Goodreads Giveaway

Join the Goodreads book giveaway and you might win one of five copies of my new mystery BINGOED.  Just click on the link below:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Bingoed

by Patricia Rockwell

Giveaway ends August 27, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

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BINGOED!

A red-letter day for me today!  My new humorous mystery BINGOED--first in my Essie Cobb, Senior Sleuth, mystery series, is finally out.  You can download an e-copy here at Amazon Kindle.  The paperback version will follow shortly.  I've been wanting to do a series about clever older ladies in an assisted living facility for quite some time--probably because my own Mom is 90 years old and still going strong.  As you can imagine, she's the inspiration for this light-hearted caper! 

Here's the story:

Why would spry senior Bob Weiderley suddenly fall into a coma after winning a game of Bingo?  After all, he was the most physically fit of all the men at the Happy Haven Assisted Living Facility—able to bend over to tie his own shoes and use the stairs rather than the elevator.  It was just very suspicious.  That’s why Essie Cobb and her friends and fellow residents--Opal, Marjorie, and Fay--decided to investigate. 

Was it possible that someone was out to get the friendly old gentleman?  Maybe it was Violet, Happy Haven’s manager, trying to cover up her shady past.  Or Sue, the activities director, whose behavior was strange to say the least.  Maybe it was one of the three women who sat at Bob’s regular table in the dining room.  Or the mysterious man who had recently sent Bob a startling letter.  Essie Cobb is determined to find out—and she’s not going to let her age (90), her weak bladder, or her various infirmities hold her back. 

Welcome to Happy Haven.  If you thought most elderly residents of assisted living facilities spent their days sitting in the sun watching television, you haven’t met senior sleuth Essie Cobb and her three detecting buddies.  These four elderly ladies have curiosity and drive unusual for women in their 80’s and 90’s.   They may not be able to get around as fast as youngsters in their 60’s, or navigate the Interstate or Interweb (or whatever that computer thing is called), but they can solve a mystery.  And they’re starting with this one.

Hope you'll read it--and if you do, hope you'll drop me a comment and let me know what you think--particularly if you too have parents or relatives in assisted living facilities or nursing homes.  Happy reading!

He Loves His Veggies!

Sorry about this, kind readers, but it's another nutty grandma doting on her incredibly adorable grandchild again.  Here are some photographs I took yesterday at my son's 40th birthday party.  You'll notice that every one features my sweet little grandson Braeden who is just starting to eat solid foods.  Turns out he really loves vegetables.  He downed an entire container of green beans (that's the muck all over his chin), along with quite a large amount of carrots, and some whole peas (which he both played with and ate). 

That's me in one photo and my son Alex, the daddy, in another.  Isn't that the cutest baby you've ever seen? 

Looking For Academic Novelists

In my forays around the Internet, I've run across a number of other novelists like myself.  No, not retired midwesterners with ex-military husbands (although there are surely many of those out there).  I'm speaking of former college professors and researchers who now write fiction.  For example, I just ran across one Andy Christopherson a Ph.D. in computational biochemistry who writes fiction and maintains a blog called Videlicet Productions about writing.  I was intrigued when in the midst of a blog post, he listed a link to one of his academic journal articles (which was, of course, totally Greek to me).

It got me thinking about the nature of--and number of---fiction writers who come from an academic research background.  It got me wondering what connection--if any--there might be from said researcher's area to their fictional style, genre, or subject matter.  I guess this question interests me specifically because of my own background.

I spent a lot of my career publishing academic research in the communication field.  I conducted experimental research in communication-related topics such as deception, sarcasm, vocal behavior, and a variety of others.  How or why any of this research led me to my fascination with mysteries--particularly the sub-genre of cozy mysteries--still befuddles me.  I guess I thought that all academic researchers should probably write mysteries--if they wrote fiction at all--because it dealt with solving problems and findings answers.  After all, that's what researchers do.

But now I'm thinking that I may certainly be wrong.  It's quite possible that former (or even present) academic researchers and authors may pursue different kinds of fiction if they are so inclined to write fiction at all.  Maybe astro-physicists lean towards science fiction.  Maybe sociologists become romance writers.  Maybe historians all want to write comic novels.  Who knows?  I wish I did.

If you are a fiction writer who used to be (or still are) an academic author, please let me know about your specialties (both academic and fictional).  I'd really like to see what sort of correlation there might be between academic areas and fictional genre. 

What's Up With Dishwashing Detergent?

I really don't dwell on the niceties of dishwashing detergent because filling the dishwasher has always been my husband's job--one he readily took on when we were first married.  Possibly it has something to do with his lifelong career as an Air Force officer.  He really seems to enjoy plotting ways to make the arrangement of the dishes more aerodynamically efficient so that the water and soap will distribute more evenly over the plates and glasses.  Sort of like how pilots have to determine air speed and angle when they take-off and land.  Heaven forbid if I ever place a pan in the top shelf!  It violates some sort of dishwasher principle or something.

Anyway, after many years of Milt managing daily dishwasher duty, he has run into a major problem.  It seems that the dishwashing detergent that is produced these days simply does not clean dishes well enough and my husband is forced to run our dishwasher TWICE--thus wasting a huge amount of water.  Now, if you're thinking that this is just a matter of pre-cleaning our dishes better, you would be wrong.  We always scrape and remove any debris or food from dishes before we load them in the dishwasher.  Also, we have had our dishwasher checked and according to the repairman, it is working fine.  No, the problem appears to be the quality of the dishwashing detergent.

Milt has used the same detergent ever since I can remember and for many years it worked perfectly.  Recently, however, (according to Milt) the government required that companies remove a particular substance from these detergents that it claimed was harmful to the environment.  I am certainly not knowledegeable enough to speak to the veracity of this claim.  However, I do know that if other dishwasher owners (like us) are being forced to run their machines TWICE for each load of dishes, water consumption must be increasing dramatically--which is probably not all that good for the environment either.  We even went so far as to try one of those new dishwasher detergent enhancers, but we didn't find that it helped that much.

I'm just curious.  Do any of you have this problem?  Does your dishwasher seem to clean your dishes less efficiently these days?  Do you blame the detergent? 

(photo from www.environmentabout.com)

Love Thy Author

Here's a super new site to help you find and appreciate new authors. You might recognize the one being featured on July 12.  Check it out:  www.lovethyauthor.com

Hatching America

Many years ago (in another lifetime actually) in 1976 during America's bi-centennial, I directed the Broadway musical 1776.  One of my favorite songs from that show was the delightful trio between Jefferson, Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, in which Franklin compares the impending birth of our country and subsequent break with Great Britain to the hatching of an egg.  The lyrics are timely yet today:

Adams:   It's a masterpiece, I say!
               They will cheer every word, every letter


Jefferson:  I wish I felt that way

Franklin:  I believe I can put it better
                Now then attend, as friend to friend
                On our Declaration Committee
                For us I see immortality

All:   In Philadelphia City

Franklin:  A farmer, a lawyer, and a sage
                A bit gouty in the leg
                You know it's quite bizarre
                To think that here we are
                Playing midwives to an egg


All:  We're waiting for the chirp, chirp, chirp
        Of an eaglet being born
        We're waiting for the chirp, chirp, chirp
        On this humid Monday morning in this
        Congressional incubator

Franklin:  God knows the temperature's hot enough
                To hatch a stone, let alone an egg

All:  We're waiting for the scratch, scratch, scratch
        Of that tiny little fellow
        Waiting for the egg to hatch
        On this humid Monday morning in this
        Congressional incubator

Adams:  God knows the temperature's hot enough
              To hatch a stone

Jefferson:  But will it hatch an egg?


Adams:  The eagle's going to crack the shell
              Of the egg that England laid

All:  Yes, so we can tell, tell, tell
        On this humid Monday morning in this
        Congressional incubator

Franklin:  And as just as Tom here has written
                Though the egg may belong to Great Britain,
                The eagle inside belongs to us!

All:  And just as Tom here has written
        We say to hell with Great Britain!
        The eagle inside belongs to us!

Happy Independence Day!  Happy Birthday, America!  Thank you, Founding Fathers!