and free treats to attract new customers. And the event is a sweet success—at least until Fran Abraham, the town’s foul-tempered theater director, drops dead after a bitter confrontation with Tally’s mother.

Murder was definitely not on Tally’s menu, but it’s clear that Fran’s death wasn’t natural. The list of possible culprits includes not just Tally’s mom, but her protective dad too. Relying on Yolanda Bella, her best friend and the proprietor of Bella’s Baskets next door, for help, Tally will need to unwrap the sticky pasts and unsavory presents of everyone from her own parents to her new hires before Fran’s death sours everybody on her fledgling shop….

Recipe included! And this one promises not to kill…