Hit And Run Book Recommendation

After my last blog it seems appropriate that I recommend a romance. Problem is I don’t really care for most romances (the reasons for that can probably also be found in the below post). However after a little thought I realized that there is at least one glaring exception to that rule:

Annie’s Wild Ride by Alina Adams
It is one of life’s many injustices that this book is currently out-of-print. I just hope that eventually Avon will decide to capitalize on the well deserved popularity of Alina’s Figure Skating Mysteries by re-releasing the title with a new cover (sorry, but what’s the deal with the swan?). One of the things that I love about this novel is its heroine, Annie. Unlike so many romantic female protagonists, Annie isn’t a dewy eyed twenty-something damsel in distress/virgin. She’s a savvy, thirty-something Captain in the Air Force/single mom. The characters are complex and exquisitely developed. Of course you can buy the book used on Amazon for like a penny but I really encourage you to ask for it at your bookstore as well. Those requests are occasionally relayed to publishers which is of course a good thing.

• Kyra Davis
• http://www.kyradavis.com/
• Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
• Preorder Passion,Betrayal And Killer Highlights In Stores May 2006!
• For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
• Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

Sad Songs Say So Much

I’ve never been a big Kelly Clarkson fan. She has a perfectly good voice but her vocal and musical stylings just don’t do anything for me. However I love her song Because Of You which is kind of weird because the single isn’t exactly an artistic departure for her. When my friend asked why the song got to me I shrugged and said I didn’t know. I was lying. I knew exactly why it got to me. It was so obvious I couldn’t even bury it in my subconscious. The knowledge was right there in my conscious brain and I just forced myself to ignore it. Then the other day I started singing along while driving to a bookstore. I pulled into the appropriate parking garage, turned the ignition off and immediately broke down and started crying. What gets me about that song is its lyrics:

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don’t get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you I am afraid

I watched you die
I heard you cry every night in your sleep
I was so young
You should have known better than to lean on me
You never thought of anyone else
You just saw your pain
And now I cry in the middle of the night
For the same damn thing

It basically just goes on like that. The thing is I basically did watch the man who was once my husband “die” and there is nothing more frightening than watching the person you love fall apart in everyway. Once upon a time my ex made me feel safe. I trusted him. But then it turned out that he wasn’t even able to be honest with himself let alone with anyone else and suddenly the person who used to offer me a sense of security was holding a gun and asking me to take it away from him because he “wasn’t safe with it.”

I can recall pulling into the parking spot at home with my then two-year-old son in the backseat. I was talking on my cell to my friend Cheryl. I noticed that my husband’s car was there so naturally I assumed he was home too. But when I walked inside he didn’t seem to be around. I was still on my cell so I just casually put my son in front of the television and continued my conversation with my friend as I checked the closets, the bathrooms and so on. Eventually I stopped talking mid-sentence, took a deep breath and said, “Cheryl, do you know what I’ve been doing while talking to you for the last few minutes?”

“What?” She asked.

“I’ve been looking for my husband’s dead body.”

I had become so numb to his constant suicide threats and erratic behavior that I was able to chitchat with a girlfriend while checking to see if he was hanging from a noose.

So now my ex has moved across the country. He rarely calls and God only knows when or if I’ll see him again. If he’s feeling suicidal he won’t ask me to be the one to stop him. I’m safe. But when it comes to relationships I’m not at all sure if I’ll ever be able to allow myself to risk being “unsafe.” I came close this last summer. It was hard but I discovered that emotional courage is never more than a cocktail away. Unlike Sophie, I’m not a big drinker. Within this last month I’ve had a total of 2 alcoholic beverages and that’s not uncommon for me. But when I was with this summer guy it wasn’t uncommon for me to have 4-5 cocktails during the course of one date. I would go out with this guy one or two nights a week when my son could spend the night with his grandmother, I’d drink and then I’d wake up the next morning, have some coffee, go get my child and I wouldn’t crave anything stronger than a Perrier until…the next date. The relationship ended after a few short months which is a good thing for a multitude of reasons, one being that I don’t think my liver could have handled a year of that.

I’m fine with what my friend Brenda refers to as GBCs (Glorified Booty Calls). GBCs are the booty call guys that you occasionally agree to go to a movie or dinner with. Those I can “do” stone cold sober and enjoy myself. However if a man wants to stick me with the “girlfriend” label he’d better have some vodka handy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy. I enjoy my single status and I really enjoy my space. In fact my contentedness with the status quo may be hindering my motivation to tackle my demons. But over the last year I’ve met some really nice guys who have made it clear that they would like to be more than a GBC and I just haven’t been able to do it. Now I’m dating a few people but none of them live in Northern California and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Distance keeps things safe.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I don’t have a moral to this story or an empowerment message that you can share with all your single girlfriends. This is just me writing about one of my issues; exposing myself as something other than the perfect Goddess-of-Emotional-Health that some people seem think I am. So I guess if you really want to take something useful from this then let it be this: none of us are perfect. 99.9% of the people are screwed up on one level or another and that .01% that aren’t are bellow the age of two. As for me, eventually I assume I’ll have to deal with all this. Maybe Kelly can write a follow up song teaching me how to go about doing that.

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
Preorder Passion,Betrayal And Killer Highlights In Stores May 2006!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

Calling All Equal Opportunity Readers

The other day I did a stock signing at one of the many Barnes & Noble’s in San Jose. I signed my books while standing at the information desk and talking to one of the employees who was incredibly nice and helpful. “We’ll all have to read your book!” she said enthusiastically at which point her co-worker, who apparently felt it was his duty to play the ying to her yang, scoffed and said, “I won’t read it.”

He then had the good sense to look somewhat embarrassed by his extreme rudeness. I figured I’d be nice and give him an out. “It’s okay,” I said. “I know there are a lot of guys out there who aren’t really into books with the pink covers.”

Unfortunately my “out” wasn’t good enough for this idiot and so rather than take it he informed me, in a rather affected tone, that he “only read philosophy.”

At this point the nice employee looked like she was about ready to smack him and for the record if she had hauled off and hit him I would have testified that it was in self-defense. But instead she exercised restraint so I tried to follow her lead and simply offered him a tight smile and suggested that the greatest philosophers believed people should strive to be well rounded which of course you can’t be if you only read philosophy. Then I bit my tongue before adding that he should take his philosophy and stick it up his existential ass.

The disturbing part about the exchange was not this man’s unearned superiority complex but the fact that he wasn’t all that unique in his approach to literature. I’m not suggesting that there is a huge surge of philosophy reading booksellers out there but simply that there are a lot of people who only read one genre of literature. They only read Science Fiction, or Romance, or non-fiction, or literary fiction and so on and so forth. I know how busy people are (believe me, I know) and I would never suggest that someone should make the time to read something she doesn’t enjoy just so she can claim to be some kind of renaissance chick but I do think that when in a bookstore it couldn’t hurt to pick up a novel shelved in a section that you don’t normally visit, flip through it and see if maybe it’s something that might interest you. It’s really no different than periodically tuning into that “other” radio station to see if they’re playing anything that appeals to you.

On that note I have decided to allow myself a few Oprah moments. I’m going to start recommending books that I like on this blog. I’ll end some of my posts with a little blurb about a book that I like and on those many, many days when I don’t have time to write a full blog I may drop in and throw up a hit and run book recommendation post. At least that way when you check in on one of my off days you won’t feel like the energy you expelled clicking your mouse was all for naught. Some of the books I’ll mention will be chick lit and some won’t be. Out of spite I will not be recommending any philosophy. I’m afraid Nietzsche and Aristotle are on their own. You can read the books I recommend, not read the books, email me and tell me how much the books suck, whatever. I certainly encourage you to tell me what books you like because God knows I’m always looking for another good book to take with me to Starbucks. Anyway, here’s one to start with:

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
I am the only person I know who thought the movie that was based on this novel was a letdown, that’s because I’m the only person I know who read the book first. It’s an incredibly fun tale and I’ve yet to hear anyone say they didn’t like it. I only have one little caution: Goldman wrote the book as a story within a story. He writes a very long introduction talking about his unhappy family life and how he had to abridge The Princess Bride from it’s original version written by Morgenstern in order to make it readable. Just so you know, Morgenstern doesn’t actually exist, nor does Goldman’s “ex-wife” Helen or his “son” so no need to get upset with him when he picks fun at their shortcomings. I mention this simply because while the intro is humorous and has it’s moments the actual story within the story (that would be the Princess Bride story) could easily stand on its own; so if you get bored reading the first few pages skip them and get to what Goldman affectionately refers to as the “good parts.”

That’s all for now!

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
Preorder Passion,Betrayal And Killer Highlights In Stores May 2006!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

San Francisco's Truth Is Stranger Than My Fiction

If you’re lucky enough to get a book published you have to expect that there are going to be those who have the need to criticize your work. Writers really shouldn’t be over sensitive about this; it just falls into the you-can’t-please-everybody category of life. Plus if the criticism is constructive you can learn from it. However once in a while someone will find fault where there really is no fault to be found. For instance there have been a few reviewers (amateur and otherwise) who have found fault with the manner in which the San Francisco police were portrayed in Sex, Murder And A Double Latte. Apparently there are a few who feel that in real life the SFPD would have:

A) Spent more time investigating some of the crimes that occurred early on in the book
B) Arrested Sophie for some of the illegal stuff she did while trying to solve the crimes
C) Treated Sophie with more consideration and respect
D) Just generally been more on top of things.

To those critics I would like to point out a few recently released statistics. Murder is becoming an increasingly popular pastime in the city by the Bay. In fact San Francisco had as many homicides last year as Oakland, which is the murder capital of the country, if not the world. Unfortunately San Francisco’s finest were only able to solve 28% of violent crimes during that same period, a statistic that can be partially explained by the fact that approximately 70% of the cities robberies and assaults aren't even investigated. But to be fair those numbers might not be all that relevant since only 29% of the suspects that the police do manage to apprehend are ever convicted.

So that pretty much crushes criticism A and B.

But lack of investigating isn’t the only reason for San Francisco’s low arrest rate. Police also have to contend with the strong distrust of law enforcement that is prevalent within many of SF’s neighborhoods. Officer Cohn came up with a unique approach to dealing with this problem: he made a home movie, starring a few of his fellow officers, in which he poked fun of Blacks, Asians, Gays, women and the homeless and then posted that video on the internet. I’m not sure what about the situation was more surprising, the fact that Cohn would be stupid enough to put something like that on his website for all to see or the righteous shock and indignation he expressed when people took issue with his conduct.

So that takes care of C.

As for D…well let me tell you a little story about a device found in a San Francisco Starbucks: A few weeks ago one of the Baristas spotted an odd looking item in the café’s bathroom and called the police just to be on the safe side. The police examined it, confirmed that it was indeed a bomb and evacuated the building before “defusing” it. They then told the media that it was a well made explosive and that "If it had detonated, it would have caused damage," and possibly resulted in many injuries and deaths. Then the SFPD did something that surprised everyone, they caught the person (a local homeless guy) who left the device in the bathroom! Furthermore they were able to arrest him (albeit for an unrelated burglary charge, but still!). Again all this was announced to the media.

The police were looking great and they were finally getting some positive recognition…until the forensic team took the time to really look at the device that had been disabled and discovered that it was a highly…corroded flashlight.

That’s right, they defused a flashlight. The homeless guy did leave it in the bathroom and he was really apologetic about the whole thing. He apparently “love(s) that Starbucks." The Baristas there let him “…drink coffee for 50 cents.”

Let me take a moment to say that I am not one of those people who instinctively distrusts police. One of the nice things about writing mysteries is that it gives me the opportunity to interview a lot of them and most are wonderful and highly competent people. I also think they have one of the hardest jobs in the world under the best of circumstances. Nonetheless the SFPD clearly has some problems that it needs to address. And I think we all know what the solution is:

Hire Sophie Katz! Who better to rebuild trust with the multicultural community of San Francisco than a Black, Jewish woman with a Gay best friend? Who is better qualified to reach out to the city’s schizophrenic homeless than a woman who talks to her cat? The police won’t have to worry about providing her with weapons because her friend Dena sells lots of dominatrix sex toys that’ll put the bad guys in their place and those watchdog groups who are continually on the lookout for evidence of police brutality will be gratified to know that the handcuffs Sophie slaps on perps always have a fur lining. Plus Sophie would never ever falsely accuse a fellow coffee lover of trying to blow-up a Starbucks!

But until the SF cops find someone to fill the Sophie role (other than me, the only way I’d be interested in fighting crime is if someone gave me super powers, an invisible plane and a really cool tiara) I would like to remind those who think that the fictional cops in Sex, Murder And A Double Latte are too unrealistic that if anything I was pretty generous in my portrayal of them. I can’t really blame the cops for not taking Sophie seriously because, as much as I love her, from a legal standpoint she didn’t come across as a very credible witness. Plus it’s not like I had the police do something really outrageous like brag to the media about defusing a flashlight.

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
Preorder Passion,Betrayal And Killer Highlights In Stores May 2006!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

The Fun Of Testing

So my son is being tested…literally. So far my son and I have collectively spent three and half hours and (I can’t believe I’m admitting this) $1000 on a doctor who is evaluating and testing my son in an attempt to figure out if he has a learning disability or disorder of any kind and how to best deal with it within a school setting. I tried to prepare my son for the meeting without making him nervous but I failed miserably. When it was finally time for his first appointment my child was bouncing off the wall in a rather bizarre display of nervous energy. Two seconds before I introduced the doctor to my son I had (truthfully) told her that he rarely waved his hands in the air in excitement, made up words or talked in weird voices. The minute that they met he started doing all three. Once they had disappeared into her office I dropped my head and started praying right there in the middle of the crowded waiting room. I asked God to help my son be cooperative for the testing and work with the doctor so she could give me the tools to get him into a classroom environment in which he could be successful.

Apparently God was really tuned in at that moment. When my son’s hour was over he came out a happy, calm and collected child. He walked up to me and said, “You’re really going to like this doctor, I love working with her.”

The doctor smiled warmly at me. “He was great,” she said. “I gave him the Stanford-Binet test and he was very cooperative.”

Music to my ears. We waved goodbye, knowing that we were going to be back the next morning. I smiled down at my son. “So was the test hard?”

“Well I guess it might have been for some kids, but not for me,” he responded. "You know, all kids have different strengths and talents."

“I see,” I said. “What kind of questions did she ask?”

“Oh just a bunch of different stuff. Like she asked what a baseball and an orange have in common.”

“And did you know the answer to that?”

“Of course mom!” he said with a roll of his eyes. “They’re both inanimate objects.”

I stopped walking for a second. “That’s what you said?”

“Yep.”

A few minutes later he asked in a very quiet voice, “You don’t think she was talking about an orange before it was picked, do you? Because if so then the orange isn’t really inanimate since it’s part of a living plant, right?”

So now what really should have been a very simple question with a very simple answer has morphed into a discussion of what qualifies as an inanimate object. But that’s par for the course in my house because my son doesn’t do simple which can often be charming but not always. I mean lets face it; there are times when simple is a good thing. There are times when we just want to focus on an item’s shape, not the scientific nature of its material composition.

Anyway I decided that it wasn’t all that important and the next day I took him to the doctor again. This time he wasn’t nervous at all. He walked with her to the office without any prompting or undue encouragement. The doctor had told me that she was going to be giving him a test that is apparently referred to as the Gold Standard within the school system. She said there were timed portions of the test and some perceptual aspects to it as well. My son has a hard time seeing certain patterns and he hates doing timed activities so I fully expected him to struggle with this and had warned the doctor that he might be a bit resistant.

He did better on the Gold Standard test than he did on the Stanford-Binet. The exact opposite of what anyone expected. Furthermore he was the poster boy of cooperative behavior. As it turns out my son loves having his “brain tested.” He wants to do it all the time. So now I have a new fear…maybe my prayer was answered a little too well. What if after spending an enormous amount of money my son never exhibits the behavior that has hindered him in school in front of the doctor thus making it impossible for her to help me deal with him when he’s at his worst? As difficult as it is for me to get my son to behave himself it’s unthinkable that I ask him to purposely behave badly just so I can get my money’s worth.

But there’s another issue too. How is it that a woman who has met my son twice is able to get him to behave like the model student? Is there a trick that I’m not privy to? If so then none of my son’s teachers are privy to it either.

The whole thing is insanely complicated and (for me) more than a little nerve wracking. The financial expense is significant but I justify it by reminding myself that I would’ve put out a lot more money if I had enrolled him in a private school this year. Plus, I’m desperate. I have tried taking advantage of the public school services in the past, from testing to occupational therapy and the whole thing (for reason’s I won’t get into here) was a pretty miserable failure. As it stands now I spend more time in teacher parent conferences than my son spends in class. That’s not to say that he’s not being educated but I’m the one doing all the educating and being mom, dad and teacher to a wonderful but high maintenance child and still finding time to write…well it’s beginning to wear me down.

So keep your fingers crossed for me and for him. I’m sure there are people who will read this and think that I’m wasting my money and that fancy doctors and tests are useless. Maybe they are, but I don’t waste my money on very much…okay I spend too much at Starbucks, but I rarely shop for myself, I bought my car used, I have basic cable and I may be the last person of my generation who doesn’t have a camera phone or an IPod so if I want to waste my money traveling down to LA in order to spend more money on tests for the kid (tests that he enjoys) then what’s the harm in that? If nothing else the trips to So Cal give me an opportunity to work on my Spanish.

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

Does L.A. stand for Latino Americans?

Well I’m either in LA or a wealthy South American country with a big tourist trade…it’s hard to tell which.

I came down here because there’s a specialist at UCLA who is helping me figure out a good educational program for my son. But I’ll write about that later. Right now I want to blog about the changing demographic of this area.

The bulk of my mother’s family lives in Los Angeles and my father used to live down here as well so while I’ve never lived here personally I have visited Southern California more times than I can count. It is due to my casual familiarity with the area that the comments of one of my San Francisco marketing professors back in the early 90s confused me. She was talking about pitching products to certain niche markets and she said, “Corporations recently became aware of a large Latino community in the Los Angeles area and they have begun to design marketing campaigns aimed at this demographic.”

I remember raising my hand and saying, “Wait, they just recently figured out there were a lot of Latinos in LA?”

My professor chuckled. “Clearly they should have been trying to market to Los Angeles’ Latino population years ago,” she conceded, “but the prejudices of executives often undermine the capitalistic interests of the corporations they work for.”

Whatever. All I know is that anyone who visited LA during the 20th century would have to be deaf and blind not to notice the ever-growing Latino community here and now in 2006…well lets just say that this year even Helen Keller would notice that the majority of the city’s restaurants serve tamales.

I grew up with the understanding that African Americans were the “main” minority group in this nation. We have changed the face of music, fashion, sports, dance and oh so much more and our influence and power shows no sign of diminishing. But now it seems that we’re sharing the spotlight in a really big way. As I was tuning into one of the dozen or so Latino hip-hop radio stations my mother (who accompanied me and my son on this trip) said that she understood why I liked the music because it was very “catchy.”

I hesitated for a moment and said, “Yes…that’s true but there’s more to it than that. When I listen to this it’s as if I’m listening to the beginnings of a huge cultural phenomenon. The genetic make-up of this country is changing and Latino culture is going to integrate itself into our every day lives in ways and to a degree that it never has before. It’s happening right now. These Spanish songs are already being played on the mainstream hip hop stations, J-Lo is the “it” girl and there are as many successful Latina chick lit authors as there are British ones. It’s all happening right now and we have front row seats, but front row seats are useless if you don’t watch the stage so…I’m watching the stage.”

And it really is an incredible show. As a woman of color I find there is nothing so exciting as watching a traditionally oppressed minority group (be it mine or someone else’s) rise in power and influence.

So now I’ve got to go out and find an adult Spanish language class because these kinds of shows are so much better when you don’t have to bother reading the subtitles.

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

Thank God Today’s Over

Let me start off by apologizing in advance if this post is in anyway incoherent. You see I’m at the tale end of a day from hell. Like most hellish days it started early (as in way too early to get up) with a small earthquake. Being a California native I’m not entirely unaccustomed to such events. When tremors would wake me up as a kid I would groan and pray that the quake wouldn’t be strong enough to necessitate getting out of bed.

My attitude kind of changed in 1989 when in a 15 second span of time a portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed, downtown Santa Cruz was completely destroyed and a good portion of San Francisco’s Marina district burst into flames.

So while I still don’t stress about earthquakes I also no longer wait to see if they’re going to be big before getting out of bed. Of course the quake this morning ranked a puny 3.14 in magnitude and it lasted for all of four seconds or so. However it was monumental in that it was the first one I’ve felt since the birth of my child so this time when I woke up my first thought was, “Oh my God, I’ve got to get to my kid!” Again that didn’t turn out to be necessary but it still shook me up (no pun intended).

Then of course I couldn’t get back to sleep which was annoying since I’ve been up very late the last few nights writing. But I kept thinking to myself, “What if the quake had been bigger? Would my son have done what I taught him to do or would he have panicked? And all that furniture that I’ve fastened to the walls…is it really secure? Should I be e-mailing my unfinished manuscripts to out of state friends so that I’ll still have it in the event that my computer and my back-up disks get buried under a pile of rubble?” So in other words I was awake the rest of the night.

I staggered through the day only half conscious. My son on the other hand was a bundle of energy. This is a bad combination. Somewhere between trying to control him, getting errands done and trying to stay awake I lost my cell phone with all my friends and colleagues numbers in it not to mention a few addresses and my calendar. Then this guy, who I was supposed to go out with this weekend, called me up to chat. Now this man, who is probably very nice, has been irritating me a lot. It’s not exactly his fault. We’ve only met once (at the grocery store) but he knew about my book and was all excited about getting to know its author. After a few phone conversations it became clear that he has a lot of preconceived ideas about who I am and furthermore had all these romantic ideas of what our relationship was going to be. Keep in mind that we haven’t even been out on a date yet! Now normally I’m a really nice person and I know that guys risk a lot when they ask a woman out but this phone call caught me at a very bad moment. We were two seconds into our conversation when he started telling me how just talking to me makes him “giddy” and that I’m the “goddess of all things” at which point I just sort of snapped. So there will not be a date this weekend or ever with this particular person which is probably for the best. Again, I think he’s a good guy; he’s just not a good match for me. As far as I’m concerned the sexiest thing a man can do is give me space.

Anyway, it will be tomorrow in less than an hour and I’m going to just pretend that today never happened.


Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

Thanks And More Thanks!

Okay this is one of those hit and run blogs but I need to take a second to thank all of you. Clearly you read my anxiety ridden post below and decided to ease my misery. When I wrote that little piece my Amazon ranking for Passion Betrayal and Killer Highlights was somewhere around 900,000 which I felt okay about. After all Amazon has over 2,000,000 books to choose from so ranking below a million four months before publication isn’t so horrible. But since yesterday my ranking has dropped to 150,000. That's a 750,000 point improvement people! I’m a writer but your support has literally left me at a loss for words. Thank you so much for supporting me and believing in me. I feel like I have this huge extended family out there pulling for me and watching my back. Seriously, if I had access to that 70’s song We Are Family I’d be dancing around my living room right now.

So once again, thank you, thank you, and thank you!

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!

New Year = New Possibilities

So it’s time to say goodbye to 2005…to be honest I have mixed feelings about that. 2005 was pretty good to me. I eliminated the last of the debt I had left over from my marriage, Sex, Murder And A Double Latte started my writing career off with a bang, I’ve made some wonderful new friends and I’ve reconnected with some good old ones.

2006 scares me a little bit. I think there’s a reasonably good chance that I’ll get another book contract but at this point it’s way too early to speculate what the terms and conditions of that contract will be and that's a little nerve wracking. I’m also rather nervous about my two completed books which will be released this year, starting with Passion, Betrayal And Killer Highlights. Personally I think Passion is every bit as good as my first novel (I wouldn’t have submitted it to my editor if I didn’t) but reviewers tend to be more critical of second novels. Everyone expects you to hit a “sophomore slump.” I also worry that it won’t get anywhere near as much media attention as Sex, Murder. It’s easier to promote a debut novel than a sequel. Of course I now have a bit of a built in readership because all of you who liked my first book will be buying my second, right? If you’re not going to buy it just lie to me and tell me you are. Seriously, my prescription drug plan sucks and I can’t afford to go on anti-anxiety medication right now.

Then there’s So Much For My Happy Ending (Thanks again to all of you who helped me decide on a title). That will be out in September. I’m actually pretty proud of the way that manuscript turned out. However there were some people who were initially worried that the subject matter was a bit too serious for a “chick lit” novel although it’s still filled with humor and personally I don’t think it’s anywhere near as dark as Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus' The Nanny Diaries or Jennifer Belle’s Going Down. It’s being published by Mira in Trade Paperback. I’ve done very well for Red Dress Ink and they are firmly behind me but I have no idea what kind of attention I’ll get at Mira. After all, they publish USA Today and New York Times bestselling authors. I’m just a blip on the radar screen.


But on the other hand, it is the uncertainty of what 2006 holds that also make it a year of possibilities. Perhaps Passion’s sales figures will blow Sex, Murder’s out of the water…or better yet perhaps the sales of both books will surge. As it stands now Passion is available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes And Noble.com and a few other sites. On Amazon at least one person has gone ahead and ordered it despite the fact that Amazon hasn’t shown the cover yet and they can’t ship it until the end of April…I’ve decided to take the sale as a good omen. As of yesterday Amazon also started selling Sex, Murder And A Double Latte as an audio-book. I haven’t heard it so I have no idea if it’s narrated well but it’s a nice option for those who don’t have the time and/or desire to sit down with the paper version…so I’ll count the development as a second good omen. I don’t currently have a boyfriend per se but there are two or three very nice (and cute) guys who seem to be interested in filling that role…so once again: possibilities. I have found someone who I think may be able to help me find a way to better meet my son’s educational needs…granted it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg to get him tested and assessed and I’ll have to fly to LA several times in order to do it, but who knows? Maybe I’ll gain some insights that will help me preserve his love of learning while simultaneously enabling him to be successful within a classroom setting.

And maybe…just maybe my next book contract will be fantastic and the publisher who signs me will give me everything I ask for and more!

Okay the last part of that statement is a stretch but it’s the beginning of a new year…the time is ripe for dreaming.

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!