http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/ 

AuthorBuzz is a marketing service that puts authors directly in touch with readers, reading groups, booksellers and librarians, allowing them to offer excerpts, phone chats or visits with reading groups, material for newsletters, info about contests and freebies, mentions of new reviews — anything and everything authors want to buzz directly to the people who buy, read and sell their books.

http://confidentwriting.com/2009/09/27-top-writing-blogs/

http://confidentwriting.com/10-posts-on-finding-your-writing-voice/

Voice Again…

There are millions of blogs on writing and after looking at a few I realized that I could spend the rest of my writing career reading them and not really writing.

Of course, I’m not trying to discourage anyone from getting information from a blog. There’s lots of good information out there.  You simply have to know what you’re looking for.  

One writing blog I found of particular interest is Sara Paretsky’s blog http://saraparetsky.wordpress.com/. I followed her V I Warshawski series when they first came out and she was of fundamental inspiration in the creature of my detective, Alice Vireo.  On Sara Paretsky’s blog I came across the link http://www.womenofmystery.net/ and discovered this:

Sunday, July 11, 2010

To Kill a Mockingbird – 50th Anniversary

Celebrations are being held throughout the country to honor the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, the Harper Lee Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It is her only major work

Another writer who was significant in the development of my Alice character was Dorothy Uhnak. Her book Policewoman is doggy-eared. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Uhnak 

Policewoman is an account of Uhnak’s experiences as an NYPD detective.  She eventually quit because of discrimination.  Voltaire’s Professor Pangloss would surely claim that all is for the best. And that had it not been for discrimination she might not have written Law and Order and all her other award wining books.

To which Conégonde would reply, does there always have to be suffering?