Happy Thanksgiving

Millions of people today will be celebrating Thanksgiving with food, family, friends and their own special traditions.

I want to extend a heartfelt THANK YOU to each and every one of you my blogging family and friends. Whether you are observing the holiday or not, I hope for you a wonderful and safe day that gives you much pleasure.

This is a day for giving thanks. I am so grateful for your friendship and support. While I’ve been away visiting friends, y’all have continued to visit and comment. I so appreciate that. The support and friendship among bloggers is an amazing thing.

While there are terrible things going on in the world, there is still hope and love. Today (and every day) we have much to be thankful for.

Whether you are celebrating by sharing a meal, watching a football game, shopping or some other activity, may you have a joyous day. Wishing everyone a very HAPPY THANKSGIVING. Be safe, be happy!!

It’s That Time Again

Where does the time go? I can’t believe it’s been a year since I wrote a similar post. You see, today is the third anniversary of Thoughts in Progress.

Three years ago on Oct. 31, 2009, I wrote my first post and began my adventure into blogdom. It has been a fun and wonderful journey. I have found great books to read, listen to and share with y’all.

And that’s the best part - I have gotten to know some amazing and delightful people through blogging. Mere words can’t express how grateful I am for the friendship and support each and everyone of you has shown me. Y’all continue to visit even though I’ve been limited in my ability to visit with you. I am eternally grateful. I am also thankful for those who follow this blog through all the different means.

While the blogging is a great way for me to express myself and my thoughts, I also want to make Thoughts in Progress a place you enjoy visiting time and time again. For that reason, I’m always open to suggestions for changes to the layout and the blog content. If there’s something you’d like to see or not see here, let me know in the comments. If you prefer, drop me an e-mail and share your thoughts.

Looking at other blogs I’ve tried to include a number of things I hope are enjoyable and/or helpful. I’ve added a list to my sidebar of the wonderful publishers and their links who graciously provide materials for me to review. I’ve also added the various blog tour promoters I’m associated with and their links. If I’ve left someone out, please let me know as this is a work in progress.

I try to highlight the books of authors guest blogging during the month with the slideshow, as well as providing a calendar showing when the authors will visit. Since most of the blog tours are now featuring banners, I’ve though about also including a slideshow just highlighting the banners. Do you think the banners displayed on the sidebar with a link to the tour promoters would be better? Or no banners at all? Readers and authors tell me what you’d like to see.

Another question for you. Are buttons important? I know a lot of bloggers have buttons that are quickly associated with their blog. If buttons are important, what image would make the best button for Thoughts?

Before I forget, today is the last day to access Riffle from this link. I hope you will check it out and join me there.

Again I want to say a huge and heartfelt THANK YOU for your support of Thoughts in Progress. It’s been a fun three years getting to know y’all and I look forward to the coming year to see what new adventures we can share together.

For those celebrating today - HAPPY HALLOWEEN. Hope everyone has a safe and fun time trick-or-treating and gets lots and lots of chocolate.

I also hope all our blogging buddies on the East Coast are safe and warm. Sending prayers and hugs to those involved in Superstorm Sandy.
 
I hope y’all will join me tomorrow to leave more about author Jennifer Chiaverini’s latest installment in her Elm Creek Quilt Series, THE GIVING QUILT. I leave you with a virtual hug, a glass of your favorite beverage, and a sincere THANK YOU!

Just Saying Hello

I had good intentions today to have a review for you or at least a thoughtful piece pertaining to writing. Well, we all know what’s paved with good intentions.

So I decided just to say hello, thanks for dropping by, sorry about the problem with the virus warning (still don’t understand that one) and share a photo of my water lily that snapped last month.

The funny thing about this water lily is that it’s growing in a large plastic tub. I placed it there years ago to keep it alive while I decided where to put a small pond/waterfall kit. 

Still haven’t decided where to put that kit, but the water lily doesn’t seem to mind. So now I hate to bother it.

Have you ever put something somewhere for a brief time only to have it turn out to be permanent? In the long run was the brief place better than the permanent anyway? Hope everyone has a safe and fun day. Thanks for coming by.

Thanks And An Explanation

I want to take today to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has stopped by lately and an extra THANKS to those who comment.

I’ve been lagging in my responses to your comments recently and I’ve neglected visiting your blogs. I’m sorry for this and hope to get back on track next week. I should be reviewing books here today, but just couldn’t get into. It’s not the authors’ fault. The books are good and I’ll share them with you later.

Gum Drop

Today I also wanted to say a heart-felt THANKS to everyone for their kind words, prayers and virtual hugs regarding my cat, Gum Drop, and her illness. She passed away in the early morning hours of Wednesday, Sept. 28, after a 2-month battle with cancer (her third go around). She was 13 years old.

Between helping care for my in-laws at their home and running back to my home when I could to spend sometime with Gum Drop, I haven’t been around blogdom very much. Her last couple of weeks have been the roughest.

I know to some this care, concern, and upset over the loss of a pet may seem a bit over the top. But you have to remember, I don’t have children and my furry four-legged friends are my children. I baby them as if they were children. No, I don’t dress them up and such, but I have been known to read to them though. I just give them lots and lots of attention and love. Add to that the length of time we’ve had Gum Drop and it’s just been hard letting go even though I’ve know since the vet visit on July 25 that nothing else could be done and her time wasn’t long.

While I was trying to care for Gum Drop and make sure her last days were as comfortable and as normal as possible, I’ve also been spending time with Little One (my avatar) to make sure she’s okay during this time as well. She and Gum Drop have been together since Gum Drop was a little kitten and Little One was less than a year old. 

The photos you see here are of Gum Drop in late August and early September. She was an indoor cat, but the last 6 months or so she enjoyed going outside to sit and just look around. It became a routine after I fixed their breakfast every morning, both cats would sit at the door waiting to go outside. When I was blogging from home Gum Drop is the one that would stretch out in front of the laptop, lay her head on my right hand and hold my wrist with both her paws. Now that makes for a challenge when trying to type. My little sweetheart did make life interesting.

Enough for now. Just wanted you to know why I have been absent. Again, thank you for your understanding and continued support. I hope to have some reviews for you tomorrow and get back to visiting with you very soon.

Y’all are the best!

Author Ed Lynskey Guest Blogs

It’s my pleasure to welcome ‘new-to-me’ author Ed Lynskey to Thoughts in Progress as the special guest blogger today as he makes a stop on his virtual blog tour.

Wildside Press will bring out Ed’s stand alone Appalachian (TN) noir, LAKE CHARLES, in late June. Here’s a brief synopsis of it: Brendan Fishback coming home from a rock concert ends up the next morning in bed with a corpse, his dead girlfriend Jodi Sizemore. He has no idea how she died. But the local sheriff closing in targets Brendan as the prime suspect for Jodi’s murder. Times is running tight.Going on a Lake Charles outing with his twin sister Edna and best pal Cobb Kuzawa, Brendan mulls things over. That night when Edna turns up missing, Brendan and Cobb take off to find her. Events heat up after they stumble on a well-guarded pot farm. Blood spills in the violent clash. Staying one jump ahead of the local authorities and an enraged drug cartel, Brendan picks up unexpected aid.

Cobb’s dad Jeremiah is a decorated Korean War vet and ex-CIA operative who applies his own rough ideas of justice. Veera Grant, a tough lady DEA agent working under cover, also joins in Cobb’s quest for the truth. Told in a stylish, taut prose, LAKE CHARLES set in the vibrant Great Smoky Mountains tells how a young man when pushed to the extreme defends himself against overwhelming forces on both sides of the law -- and wins, but on his own terms.

Ed was kind enough to answer some questions about his current release, as well as his writing in general.

Mason - What inspired you to write this book?

Ed - LAKE CHARLES was borne out of some desperation more than eight years ago. I’d written several hardboiled male detective books in the P.I. Frank Johnson mystery series. Frankly, I’d almost—not entirely, but almost—OD’d on Frank. He’s always going to be my main most man, and I’ll probably always be tied to him when thought of as a writer since there are now seven books starring him. But I needed a break from him and vice versa also held true. Today I went back and looked in my records. “Lake Charles” was first a short story published in an ezine called DEAD MULE in April 2001. The story became essentially the first chapter to LAKE CHARLES novel. So, LAKE CHARLES took me ten years to write.

I wanted to set LAKE CHARLES in the same time period when I was a young man. So,    1979 was the right year. My protagonist is Brendan Fishback. He’s from the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee where I’d fond memories from my travels there. He’s a little different, as the reviewers have noted. He experiences dreams where he converses with his dead girlfriend while he powers through a self-detox from pot. The dreams may or may not be supernatural. The reader can decide on that part. But as I just said, I sought to write something different than what I’d been doing up until LAKE CHARLES.

Mason - Do you have a writing schedule, a favorite place to write or a favorite time to write?

Ed - For some reason, the early morning—up at 4 a.m.—suits me the best. I shoo the cat off my chair seat after I’ve started to perk the coffee. I like to have 300 new words down before I hear the plop of the newspaper—Washington Post—hitting the foot of our driveway from the carrier making his appointed rounds. The freelance work is sandwiched in the middle of the day, but not before I fit in my two-mile walk. That’s it. If I listen to music, it’s usually jazz. Miles Davis is my current favorite. Right now I’m promoting two books—a small town cozy titled QUIET ANCHORAGE and LAKE CHARLES, my Appalachian noir. I hope soon to get back to my regular schedule of writing. That’s when I’m the happiest of all.

Mason - What type of research did you do for the book? Is research a process you enjoy or just something that is necessary?

Ed - I’m not sure what scope of research I did for Lake Charles since I wrote the first  draft eight years ago. No doubt I consulted a regional map, though the immediate area where the novel takes place is fictitious. No Lake Charles exists in Tennessee. No town of Umpire is there. The pressmen’s strike did occur. I see there’s a bibliography of reference works in LAKE CHARLES, including about the pressmen’s strike, so I must’ve consulted them. I had contact with people from the Kingsport area where the pressmen’s strike occurred so that provided me with the background. Years ago, Kingsport did much of the printing for books. You can see their stamp in the back of old books if you look for it. The strike turned bitter and vengeful. The scabs and union people fought each other. Families didn’t speak to each other. Anyway, the strike plays a significant part in the back-story to Lake Charles. 

Mason - What was the best and worst thing about writing?

Ed - The best thing about writing, for me, is the creation of a novel’s first draft from scratch. I don’t know if I can cite any worst thing. There are aspects that don’t appeal to me as much. I feel lucky and thankful to have my health and the time to write fiction. The most gratifying thrill to me is when readers finish my books and tell me they enjoyed the experience. 

Mason - What message would you like readers to take away from your book, if any?

Ed - I don’t write my fiction with any hidden agenda or political slant that I’m aware of putting there. I like for there to be some development in the main character. He or she has changed or learned something important about life after the story is completed. I can’t believe they can go through a major crisis or traumatic event in their lives and not be affected by it in some way. Of course, the men in LAKE CHARLES, including Brendan, are a stoic, watchful, and standoffish mountain clan. They aren’t like today’s sensitive males given to crying and spilling their troubles. They came from a different time. Mr. Kuzawa is a decorated vet from the Korean War. Think of the Mike Hammer generation. That’s just how the men acted back then. I don’t know. Maybe you had to know and talk to such men in order to understand and portray them.    

Mason - What can readers expect next from you?

Ed - Frank Johnson will return in two more installments: THE ZINC ZOO and AFTER THE BIG NOISE. A pulpy science fiction titled THE QUETZAL MOTEL should be hitting the streets. I’ve written and published a number of speculative fiction short stories so QUETZAL isn’t too out there for me. A few other projects are making the usual rounds, so I won’t mention them until they find a good home.

I’d like to say before I close out my discussion how I appreciate the opportunity to speak on your weblog about my writing and books. Thank you for your interest and for keeping the written word alive and a part of the cyber mainstream.   

Ed, thanks so much for guest blogging. I’m always delighted to feature authors and their work here at Thoughts in Progress. I‘m sorry that I won‘t be able to drop back in today, but I hope you enjoy your visit and please come again. It’s always interesting and fun to learn about the background of how a book (and character) comes to life.

Now for a bit of background on Ed. He is the author of the P.I. Frank Johnson mystery series (including THE ZINC ZOO out in 2011) as well as a small town cozy mystery, QUIET ANCHORAGE, also now out for sale. Ed can be found on Twitter @edlynskey and by email at e_lynskey@yahoo.com. He’s also on Goodreads at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/692283.Ed_Lynskey/blog and at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/692283.Ed_Lynskey

You can also read the first chapter of LAKE CHARLES to learn more about the book and Ed at http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/254944-lake-charles

LAKE CHARLES is up for pre-order sales at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Lake-Charles-Mystery-Ed-Lynskey/dp/1434430464/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300115352&sr=1-7

As a reader, do you enjoy stories with a little different plot line? If you’re a writer, have you ever gone back to a storyline you started years ago?

**Just a quick and huge THANK YOU for all the prayers and positive thoughts concerning my mother-in-law. We came home from the hospital late Friday and have been doing fairly well so for. We had decided against surgery for her since she will soon be 90 years old and we thought that might be too much for her. The surgeon was in agreement. It will be a long and sometimes difficult road, but so far she is doing well and has a positive attitude. I’ll be away from blogdom a bit more until I can get internet set up at my in-law’s home . I do have several authors guest blogging this week, so I hope you’ll come back and visit with them. Again, thank you so much for your thoughtfulness.