I gotta tell you, I love mysteries. I especially love a subgenre known as cozy mysteries, which is where your protagonist (i.e. mystery solver) is not in a line of work that typically solves mysteries (such as a cop or a detective). They can be little old women, journalists, bakers, writers, cat sitters, teenaged girls… Anyway. I love the subgenre a lot, and am always willing to give a potentially interesting series a chance. So when I heard about Whodunnit, a murder mystery reality television series, I thought, “This sounds like something I’d like.”

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Last week, I was on YouTube and found myself watching the new music video for Kelly Clarkson’s People Like Us. I’m rather fond of both the song and the video, but what I found really interesting about the whole thing was the comments. People seem to universally find the song inspirational, but their reasons for finding it so varies from person to person. Some people were lonely. Some people were bullied. Some people had gotten out of a bad relationship. Some people just liked the idea that there were people out there who were like them, somewhere. It’s why music–and art–endures.

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I love to read. I love to curl up in an armchair with a mug of cocoa and an enjoyable book and while away the afternoon in the middle of someone else’s adventure. I’m pretty sure most writers (and bibliophiles of all sorts) do as well. (“I hate books, so I’m going to be a writer,” said no one ever.) That’s why I’m so excited that we’re opening up for submissions tomorrow!

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Hm. I almost hate to break KD’s combo. Anyway, my dear friends, I’m going to let you in on a secret. Our December release? It’s mine. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. (Yes, we have our releases planned out a year, year and a half in advance. That gives us time to do the editing, re-writing, marketing, etc., needed to make sure we’re putting out good books. And that’s before we let Siri at them.)

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Well, we can’t all be globe-trotting like Siri, so I find my thoughts lately have been drawn to more mundane topics, such as what to do with my pocket computer, as I prefer to refer to my smartphone. I mean, it really is. It accesses the internet, all my social media platforms, even my IM programs. It plays games and music and videos. Oh, yeah, and makes phone calls. (Which, coincidentally, you can now do on your computer. So.)

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Ah, Fat Tuesday. The last day before Lent where you get to eat as much as you want, party as much as you want, whatever. I am celebrating by having pancakes for dinner. It’s probably been about twenty years since I last had pancakes for dinner, so I’m unnecessarily excited by this. Lent is sort of an interesting time of year because it absolutely does not work towards an actual personal improvement, and because it encourages ever more creative ways to get around whatever your Lenten goals happen to be.

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Let’s be frank, friends. Society, as a whole, is kind of immature. Sometimes this is annoying. Sometimes this is brilliant. But this tendency has given us some fun word games to play, some of which can be used with book titles. And we here at Turtleduck Press like books.

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Ah, do you smell that? It’s the scent of a brand new year, full of promise and hope and unicorns. Now, dear reader, are you like me? Do you feel compelled to finish a book you start, no matter how bad it is? Do you feel the need to push on to the bitter end which, invariably, takes forever because sometimes you’d rather do anything else than read another godforsaken sentence, but you feel you must press on?

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Ah, December. A time of friends and family, of warm evenings curled up by the fire with a mug of cocoa while snow falls outside, of goodwill and giving, of sparkling lights and pine-scented bows. In theory. It certainly was when I was younger. My sister and I used to make chains of paper rings, enough to get us from whenever it was through Christmas, and on the inside of each ring we’d write something nice to accomplish, and we’d tear one off each day and give it a go. We’d watch holiday specials, go caroling, and spend hours decorating the tree and setting up each little Christmas thing we could find. When we finished, it looked like Christmas had thrown up all over our house. (Enthusiastic, yes. Tidy or tasteful? No.) But now…

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Ah, titles. The first thing that introduces you to a story. A good one will lure in your reader, enticing people who otherwise would not have given you the time of day. A bad one will find you languishing on the shelves, unread and alone. I hate them a lot.

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